Most of my few readers come through Facebook. For you, this is a bit of a repeat of something I wrote there yesterday, but I want to expand on it. This blog may never be anything more than a hobby, but if I ever do want to do anything practical with it I need to create content, so on we go. If the formatting is wacky, this is a first attempt at emailing the post. When I tried this years ago WordPress made a mess of it. Hopefully things have improved.

My favorite coffee cup has developed a leak. Better the cup than the expensive Keurig coffee maker I first suspected. The cup has developed a hairline crack, probably from leaving it empty on the warmer for hours one too many times. There isn’t a great deal of sentimental value attached to the cup, but upon retiring it I thought back to the people and circumstances of the time when I received it. The cup was one of a pair. The other got broken years ago. It was a going-away present from a church member where I was attending back in 1991.

The church was New Life Fellowship. We met in a small converted warehouse on the outskirts of Palestine, Texas. It was not far from where I was staying with my parents and I liked it. So though my parents kept looking, I stayed. I wasn’t there long before heading off to school in Dallas, but was immediately and warmly accepted. I was still reeling from the recent divorce and they were there to be my friends. When I left, they gave me a party and then sent me a little money each month to help with expenses.

Those were difficult years. I was in a pit of doubt and depression. God would slowly pull me out, but I had to be willing to reach for Him. My story is detailed on the About Larry page, which I see needs some updating. The folks at New Life deserve honorable mention there, but they are missing. I’ll be correcting that oversight.

That’s where the appreciation and growing up come in. I returned to Palestine for a while after my training ended and the short term tutoring contract with the school ended. I ran out of money. I didn’t exactly fail to launch, but it did take a couple of tries. I’m grateful to my parents for being there to help.

I reconnected with the church, but it wasn’t the same. There were other things going on, but I think the biggest problem was me. Still floundering and shy of strong commitment to anything, I just stopped coming one week, commenting to one of the members that I had seen something there that disturbed me. It was an ungrateful and cowardly way to leave things.

I wish now I could go back and express to all of them my appreciation for what they did for me. I have written in my testimony that I first learn how a church should be at the Higher Ground ministry of Hillcrest church, which is no more. There I understood more clearly the roll of love in the church. I think now I should have seen it a few years sooner, but I was blind in more ways than one.

I don’t think the church exists anymore. Now my favorite coffee cup is consigned to the landfill. The last tangible vestige of the church may be gone, but what had been given to my heart will not be so easily shattered. I may never get the chance to thank any of you personally, but at least I can thank you publically. Wherever God has led you, may He reward you richly.