Waking up

Today, I attended an all-day conference with Christian speaker Beth Moore. She was actually speaking in Texas, but the event was fed through satellite to more than 500 churches all over the United States and in Canada.

About 150,000 people watched her. She said she and her ministry team were "floored" to hear how many people were tuning in: "I'm talking carpet fibers in the nasal passages," she said. She cracks me up.

She is actually the author of two different Bible study series I have done with groups of friends. I finished the last one in December. They are a little different than your usual sit around in a circle and discuss a chapter of your favorite book in the Bible. They involve five days of intense homework and a video of her speaking each week.

I'm not exaggerating to say they were each life changing in their own way. She is a phenomenal speaker and writer, who is so good at weaving in analogies, her studies of Hebrew, humor and her own testimony to make you get so much more out of what your reading in the Bible than you ever would have if you just read it on your own.

This particular conference came at the perfect time for me. I wasn't even supposed to go originally, but Sarah snagged me a ticket at the last moment. It is eerie how whatever the topic of her sermon is always applies so closely to whatever is going on in my life at the time. Today's was truly core-shaking. So much so, I went home in a sort of exhausted release and slept for three hours.

I wish all my friends and the people I love could have watched it.

I'm actually seeing her live in a couple of weeks at a conference in San Francisco. I'm looking forward to another wake up call from her and other speakers who will be there.

Lesson learned: So many.