Sundays with the Days

Remember summer days as a child? They probably included running around the neighborhood barefoot, playing games in the lawn with your friends, and learning to do cartwheels in the grass.

Yeah…that’s my every Sunday.

 No, not allegorically.

 Literally.

Every Sunday I’m a ten year old in all the greatest ways. I hang out with my closest girlfriends, sit in the grass and goof off, play sand volleyball, whiffle ball, or whatever the sport of choice is for the day, and I’m even learning how to do a cartwheel. Yesterday we even played in the rain.

 And the best part is, my mom doesn’t yell at me to come inside.

 By dinnertime on Sundays, I hop in my car with dirt caked head to toe and drive back to my apartment exhausted, but full of more happiness and joy than I can explain. And I’m usually thinking the same thing:

Thank God I met the Day Family. 

The Day Family has become my family here in Louisville, as they have for so many other young people. I met this incredible family at Crossing Church, where I am now a member. I don’t just have an invitation to come to the Day household on Sunday afternoons, but an expectation. Because, by golly, I’m a part of the family now.

And Sunday afternoons are family time.

But I’m not the only one with a regularly extended expectation. On any given Sunday you are sure to find many more than just the Day family of five. You will find my four lovely Hawaiian sisters, a couple other twenty-somethings, a young married couple with their newborn, and probably a few strangers that just visited church for the first time that Sunday.

Because that’s community. And that’s the Days.

I first met Michael Day at the entrance of Crossing just less than a year ago. What he doesn’t know, is I cried my entire way to church that morning. I was terrified. And I was experiencing a lonely unlike I had ever before.

 I was in a new city, working a new job – one done most days from my computer in my one-person apartment. I didn’t know much besides this move to Louisville was the biggest mistake of my life.

 I didn’t want to go to church. I didn’t want to walk into an unknown place full of strangers being happy. I feared I would feel that much more alone surrounded by people who knew each other and smiled and did all the “church-like” nice-people stuff. No one would see me.

 But Michael Day saw me. 

And Michael introduced me to his daughter, Abby. And Abby sat with me. And when church was over, I was expected to come to lunch at her house. There I met Abby’s mom, Ruth, grandmother, Mimi and sister, Michelle.
  
I met my family. 

I now have a very large family here in Louisville. Sundays are a little slice of heaven. All ages, all types of people, but all with one commonality – we love the Lord, and we want to know him deeper.

In fact, He is just the reason the Days open their doors to so many. Because Jesus opened the doors to the Days. From what I hear, Jesus has made all the difference in the Day family in just the last few years. He took brokenness and recreated it into something beautiful – something He is pretty good at doing.

 Kind of like He did with this “biggest mistake of my life” move to Louisville.

 Ha! I wouldn’t trade this move for the world. 




So if you are ever visiting Louisville and you want to make a travel itinerary, make sure you set aside Sunday to come to Crossing Church then go to the Days’ afterwards. You will eat an amazing homemade meal, sit around the table and talk about the Lord, and even have the opportunity to be a kid again and run around the neighborhood barefoot.

 Seriously, I invite you to join us.

Scratch that.

 I expect you to join us.