Feed My Sheep

People have been inviting me to church for ten plus years.

Friends. Clients. My grandmother. My own girls have gone without me.

And it isn't that I don't know the place. My papa was a preacher. My uncle was a preacher. My godmother is a priest. I'm no stranger to the word of God.

I never went anyway, and it wasn't because I didn't want to. I wanted to walk in when I could actually fully receive it. On my own terms.

This morning I went alone, to the church my grandmother took me to when I was little, visiting Texas. She still goes. She had no idea I was coming. I think she may have given up on me over the years.

She and I never got to have the normal kind of relationship. But I love being in her presence, and this morning I got to sit in it.

One thing before I go further. Where I say God, put whatever you believe in. Or nothing at all. It reads the same.

I'll be honest about the pattern, because I've said it for years: we go looking for God when things get hard. I've done it, and there have been plenty of hard seasons to do it in. This time was different. Nothing was pushing me other than the obvious, life. I'd just been craving it for a while, and I finally went.

The sermon was about putting God first. Above all things. And about expecting the blessings without expecting the trouble that comes with them at times. Trial and tribulation. If you're going to do big things, there's going to be persecution, and you take it. That isn't a punishment. That's the arrangement. As a business owner, that one was worth hearing.

He preached the passage about the fishermen, too. Out all night and they caught nothing. Then a voice from the shore told them to throw the net on the other side of the boat, and they listened, and it came up with a hundred and fifty-three fish in it. Same water. Same men. Same night. They just had to be willing to hear it.

I'd been fishing the same side of the boat for ten plus years. Everybody kept telling me to cast my net on the other side.

He kept coming back to the same three words. Love me more.

And then the three I haven't been able to put down since.

Feed my sheep.

That's what I was able to receive this morning. The woman in the row in front of me probably walked out with something completely different, and I'm fine with that. I'll take what I can take right now. The rest will speak to me later, when I'm ready for it.

And receiving it means doing something with it. The way I hear it, your sheep is your circle. When you're good, you make sure your circle is good.

I've been told I have a great testimony. I probably do. So does almost every woman who has ever laid on my bed and talked to me for an hour, and most of those stories never get heard by anybody. That's the part I can't stop thinking about.

The books are picking up. What I want out of all of it is simple. I want to keep making women feel beautiful. I want them to feel seen.

So here's what I'm going to do about it. A few times a year I'm giving my work away, free, to a woman who needs it. Not money, not a gift card. The thing I actually do. I haven't worked out all the shape of it yet. I just know I'm doing it, and I'd rather say it out loud than leave it sitting as a nice thought.

So if you know a woman who deserves it, or you're sitting there thinking it might be you, follow along and stay in contact.

I know it isn't like us to want something good for ourselves. Do it anyway.