Grace and Goodness

I've been saying I would write about the miracle that was this charity lunch I chaired this week and now I'm finally doing it.  At the beginning of 2011, I was named chair of the Women's Energy Network biennial charity lunch.  It's been around since the mid-90s and has benefited a variety of Houston area charities. 

When we set out to select the beneficiary for this spring last year, we had 20 nominees, all that undertook worthwhile missions.  But the one that was selected, Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse or AVDA, captured my heart and my passion from the day we set foot into their offices.  It's a miracle how much this organization accomplishes for so many families trapped in the vicious cycle of domestic abuse in Harris County with so little.  I was dead set on raising more than $100,000 and having over 300 people attend because it would blow past past lunch records and make a real difference for AVDA.

However, by early March, I had gotten so tied up in all the little details and micro-managing my amazing committee of 34 women, that I'd forgotten why we were doing the work.  I was waking up nights in a cold sweat and getting ulcers in my mouth.  The goals became numbers that I was "personally" failing to achieve without taking into consideration what the numbers were there for and remembering the cause.  The message of why we were raising money was getting lost in the targets and milestones. 

Thank heavens for Beth Moore.  I arrived from the Omni in early March (where we were having the event) to the last night of Beth Moore's spring bible study all worked up because of a contract issue.  I was wound so tightly and ranting to my mom.  Then I listened to Beth's message about God working things together.  A message that we, of course, have to be willing to work - when God brought people into the promised land they had to plant the fields and harvest the grain -but it is through God's miraculous action that we actually have the option of entering into the promise. 

That message so resonated with me, and the timing couldn't have been better.  The next day I had a committee meeting where I was able to say, God is all about what AVDA is doing.  Compassionate generous people are reaching out to people in their darkest hour to rescue them and bring them into a safe place.  There's nothing that I, on my own, can do to make people give to this cause.  But if I just share the message of their work, then I can leave it to God to work in people's hearts to give.

If we were each going out there and sharing that message, and that message alone, I accepted that everything else that happened, no matter how big or small, was the result God desired.  This Wednesday, we had a sold out crowd of 400 people come to hear AVDA's story.  We raised $150,000 to allow AVDA to keep their staff and have a building.  We were at $50,000 in March.  That is God at work.  That is God doing His thing when we get out of the way and let Him work.  That is just another modern day miracle.  God being God in our midst.  What a pleasure it was to be a part of His team on this one.  And what a reminder to me that, "whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (I Cor. 10:31)