Glory Happening (in my kitchen)

I got it in the mail the week before we moved from our tiny, cramped one-bedroom apartment into our new three-bedroom house: a book full of the exact words my soul was longing for.

We were moving from the little apartment Sarah had agreed to rent without ever even having seen it as she had tried to coordinate a move across the country two years ago. That apartment had welcomed me when I moved from the state I had been born and raised in to a new place, full of promise and hope, joy and love–and also of fear and too much expectation. Those walls kept me safe as I navigated a new job, new friends, new culture of the northeast.

And now, suddenly, we were moving into the house we had been longing and hoping and waiting and praying for.

Days before we moved and settled into this new, seemingly-huge space, I sat on the cold hardwood floor in the empty dining room and prayed for our life in this house. Pulling my sweater close around me, I took from my bag the book I’d just received in the mail: Glory Happening by Kaitlin Curtice. Her words were like a balm to my fragile heart in this tumultuous season and I soaked in them.

At the end of each chapter, there is a poem-prayer and I recognized it as I continued to read: these were the prayers I wanted to bless this new house with.

I began in the kitchen, where I believe life is lived best and where I am drawn most often. “Lord, help me to nourish people well here,” I prayed. I stood at the sink, imagining the walls painted yellow, and begged God to remind me here that communion is not only given at the altar. My voice joined Kaitlin’s as I prayed her words: Jesus, It will take us our whole lives and all of eternity to understand how exactly you came to be the bread and the wine–and our hearts beat together, yearning to know God more.

I moved to the living room and smiled at the thought of all the traditions we will begin here–Rummy, maybe–the ones that will remind us that, though the world is dark, we can be human to and with each other in this sacred space.

I slowly meandered the hallways, asking God to show us how and where and when to find rest and truth and peace.

I knelt on the floor of what was to become my study, my little space in the house to think and pray and read and write, the room Sarah insisted I use to write that book I’ve been talking about, and nearly lost myself in the hugeness of this dream. “Free me from a life ruled by fear,” I cried to Jesus as I flipped back to the chapter called Laboring, the one about hiding in our fear, avoiding the uncomfortable, and read Kaitlin’s words aloud, claiming them for myself: Lean us into our pain, lean us into our strength, lean us into spirit and soul and life.

In the basement, I sunk to the cold cement floor and begged God to show Himself to me even here, among the peeling paint and dust: Gather yourself into the corners of our homes, into the spaces we inhabit every day.

Tears welled in my eyes and my soul marveled at the ways I have found myself and God in the words of another woman in another state with another life story whom I’ve never met. I found her on Twitter and now she ministers to me in my living room in the evenings. Her words remind me that we belong to each other, all of us together, and I find Jesus in that realization. I want to tell her what she wanted to tell the people who ushered God’s presence through the written word into her own life: God speaks through books filled with prayers.

God is so good and His glory is everywhere–if only we can learn how to recognize it.

Glory Happening is out today! Find Kaitlin Curtice‘s first book here. (Trust me, you want it.)