by Alesha Sinks | Jun 4, 2015 | Church Planting
…this…..these moments.
…these collections of things and people and places and conversations and actions and chores that make up our lives each day.
We can’t afford to miss that this is it.
The work we do.
The daily life we live.
The streets we drive.
The songs we sing.
The relationships we have.
The smallest of moments we live each day…
…this is church planting.
And I want to remember this.
The small times.
The seemingly insignificant times.
The days when a team of five adults and two kids can set up for church in just over an hour.
The days of hauling equipment out of a back closet.
The days of taking an empty, uninviting space and turning it into a place where people come to meet with Jesus.
The days of one tiny kids room in the back, only separated from the sanctuary by a pulling divider.
The days of folding chairs and folding tables and black curtain dividers.
The days of wiping play mats on hands and knees.
The days of ten-year-olds holding hands with three-year-olds and learning about Jesus together.
The days of events that take every person in the church to accomplish.
I want to remember the small days and the small moments and the big things Jesus did in and through all of the smallness.
I want to remember this and I want to be thankful for it now, in the midst of the smallness. I want to remember and celebrate that God is somehow working through all of the small.
I want to remember that all these small things are the big things…that they are what church planting is made up of.
Church planting is all the little things that happen in the little moments of life that we can so easily miss if we don’t take the time to notice and celebrate.
Be blessed
<3
by Alesha Sinks | Nov 28, 2014 | Family, Just Me
Because thankfulness is important every day of the year, and sometimes most of all in the days after the big day…
I’m thankful for a chilly but sunny 3.75 mile run to start off my Thanksgiving Day.
I’m thankful for hot showers and hot cups of coffee with eggnog.
I’m thankful for hours in the kitchen baking pies.
I’m thankful for Jimmy Fallon clips on youtube keeping me company while I whisk around the kitchen.
I’m thankful for Thanksgiving with my church family, a time so sweet and special that I don’t feel quite so homesick.
I’m thankful for friends and their dear sweet kids who make the holidays seem full of wonder again.
I’m thankful for baked brie as an appetizer.
I’m thankful for so much food we could even eat half of it, and for lots of leftovers that taste even better the next day.
I’m thankful for sunny Florida Thanksgivings and perfectly clear blue skies two days in a row.
I’m thankful for a long slow wake up this morning.
I’m thankful for steamy cups of café con leche with pumpkin pie for breakfast.
I’m thankful for car repair discounts and our still-sort-of-new Honda Civic.
I’m thankful for fuzzy blankets on cold days…or any day really.
I’m thankful for family and for FaceTime chats.
I’m thankful for my husband and his car repair discount negotiating skills.
I’m thankful for diet coke in a wine glass and writing blog posts while cuddled up in bed.
What are you thankful for?
Be blessed
<3
by Alesha Sinks | Oct 21, 2014 | Just Me
{This post is part of my 31 Day blog series Work Hard + Rest Well: Learning Obedience in the Rhythms of Work and Rest.}
“Whether we’re morning people or night people there is something we all share in common. We need sleep.”
Day 20
I was at coffee with a friend last week, sharing the struggles I’m having with my schedule. I like order and structure and routine, but God has called us to a life that has very little of that.
My own work schedule is different every day of the week and my husband’s work schedule even more so. And I feel like I’m constantly fighting with my sleep schedule and that day I was feeling particularly tired and frustrated.
And she said, “Maybe you’ll just have to become night people.”
I think I wailed back, “But I want to be a morning person.”
I love mornings.
I love getting up early.
I love the freshness of a day at dawn.
I love checking a million things off my todo list by 10 am.
But my husband is a part time assistant pastor and part time shift supervisor at Starbucks. We moved to Florida for the sole purpose of helping start Redemption Church, so we very intentionally orient our lives around that, because that is what God has called us to do. Most church services and events and ministry opportunities at our church happen at night.
And I’m learning even though God wired me to be a morning person, He might be calling me to die to myself and become a night person. At least for right now, for this season.
“It’s not really about the discipline of getting up early; it’s about the discipline of going to bed early….people who usually struggle with getting up early in the morning want to stay up really late. This is not a moral issue…I don’t really care. What I care about is that you be intentional and choose it.”
Michael Hyatt
So what will you do with your sleep?
What will you choose?
Get up early?
OR
Stay up late?
It’s up to you and what God has called you to in this season of your life. It’s not something that should just happen to you. It’s a decision that you need to make intentionally.
We don’t choose to be morning people or night people because that is what is popular…or we shouldn’t. We choose our schedule based on what God has called us to.
I’ve tried to be both at the same time. And I’ve ended up exhausted, sick and practically useless for anything. The difference may not be as drastic for you, but the difference exists.
God gave us the need for sleep and we should not ignore it.
In fact, we should rejoice in it and use it for His glory.
Be blessed
<3
by Alesha Sinks | Sep 16, 2014 | Church Planting, Just Me
Yesterday was two years.Two years since we drove into Delray Beach for the first time.
Two years since we rode around in the back of our pastor’s white minivan, seeing all the places we’d been dreaming about for the past 14 months.
Two years since we came home to a place that felt so strange and new.
And every new season that comes, my heart still feels a little stuck. Because Florida is home now, in all the familiar, settled-in kinds of ways. But it’s still not completely normal all of the time.
Especially fall.
Summer here is the weather you dread, not the weather you look forward to. So fall doesn’t have that achy I-miss-summer quality or the excited surprise of cold that I’ve known all my life. I feel all the other fall sensations coming on, but there’s no boots and scarves and falling leaves and pumpkin patches…
It doesn’t feel like fall to me yet, because I’m not used to what fall feels like in Florida…still.
And I get a little achy for a “real” fall.
And I start to feel a little displaced in my home…because it’s still not that deeply ingrained level of comfortable, where every part of your body knows and anticipates what’s coming in a new season. I’m still learning my home…
And my husband and I are about to embark on a new season of work for him and I’m feeling all the new and excited and nervous all over again. And those feelings are whispering and echoing the memory of arriving here…the whisper of that fragile excitement and nervousness of moving to a new place with no job or apartment or idea what it really looked like.
So some days I feel all achy and confused, wondering where summer went and wishing for fall yet reminding myself that beach weather is back. And some days I feel jittery and excited with the first breaths of cool air and the sight of school buses and reminder that just two short years ago all this familiar was strange and exciting. And some days I feel scared and excited and nervous for new steps all at the same time.
And somewhere in the midst of it all, in a few small ways, I’m still trying to make Florida home. I’m looking back and looking forward, yet still trying to remember to soak up the moments as they come.
I’m trying to feel what fall is here in Florida and to let the feel of my home sink in a little deeper and breathe deeply into this season of learning home. Because next year, I’m hoping that fall will feel a little less achy and strange, when the sun is scorching the 2 o’clock buses and the traffic is getting worse by the day and we’re taking evening walks once again and trying to find time to head to the beach.
Because in spite of the achy and the odd and the exciting, I wouldn’t trade these past two years for anything. Because even though there’s places and seasons I haven’t fully settled into, Florida is home now.
When God called us here, He made special room in our hearts for this place. I’m so thankful that He made this place home for me in a way I would never have imagined. Because there is nothing more comforting than being where God has called you.
So I’m resting in our calling and trying to soak this fall feeling into my bones and trying think about fall candle scents even though fall in South Florida feels kinda funny.
I know that I’m settling in to our calling, into here, on a new level…and it’s good. And I’m learning that it’s okay that there are levels and season of settling deeper into home. And I’m trying to breathe deeply into the seasons and the settling-in process and this learning my home. And in it all, I’m praising Him for all He has done in these two years.
Be blessed
<3
by Alesha Sinks | Sep 16, 2014 | Church Planting, Just Me
Yesterday was two years.Two years since we drove into Delray Beach for the first time.
Two years since we rode around in the back of our pastor’s white minivan, seeing all the places we’d been dreaming about for the past 14 months.
Two years since we came home to a place that felt so strange and new.
And every new season that comes, my heart still feels a little stuck. Because Florida is home now, in all the familiar, settled-in kinds of ways. But it’s still not completely normal all of the time.
Especially fall.
Summer here is the weather you dread, not the weather you look forward to. So fall doesn’t have that achy I-miss-summer quality or the excited surprise of cold that I’ve known all my life. I feel all the other fall sensations coming on, but there’s no boots and scarves and falling leaves and pumpkin patches…
It doesn’t feel like fall to me yet, because I’m not used to what fall feels like in Florida…still.
And I get a little achy for a “real” fall.
And I start to feel a little displaced in my home…because it’s still not that deeply ingrained level of comfortable, where every part of your body knows and anticipates what’s coming in a new season. I’m still learning my home…
And my husband and I are about to embark on a new season of work for him and I’m feeling all the new and excited and nervous all over again. And those feelings are whispering and echoing the memory of arriving here…the whisper of that fragile excitement and nervousness of moving to a new place with no job or apartment or idea what it really looked like.
So some days I feel all achy and confused, wondering where summer went and wishing for fall yet reminding myself that beach weather is back. And some days I feel jittery and excited with the first breaths of cool air and the sight of school buses and reminder that just two short years ago all this familiar was strange and exciting. And some days I feel scared and excited and nervous for new steps all at the same time.
And somewhere in the midst of it all, in a few small ways, I’m still trying to make Florida home. I’m looking back and looking forward, yet still trying to remember to soak up the moments as they come.
I’m trying to feel what fall is here in Florida and to let the feel of my home sink in a little deeper and breathe deeply into this season of learning home. Because next year, I’m hoping that fall will feel a little less achy and strange, when the sun is scorching the 2 o’clock buses and the traffic is getting worse by the day and we’re taking evening walks once again and trying to find time to head to the beach.
Because in spite of the achy and the odd and the exciting, I wouldn’t trade these past two years for anything. Because even though there’s places and seasons I haven’t fully settled into, Florida is home now.
When God called us here, He made special room in our hearts for this place. I’m so thankful that He made this place home for me in a way I would never have imagined. Because there is nothing more comforting than being where God has called you.
So I’m resting in our calling and trying to soak this fall feeling into my bones and trying think about fall candle scents even though fall in South Florida feels kinda funny.
I know that I’m settling in to our calling, into here, on a new level…and it’s good. And I’m learning that it’s okay that there are levels and season of settling deeper into home. And I’m trying to breathe deeply into the seasons and the settling-in process and this learning my home. And in it all, I’m praising Him for all He has done in these two years.
Be blessed
<3
