Like I Never Left

This year my return to the water seems hardly a return at all.

To be sure, there were 11 abundant months in between. Months of ministry and family and growing and full engagement in the wild adventure that is my great gift to call living.
This past year, as I Waited and Listened (as instructed last summer on the dock), I saw God do His thing in some pretty spectacular, quietly astonishing ways. Relationships shifted, loves grew deeper, connections ran stronger, celebrations rang happier. (A hands-down highlight was being asked to baptize five new believers at Hot Springs when our Team was there last March.)

My outside speaking engagements brought serendipitous surprises as I came with my little bag lunch of loaves and fishes and then stood back and watched with amazement as God fed healing and encouragement to the masses. My own healing was part of His agenda those times too.

Highview, my blessed place of serving and being served, has grown in her hunger for prayer, her longing for deep teachings from God's Word, and her passion to be the hands and feet of Jesus in honest and livable ways. Fifteen among us made the decision to call Jesus Lord. Oh!

So, the between-time was decidedly big and memorable and breath-snatching.

And yet.

I come to the dock now, to begin a generous six week stay, and -- it feels like I never left.

Maybe it's because I'm not exhausted. Usually I am. Usually I get here barely coherent, running on fumes (that stink) and ready for nothing more than sleep alternating with glazed-over stares across the water. Usually it takes me a solid week or more, sometimes a lot more, just to "climb back up to zero" as on of my Elders describes it.

Not this year. This year it feels like God and I are picking up where we left off last summer. I am alive and alert and deeply engaged right from the get go. Ken has noticed (and appreciated) the difference. So have I.

I am grateful for those who continue to speak encouragement into my soul all year long, my confidants, my counsellors, my mentors. Thank you for sharing your spiritual energies with me always, but particularly this year.

I deeply love and appreciate the committed and hard working Staff at Highview, who have shared the burden with me this year in new and obviously healthy (for me at least) ways.

And I am full of awe, and vibrantly aware of my deep and refreshing God, who's been both with me every moment of this past year, AND waiting with eager anticipation to meet me here again, on the dock, where it feels like I've never left.
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