It has taken me this long to honestly get the guts to write this. My experience Sunday was way more than I had expected when I finally got to go to the church I had been trying to get to. The church on the hill across from the old Sharecropper. Bishopville Church of Christ, it will now be forever and permanently etched in my mind. Some may know I had been drawn there and I felt God had been holding me back, waiting for the time. Now I know why, it had to all be timed just right. Lets go back, in September before I got sick I was doing an Ester bible study. I came to the time in the study when Ester is told you were placed here for such a time as this. When I read it, he hit me with something so insane that I started to cry, got on my knees and started to honestly beg him not to do it to me. However after crying and begging my final words to him were but I will do whatever you want me to do. I at that time shared it with Christy and Thres, not Bennett and then sort of let it go. Then I got sick and had hoped it was like Abraham and Issac and he just wanted to know I would do it but surely he wouldn’t expect me to do it now. Over the last few weeks it had come back around and I kept finding the topic coming up in my mind as I tried to tamp it down. This Sunday at Bishopville Church of Christ the service was awesome!!! The music was great and the message was seemingly meant for me. Their pastor was out of town so a younger man Jimmy Whaley was preaching. His topic, “Service after Salvation”. He was asking what is Jesus calling you to do? You have a testimony before you are saved but does it stop there? After you are saved are you then on coast or is there more to what you will give to Jesus and what he will give to you. “Duty after deliverance”, I told God then I want your anointing on my life so I can full fill my destiny. What he had called me to do came crashing in on me, and the preacher asked if you are being called by him to do something, come up here and let me pray for you. When I went up front he directed me to one of the deacons for prayer but I asked the pastor if he would step over to and told them what God had laid at my feet and on my heart. I honestly just thought they would pray for me, when they asked me to sit on the front row I just thought it was to wait for prayer. As I was sitting there the deacon came up and asked me my name and I told him, “Laura Bennett”, and he said, “Bennett’s wife?” Yeah I said thinking oh wow I just told man what is on my heart and I haven’t told Bennett. The part that really caught me off guard was when he went up he asked me to stand and tell the congregation what I told him. So I did, crying like a child I told them that I felt the lord had called me to run for Mayor of Bishopville. I know, me to, I have had a year and it still sounds weird. I knew I was not politician, I am a nurse, a mother, and a wife it was not something that I would have ever considered but there it was, I had said it out loud and that made it more real. They were so encouraging really. One lady gave me a copy of an awesome devotion about following God, and then wrote me a personal note telling me good luck on my journey and said our politics needed some fresh air. I had so many come people come up to me before service and welcome me and after to ask me to return I had to ponder if this is the experience a black woman would have in an all white church? I truly felt welcome and will return because they are truly special now to me now, it is where I faced my new reality. Deep breath. So then I had to go home and tell my husband and family. The family did pretty well, the husband kind of freaked out. I mean I get it, again I had a year and I am still struggling with it. As he freaked out, I told him do you think I wanted this, it is a mess and I have a job, a family, and I am sick. That was when he screamed at me “YOU ARE NOT SICK”, and I realized he doesn’t see me as sick and he can’t see me as weak. Which is ironic because the same man that knows I am capable of handling almost anything, confident MS is nothing but is afraid to let me handle this. Later after it had absorbed a little and he was calmer I asked him if he thought I was a better decision maker than what we have now and he said yes. I asked him if he thought I was more capable and he said yes. I think it is just the change and what might come, plus I don’t think he ever thought of himself as a First ManJ I don’t know that this would mean I would win but I do know it would mean I would definitely learn some stuff and who knows what will come of it. Who knows? I feel like the guy on the Big Fat Greek Wedding. When is the election? “I don’t know” How do you register?” I don’t know” What does a Mayor do? “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know”. All I do know is this as I cried and prayed for the third day in a row, all of a sudden the same thing came to me today that I had written on the front of my Ester Bible Study Book in September, “DO NOT BE AFRAID”. From what I understand the bible says it 365 times the most repeated phrase in all of the bible. What was not lost on me was one for every calendar day. This morning crying on my knees I heard him say, “Do not be afraid”, and then I wasn’t. When I asked him why me, he said, “because you ask me what to do and then you do it”. I wasn’t expecting that answer. I have said that is all my stories are, I asked him what to do he told me and I did it and this is what happened. He has brought me this far and all the short stories have ended well. I guess that was the point that it has been OK Laura, trust me and it will be OK. Just Do not be afraid. So that is my plan, one day at a time of figuring all this out and not to be afraid. So with all that said I guess I will finish with, Laura Bennett for Mayor 2014 (at least I think that is when the next election is). I know it takes a little while to absorb it!
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 22:21:17 +0000
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