I sat surrounded by my church friends, eating my stale animal crackers dipped in Dixie cups of water in front of a blank page. Earlier, our leader had introduced the idea of journaling our thoughts about God and asking for God to give us things to write and draw. Sometimes, the blank page would taunt me as I struggled to find what God was showing me, but on this particular day, my journaling brought me right back to camp the previous week. The scene that played in my memory was a vision of walking into the main worship room and being completely surrounded by true worship. That night, I, a fourth grade student, had stepped into a room filled with high school and middle school students who were smiling, hugging, and shouting praises in unison. There was so much energy in that room and all of it was directed towards God. Never before had I been so captured by God's glory. 

  "I saw God in there", I told my mom that night. Thus, when I sat with my Pebbles and Stones journal in front of me, I quickly started sketching my adolescent stick figures complete with music notes and smiling faces. This is one of the many memories I have of Pebbles and Stones. Learning to discern the voice of God and to see how God was moving around me at a young age has been so influential on how I live my life now that I am not sure how to summarize. My decisions about careers, going to college, getting married and which jobs I should take have been influenced by my journals and asking God what He wants. I even learned something as small as my gift for harmonization when I wrote a song in my journal as a child and knew what notes to put with the music to make it sound how I wanted .

  As I have grown, I've learned to measure what I hear with Scripture, tradition and other's wisdom. I have wrestled with God through difficult questi ons and doubts. I struggled to discern what was God's voice and what was my own or the influence of culture. I even got to the point of wondering if I could really be right and all other religions wrong. In the end, I kept my faith in part because God reminded me of my relationship with Him and all the conversations we had together. Because I had lived life with Him guiding me, I couldn't believe in anything else. As Peter so accurately stated in John 6:68, my response became "Lord, to whom shall [I] go? You have the words of eternal life." To be able to hear life-giving words by listening to Spirit-led thoughts is a gift I would never give away for anything the world had to offer.