“Give them a gift,” I heard from the depths of sleep. It was 7:10am and I’d been in a blissful sleep since 9:00pm the night before. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I was wiped. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon when I felt the stirring of the idea.
God does that, though, He’ll give me ideas when I’m not quite awake. It could be because there aren’t any other distractions taking me away from what it is HE wants me to hear. 😉 Today I was due to give a presentation for St. Helen’s LIFENIGHT on The Gift of Sexuality. Not once but twice. They split their LIFETEEN program into two groups 9-10th grade and 11-12th grade.
Apparently my sub-conscience was already focusing on the task at hand this morning because before my eyes could open I was working out the details of how I could present this nicely wrapped, pure white gift to a GUY and how this whole scenario could go to best bring forth a message in the 15 minute time period I had with both guys and girls together before we split up.
That’s all it took and my mind was fully awake, the idea in full bloom but I knew if I didn’t write it down I’d lose it…like losing a dream. So I put it into my phone. (The ‘gift’ of technology 😉 ).
The only issue was wrapping these gifts. I needed 4 nicely wrapped gifts (2 for each LIFENIGHT) and I needed them NICELY wrapped. That’s an issue with me. My wrapping looks like a 5 year old tried to surprise their parents with wrapping their beloved pet in a box. 😉 Messy. Plus I only had so much time in my day once I took kids where they needed to be, etc.
By 12 I was in Target asking their customer service department if they wrapped gifts. I was under the wrong impression that they did this….I don’t know why? Maybe I was thinking of Bed, Bath & Beyond?? They looked at me like I had three heads. Time was running out and I knew if I didn’t get the stuff to wrap these gifts I was going to miss out on a very cool idea.
Within five minutes I had the boxes, gift wrap and bows. In my mind as I headed to the register I was already consoling my ego on the wrapping job I was surely going to produce. I decided to put bows ONLY on the nice gifts and not the gift that was represented of having been ‘misused’. I reasoned as long as the other gifts are at least covered in white with a bow and minimal tape showing I might be OK.
That’s when I saw Julie, a woman that is in adoration with me every Friday morning. I have never seen Julie outside of church in the 9 years I’ve been going to adoration. I’ve seen her outside of adoration at church but not outside of church. 🙂 So I called her name and we ended up standing in line together to check out. She saw that I was going to wrap gifts and assumed I was going to a wedding.
“Oh no, I’m doing a presentation at St. Helen’s in Pearland and these are my props.” I went on to explain to her the idea.
“Oh, I like that idea,” she said. “I’m very good at wrapping I can wrap them.”
I did a double take. “What? Oh, no,” I said to be polite. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes,” she said matter of fact as if she was meeting me at Target in order to wrap the gifts. “Where do you want to wrap them? We can go to the church?”
“Are you sure?” I said one last time to give her an out.
“Yes,” this time she said it sternly. “Where should we go?”
So she followed me to my house and wrapped all four gifts as if they were done professionally. One MALE even asked me at the end “How did you make that cool crease in the paper?” 🙂
It was obviously very important for the ‘idea’ that God gave me to work and have the gift be something nice, pure, near perfect. So important that he sent a professional gift wrapper in my path!
It was interesting to give this to the male volunteer and have them hold onto it…not wanting to let it go. But when I had his friends take it (representing his future wife’s ‘gift of sexuality’ and the men that she might date or come into contact with BEFORE they are to meet and marry) he didn’t want them to ‘mess it up’ ….he wanted it safely in his hands. BOTH male volunteers during both sessions acted this way and when I had the men in the audience raise their hands of who had ‘held’ the gift and MOST of the young men raised their hands you could see the male volunteer ‘got it’…he understood. That the gift was worth keeping pure, safe, nice, near perfect. Even if it isn’t his YET he needs to respect all the gifts he gets to hold for safe keeping for whomever that gift is for. 😉 (And pray the other men will do the same and handle his future ‘gift’ with gentle care too!)
It was a blessing to be a part of this program tonight and I could write out the entire ‘program’ but it would take a mini pamphlet! I hope you get the idea. 😉 These young people were an amazing group and so BEAUTIFUL. I was blessed to be before them.
I love that God showed up through Julie today and helped me deliver His love to His beloved in the way He wanted. 🙂
Blessings
Shannon