clutch it close, count it precious

Our van was finally released to us last week just days before Easter. Honestly, I didn't realize Easter was upon us until the week prior to that. Since arriving here in Baku, all the holidays have slipped by me. Without the brightly-colored displays bombarding me at the entrance of Target and in the windows of countless shops of just as many outlet malls, I'm most often reminded of holidays by my Instagram stream and Facebook friends.

So it was that we all woke on Easter Sunday with an hour and a half until church and not a single thing ready to go. I had resigned myself to the idea that we wouldn't be going, but standing in the slightly messy kitchen while Ben hooked Quinn into her booster seat, I suggested that we make a valiant attempt anyway. We successfully managed to get dressed, snap a family picture courtesy of the camera timer and a window ledge, and load into the van.

Of course, this is when we realized that neither of us remembered how to get to church. We frantically called the two friends we knew would be there but neither answered, so we decided on Operation Drive On A Hunch, which translates to this:

"How about that? Does that building look familiar to you?"
"Yes! Yes, I think so! Turn right!"
....
"Wait, I don't recognize any of this."
"... I don't, either."
*sigh*

Amazingly, we only took one wrong turn and our collective hunches got us to church only twenty minutes late. The only other time we've been to church was the week before Christmas, the very week we arrived in Azerbaijan. The auditorium had been half-empty for that service --vacant for families flown to their respective home countries for the holiday-- but as we scurried in on Sunday, I was overwhelmed at the packed rows. Every row, in fact, was full.

We wound our way across and to the rear, where we found a string of seats. The boys stood atop their chairs to see over the crowd and Ben held Quinn. I inhaled deeply for the first time that morning.

My heart fluttered at the familiar chords of a worship song that sits at one of the earliest points of memory in my walk of faith. I can vividly remember singing "Worthy Is The Lamb" in a sunshine-filled sanctuary in northern California, and here I stood almost ten years later in a Soviet-style auditorium decorated in mute gold and burgundy, praising the Father a world away from where I took my first breath.

I was immediately touched by the sight of my fellow believers: It rips me open, fierce and raw, when I see the collection of ethnicity in the crowd. "Crown You now with many crowns, You reign victorious," we sang, and my heart caught in my throat when I saw hands go up all over the room.

It wrecks me every time, the awareness that the people God loves are here just as they are where I came from, that He loves the faces I see on the street corners, on stools outside tea houses, in the aisles next to me at the market. The people God loves come from everywhere on this earth, and when many of them lift hands with souls brimming of hope and gratitude for true freedom in Jesus Christ, it's because many of them clutch it close and count it precious because it is the only freedom they possess.

Not everyone can or will or needs to come across the globe to have their perspective shaken and clarified. I did. We've encountered our share of people who have questioned our choice to come here with our children, but the hunch that we were supposed to for reasons unknown --His spirit, I believe, encouraging us on-- takes form and gains momentum every week longer that we are here. The Body of Christ is alive and I did not leave it behind, across continents and oceans; I've only rendezvoused with family members on new soil.

A belated Happy Easter to you, my friends. Truly, we serve a great God. Here's to eyes ever opening.