I just got back home on Monday from a 6-day trip to the Nashville, Tennessee, area. I went to be the featured speaker at a women’s retreat that’s been going on for 19 years already. To say that I was honored is a total understatement. It was a crazy-amazing weekend of refreshment, renewal, and reminding that God’s HOPE is available to every single person on the entirety of the whole earth…no matter where you are, who you are, what you do, what you’ve done or who you’ve done it with.
There were close to 70 beautiful ladies at this event, and I know that I was able to personally minister to at least 15 specific women…mainly because they were the ones who actually came up to me when the weekend was ending to tell me of the horrific storms that they’re going through AS WE SPEAK…and to tell me that the message of HOPE that I brought straight from God (and thank God, because it was ALL Him) was giving them the strength to go home and give their situation another try and to not give up. #canteven
I mean, really people…….how can you ask more than that? Listen…that was my specific prayer as I studied over the last 3-4 months, and as I stepped foot on a plane to get my body to this retreat…and as I walked up to the “podium” that was provided for me in front of these many expectant women, all facing their own battles and storms…so many of them in storms worse than I’ve ever had to go through..
And yet…so willingly and lovingly and longingly, they looked for the anchor that would keep them from drifting and keep them from rocking and rolling in their current storm.
Along with this amazing God-job placed in front of me, I was so blessed to spend quality and quantity time with one of my best of bestest friends, Robin Woodson. Can’t even tell you how much I love this woman!! She and her husband Israel, and her 3 crazy-beautiful and talented and awesome and precious and funny girl-children, treated me like a princess and made me feel so welcome in their home and in their life. (And as a side note, I’m just pretty not-happy that God called them to move so far away from me…but I’m dealing. I’m trying to be Christian about this whole thing! lol)
Ok, that’s the setup. Stay with me, ok?
Monday night, after a bit of delay in my final flight to Durango, CO, (one whole stinkin’ hour…#firstworldproblems)…my handsome, charming, amazing, totally-missed husband drove an hour from Cortez to the Durango airport to meet me and bring me back home. I don’t pretend to think that he can make it without me (although he always does), but I love to be needed and wanted and desired…even if it’s just to make his tuna salad the exact/specific way he prefers. It was great to get home and have him tell me that things just go better when I’m here…for him personally…for the home…and just life in general.
But there’s this weird thing that happens with me when I come home from an extended trip somewhere else. It’s always been this way…and I mean, always! I can’t even really put my finger on it, to be honest…it’s just an eerily-strange mental/emotional sensation that takes a few days to wear off so that I can feel normal again…and get back into the regular groove of my life here with this stuff in this place in this time.
It also happened a couple of weeks ago when David and I went up to Fort Collins, CO, to spend time with our son, CD. We got back home…to our house…and our stuff…and it happened……
Like I said…can’t really explain it. (If you’re a genius and know what this particular phenomenon is, I’m all ears.)
But David said something that makes total sense when I told him that I kinda feel like a stranger…a visitor…in my own home around my own whatever. It’s almost like our physical bodies showed up in our town, on our property, in our driveway and on into our house and our life… He told me it’s like “we’re just waiting for our souls to catch up.”
YES!! Oh my golly gosh!! That’s exactly it!! For some strange reason, for a couple of days after I get back home from a meaningful, memory-making trip to wherever…when I spend quality time with whoever…when I get back home (as much as I love coming home)…it just feels…weird. (Like I said, there’s no way really to describe it.)
And maybe it’s exactly as David said. When we went to Fort Collins to spend time with our one-and-only most precious son a couple of weeks ago, my soul…my spirit, if you will…stayed in Fort Collins for a couple of days, because CD is such a huge part of my heart.
And when I spent 5+ days in Nashville…the very city where I finally found my adult-self during college and early work years… and also spending sweet days with Israel & Robin, the dearest of the dearest of heart-friends, and their three sweet, sweet girls that I love like my own family…and being able to share my painful story followed by God’s out-of-this-world HOPE with around 70 beautiful women at the retreat…that’s where my soul lives! Yes, I love where I am…where I live…and the people who share my life in my town in my world. But even though I know that my world at this moment is totally meant to be in Montezuma County…my soul takes just a minute to catch up to me when I come home.
Is it just me?
I love my life.
I love my church.
I love my close heart-friends.
I love my home.
I love my purpose and my ministry.
But just because my body occupies a certain space, that doesn’t mean that my soul is there yet. Just gimme a minute, ok? It’ll show up. In a coupla days. And stand back when it does…cuz I’ll hit the ground running full-speed again, making sure that the fire that ignites the part of my soul that brings purpose, meaning and changed lives is always LIT.
Heaven is gonna be a place where our lives are totally and completely LIT. There’s no two ways about it. Life here on earth, in this limited, finite, bound-by-earth existence, is gonna keep longing and needing and searching for things that will make us feel complete and useful and purposeful and complete…before we go to heaven.
As believers, our “souls” are already there. In heaven. With Jesus. And on this big blue ball where we live, we are going to feel incomplete, uncomfortable at times, out of sync with ourselves…
But hey…good news…we can start living that heaven-life right now!…
The longing…the needing…the searching…look no further!
Jesus is the Answer! Period!!
That is all for now.
the girl ramsey 