Chronicle #22: Delayed

I told you I wasn't going to take you all the way inside those doors just yet.  Well, grab a coat.  Apparently, getting to revival was going to require standing outside in 29-degree weather for six hours first.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

By February 2023, I had been watching what was happening at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky, along with what seemed like half the Christian world. What had begun as an ordinary chapel service had turned into days of continuous worship, prayer, repentance, and people simply lingering in the presence of God. And I desperately wanted to go.

There was just one problem. I couldn't exactly pack up the family and chase a revival to Kentucky on a whim. We had jobs. Kids. Responsibilities. And, at that particular point in our marriage, Nick and I were still navigating plenty of our own stuff.

So I prayed. I asked God to let it continue long enough for us to make it there. Not because I believed my prayer was somehow keeping the Asbury Revival alive. I'm quite certain I wasn't the only person somewhere in America praying, Please still be going when I can get there. I just wanted a chance to experience it.

Then, on Thursday, Nick came home and told me he'd had what he described as a “pow wow with God.”  His conclusion?  If Asbury was still going when I got out of work Friday, we'd go.  Wait.  We'd go?

I hadn't convinced him. I hadn't begged him. I hadn't strategically dropped Asbury into seventeen conversations until he finally surrendered just to make me stop talking about it. He had wrestled it out with God himself.  And apparently God won.  So Friday came, Asbury was still going, and we headed toward Kentucky.

The drive itself felt significant. Nick and I talked—a lot. We talked about God, about ourselves, about things we were beginning to understand. There were moments when ideas seemed to come faster than I could process them, including this strange sense that I would somehow be a scribe and Nick would be a voice.

I didn't fully understand what that meant.  I'm still not sure I do.

Then there were stretches when neither of us said much at all. Looking back, I think even the drive was part of the experience. Before we ever reached Wilmore, something was already stirring.  We arrived around six in the morning.

Our plan seemed simple enough. The gathering had been continuing around the clock, so we'd get there early, spend a couple of hours inside, soak in God's presence, and then head back toward Michigan in plenty of time to relieve the people watching our kids, who were only available until around three that afternoon.

Solid plan.  Except apparently nobody had consulted Asbury about it.  When we arrived, there were only about a dozen people ahead of us.  We had made it.  Or so we thought.  Then came the announcement.  After operating continuously for so long, the building needed to be thoroughly cleaned. They were closing it down and wouldn't reopen until 1:00 p.m.

I looked at the time.

Six hours.

Outside.

In approximately 29-degree weather.

We hadn't dressed to spend six hours standing outside in February. We didn't have boots prepared for it. We didn't have warm enough clothes. We had come prepared to sit inside a church, not audition for Survivor: Revival Edition.

And Nick was angry.

At that point in our marriage, anger was often what came out of him when something underneath it was harder to identify or express. Disappointment. Helplessness. Frustration. Fear. If he didn't know what to do with the feeling, sometimes anger did the talking for him.

And then he walked away.

He didn't tell me where he was going. He didn't say, I need a minute to process this. He just left.  And there I stood.  I didn't want to leave the line because we'd somehow managed to get there with only a handful of people ahead of us. But watching my husband disappear without knowing whether or when he was coming back pressed directly against an abandonment wound I already carried.

So I stayed.

And I prayed.

God, work on his heart.

Bring him back.

About half an hour later, I saw him coming toward me.

And he wasn't empty-handed.

While I had been standing there wondering where my husband had gone, Nick had gone to Dollar General. He came back carrying chairs, a blanket, gloves, and whatever else he could find to help us survive the wait.

The man who had walked away angry came back prepared to take care of us.  That's one of those details that looks different in the rearview mirror. At the time, I mostly saw the walking away. Now I can also see the coming back.  So we settled in for the wait.  And strangely enough, the waiting became part of Asbury.

You didn't have to be inside the building to sense that something unusual was happening in Wilmore. It seemed to spill into the community. People standing in line began singing worship songs we knew. Volunteers came through offering hot cocoa and donuts. Portable heaters were placed along the line so freezing strangers could gather around them for warmth.

There was something beautiful about it. People had traveled from who-knows-where because they were hungry for God, and for a while, a freezing sidewalk in Kentucky felt a little bit like church.

And then like a cue to a bad movie scene, in came the line cutters.

So. Many. Line cutters.

Remember those dozen or so people who had been standing ahead of us?  Yeah.  That didn't last.  People kept joining people. Others simply seemed to appear in front of us. Even people with wheelchairs were being brought into places ahead of where we'd been standing. And being the people we were, Nick and I weren't exactly going to start throwing people out of line at a revival.

Excuse me, ma'am, I'm trying to encounter Jesus here. Kindly GET BEHIND ME.

Probably not the testimony we were going for.  So we tried to extend grace. And then some more grace. And then perhaps just a tiny bit of increasingly irritated grace.  At first we'd been sitting in the chairs Nick bought, but eventually we realized the space created by sitting down apparently looked like an engraved invitation:

INSERT PERSON HERE.

So the chairs got packed up.  We stood.  And slowly, the handful of people ahead of us became dozens. Then more.  By the time the doors were getting close to reopening, I was genuinely nervous. We had driven all the way from Michigan. We'd stood outside for six hours. We'd frozen our toes, guarded our little piece of sidewalk, watched what felt like a hundred people somehow migrate in front of us, and now there was a capacity limit.

What if we didn't make it inside?  There was something almost comical about struggling not to judge people while standing in line for a revival.  Almost.  But maybe that was part of it too. Because I had come looking for God's presence. I hadn't considered that He might start showing me myself before I ever entered the building.

Eventually, the line began moving.

Closer.

Closer.

And then...

we made it.

After all the praying, driving, waiting, freezing, singing, cocoa drinking, line guarding, judging, repenting for judging, and trying very hard not to reclaim our original twelve-person position...we walked through the doors.  The warmth hit first. After six hours outside, simply sitting in an actual heated building felt glorious.

But there was something else there too. Something we'd already begun experiencing outside, only fuller now that we could finally stop worrying about our toes and simply be still.  We had made it to Asbury. We had chased the cloud all the way to Kentucky. And now we were finally sitting inside the room we'd prayed we'd get to experience.

There was only one problem.

After waiting six hours to get in...

we were told we had one hour.

Companion Thought:

Sometimes the closed door isn't a “no.” Sometimes there's something happening in the waiting that you couldn't have learned inside.