Whisper #1 - Service with a Smile

This has been an interesting week.  A bit has changed in my life since Monday...and I love it when that happens because it makes life interesting.  I also always learn something with each rock of life that I uncover.  There were 3 distinct times this week where I needed some guidance...I needed to make a decision or needed help with something.  When I come to that place where, now I have to make a decision...what should I do here?...That's when I get still.  I think.  I need a quiet place, or at least a quiet place inside my head.  After processing the options I have, I almost always ask David his thoughts, after explaining what I've considered.  He listens, hears the pros/cons I've come up with and usually adds thoughts and considerations that come to mind to help me.  Then...I sloooow down, think through, imagine myself in each option...and I wait.  I wait for the whisper.  Do you know what I mean by whisper?  For me, it is quite distinct.  It feels different than an idea, it sounds different than my voice to myself.  I talk to myself a lot in my head, and I know what I sound like to myself...if that makes any sense.  The whisper is God's voice.  Not a voice that you hear, and not just a feeling, but it's almost like...while I am thinking and processing, a thought Pops into my head out of the blue and not in the normal course of my own thinking.  It feels like I'm searching a dark room for something and all of a sudden a small light blinks to the side...just to get my attention.  That's what it feels like to me when I'm trying to decide something and I get an urge about it that is unrelated to the logic I am walking myself through.  Now usually they complement each other, but usually the logic stops at some point and you have to decide something base on what you have.  God's whisper is very distinct to me...so distinct that I immediately give Him credit for the outcome in those circumstances because I don't feel like I got there on my own wisdom, but like I was led.  Of course wisdom is given by God and I make a zillion decisions based on that wisdom every day...but some are different where I feel led to the decision by Someone Else.

All that was a lead-in to 3 whisper moments Jesus gave me this week...and I love Him for that.  Well, I'd love Him anyway but it just makes our relationship so much closer when He does that for me.  Lately, I have been re-examining where I serve.  Church, school. community.  Way back when the kids were tiny, I started serving everywhere.  I needed the outlet, being a full time stay at home mom (SAHM).  It grew from serving on a committee at church for a women's event to the following:  Attending a bible study, teaching a children's bible study, teaching in VBS, running a whole section of VBS, co-chairing the women's event, chairing the women's event, leading a small group at church, class mom for my pre-schooler, and serving in the school library.  After 3-4 years of that, I was wiped and I took a huge break from it all.  I back out of everything.  I decided to serve in 1 place.  That's it.  I will teach Sunday School with David...because I love to teach.  Don't ask me to do anything else.  I turned down lots of requests to teach other places, serve on committees.  I even stopped attending my Bible study because I wasn't in the right place to receive it.  It was just another thing on my list that I started to resent.  Sloooooowww dooooown......

Okay, so now I've been slow for a few years and it felt great.  So this is the weird thing.  Just a few weeks ago I started feeling like I should re-examine where I serve.  I kind of felt like there was more for me to do right now, but I wasn't about to jump on something.  I just had this sense like I should so something extra.  Like what?  I kind of just sat in that space for a few weeks.  No rush.  Just being still about it.

Then I get a call.  It's a call I have gotten before...in fact I got one last spring.  I saw the Caller ID and I knew exactly who it was.  The only reason this person calls is to ask me to consider serving somewhere.  For just a second, I considered letting it roll to voicemail because I just had heard from her last spring and I had to say no.  I made an honest consideration at the time but felt very strongly that it was a No right then.  But I felt the "urge" and I took the call...very willing to hear what she needed me to consider but fully expecting to have no change in my answer.  At the beginning of the call, I felt pretty sure that it was still a No.  But by the middle of the call something changed.  Not because of anything she said because it's the same request I've had before...but it was a soft whisper, an urging.  After the call, I immediately told David how weird I felt.  Very different from the other times she has called with the exact same request and I knew it was a no.  I started imagining myself in the No position, and anxiety stated forming.  I imagined myself in the Yes positon and sweet recollections of years past came to my mind...things God taught me through this service, ways I changed during those years, the leaps that I grew, and the lives I touched in that place.  "I think I'm supposed to do this" I told David.  And his demeanor was different too.  Previously he would tell me outright, I don't think you should do that.  This time was different. 

The next day I called her back and said Yes...and I even told her my journey to get there.  She gave the glory where it was due as did I.  So I am officially teaching Bible Study to children for the next school year at BSF.  Bible Study Fellowship.  It's a fantastic organization not affiliated with any church, with classes all over the nation and the world.  There are 3 women's classes in the Tulsa area and they have changed my life.  Teaching children is one of my favorite things to do and being a Children's Leader in BSF is a huge commitment but I'm going to let go and see what God does with it.

Stay tuned for 2 more Jesus whispers I experienced this week....