In the middle....

"Everything that is done in the world is done by hope"

~Martin Luther

 

“When it comes to life, the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.”

~G. K. Chesterton

 

“Worship helps people see God in the midst of their troubled lives.”

~Paul Anderson

 

“We make a living by what we get out of life, but we make a life by what we give.”

 

“We are never more like God than when we give."

~Charles R. Swindoll

 

“A man's spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.”

~ C.S. Lewis

 

“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”

~G. K. Chesterton

 

This has been an amazing weekend of music, family and friends.....and the most incredible experience with a group of 1200 PLUS worshipers.....and God Himself in the midst of it all. I have thought that I could share it but each time I have tried to explain what I experienced....I am clear that it has fallen WAY short of the reality of the experience.....and yet I am driven to get this out.

 

It is like that time when I first realized that God was real.....and that He was aware of me.....and was seeking me. Yeah, that is what it was like....the wonder, the awe, the healing beauty of it all. He wrapped it all up again in the events and experiences of the last 48 hours. Almost as a reminder and a foretaste of things to come.

 

This music business is filled with surprises....each concert is a gift waiting to be opened with all of it's own surprises packaged inside. This one was no different.....and yet it was the most incredibly unique experience I have ever had. It started out quite normally.....getting to the venue, setting up, preparing, checking the sounds.....making sure all of the logistics were in place and prepared for whatever was ahead. Then the surprises started.....

 

We had thought we would be eating dinner in the cafeteria....and we were surprised by the gift of dinner out....so we enjoyed a wonderful meal as a team.....sharing, laughing, getting to know one another, bonding.....it is my favorite part of the preparation. The time when everyone just shows up as themselves....not as musicians, not as professionals, not as anything but the wonderful person that they are......and we all get to enjoy one another.

 

We arrived back to the concert hall to a theater filled with excitement, an electric atmosphere.....the young people were gathering.....and they were EXCITED...to say the least! Then the singing started....and what singing it was....I have never, and I MEAN NEVER heard or experienced singing like that....so beautiful, SO LOUD.....every voice singing out with all that they had in them.....hands lifted in unison up to touch the face of God. And the most amazing part of it was that He was clearly there to be touched....and He was loving every moment of it!

 

All of this was preparation.....I look back on it now and realize that God was inviting all of us into His presence....into the love affair.....it was a taste of heaven....right there in Cullen Performance Hall. Zach and I knew we were watching and witnessing something very special....and went back stage to prepare the band somehow, someway for what we recognized was occurring. They were already aware....and preparing themselves.

 

I have been in a lot of concerts.....in the audience, backstage, in the back watching the event.....from every angle expect as a musician.....and in ALL of these experiences.....I have never experienced what I did last Saturday night. I went to ever angle I could.....to see what was happening and experience it fully. And from every vantage point I was enthralled. Not by the concert itself.....or the musicians.....but by the audience!

 

The concert only seemed to be God's next loving gesture in a night of well orchestrated romance, to woo His lovers into His arms......His lovers in the audience and His lovers on the stage. And He was in the space between them.....receiving it all and giving it all.....uniting all in the Oneness of Himself.

 

It was hard to not get totally lost in the experience of this great love affair happening before my eyes....the audience was giving and receiving.....the band seemed overwhelmed and amazed by the power of the love that was flowing towards them...and their response was powerful in return.....giving back their gift of music, song and stories from a grateful heart....broken and aware of their own inadequacies.....clear about the reality that what was happening was beyond them.....they were simply invited to participate in the experience.

 

I kept wishing it would never end.....and then I knew in my heart that there would come a day.....when this would never end. When we would not unplug the amps and turn the lights off  .....and go back to our quiet lives. Instead, God would have His dream come true.....we would know Him completely....touch His face and experience the love that we can only glimpse in experiences like the one on Saturday night.....for all eternity.  

 

Afterwards...I became even clearer that all of our inadequacies are part of God's plan.....God doesn't need our proficiencies or our talent and great skills.....He wants us just as we are.... with our messes and our brokenness....to come and experience all that He is. It is then and only then that we realize that He is enough. He is all we need, He is all we really want. He IS the journey.....enjoying Him forever.

 

"I looked again. I heard a company of Angels around the Throne, the Animals, and the Elders—ten thousand times ten thousand their number, thousand after thousand after thousand in full song:

   The slain Lamb is worthy!
   Take the power, the wealth, the wisdom, the strength!
   Take the honor, the glory, the blessing!

Then I heard every creature in Heaven and earth, in underworld and sea, join in, all voices in all places, singing:

   To the One on the Throne! To the Lamb!
   The blessing, the honor, the glory, the strength,
   For age after age after age.

The Four Animals called out, "Oh, Yes!" The Elders fell to their knees and worshiped."

~John experiencing heaven in Revelations 5:11-14

 

Extreme Dreams, LLC
Kathy Douglas
President
10603 Grant Rd. Ste 110
Houston, TX 77070
Office - 281-890-5034
Fax - 281-890-0300
Cell - 713-398-7304
www.extreme-dreams.net/
www.extremedreamsevents.com

kathyd@extreme-dreams.net

"Helping people enjoy the Journey as much as the Destination"

Visit my coaching journal at:

http://extreme-dreams.blogspot.com/

 

 

Three Generations......

" For only as we ourselves, as adults, actually move and have our being in the state of love, can we be appropriate models and guides for our children. What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become."

~ Joseph Chilton Pearce

 

"As adults, we must ask more of our children than they know how to ask of themselves. What can we do to foster their open-hearted hopefulness, engage their need to collaborate, be an incentive to utilize their natural competency and compassion...show them ways they can connect, reach out, weave themselves into the web of relationships that is called community."

~ Dawna Markova

 

"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it."

~ Harry S Truman

 

 "Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said."
~Anonymous

 

When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw you hang up my first painting on the refrigerator, and I wanted to paint another one.
When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw you feed a stray cat, and I thought it was good to be kind to animals.
When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw you make my favorite cake for me, and I knew that little things are special things.
When you thought I wasn't looking, I heard you say a prayer, and I believed there is a God I could always talk to.
When you thought I wasn't looking, I felt you kiss me goodnight, and I felt loved.
When you thought I wasn't looking, I saw that you cared, and I wanted to be everything that I could be.
When you thought I wasn't looking, I LOOKED....and wanted to say thanks for all the things I saw when you thought I wasn't looking.

~Connie Back

 

Today my girls, Amy, Sara and Sydney, and I go with my mom to celebrate her birthday.....it is not today....it was Tuesday. And yet today is the perfect day to celebrate as we will all be together....three generations of women...celebrating the one who went before us.

 

My mom has done a wonderful job of passing along the legacy of the prior generations of our family to me.....and my hope is that in my own self-centeredness that I will not drop the ball and their legacy will be lost for the future generations of women in our family. I grew up hearing all the amazing stories of my mom's family....how the Bratton family had walked from Pennsylvania, after the Revolutionary War, to Ohio to receive the payment for their father's service in the war....land.

 

Then I heard about....and have even gone to see....the little church in Independence, TX where Kate Hudson and Sam Houston's wife used to sing their duets for the congregation and teach in the very first buildings of Baylor University. The stories I grew up hearing about the women who went before me inspired me then....and ring strong in my heart even now....they were courageous and strong women....and their legacy runs true through my veins and the hearts of my daughters.

 

My mom has loved each of us with a depth of love and care that I rarely see in lives around me.....and yet I am so aware that each mom loves her children beyond words. I grew up being told daily how much I was loved.....and I remember even saying that she "had" to love me....cause she was stuck with me. Isn't it weird how we never seem to appreciate what we have....the ole "grass is always greener on the other side" syndrome???? I didn't feel loved by others outside our family....so I made up the story that I wasn't really LOVABLE by anyone.....and yet love surrounded me throughout my childhood and to this day.

Receiving that love has been a powerful and beautiful result of becoming a mother myself.....understanding the truth that I was loved by my mom in ways that no one else on earth could express in words....not because she had to....out of obligation or even my own "belief" that she was "stuck" with me....but out of a complete and total amazement of the person that I am.

 

Mom's have the hardest job of all.....their hearts are joined by invisible satin ribbons to the hearts of their children. The children don't see the ribbons.....but the mom's forever see and feel them pulling and toughing on their hearts. My mom, Charlotte Faye Wylie.....has shown me again and again how to see and feel those ribbons with a powerful and forgiving love that accepts the truth that our children don't belong to us.....they are simply a gift that we are given by God, to oversee on behalf of our Father who created all of us.....until that time when He decides they must step out in faith and walk with Him.

 

People come and go in my life......and I have loved and been loved by many of them.....some haven't loved me at all....and some have simply not taken the time to even find out if they do or don't. I have learned through all of it that my mom and my dad know me better than most and love me in the midst of all that they know of me with a love that goes beyond words or actions....it is a love that only parents know in their hearts for their children.

 

So today I say thank you, Mom.....and to the mom's in our family that went before us.....for passing down through your daughters the love that we experience today.....you have trained us, loved us and prepared us to be wonderful wives and mothers.......and now through your counseling service, you pass that on to so many others.....you are amazing!

 

"Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives."

~Paul in a letter to Titus 2:1-6