So in the midst of Lipscomb and all if it's adventures, Margaret and Terry Reeves enter the picture and enter our hearts. Margaret was our dorm momma and she was wonderful. Goofy enough to put up with a bunch of college age gals at all hours of the day and night. Balanced enough to be wife and mom and yet meet the jobs demands. Solid enough to know when to be crazy and when to look you square in the eyes and say..."you're messing up here." I remember one such conversation as I was in that time in my life where I knew I wanted something to do with this God thing, I just didn't want all the discipline and the rules and I just wanted to have a good time and I'd get serious about it later, stage in my life. I wanted to be at Lipscomb because I liked the feeling of still being connected to God, I just wasn't sure about all the rest of what it supposedly required. I had stopped going to church regularly and was missing more and hanging out at some places that were not the best places for me to be for sure. Margaret one day pulls me aside and says "hey, come in here to my office for a minute I need to talk to you." I was unaware at that moment that alarm should be sounding somewhere within cause we were about to have A TALK! Lovingly and yet very sternly she looked me square in the eyes and said, Jen you're playing with God here and I don't think you're doing what you really want to do and I know you're not doing what God wants you to do. Some things have changed lately and I know you adore my son (WHICH I DO...we adopted him as a little brother long ago -- she pulled the little brother card...NOT FAIR) and I have felt like you were someone he could look up to, but truth of the matter is I don't want him looking at you right now and seeing your apathy toward God. I don't want him to see you choosing other things over God. Can we say profitable guilt trip here??? So she hands me this card, matter of fact i think it was written on an attendance card from church, that has probably 10 or 15 verses on it and she sits there and goes through every single one and reads them to me with tears in her eyes and then hands me this card says you keep this, reminds me she loves me, prays with me, and then tells me she's done now. As you can tell it was a memorable moment. I still have that card, tucked safely away and it reminds me that sometimes loving someone means you look them square in the eye and say I love you enough to tell you that you're making a mistake here and I wouldn't be much of a friend if I didn't beg you not to hurt God like this. I didn't like that very much that day and it hurt my heart in no uncertain terms, but I have respected her more every day since then because of it. Did it change things immediately, no not immediately. Does it still resonate in my heart at moments, absolutely! It also taught me a lesson about what being the church means...it means knowing and loving people enough that you'd realize when things were distant and you'd help them find their way back to true north!
Lots of memories with the momma of Fanning Hall! She taught us all a whole bunch and somewhere in the middle of that we gained friendships that felt a whole lot like family. Nate still is my little brother and Terry and Margaret some of my favorite people on the face of the planet. Isn't God brilliant that He patches pieces together from so many places to construct the quilt of our lives, or lays stones in so many places on our path through life that as we look back we think, man God you were working all of this out even then weren't you? Nothing He does or leads us through, does He waste, He knits it all together, all those people, all those experiences, all of it, and it all factors into the journey.
Thanks Margaret for being a major impact in my faith journey. You spoke truth when less would have been far easier and I still can hear your words of love that day saying Jen choose God. Took a while, but God used your influence in that in big ways.
I'll tell you more about Mr. Terry another day. My fingers are tired. To be continued....
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