Sometimes we have the privilege of knowing people who believe in us even more than we believe in ourselves. Those people who cheer us on, are happy for our successes and who help us get back up when we fail. God has done me the favor of giving me several of those people in my life. And yesterday was a clear example of that.
My friend Marybeth is a successful businesswoman and a born leader. She is a go-getter who makes things happen. People look to her for organization and direction. But what I love most about Marybeth has nothing to do with her own abilities and accomplishments. It’s her heart and how she celebrates every person that she meets and focuses on their abilities and accomplishments as if they were her own. I’ve seen it again and again in conversations with her. And yesterday I got to experience it in a whole new way.
Marybeth also loves to entertain. Her doors are always open to the young and the old, the familiar and strangers. The combination of her love for others and her love for entertaining was in full force yesterday afternoon when she held an open house for me to highlight HANDled. She provided food and beverages, a matted and framed picture of my book cover with room for people to sign, and a welcoming home. She invited my friends and friends of hers whom I’d never met but who became friends in the short two and half hours that we were together.
She gave me an opportunity to share my heart, how the book came to be and my vision for how I see God using this new ministry. The women (about 15 of us) were so sweet and receptive and once again, important conversations were had. I shared with these women that over the course of the past 10 years, God has whispered “words” in my ear, saying that’s how He would use me. I was never sure if that meant through singing, song writing, speaking, the written words or one on one conversations. Even as I was saying this, it became so clear that over the years God has allowed me to dabble in all of these areas but that His direction was becoming more and more focused. The book has become not just the end, but the means to have intimate, personal conversations with people that would not normally have happened. To have speaking opportunities to groups of women that I have never had access to before. To share Jesus’ love with people that I had never imagined in ways that I had never imagined. Not because of the book itself, but because, by God’s grace, He is choosing to use it to open doors.
Thank you, Marybeth, for being such an excited partner in this new adventure. Thank you for allowing God to open a door through you that I could not have opened. All of us need each other, no matter what our calling, our gift, or our calling. That’s how God works. Through the teamwork of us working together. That’s how He brings us together and how He gets the credit for the amazing things that happen. Thank you for following His lead, Marybeth. You so rock! And thank You, Jesus, for the many people that you have placed in my life who love, encourage and cheer me on. Thank You for showing Your hands through Your people…
(Funny fact…if you’ve been reading over the past several posts, you will understand that yesterday should have been a day where I would sell five books, according to my pattern over the last few book signings. True to the pattern, I sold four on Saturday. And yesterday I sold 23! And 2+3=5! A little nerd humor there…)
