Today Jesus met me in a way I haven’t had in a long time. Today I sat at His feet and wept and worshiped. Today I had needs met in me so deep and so long unmet I’d forgotten what it was like to have them satisfied. Today I felt known; more over, I felt people wanted to know me. Today I found a place that values all that I value; that holds dear what I hold dear; a place where conviction meets real life and both walk hand-in-hand. A place that is as close to Mosaic as I think a place can get without being it, and yet is different.

Now that its over, fear is threatening to take over my heart. Fear that the whole thing was just a marvelous dream, or at best a one-time thing that won’t be repeated; fear that what I found is just too rare to be mine. Is that not the most insane thing you ever heard? But there it is. The reality in my heart. I’m so afraid I will come back empty-handed next time.

Two months ago I wrote about my dilemma. I’d been struggling for months with not having community at the church I was serving. I had prayed, reached out, gone to events and small groups, even had one in my home, but I could not seem to really connect with anyone. It was as if I was a foreigner to them, and they to me. We were interesting to each other but ultimately we spoke different languages, and I felt Lost in Translation. They want comfort, stability, safety, sameness, perhaps even God-in-a-box. I don’t. Here’s what I wrote; Here’s what I want.

I want to be known more than I fear it. I want
community more than I fear intimacy. I want to be challenged more than
I want to be "fed". I want to follow Jesus no matter the cost more than
I fear where He might take me. And I want a community of people to
journey with in life here in Nashville that shares my passion for Jesus
and my longings for community and challenge. I want that more than I want to shuffle
alongside people who still think Church is a fortress from the "world",
rather than the shelter and refuge FOR the world’s most broken, twisted
and shattered that it is and was always meant to be. I want a community
who desires to pursue Jesus with full-out passion. I want it so bad it
hurts. I haven’t had it since I left LA.

Today I think I found that place. Not only that, but I joined that place; for the first time since leaving LA I became a member of a church.

I didn’t mean to. I didn’t intend to. I intended to go to this event ("class") and just find out about this community, investigate it. I was going to keep my options open this time, and guard my heart well, in case they weren’t what my friend who’d told me about them said they were.  What have I done?

But people at the event were so friendly, so open, so willing to be known, and to know others. Conversation was easy, and for the first time in over two years I felt I belonged, really belonged. Like I wasn’t a foreigner speaking a strange language, or a stranger trying to force my way in. It felt very good.

Anyone who knows me knows I love people, but that they also exhaust me. I’m such an introvert! Crowds, big or small, scare me and I have to take a deep breath before I plunge in. Yet I felt no fear with this group. I felt no… discomfort at all. And the time went by far too fast. I wasn’t at all ready for it to be over when it was.

God spoke to me as I stared at the community’s commitment/covenant at the end of our time. He spoke of putting down roots and how I’ve been avoiding it since the church-plant fell apart. I invested so much of myself, invested my whole heart and soul in that group. To have it disintegrate before my eyes broke not just my heart, but my spirit, I think.  It’s like losing a baby that never got to be birthed.

But here He was, Jesus, talking to me softly about putting down roots, reminding me that it is a rare thing, and this was the first place I’d found it in Nashville. He was soft, but insistent, yet never demanding. So, I took a deep breath, signed the covenant and nervously handed it to someone on staff.

What have I done?

This morning was my last morning on the sound team at the other church, and it was filled with sweet fellowship with the team leader and with my ministry partner/producer. It was as if they were dangling carrots to keep me there and involved. It nearly worked; part of me really wondered if I really ought to be leaving and whether a year was long enough a chance to give a community.

But then I walked into the other community– my new community now — and Jesus sat down beside me. Wrapping up the sound in the chapel after 1st service of my old church had caused me to miss the worship at my new home. When I came in the pastor was already into his sermon. I sat down on some steps nearby, the nearest "seat" I could find, and Jesus made His presence immediately known.

I have this "language" with Him that I cannot explain, it just is. Its a visual language; one where He shows me things–shows me Himself–in my mind, or what I call my "mind’s eye". I get flashes of images, Him sitting somewhere or standing or in some position, always near or next to me. Sometimes we dance, sometimes He holds me, sometimes He’s drenching me like a rainstorm, sometimes He’s at my feet. No, often He’s at my feet. At first I fought that idea; that’s not where He belongs, He belongs above me and I at His feet. But He’s been insistent that His position is at my feet. He came to serve me, came to love me. He adores me. And He kneels in front of me, and stares intently into my eyes, my face, because He wants me to know Him, not just as "Lord" or "Almighty God" but as Lover and Counselor and Servant-Leader and Friend.

I realize some will call me a heretic for this. I cannot help that. This is who God reveals Himself to be, to me. And I know, to the core of my being, that it is Truth. He has proved it over and over. Its a position I don’t fully understand, I just know that it is. And I live by it.  Since He calls me to follow Him — His position toward me says to me that my position is kneeling at the feet of others, serving them, looking intently into their faces, letting them know me as friend, counselor, servant.

So often I’ve longed to kneel at His feet. So often I have, only to have Him get down on the floor beside me, so He can look intently into my face, and I into His. I try to tell Him this defeats my purpose in being on my face, only to have Him retort that His purposes are higher than mine, and His purposes are the ones that will last. There’s no point fighting with God. He decides He’s going to do something a certain way, that’s what will happen, regardless of what I try — and believe me I have tried it all.

Today Jesus let me sit at His feet. I don’t know why. But today, as the Pastor brought us into a time of quietness before God and the worship team led us to the throne, Jesus let me place myself at His feet. And instead of getting down on the floor with me, eye-to-eye, He stood tall, His hands on my head, as if to say to anyone, everyone in the universe, "this one is Mine. This one I love. This one I am–" dare I say it?? –"I am proud to call My own."

I clung to His feet, knowing beyond doubt how blessed I am to be known by Him, how unworthy I am to be loved by Him, and how grateful I am to belong to Him. I did not want to get up from that place, did not want to leave that position. It became holy, sacred ground in that moment, though the rest of the world would see them only as stairs at a movie theater.

The pastor had asked earlier, what do we bring to God this Christmas season? We spend so much time and energy telling people what we want for Christmas, making our lists for our parents, friends, family — perhaps even for God — of what we want this Christmas. But what do we bring to Him? He is, after all, the one who came; the one who’s birth we celebrate. Sadly, for all my talk of mission and passion, I had not really thought about that question, until the pastor asked it. Sadder still, I didn’t have an answer.

So, today I brought myself. Today I brought all of me to His throne, to His feet, for whatever I am worth and whatever He can do with me, and I worshiped. And I wept. While He stood tall and proclaimed me His own, His beloved.

And when He later whispered that I had too long resisted putting down roots, I brought myself to Him again. Perhaps what I have done is to bring myself to the community He has brought to me. Is it real? Will it last? I don’t know. But perhaps its time to step into the fear, instead of running from it, and find out.