The Return.

Of what, you ask?  The return of life back to the grind.  Of moving from a spiritual high to the reality of daily life.  Funny, both WCC and my marathon seem an eternity ago now.  I promised a WCC entry awhile back, and I'm now going to make good on my promise...

WCC was huge for me this year.  I tend to use 'huge' rather liberally, usually to refer to something big, important, significant....you get the point.  I knda chuckle when I reflect on my first conference five years back.  My fiirst WCC was during my senior year in college.  Naive, I stepped into a world that would soon become a provision of encouragement, and successively good butt kicks (no elegance in that description).  My thoughts at that first WCC were that I wanted to go home.  I really didn't know why I was there.

But it's five years later, and we fast forward through Sherise's life, to the place where she's at today...still insecure and unsure of herself, but with a greater sense of her worth in Christ.  It was that realization, during Jimmy's message on Saturday morning, that broke me down to tears.  Oh how great God's heart for His people truly is!  He is the God who truly cares.  And it is Christ in us, the Hope of Glory.  I had been forewarned by tchia before the plenary session that the video Jimmy was going to show would be a tearjerker.  I didn't think much of it, neither did I think much of it when the the tissue box was prematurely passed around.

The video was of Dick and Rick Hoyt.  Dick, father to the cerebral palsy sticken Rick, entered the both of them in the Ironman triathalon.  How was this possible?  Only through the father.  Dick pulled his son on a raft for the swim portion, rode with his son attached to the front end of his bike, and then ran the final full marathon with his son in a racing wheelchair.  Rick didn't do a thing. The analogy is pretty obvious.  Only God the Father is more perfect than Dick and I am more retarded than Rick.  And of course, my marathon was foremost in my mind.  I was desparately searching for the tissue at that point.  After the session, the well-intending person next to me asked if there was anything she could pray for me about.  I guess I looked like a wreck.  She, oddly enough, was quite composed.  Later on I realized that I had cried my contact out of my eye.  And I just thought I was seeing blurry from all the tears!  (So if you happened to catch a glimpse of me after that session and I was blinking at you, I didn't mean anything by it...really...)

I wasn't prepared for all the heart wrenching stuff that early in the conference.  Not only was that type of stuff early, but it was a consistent theme throughout.  The next session on faith and faithfulness also did a number on me.  "Sovereignty and response creates our destiny."  And the tears of realizing that if I want to know God's will, I have to lay mine down.  All the post-college struggle of "What do you want of my life, Lord?" all came to a head.  I cried out my past hurts, struggles, and sacrifices.  Thankfully those tears were assured by my neighboring sis, who sat by me during that session and prayed for me (note to self: sit next to someone you know during these sessions!).   

The next morning's session on God's Church was empowering.  Are we people who are unapologetic about the gospel?  Do we (I) take seriously the call of God?  Ephesians 3:10 was like a new verse for me.  Jimmy's final message centered on the practical--"How Then Shall We Live?"  It was a message on the basics of spiritual disciplines...how the Word of God must be built up within us so that we may face up to anything.  I realize that sometimes I have these visions of grandeur, but am sorely absent in the whole seeking God department.  From this message came practical applications for me:

1. Getting up early each morning to pray and read God's Word.  Doesn't Sherise do this already?  Nope.  Early morning is a rather ungodly hour for me, but I am determined to make it sacred. (3 weeks later, by grace, this goal is holding fast)

2. Getting into a discipleship relationship. I suck at this, too.  That is, in the area of being intentional about these relationships.  I realize that there are 2 people very near and dear to me that I want to invest my life into--MF and SL.  Thankfully, they want to meet with me, too.  And so far, I feel the most blessed from our times together.     

3. Preachin' it.  What I mean is being bold for Christ, including in the classroom.  I now pray over my class roster before class and make the choice to surrender my students to the Lord.  And I've already found opportunity to 'preach it' in all ways that I'm allowed. 

I feel like I've only described a tidbit of WCC.  Perhaps more thoughts will manifest itself in later entries.

The reason why I've dubbed this entry "The Return," is because having experienced/realized all of this, I am now called to live it out.  And it's so gosh darn hard!  I'm struggling against every battle of my will to face each day and claim it for Christ.  My first run after my marathon illustrates this point most powerfully.  I ran for the first time in almost 2 weeks this past weekend.  I ran 4.5 miles, the loop around Lake Merced that I've ran many times over, only this time I just wasn't having it.  I was tired, wanting to quit, and questioning myself.  Dude Sherise, you just ran a marathon, what's a peasly 4.5 miles?

Well, those 4.5 miles ain't peasly.  It's the dailyness of life that real joys are found, and real gains of faith are made (this I quote from Alistair Begg). 

Lest you think I've pulled out of this whole marathon thing, you're wrong.  I'm still running...at times stumbling...yet still running...