1. How did you get here?
2.What is it?
Let me answer the first question here.
How did I get here?
You know, I have been asking myself this question for a couple of months. Trying to think back and figure out where this all started. I've even gone as far back as my freshman Social Studies class. Oh, I just lost some of you didn't I? I just had a flashback to Exposition of Genesis when we spend 6 weeks on 1-2. Not the chapters. We spent 6 weeks on Genesis 1:1-2. Seriously. Anyway, I'm not going to go into that kind of detail.
For more than a decade, I have had an idea in the back of my head. Wouldn't it be great to open a coffee shop/café that would be a community gathering place. You know the kind of place where the old men go to have coffee in the morning. A place where groups could meet for Bible study, team building or just catching up with each other. This idea of creating space for people to come and expecting God to come and move.
But let me start few years ago when I attended a leadership retreat. We were studying Luke 13 where Jesus heals the bent over women. What I had never noticed is that it doesn't tell us she pursued Jesus.
He saw her. HE saw her.
She wasn't invisible to Jesus. I'm not invisible to Jesus. I didn't even realize until that moment that I had felt invisible. I felt like I could drift away and no one would ever notice I was gone or that I had been there at all. At the end of the retreat, we were all to write a letter to ourselves that the speaker would mail to us at a later date. I cried when I wrote it. I cried when I received in the mail. I even cried again today when I read it.
Dear Angela, beloved one of God,
Remember how the Lord met you at this retreat. Even though you tried your best to hide, he still found you bent over [hiding] in your tent. He poked in His head and said, "My dear, dear daughter. I found you. I see you. You are not invisible!
Remember my love for you is like a hurricane, you are a tree. Bending under the wave of my wind, love and mercy. Believe me when I say that I will lead you with my hand. Accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.
It's okay to hang exposed. I already know all of who you [are] and I love you. Come, sit with me. Sit knee to knee, toe to toe, brow to brow. Let me look into you. More importantly look at how you are in my eyes. My wonderfully made daughter, I have very special plans for us. I will be glorified and you will be blessed.
Remember who I am
Remember who and whose you are.
First let me apologize for the Crower Band song quote. That was the first time I had heard that song and it was so impactful to me. That part made me cry because it sounds so cheesy! But on with the story...
That weekend started me on a journey of seeing myself, allowing myself to be seen, and living in surrender to whatever God has for my life.
The speaker from the retreat agreed to meet with me and we began a mentoring relationship. Among other ways she has spoken into my life, she encouraged me to read Radical Hospitality. Hospitality is second nature to me. My mom was the "hostess with the mostess". But this book looked at hospitality in a different way. This book talks of Benedictine hospitality. It's about much more than serving coffee. It's about welcoming the stranger. It's about recognizing the image of God in another person.
More recently, God has used IF:Gathering to wreck me (in all the best ways) and the Lead Stories podcast to make me uncomfortable in the status quo of my life.
Before I attended IF in 2015, a burden for my neighbors began to weigh heavy on my heart. I desired to make space for my neighbors to come. To come for coffee with neighbors and conversation, but I also wanted to make space for God to lead and guide conversations. I didn't have anything formal planned. I didn't have any expectations, beyond that I expected God to come and move, rather I didn't have any expectations of my neighbors. At the end of IF, we were to write our next steps on a stone and pile it on the Ebenezer in the front of the venue. Mine said, "IF:Coffee". IF has IF:Table where you invite neighbors for a meal and conversation, but God reconfirmed my coffee with neighbors. When I returned home, I continued to host them and other neighbors even hosted a couple. My desire to create space for God to move continued.
In the time leading up to IF in 2016, I was beginning to realize I had myself shut up. I wasn't allowing anyone in. Mostly, I wasn't allowing my husband in. I wasn't allowing myself to be seen by him. I wasn't allowing myself to be loved by him. I was holding him at arms length. During IF that year, I realized not only was I not allowing myself to be seen by my husband, I wasn't allowing myself to be seen by God (which is ridiculous that I think I can hide from him) or others. As I peeled back my reasons of why I wasn't allowing myself to be seen, I realized it's because I was afraid. I was afraid of truly being seen, of being exposed. More specifically, I was afraid of being exposed as a phony. It wasn't as though I was going around telling lies about myself, but I was afraid if people were to see me, all of me, they would see something ugly inside that I (unconsciously) work so hard to hide. There was a tension. I realized we all want to be seen, but we don't want to be exposed. I guess I feared not being welcomed. I feared I wouldn't receive grace (I need so much grace). At the end of the conference that year, we were to write on a domino what we sensed God was leading us to do. The idea was that if we all did what was written on our domino, we would fall into the next person and there would be a domino effect of people obeying where God was leading. I wrote one word: SEEN. I was going to allow myself to be seen AND I was going see others.
During 2016 I was also listening to the Lead Stories Podcast. The hosts define leaders as anyone who has influence. They've shared their experiences in leadership and interviewed many people over the year. People who had taken steps in their lives. Small steps of obedience that have led them to serve God in a variety of ways. One interview in particular has come back to me several times over the year. They interviewed Gwen Adams who works with an organization called Priceless Alaska. She shared the story about how their organization started. There were a group of woman who wanted to help fight human trafficking in Alaska.
So they began to pray. And pray. And pray.
They prayed for nine months for God to lead them to where they could be involved in the fight. When he finally revealed how they could be involved, the timing was perfect. (You'll have to listen to the podcast for the rest of the story.) This and a other stories like it gave me confidence that as I seek God he will direct my small steps and direct them in His (perfect) timing.
This all sounds very clean and clear as I tell it now, but there were countless places I saw God working and tried to jump in and be a part of it. Each time I was pushed out. It was as though what God was doing was a river flowing. I kept jumping in the river, wanting to go where God was going, but I kept getting thrown out. Finally in frustration I shared my river analogy with someone. She reflected back to me that maybe I was trying to get in the wrong river. Just like large rivers have smaller rivers that feed into them, maybe there's a different small river I was supposed to get into. A small river that still flowed into the large river of what God was doing, but different than where I was trying to jump in.... As she spoke, her words resonated with my soul. I took time with God to pray and seek His wisdom and direction about this other river. One thing was clear. I needed to be still and know He is God.
Another bit of wisdom I heard was from Andy Stanley in his Leadership Podcast on Visioneering. He shared that he gets so many ideas for new ministries, etc, that sometimes he just needs to sit on them for about a month to see if he's still as excited about it when it first came to him. I think part of my problem was that I had been frantic, running after every idea I had or every place I saw God moving.
So I took time to breathe. I took time to just be. If you know me, I am a doer. I've often said that if someone could just tell me what I need to "do" to just "be", that would be great. But more than anything, I wanted to be obedient.
Then a local retreat space closed their physical space. It was such a loss for me personally. As word got round that they closed, I heard from others what a loss it was for them. Then there was a nudge that I could run a place like that. Okay. There's a nudge. I'm not going to jump in the river, I'm going to sit on it, keep it to myself for awhile. I went ahead and ordered Starting a Small Business for Dummies. I didn't think it would hurt to educate myself. Especially since I have never run a business and thought I never would. When I absent-mindedly left the book on the dining room table, my husband picked it up and asked if there was something we should talk about. I told him not yet.
Shortly after, I had lunch with a friend who, since graduating from seminary, hadn't found the right fit. I kept thinking about all the ways she's gifted and all the people I know who are gifted in different areas that would make for great sessions at a retreat house.
I should fast, I thought. I have lots-o-issues with food, so I went to two other things I spend a lot of time doing: Facebook and all things British. I decided to fast from them for a week and spend that time educating myself about starting a business and praying for God's wisdom and clarity.
By the end of the week, I knew I needed to talk to two people. I needed to talk to the owner of the retreat space that closed and my lunch friend.
To my astonishment, the owner agreed to meet with me. I had requested to know all the eyes wide open things about owning/running a retreat space. I got what I asked for. She told me all the things she wished she would have known before starting hers. She also warned me that had she known these things, she may not have done it. I assured her that those were exactly the kinds of things I wanted/needed to hear. For the next 45 minutes we talked about zoning, liability insurance, gathering a board, etc. It should have been the most discouraging, disappointing conversation. But I was not deterred. In my marrow I know that if this is God's thing, then he'll clear the obstacles (in his timing). If he doesn't remove the obstacles, I know I'm being obedient and that's what this is about, not the end result.
The next day I had lunch with my friend. My expectation was that I would share this vision/idea with her and give her time to think, pray and seek God about whether or not she wanted to be involved. We met at 11:30am and didn't leave the table until 2:30pm. We had a name and I was to go home and purchase our domain name and social media handles.
It's been a bit of a blur since then, but now we're busy preparing our business plan.
That is how I got here...
