I Survived the Fair!!

Our area has 2 State Fairs every year. The biggest is the Washington State Fair in Puyallup. As a kid, our school took us to enjoy the fair right at the beginning of every school year! Younger kids toured the animal barns and all the produce displays, etc and reported back on things like how much the biggest pumpkin weighed and how many varieties of cows were there, etc. Older grades had more freedom to roam the fair and ride the rides. My sister and I started a tradition in high school of taking a series of pictures together in the Photo Booth. We continued the annual tradition of attending the Washington State Fair and getting our Photo Booth pictures well into adulthood.

But Puyallup is quite a drive from where we live and the traffic has gotten so much worse! Parking near the fair became difficult to find and quite expensive as well. So we stopped going to the fair.

Then I got married and had children of my own. When they were old enough, I started taking the kids to the other local State Fair - the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe. It’s a smaller fair and it’s closer to where we live. This fair starts at the end of August and runs into the first couple of days in September- just before the fair in Puyallup opens. I think probably most people prefer the bigger, more widely known and advertised fair but for younger kids or for people with disabilities and/or limited energy like me the smaller fair and very close disabled parking lot is perfect! It’s just as fun and easier to navigate!

This has become a fun final hoorah before the beginning of the school year. I used to be able to keep up with the kids. When my son was really young he used to just take off running in whatever direction fascinated him and to keep him safe and to avoid losing him to the crowds, I had to chase after him. Thankfully, I was able to stay on his heels and keep him from getting lost or hurt.

The fair is a different experience now than it was when the kids were young. My sister used to come with me to help with the kids because they couldn’t go on any of the rides without an adult and I was already having a little difficulty with balance so the REALLY aggressive rides were not ones I could go on. In addition, my young son was either not tall enough or not brave enough for the rides his older sister wanted to try so I really needed another adult!

As the kids got older, taller and braver and my sister and I got older and less able to tolerate spinning rides, the kids could ride most rides together and didn’t need an adult. But there were several rides my son (who has a fear of heights and hates being upside down) refused to go on with his more adventuresome older sister. So, I started inviting a friend for our daughter to bring to the fair - a ride buddy if you will. Each year for 3 or 4 years in a row we brought one of her friends.

The last couple of years have been a very different experience. My daughter has a whole group of friends who make plans to meet at the fair.

Last year I let my daughter roam around on her own with her friends while I rode some of the rides with my son. There were still rides I couldn’t do but my daughter and some of her amazing friends were willing to ride some of the more dizzying rides with him.

This year, we met my daughter’s friends at the fair and it was my son who wanted to invite a friend. I didn’t ride ANY rides because at this point it’s just too hard for me and I don’t recover well (Which is also why my sister stopped coming to the fair with us). But, as my abilities have diminished, my children’s abilities have grown to the point that they don’t need me as much. And that’s the way it’s SUPPOSED to work.😁

That doesn’t make the fair experience easy for me. When the kids were younger, they tired out easier and were ready to go home after a few hours. Starting last year though, the kids now want to spend the entire day at the fair and don’t want to leave until it closes at 10pm.

This year I was responsible for my son’s friend too who is autistic and has ADHD as well as a sensory processing disorder. My son has a touch of all of that but not nearly to the level of his friend. But the bigger challenge for me was that my son didn’t want to go on all the rides his friend did so I had to keep coordinating with my daughter and her friends who were also sweet to ride those rides with him. Also, his mom told me that he might not want to stay at the fair until it closed so his dad was on standby to come get him if he got overwhelmed. So I needed to keep an eye on him and make sure he was doing okay. He rode almost every ride. I was impressed by his stamina! He finally had enough and called his dad to come get him. He left at a little after 6pm - 7 hours after we got there so I’d say he did pretty well given his health challenges!

One thing I MUST celebrate though is that this friend of my son did something truly amazing at the fair that day - something to be excited about. His family has a confusing spiritual background. His mom was raised Catholic but converted to Mormonism after reconnecting with her Mormon mother (she was raised by her Catholic aunt). His dad was raised Mormon. They attended a Mormon “church” when their kids were little but their oldest, and only son (this friend of our son) screamed through every service so they stopped attending (thankfully). They identify as Christians but I had an honest conversation with his mom about some of the big differences between a Christian and a Mormon.

This friend has told my son in the past that he doesn’t really believe in God. But every year at the fair we stop at the booth where people do a “salvation test” and hand out gospel tracts, candy and New Testament Bibles. Well, I prepared them ahead of time as I waited for my son and his friend to meet me near that booth. Once they arrived and after going through the whole gospel presentation and reading it aloud for himself, they asked him if he wanted to pray that prayer and ask Jesus to forgive him and he said YES!!!😃. They gave him a New Testament Bible with the date in it and had him write his name in it and encouraged him to read it - starting with the book of John. I hope and pray it was impactful for him and genuine. It is REALLY hard to tell with him. He doesn’t talk much and he doesn’t show much emotion. But it was so encouraging that he didn’t reject the message and seemed genuinely interested in hearing it!

We had been praying about how we could find ways to speak God’s truth to this boy and his family but I honestly hadn’t even remotely considered that he might find Jesus at the fair! I didn’t seek this opportunity out either. It was the Lord’s doing all the way. I was waiting near a ride for the boys to meet me and there was a bench nearby that I was sitting at. I noticed the “Jesus booth” and knew my son would want to spin their prize wheel as he has done every year. I didn’t approach them but when I stood to see if the boys were coming, the men at the booth reached out to me and I told them about our friend who needed Jesus. They were primed and ready when the boys arrived and I was blown away that the Lord so obviously was chasing after this boy - to save him.

That seems like it should be the whole point to this post! But there’s more so bear with me!

I really struggled this year because it was over 85 degrees and I have just this summer started feeling some of that heat intolerance MS patients are prone to. For me, it fatigues me and makes my legs feel heavy - like they each weigh a hundred pounds.

I thought I had to follow my son and his friend around because this was his friend’s first time hanging out with a friend without at least one of his parents with him. So for about 2 hours I went everywhere they did until I just needed to sit down. I decided it was lunchtime. My son’s friend wasn’t hungry and kept asking if he could just go on the rides by himself. So I texted his mom and she said it was fine. So he took off and that gave me little more freedom to get the rest I needed. My son WAS hungry so he sat with me and ate lunch. 🙂

We have a policy in our family that our children don’t get cell phones until they start high school. So our son does not have a phone, making it important that I know where he is - unless he is with someone who has a phone. Thankfully, his friend has a phone and I had gotten the number from his mom. That made it so much easier to let them go off by themselves. Normally, I would say that waiting until high school to trust a child with a phone has benefits that far outweigh the inconvenience at times. But having MS, I can definitely understand why it would be necessary, in certain circumstances, to give younger children a phone - as long as there are age appropriate restrictions and they are taught how to properly use and care for their phones. Our son has only a year left before high school and his friend is in the same grade - and I was grateful for a way to contact the boys at the fair this week!

After his friend left, my son and I traveled the length of the fair as he went from ride to ride. I found convenient benches and he rode alone. Only once did he need to have our daughter ride with him because the ride required two passengers per seat.

The sun started to set and the temperature cooled down, thankfully! At almost 10pm there was one final ride my son wanted to go on - a giant slide located near the exit. As we approached the ride we found my daughter and all her friends hanging out on a couple of benches. I told them I had passed a food vendor giving away food if people were willing to sing a song for the crowd. 6 of the 8 teens rushed off to sing while my son went on his last ride. At 10pm, we were all ready to go home but the singing teens had to wait in a long line before they could perform their songs. They came back to the gate smiling and happy. Another group of unrelated teens sang to my daughter and her friends and the two groups left singing - songs prompted by my son, of all people! He was singing with them which is something he rarely does - even in church.

In the parking lot the other group of teens asked my son to “knight” them with a pool noodle he had won in a contest. He happily obliged!🤣

It was probably the best fair experience yet. But for me it was also on of the worst. I had really struggled throughout the day. I know I had people praying for me because I was able to do it all and I have LOTS of pictures! That and also… I SURVIVED!

While there is Still Time!

We have a friend who is 98 years old. He can’t make it to church and he is really too frail to do much of anything except sit on the couch at his daughter’s house (where he now lives) all day and think about the past. He is bored. So, once a month I load the kids up to go visit him and give him a little change of routine. I also write letters to him so he has something to read when he is REALLY bored. 😉. We visited him this past week and, as always, we left encouraged and uplifted by our friend and we immediately started making plans to visit again next month.

When I mention at church that we have visited our favorite 98 year old or that we have plans to visit him, I often hear the same response - “Oh, I have been wanting to visit him!” Or “I have been meaning to visit him!” And yet, month by month we end up being the only visitors he has had. I have kept myself from responding with “Well, what are you waiting for? He’s not getting any younger!”

But our friend decided this morning that he wasn’t going to wait any longer for people to come to visit him. His son brought him to church today!! We were in shock but overjoyed!! My son saw him first and ran excitedly to tell his sister who followed him to his seat to talk with him. My son also came to find me to share the happy news! He was very popular because there were a number of people who had “meant to” visit him and now they had a convenient opportunity to check in and let him know they care. It was energizing for our church and encouraging to our friend.

I think that people often avoid visiting the elderly because they don’t know what to talk about - they don’t know how to relate to them and they are frankly afraid to try.

When my Dad had Parkinson’s and dementia, I was very aware that he couldn’t communicate with me the way he used to. In the end, he couldn’t communicate at all. But I visited him at least once, often twice, every week with and without my kids. My children were SO sweet and loving toward, not only my Dad, but the other residents at the memory care facility where he lived. He was the same person on the inside but he had lost the ability to outwardly express himself. I visited and visited and visited because we all needed these visits and because I knew our time was short.

Our time here on earth is short. We need to make sure we don’t neglect to encourage each other - especially those who can’t reach out on their own.

Our 98 year old friend called me once after receiving one of my letters - before we had started our monthly visits. He said “Come visit me! Come visit me! But if you don’t, I understand, because I didn’t visit people either when I could’ve.” Now that he can’t just get in the car and drive to church or a friend’s house, he recognizes the value and has regrets. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and have regrets about the way I treated my friends and family - even if I never get visitors myself.

I have started to notice who is missing on Sunday mornings and I send texts or emails to check in to let them know they were missed and to see if there is anything I can pray for. This afternoon I found out that 3 missing families are traveling so I can pray for their safety. I am already praying for 2 other families who I knew were going to be gone because they are out of the country visiting family. I also found out that one man was missing because he has pain in his teeth that kept him awake last night (he will try to get in to see a dentist this week) and a girl who was missing got up too late to come because she has a health issue that would be aggravated by the stress of rushing to get ready for church. These are things I can pray about - things I would not know if I hadn't reached out to ask.

I say all of this because I want to urge you not to wait to reach out and encourage someone who the Lord puts on your heart. The Spirit will nag you relentlessly for awhile but if you ignore Him long enough, His voice will go silent. Don’t quench the Spirit! Don’t wait to be an encouragement! Carpe Diem (Seize the Day)! You aren’t getting any younger either…

When the Spirit Moves

Please forgive another blog post so soon but something amazing happened today that I need to share - it’s thrilling and I am in awe!

Background information first. We have a family in our church that would not want to be identified so I will give no specifics here but they are dear friends of ours. They are the type of family who would drop everything to help ANYONE if they perceived a need. They are kind and generous people. They own a small business and they work extremely hard.

They often give gifts at random to our children and we have eaten dinner in their home. We can’t out-give them. Their hearts are too big and God has gifted them with such a generous spirit!

Because of their kindness, our daughter has been asking me all week if she could go surprise them at their shop with iced drinks. They love surprise visits! But their shop is not near our home and our week was already all booked up with activities or chores. But my daughter persisted. She said she would pay for the drinks herself and would figure out how to get everything done in a way that would allow her the time to go. Finally, last night I found out that their whole family would not be at the shop because one of their children was leaving for camp. So I thought that was the end of the discussion and told her she could try again another time.

This morning our daughter, who is on the leadership team for her choir at school, had to join her choir in the classroom helping paint risers and make collages/posters. She came home in time for a late lunch but she had chores she needed to get done.

My son and I had been doing chores all morning and had more to do after lunch as well.

As we were eating lunch my daughter asked again about getting iced drinks for our friends if she got her chores done (she did a few of her bigger chores yesterday so today she had less than half of her chores left to do). I told her we’d see how things went but made no promises. She bounced off upstairs after lunch to fold laundry and gather up the garbage.

While she was folding clothes, I was supervising the dusting my son was doing upstairs when I got a text from our friend saying she had just gotten to the shop after her busiest day this summer running errands, preparing for the start of her daughter’s school year and going to a routine medical appointment. She sounded pretty tired and it was close to 2pm and her work in the shop was just beginning. Her husband had been doing all the work in the shop alone until she got there. They normally have help but not today.

I don’t always recognize the working of the Holy Spirit immediately. It’s usually VERY clear to me at the last minute that He has been orchestrating service opportunities but it usually has to be really obvious before I get the hint! My daughter seems to know way before I do how she can be used by God. And it’s awesome to be a part of!

I think you see where this is going! Once I got that text I immediately told my daughter that yes, absolutely, she could go bring this family some iced drinks on this stressful day for them. I told her, in fact, that she NEEDED to go. And when I found out, through texting with our friend, that they had so much work and no help, I told my daughter that they would not have time to stop and chat. Both of us came up with the same idea - she should offer to stay and help them and accept no payment.

I was not able to go with her because my son had been invited to swim, play video games and have dinner at a friend’s house at 4:30. This is another amazing story - this friend and his family need Jesus and my son has such a way with people that they just are drawn to his sweet and honest nature. He is unafraid when talking about his faith and I am praying a bubble of protection around him as he tries to be a good testimony before his Mormon friend.

And here I am, alone at home. Not being used by the Lord at all. Resting after a very busy couple of days and praying for my sweet children who I launched out into the world to be salt and light for Jesus! And I am basking in the amazing feelings of peace and gratitude and love for the Lord and for my children who love the Lord with all their hearts and who live out their faith in ways I could have never dreamed possible.

I am feeling so full of joy! It’s a feeling like no other. Being used by the Spirit of God to encourage others and draw others to Christ brings excitement and also a contentment and satisfaction that is unmatched by any other emotion. But when my children are the vessels the Lord is using, the feelings I experience are raised to a whole new level of joy!

And as a bonus, we had a really productive day! My energy held out and we all worked to get the house cleaned, the kids’ bedding washed and beds put back together, etc. I was able to accomplish everything on my list and the kids got all their chores done too so my husband will come home to a clean home tomorrow which will get our weekend off to a good start.😁

God is SO GOOD!!

Life 360

When I was growing up, we had a rotary dial phone plugged into our wall. We didn’t have an answering machine. We had 1 TV and there was no remote control. We had 4 or 5 TV stations we could choose from and we had a TV Guide that came in the mail each week to tell us what programs were scheduled to come on which day and at what time.

We had a record player that I was allowed to play records on and a record player that I was not allowed to touch. This was pretty much the extent of the technology I grew up with. We didn’t even have a microwave until I was in high school.

When I was little, I was only allowed to play unsupervised in our backyard. It was fully fenced and the gates were locked so my sister and I were free to safely play and explore. I would look out into the neighborhood and see the “big kids” playing and riding bikes and I REALLY wanted to go out there and play with them but my parents wouldn’t allow it. I even tried to climb the fence but I only succeeded in hurting myself. My parents’ “security system “ did its’ job and kept me safe until I was old enough to play out front in the cul-de-sac.

We lived in a neighborhood on a dead end road so there wasn’t a lot of traffic during the day when people were at work. In early grade school my sister and I were finally allowed to take our Big Wheels and ride around our cul-de-sac as long as our mother could see us from the window of our house. We were given instructions about staying out of the street when vehicles came into the neighborhood. The garbage man used to tease us and pretend he was going to run over us. 🤣. But we were kept safe if we followed the rules imparted to us.

We made friends with our neighbors and were allowed to play in their yards as we got older. Once we learned how to ride bikes confidently, we were allowed to ride them out of the neighborhood, sometimes with a sack lunch, and go (unsupervised) as far away as the elementary school up the street. I got my first watch in 3rd grade. My Mom would tell me what time to be home and then I was free to go anywhere within a reasonable distance from my house (as long as my younger sister was with me) and she trusted me to return home on time.

It was a more innocent time. A time when we could trick-or-treat at every house in every neighborhood up and down the street and not worry about much in the way of danger. My Dad would inspect our candy for punctures or razor blades but he never found anything dangerous.

As I entered my teen years, my parents allowed me to walk with my neighborhood friends to the nearby bowling alley and 7-11. I also started babysitting and the people would pick me up before I could drive and take me home afterwards. I would tell my parents what time I’d be home and they wouldn’t hear from me again until I walked back in the front door. No cell phones. In fact, we got our first cordless phone just before I left for college and I didn’t have my first cell phone until I was in my mid-20’s. We got our first VCR when I was in 6th grade. Our first computer was an Apple MacIntosh 512k Enhanced that we got when I was in high school. No laptops. I had a word processor with a built in printer that I used while I was in college.

When I started driving, my parents had rules and I had to ask permission to go places but if I followed the rules (and I did), I could maintain my driving privileges. Again, there were no cell phones, no tracking software, just trust and accountability and a lot of prayer, I’m sure.😁

All that background to say that I am a product of my experiences. My husband and I are older parents so we have very different perspectives than a lot of the parents of our childrens’ peers. We have tried to keep a handle on the changing technology but at the same time we are trying to raise our kids in a similar way to the way WE were raised because we now realize that our parents were really good at being parents. They taught us how to take responsibility for ourselves, how to be independent and how to navigate life with an internal compass that doesn’t need constant supervision.

I have been hearing a lot about an App that you can buy called Life 360 that you install on your and your teen’s phones and, among other things, it allows you to track your child’s exact location at any given moment. I have been asked multiple times if we have installed it on our daughter’s phone and when I answer “no” I think they question our judgment as parents.

But our daughter didn’t have a cell phone until she turned 14 and she watched all the mistakes her friends made with their phones and the trouble they got in to with them. So, by the time she finally had a phone of her own, she had already set her own limits on phone usage that we agreed with. I will admit that it’s nice to be able to check in with her when she is at the mall or at a friend’s house so I know she is safe and honestly, the environment our children are growing up in is much more dangerous than ours was at this age.

Our daughter now has her driver’s license and we have set rules for her to follow. As long as she follows the rules, she will retain her driving privileges.

When she leaves the driveway, we don’t hear from her until she arrives at her destination and then she sends us a quick text to let us know she arrived safely. We don’t hear from her again until she texts us to let us know she is leaving and heading home. It’s important to let our children experience some independence before they are forced to go it on their own as adults.

Becoming an adult doesn’t happen all at once. We teach and train little by little until one day they are ready to step out on their own without support.

My husband travels for a living and I have MS and am responsible for two teenagers on my own while he is traveling. I do not have the time or the energy to micro manage the lives of my children and I need to be able to trust them to be responsible. Our daughter is such a responsible person and has given us no reason to distrust her. So, even though she is our first child and it’s sometimes hard to let her explore some independence, she has to be allowed some freedom so she can build experience and continue to grow and mature.

And more than that, if we are going to claim that we trust God with everything, that has to include trusting Him to watch over our children when we aren’t there with them.

We teach, we advise, we pray and then we trust Jesus to walk out the door with them and protect them with an army of unseen angels.

We don’t need Life 360 to keep constant tabs on our children. That is the Lord’s job - and He’s the best at it!

Itchy and twitchy

Another symptom of Multiple Sclerosis is a fairly constant feeling of itchiness in random parts of my body. For me, I often feel itchy on my head and face but sometimes I feel it on my hands, arms and legs and no amount of scratching or moisturizer alleviates it. They are fantom itches - not because my skin is dry or there’s something causing irritation. It’s because the signals my brain sends to the nerves throughout my body are shorting out because the protective coating (Myelin) is being stripped away by MS and my nerves are confused.

I was never that big a fan of the Simpsons cartoon but I am not going to lie and say I never watched it in my youth. My frequent itching sometimes reminds me of the cartoon within the Simpsons cartoon that the kids used to watch called “The Itchy & Scratchy Show.” 🤣

Another symptom of MS is something called muscle spasticity. There are times my muscles - especially in my legs - spasm and twitch at random. This is more annoying than anything - mostly because it makes me feel like I constantly need to change positions and can’t get comfortable. It also means I am more likely to experience muscle cramps (or Charlie Horse cramps) in my feet.

More often than not, when one of these symptoms flares up, the other accompanies it - in MY experience anyway. Not all people with MS have the same experiences I do. It seems the muscle spasticity happens more often at night which makes it really difficult to get the sleep I need to function. Thankfully, this is not a real frequent occurrence for me but there is no rhyme or reason to the timing so I can’t predict it.

Saturday night I had difficulty sleeping. My legs just kept twitching and I had to keep changing positions which isn’t as easy for me these days with my left side weakness. I try so hard not to toss and turn at night because my husband is a light sleeper and has difficulty getting back to sleep after he is awakened. But on a night like Saturday night, I can’t help it. It’s during these nights that I also feel itchy all over my body. Being in bed is miserable on these nights and sometimes I just get up and go into a different room to sit up and read to get my mind off my discomfort. But Saturday night I decided to use my awake time to pray for everyone I could think of and the struggles I was aware of. In addition, I prayed for our speaker who was a missionary to Tanzania scheduled to speak at our church the next day. I prayed for our missionary friends in Poland who would begin their journey back to Seattle on Monday to be here for their son’s wedding. Speaking of weddings, we have friends at church getting married later this month and other missionary friends are back in the area from Papua New Guinea for THEIR son’s wedding in September. Lots if weddings and new marriages to pray for! I prayed for friends trying to have a baby, for friends fighting various forms of cancer, for friends with MS, for my husband and children. And yes, I prayed my muscles would stop twitching and let me sleep.

I eventually DID fall asleep and, surprisingly, my legs felt stronger on Sunday morning than they had all week! I felt more energy and was awake and alert the entire day - no need for a nap and it wasn’t even a day that I took the medication I use on alternate days that helps with energy and focus. It was a great day! It was the LORD’s day! Sunday is my favorite day of the week and attending church is my favorite activity. I really hate when I have an experience like Saturday night because I always feel like the next day is going to be a struggle because I didn’t get the amount if sleep I needed. But prayer is more important than sleep. And sometimes I think that God allows sleepless nights because there are prayers needed during those hours. Satan doesn’t sleep and neither does God. God knows how to mobilize His army of prayer warriors to assist in the fight.

Why Orange and Why March?

My favorite color has changed multiple times over my 53 years of life. I hated the color pink when I was a kid so my parents decorated my room in yellow everything - yellow flowery wallpaper, yellow bedding, yellow curtains… you get the idea. In junior high (they call it middle school now) my favorite color was purple so my parents let me decorate my room all in purple and I had a number of purple clothing items. My favorite color the last many years has been magenta. But pretty consistently throughout my life, orange has been one of my least favorite colors.

So, having been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, I was a bit annoyed at first that the color used for raising MS awareness was ORANGE! Magenta is a much more beautiful color and it even starts with the same letter of the alphabet. But nobody asked me. 😁Orange? Really?

But it has grown on me and I’m starting to kinda like it actually. It is, after all, one of the colors God created and it IS included in the rainbow of promise God puts in the sky from time to time. So, I have overcome my objections to orange as a color representing Multiple Sclerosis fighters and raising awareness for funding research to find a cure.

But why is MARCH, of all months MS Awareness month? No offense to my Mom or others born in the month of March but I have always really dreaded that month. In school it felt like the longest month of the year because it has 31 days and no days time off for holidays - because there are no Federally recognized holidays in the month of March. It is a LONG month, appropriately named - it’s a long MARCH to the end of it! I guess they were running out of months to choose for MS awareness so they settled on March. Or maybe it was selected specifically because it’s a long, difficult month and that helps drive home the fact that MS is a long, difficult fight. Regardless of the reason, I guess I have no choice but to accept that March is the month to make people aware of MS.

But why do we have to pick one month out of the year for the purpose of talking about MS? People with MS live with it 12 months out of every year and, believe me, I am VERY aware of MS regardless of what month it is.

This brings me to my next question: Why, when Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Month is March, is Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Day MAY 30? It seems like it should be a day in March to me but what does logic have to do with anything these days? Maybe the random way in which awareness dates and months are chosen are an homage to the random nature of MS and its’ symptoms.

I obviously didn’t have a say in choosing a color or an awareness month or day but there is one choice I DO have and that is how I am going to live my life. I get to choose my attitudes and how I respond to the hand I have been dealt.

And I choose joy! I choose to allow GOD to handle my struggles, to fight my battles and to carry me through my weakness.

Wherever I Go, I’m Still Me

I have been to a lot of churches in my lifetime. I’ve spent more time at some than at others. There have been various reasons for staying at - or leaving a given church but a lot of the time I left a church only because I moved away. For instance, I moved from my home in Kirkland to Seattle when I left for college so I left one church and found a church closer to my new home. After I got married, we lived in Pennsylvania for about a year where we attended yet another church. We attended churches in New Mexico and Arizona as well before we found ourselves back in Seattle and back at the church where we met. For a long time I maintained friendships with people from almost every church I have attended - because we are all believers with a bond of love that couldn’t be broken by miles. Most of those believers have since passed away - so we lost contact… for now anyway.😉

When churches were shut down for COVID, we watched Charles Stanley and others on TV each Sunday morning. That was a rough time for everyone but one of the most painfully revealing experiences we had was the almost complete and total radio silence from our church. My husband grew up in that church and we met there, raised our children there up to that point and no one reached out to us in any meaningful way during that difficult season. So, when churches opened back up again, we decided maybe it was time to look for a different church. We visited several and finally settled on another church where we were able to get involved and met some really great people. During that time, the Lord was really working in our hearts. No one from our home church reached out to check in with us - there was no indication that our absence had even been noticed. Our names and contact information were removed from the church directory and were added to the directory at our new church. However, thankfully, my email address remained on the prayer chain list at our home church and I sent cards to friends whose names were circulated for prayer - because they were still our brothers and sisters in Christ and that didn't change just because we were attending a different church. My husband and I felt it was time to return to our former (home) church after 2 or maybe it was 3 years of absence. When we decided to return, and while considering the reasons we had left in the first place, I realized that we were part of the problem too! While we bemoaned the fact that no one had checked in with us during the lockdowns, we hadn’t tried to reach out and encourage anyone either. I realize now that this has become a huge part of the problem in (specifically American) churches today - we are too focused on our own suffering to reach out and comfort or encourage others so we go to church but are increasingly isolated from each other. I committed to do my best to reach out and encourage others as we integrated back with our home church while staying in touch with the new friends I had developed while we were away.

We had met some amazing and lovely people at the church we attended during those 2 years of absence from our home church and I have done my best to stay connected with several of them. It has been 2 years now since we returned to our church and the friends I made at the other church have largely stopped responding to my texts. Only 2 people I met during that season have remained in touch. Both also left the church because they moved away - one to the Eastern part of our state and one to Missouri. Why? I’m still me regardless of my location. Was I looked down upon because we had left and gone back to our old church? Was I no longer part of the “club?”

It’s a sad commentary on our churches today that we don’t seem to value relationships with other believers enough to stay in contact when we aren’t physically meeting together each week. People need to know that they are valued. People visit around to various churches looking for a place they can feel loved and valued. But often I think we feel betrayed as a group when someone chooses to attend elsewhere. Our feelings are hurt. And we don’t show that Christian kindness, love and forgiveness we are supposed to be known for.

I am the same person whether I attend my current church or another church. If I am valued, my location doesn’t matter. My dear friend in New Mexico values me even though she hasn’t physically seen me in 25 years or more and I greatly value her. My friend in Missouri values me even though she lives 2 time zones away and I greatly value her. I remain in contact with believers who are missionaries in Ecuador, Poland and Peru and I value them and am so encouraged by their tremendous faith and obedience to the call of the Holy Spirit to spread the gospel. I remain in contact with believers who visited our church for a short time but who now attend elsewhere for one reason or another. I remain in contact with a believer I met in the grocery store. I remain in contact with a member of the Steward’s Foundation board who visited our church last year. I maintain connections with several of my aunts and cousins who are also believers but who live in different parts of the country. I still check in with former neighbors, with members of our church who are elderly and housebound. All of these people need encouragement from time to time and, in some cases, I am the only one in a position to provide it. But it shouldn’t be that way! I should be one voice in a crowd of believers climbing over each other to show love toward those in need of encouragement.

There is a little song I learned in Sunday School that says “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold.” We don’t live like we value every believer and the gifts they bring to the body of Christ.

The fact is that where (or whether) we go to church shouldn’t really matter as long as we have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior! Believers are a part of the Church at large and we should be taking a little time here and there to check in with one another. It doesn’t take much time to send a quick text to say “Praying for you today, anything special I should mention?” Or “Thinking about you today, how are you doing?” Or if you notice someone is missing from church on a Sunday, check in and let them know that they were missed - that someone noticed their absence. A little gesture goes a long way!

The Church is the bride of Christ and we are commanded to love one another as Christ loves the Church. But we aren’t doing that! Our busy lives and our enormous egos get in the way of living out this testimony. We are FAILING each other and, therefore, we are failing God.

We need to remember that we belong to Jesus - our lives are not our own. We are watched and we are known by the fruit we bear. Do we love? Do we encourage? Do we comfort? Do we CARE?

People have the same needs regardless of where they are. We all need to know that we matter to someone. God shows His love toward His people THROUGH His people. When we withhold His love it is sin. When we ignore the prompting of the Spirit, it is sin. I, for one, feel regret and remorse over the fact that I have failed God in these ways and did for a number of years until I felt the heavy burden of that guilt and decided to DO something about it. How about you?