Summer Series

Getting older is weird.  

One day you are in a foreign country with this cool, but kind of closed off young person, and then all of a sudden, you are doing life together in community with the exact same person.  Except now, you are friends. 
You are going on a girls trip together.
You are passing on your maternity clothes to her. 
You are talking about pregnancy cravings (tater tots, anyone?).    

This is what it is to be an adult.  Now we all hang out together no matter what age we are, and I love having friends of all ages and stages.  It’s only weird when we start talking about where we were in the year 2000.  For the record, I was graduating high school and many of my friends were still in diapers.  Whatever, it’s fine.    

I have only known Rebecca Edwards for about 7 years and she was most definitely still in preschool while I crossed the stage to receive my high school diploma.  Whatever, it’s fine.  

Even in these short 7 years, I have seen her grow closer to Christ in ways that I bet she never even thought she would.  In fact, when I think back to the Becca I first met, I was intimidated.  She was cool and unbothered and chill and did I say, cool?  She was one of those people that you just felt honored to be associated with.  

Now…well, honestly, she is still cool  And she can be very chill and unbothered.  But she is also caring, and she has this ability to meet someone in the lowest moments and just be there with them.  Becca is also great at making people feel loved and seen right when they need it. I have been a direct recipient of this.  The best thing about her is that she does things for others, not because she is supposed to, not because it is what is expected of her, but because she truly wants to and strives to live like Christ.  

In the time that I have known, Becca, I have had a front row seat to this transformation.  That sounds like she was a wayward caterpillar who came out of her cocoon as an angelic butterfly.  What I actually mean is I see the small decisions she makes daily to grow closer to Christ.  
The choice to keep reading her Bible when she doesn’t feel like it. 
 The choice to reach out to a friend who is going through something hard when it would be more convenient to just leave it alone.  
The choice to show up on Sundays and Wednesdays for kids and teenagers at Capstone.  
The choice to stay faithful when things aren’t going the way she thought they would go.  
The choice to lean in to God and lean on others when she needs support and guidance.  
It’s those small decisions over time that have bore the fruit from her growing relationship with Jesus.

Those daily choices are what you and I can do, too.  
Maybe we need to choose to keep picking up our Bibles even when it seems like God is far away.
Maybe we need to choose to treat the people in our own house with even a smidge of the grace and mercy that Jesus shows us.  
Maybe we need to let our walls down and open up to those around us so they can shoulder our burdens and celebrate our wins with us.  
Small choices make a big and life-changing impact over time.  I know they have for my friend, Rebecca, and for the people that she is around.    



Sarah Ellen Edwards
July 2022