My C3 Saga

As most of you already know, God made a way for me to go to C3 last week.  I knew that God wanted me there and I was so glad when the doors opened for me to attend.  I will tell you, however, that it was a bit of a battle.  First, Amy was sick before I left.  She had some sort of stomach bug and we thought that she was getting better.  Then, the morning of my flight she had a fever.  I thought about staying home but she insisted that I go any way.  (She’s an amazing woman!)  We had planned on Amy driving me to the Marta station so I made her stay home an I drove myself down.  It was pouring down rain and bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to the airport.  Once there, I started feeling absolutely awful myself.  This made for one miserable flight.  It was truly the worst flight I’ve ever experienced.

During the flight, I read my daily devotional that said that you sometimes have to “push through the pain” to get what God wants to give you.  That should have inspired me but it felt more like an omen of things to come versus a word of encouragement.  :)

By the time I was on the ground in Texas, I was starving but I afraid to eat anything.  I called home and Amy was feeling worse than when I left and I started getting concerned for my roommate at the hotel.  I decided to get another hotel room so as to not ruin the conference for him.  Finding another room proved to be a bit of challenge though.  Thankfully, I was eventually able to find something.

That evening, I was able to spend some time with Greg Rohlinger and his wonderful team but I wasn’t myself.  My stomach was still feeling funky and I was worried about Amy.  Then, after the evening session of the conference, I got a call from Amy.  Her throat was killing her and she was experiencing a lot of pain when she swallowed.  She had asked a friend to come over and take her to a quick med place.  When I hung up the phone I couldn’t have felt more helpless.  I prayed for her.  Then, I twittered and asked a bunch of other folks to pray too.  It was comforting to have so many praying and offering to help but I just wanted to be home to take care of my wonderful wife.  This was the low point of the trip for me and I honestly thought about catching the next flight home.  Still, I keep hearing the Lord telling me to press on.

The next day the doctors confirmed that Amy had strep and they prescribed some meds.  I went to the conference and got to spend some time with a lot of really great folks that I know through twitter.  The whole time though, I was just worried about Amy and the kids.  Amy is almost never sick but going from stomach bug to strep really put her through the ringer.  Still, I tried to get something out of the conference.

The sessions were all great and I took a lot of notes but, honestly, I didn’t really feel like I was getting much more than I would have if I had stayed at home and read all the tweets from the conference.  I started to wonder why I was there.  Still, God keep reminding me to push through the pain.

Thursday night, I started to experience the full brunt of the stomach bug myself (nice!) and only slept a few hours.  I started to wonder if God was the one trying to get me to C3 or if it was perhaps the devil instead.  :)

The next day was another day of good sessions but I still didn’t feel that I had received whatever I was supposed to receive from God until the last session that evening.  It was there that Bishop T. D. Jakes spoke.  He always ministers to me and I was really looking forward to hearing him speak but, honestly, it was a some point during worship, before he spoke, that I started to sense God in a very powerful way.  I felt like He was saying to me, you stuck with it and now I’m going to bless you. I just sort of had this experience with God right there.  It was awesome and then, when the Bishop did speak, I was ministered to again in another powerful way.

So, that’s the end of my saga.  I flew home the next morning.  I felt like I had been away a week but it was really just a few days.  I’m glad I went but I guess the moral of the story is that if God promises you something you’ve got to hang on until He delivers.