This morning, I had a 9 am meeting in Frisco.

As an aside, this violates the terms of one of my own core life values:

“Rarely does anything good happen before 10 am.”

“Rarely” allows me to include the occasional outlier, and still get at the meaning. Lot’s of stuff *happens* before 10 am. Just rarely is any of it “good.” Most of it’s a lot of hard work and slogging.

Anyway, I fought through a northbound traffic accident on the tollroad (proving my point, of course…) and got to the meeting late.

The meeting was at Grace Avenue UMC in Frisco, where we’ll be doing our next Connections show a week from Friday. The meeting was with my old and dear friends, Billy and Laura Echols-Richter, who have been copastors there since the church’s founding ten years ago.

Back then, we were all in a study group together and used to see each other semi-regularly. That group disbanded as we moved different places over time. But I still remember those early years for them…how they were basically sent out to an area with nothing but promise and dream. I remember seeing their early space, how it was little more than an office building.

Now, it’s a established and fast-growing church, with four worship services and thousands of members.

Amazing stuff. It was great to walk around the building with them, and recall when it was all just a dream.

And, just yesterday, a member of Northaven told me an amazing story about Billy. This member told me that, years ago, a friend of hers wandered into Grace Avenue at a time of great need. Billy took the time to talk to her and counsel her. The woman eventually turned her life around in a major way and is now incredibly active at the church.

Knowing Billy, it didn’t surprise me.

So, for old friends like Billy and Laura, for the chance to know folks long enough to see such dreams born and grown, I am thankful.

(During this year, my goal is to find something new to be thankful for every single day, and to add that thanksgiving as a blog entry, under the title “My Daily Gratitude.” I started this kick back around Thanksgiving, and it’s already resulted in a favorite new song of mine. The goal of this ongoing spiritual exercise is to see if doing such a thing might inspire even more gratitude within me, and to foster general awareness of life on a deeper level.)