The Park Bench
This is the fifth and final chapter in sharing pieces of my story. I never fail to be amazed, not about my role in these stories, but rather, amazed at the lengths God goes to pursue you and me. His love for us is reckless and relentless. My story is my story. Your story is your story. We all have stories.
In the first four chapters I narrated the ways in which God got my attention, pricked and softened my heart, and began to move me in the direction he had ordained for me. I say began because to this day, I am still very much a work in progress. If you missed any of those four stories, a link to each one is below.
If you have followed this journey, then you know that at a watershed moment in our lives, back in 1998, I had two dreams on consecutive nights. The first in which God spoke to me, and the second, in which I had a vision. Chapters 3 and 4 delve into the first dream so I won’t write about it here. The second dream is today’s God story.
In that second dream I saw a wooden park bench on a brick pathway overlooking a river. I saw the park bench clearly, down to the blueish color of the frame and the wooden lattice making up the seat and back. I would take more than ten years for that dream to make sense.
The last chapter left off with us living in Columbus, Ohio, and me in Vinyard’s ministry school. Soon after graduating in 2001, circumstances took us back to the same town in Pennsylvania from which we had moved from. We helped plant a small Vineyard Church in that town. A few years later I began to sense God calling us to plant a church of our own.
My wife and I let those thoughts ruminate for a season as we prayed and waited. At the time, both our daughters were in high school, and we had no desire to uproot them during those years. Plus, where we lived was home to us. Life was comfortable. Life was good. We continued to pray and listen. God’s chatter only got louder and clearer. Once we felt that it was God, and not bad pizza, talking to us, the big question is – where?
We are beach-loving people and felt maybe eastern North Carolina might be where God was calling us to. In 2007, my wife and I visited that area and felt a “strange excitement,” sensing maybe God had taken us there for a reason. For the next year or so, we continued to pray and listen and wait. Our daughters are now in college. We decided to take another trip to North Carolina.
So, in April 2009, we spent a week “investigating” that same area we felt strangely excited about two years earlier. At the time, my parents had a timeshare near New Bern, North Carolina, so we used that as home base during the trip. Up and down the coastal region we went, town after town, walking the streets, talking to people, tasting the local cuisine, feeling the sand squish between our toes, dipping our feet in the ocean, praying, but we didn’t really sense anything from God. A little discouraged, we thought maybe God wasn’t calling us there after all.
Then … on our last day, we decided to go into downtown New Bern. It is a quaint little city on the confluence of two rivers. It was a beautiful evening, so after dinner we decided to stroll down along the waterfront. Just something to do before going back to the timeshare unit. As we walked through the riverfront park, I stopped dead in my tracks. The “wooden bench on a brick pathway overlooking a river” was right there, right in front of me, in that little park. It was exactly what I had seen in my dream back in 1998. Exactly! No freakin’ way! As I stood there without words (yes, me speechless), my wife says to me, “Well, I guess we are moving to New Bern.”
Two years later, my wife and I moved to New Bern to plan Twin Rivers Vineyard Church. Sadly, we closed our small little church in 2018, and have since moved back to the small college town in Pennsylvania that we have now lived in three times.
I am sure, right now, like me, you are shaking your head, wondering how it is possible that in 1998, God gave me a picture of a park bench in a city in North Carolina that I had never even heard of.
Oh, and can I add this – Those park benches did not even exist at the time of my dream. The park was being redeveloped and would not have its current design until a year or so later.
I hope my story has encouraged you to press in closer and closer to God, seeking his plans and his purposes. My well planned out path veered off in a different direction because God had (and still has) bigger and better plans for me than I could have for myself. And he wants the same for you.
Let me end with this hopeful promise – “You can make many plans, but the LORD’s purpose will prevail” (Proverbs 19:21).
Thank you for allowing me to share some of my story with you.
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