November 13, 2005

27th Birthday

Three months before turning 27

So as I recap the last few birthdays to start this birthday blog I have been rereading several journal entries. I've always kept journals. At least on and off. Time to time. As the emotion, day, circumstance call for it. I have stacks & boxes of them dating back to when I was 15. I process alone. Me & my journal. Me & Jesus & my journal.


According to my journal from 2005, the week I turned 27 I was writing about Psalm 145:13-19 that I was looking at with my sweet artsy friend, Tiffany Skidmore.

My thoughts are recorded like this in my journal:

• everlasting, endures through all generations
• loving toward all He has made
• bowed down: broken, down & out
• provider
• eye of all
• opening hand: releasing
• every living thing: satisfied
• The Lord is near!
• Hears their cry
• 1 Sam 10:19 Rejected your God

I don't remember what I did the day I turned 27 but I do remember that it was hard for me. Twenty-seven was sort of my 30. I remember telling a friend that by the time you are 27 you are lumped into your 'late twenties' and even on forms you fill out, the category puts you in the 27-30 column. So for me 27 felt like the new 30. Which writing this retroactively is working in my favor because I know now turning 30 was pretty awesome...stayed turned for that entry.

Four months after turning 27

I also remember some time during my 27th year having a tearful conversation laying in my king size bed downstairs in my room in my house in Charlotte. It was something like..."Jesus, I want to be married. I've told you a lot. A whole lot. Though painful I have concluded that I won't marry unless the man is madly in love with you, a soldier, a man after your heart. A man of the Word. You know my list but I'm submitted to your will even if that includes singleness and waiting for this sort of man. I am yours & you are mine."  This is a moment I point back to for myself and others as a time of consecration in my walk with Jesus. It is a personal ebenezer moment to remind me of what my priorities are, who my first love is and where my heart is.


The circumstances of my life at 27 included living in my house in Charlotte near UNCC with Patricia, Kali and Adriana had just moved out to go raise support to start Campus Outreach in Virginia.  I was the Women's Coordinator at UNCC. Jeff was in school at UNCC & to his chagrin leading worship weekly for lots of college students. I was discipling the TaTa's (Ashley, Megs, Renee, Crystal, Tiffany, Mary Beth & Heidi). It was a sweet time in ministry at UNCC.