Abundance

I was asked to give a short speech in church today, at the end of the early and late services, on the theme of abundance and how "showing up" (broadly defined) makes a difference to my family. Following is a rough transcript of what I said.

Timothy set the stage perfectly, in the second service, by trying his best to run out the door during the children's message.

Earlier this summer, I lost my one-year-old son Timothy in an ice cream shop. I put him down to get out my wallet, took my eyes off him for a moment, and he was gone. Panic seized me as I looked around the store, then hurried outside and scanned the parking lot. It was only a minute before someone spotted him inside the store, but I will remember that feeling for a lifetime.

I’ve never had that feeling within these walls – and in case you haven’t noticed, my two kids have wandered off plenty of times at ECLC.

I don’t worry about the boys here, because it feels like a second home for us, and the congregation is an extended family. Not only are they safe, but they are also loved. It means a lot to me that people are praying for my kids, and that they have opportunities to participate in service and giving almost from the day of their birth. As they grow older, I hope they will have friends their own age in Sunday school, and they will also have relationships with people of different generations, so they have many adults outside our family that they can confide in and feel valued by.

Even my husband Will feels at home here. When I first met him, talk of church or religion would make him clench his jaw and break into a sweat. I guess he’s still on a different spiritual journey than I am, and he doesn’t attend regularly. But not long ago, I overheard him talking to some friends about ECLC. He referred to it, not as Karen's church like I would have expected, but as our church.

I thank God for this feeling of safety and acceptance, and today I also thank all of you. Your time volunteered, and money donated, and your prayers and energy, and often simply your presence, are the conduit for all of these blessings. Whether it’s being a Sunday school teacher, or offering to hold a baby while Mama goes through the buffet line, the big and small things make a difference to families like mine.

When I was invited to talk about my experience here, I thought, why me? I’m just an ordinary person, doing ordinary things. But when I started preparing for this, I realized that committees, and Lenten vespers, and marching in the Pride parade, and serving alongside Will at the food shelf, and sitting in a circle for Lambs, and breaking bread together – all of these ordinary things add up to something extraordinary. And that is the abundance I experience at ECLC – the communion of saints, materialized, enfolding me and my whole family in God’s love.