God is so REAL....

As firm as I am in my belief of Christ, I will never stop being amazed at the ways that He continues to show up in my life and blow me away....withing the past week I've seen God in two amazing ways.

The first one was in the airport coming back from my weekend getaway...our flight was nearly an hour delayed taking off because the plane we were waiting for was stuck in Orlando due to storms, as I sat there I looked up and I saw this couple that had taken the same flight I did on Saturday, taking the same flight back to Baltimore, I saw a young guy, a young business man and an older woman all sit in the same little cluster of chairs that I did. As we continued to sit there the business man who I later found out was named John, kept getting phone calls on his phone, after one of the calls he took, I looked over and he was in tears, he walked to the podium and asked what time we would arrive in Baltimore, still flooded with tears and when they told him it would be after 9 p.m., he cried even more, at this point I had no idea why this man was crying, but it was breaking my heart. He begged the lady at the podium to re-route his flight so he could get back to Maine that night...it was impossible.

So John came back over and sat down right across from me, and was still crying, in the meantime (ps: I wish all of you could have watched this unfold the way I did!) Seth who was sitting next to me had taken out his guitar and was quietly strumming worship songs on his guitar, which triggered a conversation with myself, the couple (Michael and Tyanna), the older woman (Rose) and Seth about being a Christian. It was beautiful to be surrounded by a group of believers in an airport, I knew it was God, finally Rose said to John is everything okay who can WE not I WE be praying for you... "Well my wife is having our first baby, she's in early labor, the doctor just told her she's delivering, I won't be there to see my first child born."

I am not a parent so I can't even begin to imagine what this feels like, but the next thing I knew the six of us were in a prayer circle with Seth playing his guitar softly and Rose praying for John and his wife and their soon to be born baby...it was amazing, God was so real in that moment, when strangers came together to love and pray for a complete stranger in his time of need... You will all be glad to know that John and his wife are the proud parents of a little girl, she was born a little premature they named her Olivia Rose.

The other way that God made himself so real was last Wednesday evening I got together with a few friends and we spent some time dreaming about the future God has for us, about 10 minutes before we were about to end I got a text from a friend of mine, "We're outside...we just walked here from Wilkens," I have to be honest and tell you that my attitude was far from welcoming, I was exhausted...emotionally, mentally, physically and all I wanted to do was go home. But I am telling you, God had something bigger planned, my friend Josh shared his heart with us, he's been through something similar to what I am going through, we also spent some time in fellowship about what God was doing in each of our lives, and then the sweetest time of prayer I have ever experienced happened. In that room there were four prayer warriors, interceding on our behalf, a few of them had experienced the pain, the emotion, the joy, the struggle, the anger and every other possible emotion we were feeling at that moment that we were, they had been through leaving a ministry, they had been through the pain of troubled relationships and they wanted nothing more than to be an encouragement to us, and that they were! I had to seriously ask for forgiveness for my attitude after that!

I am so thankful that God is making himself so real and evident in my life right now, I am also so thankful for opportunities to grow even closer to Him. I've said it before...and I will say it again life hasn't been easy the past month, however I am so thankful for this storm!