Driving away from church yesterday, Sam and I found ourselves discussing again how much we love our church.  Sometimes it's something in the sermon, sometimes it's a song during the time of worship, sometimes it's a thought that God gives while we're engaged with him there, sometimes it's a testimony that somebody has shared... it happens because there's a Presence there, and the space is conducive to an encounter with the living God.  We have been worshiping at Coast Vineyard for about a year and a half now, and though developing friendships there has been sadly slower than molasses, the work of regeneration in me has not.

Looking back now, it's hard really to know how many years of wandering and woundedness I had been wallowing in.  For a long time, I was so tangled up by fears and hurt that I was incapable and undesirous of doing anything productive in the Kingdom.  Not even making and keeping friends.  But Abigail Van Buren once said, "A church should be a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints," and that is exactly how I would describe my experience at Coast.  It's like I walked into a hospital two years ago and have been steadily healing and recovering ever since. 

I'm not sure how it happened -- just that my heart has been in my hands, poised with an open invitation to God to, "Breakthrough in my life, breakthrough, like only You can do."  "Sing over me, Jesus...sing your songs of healing over me."  "Chains be broken, lives be healed..." (Please break the chains that hold me and heal my wounded heart.)  After making these songs my constant prayer over the course of these many months, God really did come to me -- he really did break through into my life and bring about a significant amount of healing. 

And he continues to do so.  For as my friend, a therapist, often reminds me, "Grief is like a moving river."  It really doesn't ever end but ebbs and flows and moves in different directions at differing paces.  I'm thankful that as the river continues to move, so does the Spirit.  And healing does and can come.  There is a balm in Gilead!  There is a Physician there!  And he came to me.

I love our new church.  God keeps using the sermons to converse with me, to challenge me, and to uncover something that needs changing, discarding or embracing.  God keeps inviting me to walk into a place deeper with Him, a place I haven't been in awhile and a place I haven't yet gone.  We're on this journey together, and God is using different aspects of this church to push me on further.  I'm excited about all the possibilities...

I love the worship too.  Beautiful music and hearts sincerely seeking after Him.  There's an earnestness and sincerity by the worship leaders that draws me into His presence...  And ya know, I love too that there's a diversity in music too.  It'll take me awhile to get used to gospel music or singing songs in Spanish, but I like it.  Even if it's not my "heart music", I like it.  Here's a video that I sneakily took on Sunday.  You can hear Sam singing on the video. 

And God's given me an opportunity to serve at Coast.  I've been meeting with two of the pastors to develop a discipleship strategy for the church.  Something about employing one of my passions makes me wanna sing!

The church meets on top of a high mountain, so every Sunday, Sam and I always ooh and ahh over the grand view of the ocean as we're driving back down.  Here's what I mean:
   

See how happy we are after we've worshiped God?

Two years ago, after Sam and I got married, we felt like it was a good time for us to start fresh at a new church.  It was not an easy decision -- for me especially, as my home church had been a home for me for a decade.  But I realized at that point that the people that made that church family to me would always be family to me, and nothing would change that.  Many of these good friends had gone different ways, following God's differing leading in their lives, anyway, and it was time for us to follow God's leading for our lives too.  I knew, though, before we ventured forth that CBC would always be home to me -- no matter where we ended up.  And two years since, it still remains true.  (I  CBC forever.)

It has been a long and windy road, let me tell you.  For the first 2 or 3 months of that first year, we visited a different church every Sunday.  Then we settled on a church right in our neighborhood (5 minutes away).  It was a very small church and the people seemed friendly.  We were there for a few months but were never able to get any deeper with anyone there.  We also had a conversation with pastor and spouse that made us wonder if their church would really be the place for us. 

On one Sunday, we decided to visit another church, whose pastor I have known for a long time.  We have good friends who were going there too.  The pastor and his wife took us out to lunch one afternoon and shared their vision for the church and its people.  We could really identify with their vision, their theology, their passion, etc, etc.  We were torn though because we had been going to the neighborhood church for a few months already.  I did not want to be thought of as a church hopper/shopper.  But the more we thought about it, the more we felt like this church fit better than that other church because of vision and leadership.  So we started attending every Sunday.  Sam started serving on the worship team, even.  But then some not-so-great things were happening.  We decided to stay and stick around to support the pastor and our friends -- and we did stay until they too decided to leave. 

So we were back to square one. 

One day while I was at seminary, another student mentioned that our New Testament professor was preaching at her church that weekend.  She also mentioned that her church had a satellite campus right where we lived and that we should check it out.  So we did.  This church was different from the other churches we had been to. Why?  Because it meets in a movie theater.  The sermons are pre-recorded and then projected on the movie screen on Sunday mornings.  (The worship team is live, of course.)  It was hip and had good music... and honestly, I was tired of drifting from church to church, so we decided to keep going back.  We stayed there (for a whole year), because it seemed like the best of all our options.  My sister started coming with us too and that gave extra incentive for us to stay.  We liked that there were many ministries and programs that seemed interesting to us, and we always meant to get plugged into them, but somehow actually plugging into them always seemed to elude us.  Or perhaps, it was really me who was trying to elude it.  I realized today that even though I liked the church and we did meet a few nice people, in my heart of hearts, I felt like we were settling.  I was still longing for a church that I was starting to believe was hopelessly nonexistent.

Then, a few weekends ago, my sister told me that she was going to start going back to her old church.  It was perfect timing because I was starting to feel like it was really time for us to move on too.  Right around that time, Sam and I went to a wedding of a friend from a missions team a few years ago.  There, I ran into some other friends that I haven't seen since college.  When I asked them how they knew the bride and groom, they told me "from church".  Which church was that?  I went home and looked the church up because it sounded familiar to me and discovered that one of my classmates last year from seminary was a pastor at that church.  Pastor?  I had no idea that she was pastoring that church with her husband!  So we went to visit it for the first time last weekend.  The first thing I noticed when I walked into the sanctuary was that people seemed happy.  There was energy and joy, and in the midst of the service, I realized that I couldn't -- didn't want to be -- fake there.  I felt inspired to have real, dynamic relationship with God so that I could have deep, authentic relationships with people.  We also went to the Welcome Lunch they had that day and had the opportunity to meet many of the staff (both women and men pastors) and spoke at length to Jamie and Michelle (the leading co-pastors) and found out more about the church's active ministries in missions and for the poor and oppressed --- and the church's stance on women's roles in the church and in the home.  Everything fell in line with the convictions and heart's desires that God had been giving us in the last two years.  As we were leaving, I wondered...why had we not visited this church all along?

We went back again today, and afterwards, Sam & I talked about the church and about how we might want to get involved.  Should we do this or that or that other thing?  For the first time in the last two years, I felt...excitement, eagerness, enthusiasm... a desire to serve, not a desire to elude.  Perhaps, finally!, we are having a fresh new start.