Surfaced in the Georgia Red Clay: Love Story {part a}

Nick and I meandered through the Appalachians at an easy 85 mph, stopping Honda's mad pace only in Beckley, WV, at a Virginia gas station, and finally, in Athens, Georgia. The air was thick even at 4 am, and as we dragged our feet through the grass upon arrival, we saw through the window that three girls had stayed awake to receive us.

The first, Jessica, was Nick's teammate in India last year. In the past year of living with Nick and Brittany, I had heard her name in more stories of Christ's glory and power than I could count, so it felt almost like I was meeting a celebrity. Joyful. Real. Passionate. All abstract words to describe a gal who totally shines with the Spirit of God. It'll have to do to say that I was refreshed by her.

Her roommate, Maychee, and her friend Lauren also stayed up to greet us. Talk about LOVE! And neither of us had ever met them before.

Backing up, Nick and I had decided on Wednesday, spur of the moment, to drive the ten hours to Athens GA for one day, Thursday, and to return on Friday morning. Sound stupid? I thought so, too. But when Nick called to tell me he was going (he couldn't resist the desire to be reunited with his friend Jessica and his missionary parents from India), there was not an ounce of me that could say no.

Exhibit A: Nick, his missionary parents (Dave and Daphne), and Jessica--reunited!


Exhibit B: Sweet, warm, Georgia river and a cool rope swing.




So, there we were in Georgia. Thursday morning when we woke up at the too-late but well-rested hour of eleven, we drove a few blocks to a local joint called Mama's Boy. Lauren met us there, then Maychee. We ate our french toast and our veggies and eggs and bacon and whatever else the smorgasbord consisted of, chatted about the town, stared at people in the restaurant, and then came the fated question: "How did you come to know Christ?"

What a small question for such a gigantic and incomprehensible experience. Ah yes, let me fit my romance with the God of the universe into this little Ball jar. I know it is an important question, but MAN! It's a hard one, and I don't want to sound like a liar when it changes a little every time--there's just so much of Him and He's everywhere and AH!

But it got me thinking. Although there are a thousand thousand factors and incidents that culminated in my finally seeing and savoring the love and grace of Jesus, there are some that I know are especially significant, and it brings me joy to see the way that God talked to me specifically, continually, and tenderly in the way I love to be talked to--by way of metaphor, letters, gentle conversation, a child's face, the detail of the night sky, the prayer of friends...yes, He even loves me enough to let me get the wind knocked out of me from time to time, only when necessary.

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One of the first expressions of His love that I can recognize is His meeting me in the quiet, on the hill behind my house.

There is not a time in my life that I can remember being without wonder of creation or sensitivity towards it. Abba knows this, and I believe it was Him who drew me out of my house night after summer night, a middle school girl wrapped in a blanket, to lay under the stars in my sleepy little town. Wonder. He spoke it to me without words.

Laying under those stars, I couldn't doubt His presence. Were stars just the holes to heaven or were they massive, luminous balls of plasma aged between 1 and 10 billion years old? Of course, it didn't matter. Either way, they spoke of His majesty. I didn't know His name yet, but I saw His qualities there in the constellations: Light in the darkness, Creator, a lover of beauty and a lover of man that He'd let us experience beauty with Him; I saw that He was found in the quiet, that He was higher than us and we could not comprehend Him.

He allured me, He began to woo me there in that small Pennsylvania field.

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At some point, as Nick and I made the drive home from Georgia after some great waffles and great conversation with Jessica, just listening to Beyonce sing in Spanish and enjoying the blue sky, we began passing field after green field. I couldn't help but to exclaim my awe of them.

"There is just something about a wide open field that hits me right here!" I said to him as I touched my heart, knowing he'd understand my oddball thought.

"Yeah," he said. "I think it's cool because the word for 'salvation' in Hebrew is something like 'to be brought into a wide open place.' A lot of the Hebrew vocabulary comes from their being shepherds, so in this case, it's like a sheep being brought back to the field, to the open field."

Well, I thought that was just about the coolest thing I'd ever heard, so I looked it up. One scholar says this:

"In the Hebrew language the word for salvation is yasha, from which we have Joshua. Yasha has this meaning: 'to be wide, or roomy - a broad and spacious place.' Yasha communicates the idea of freedom. It is 'liberation from confinement, constriction, and limitation.'"

It makes sense, then, that our hearts would be drawn to the open field and so too, to the Author of Salvation Himself. Little did I know as I lay behind my house those summer nights, He was leading me by the hand out of the briars, toward the roomiest field of all.


Here's Nick enjoying a wide open field at the botanical gardens! He's a ninja.


And a nice Mexican field for some added variation. :) He loves us!