You're right, Jon Acuff. Just Start.

There is no day like today to begin. After revealing to my daughter that she could be anything in the world that she wanted to be, I gathered my courage and explained I'd always wanted to be a published writer since I was young. The hypocrisy of my predictable, static life hit me.
How can I tell her something like that when I haven't done it myself?

So here goes.
This will be the first of many written Ebenezer stones I've gathered over the years, heart keepsakes from a child collecting souvenirs of interactions with the Divine.

It generally starts off with a problem.

This is a humble place that I live in. We are weak creatures. Perhaps not many will be able to identify with us- my dear Moshe and I. But the few who will, I hope you will be blessed, quickened, and encouraged to begin your own journey of collecting Ebenezer stones.

It's all for God's glory, to be sure. I wish simply to observe, and share, what He is doing on a personal level with us, and hopefully be a blessing to others on this sometimes hard journey of life we all share.

One of the first times it hit me~ Gods' sheer kindness, was in the Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, NC. It was during the week after Halloween, 1998. The Charlotte Hornets still existed. Our second son was about 8 months old, and he had just been given an emergency tracheostomy due to a tumor in his windpipe that had blocked his airway about 80%. The news hit my husband and I like a wall of cement blocks. 3-5 years of laser surgeries every six months or so, and we could hope that the tumor would be reduced, but until then, our son, named Elias to be "the mouthpiece of God", would have a trach and not talk without special decices, and speech therapy was the least of our problems.
They pumped him full of medications, and after an emergency tracheostomy, he spent days in Pediatric ICU. Then we were left with him on the regular ward with nurses coming by checking on him to see that he recovered from the surgery.
My husband and I had to take shifts to watch over him. He had to work still, and thankfully, my in-laws came and took our older son to their home to visit during our time of crisis.
The dust from the shock settled.
I was left alone, watching our small child lay, strapped to a hospital bed to prevent movement that would damage his new tracheostomy, and my soul collapsed within me with grief and I wept on his bedside.
In that brief moment in time, between quiet sobs (I didn't want to wake our baby), I didn't have much real conscious thought. Just a clear, agonizing sorrow for our child, and the whole scary scenario of what if's.
After a while, the tears slowed. Suddenly and oddly, more than anything in the world, like a little child myself, I simply craved a piece of Chocolate. A small Kit-Kat, to be exact.
Within a few moments, there was a hustling down the hallway. Apparently, someone important was on the floor.
I peaked my head out the door, and noticed men in costumes walking down the hall and going into rooms. Myself being very shy, I dreaded the thought of visitors in my blubbery state, and quickly withdrew my head.
I sat back down beside my sons' bed, but hadn't very long till the visitors came into the room.
The nurse accompanying them smiled big as she introduced them. They were someone important from the local basketball team--manager or owner of the Charlotte Hornets, and one was short and one was tall, and the short one was wearing a Superman outfit. They were passing out candy to the children on the pediatric wing of the hospital.
Like an idiot, I said my baby was too young for candy, and he was on liquids anyway.
They smiled and spoke briefly, then gave me the candy instead.


I thanked them, embarrassed and blustery because I knew my eyes were swollen, and they parted.

After they left, I sat there and thought the whole thing was nice but kind of surreal, and then looked at the pieces of candy in my hand. Tragedy and irony danced inside my heart.
There was a small Kit-Kat. Just like I had pictured in my heart moments before.
In that moment, time was suspended, and I knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that God Almighty saw me in the hospital room: alone, tired, scared and weak. Fragile. But He knew exactly what to do, and how to move Heaven and earth to show me He was and is very much there, Almighty, powerful, and bursting with Love. Perfect Love.
I opened that Kit Kat, like Charlie discovering the wrapper of gold, and knew that no matter what, God was there with me, and my tiny mustard seed of faith emboldened and began to grow.