right place, right time

hey all,
I think you all recall that I am trying to find 'life balance'.
In that vein I have spent friday (now today) and tomorrow not going to the gym.
I walked yesterday and will walk tomorrow...
I will be back to the gym on monday and go monday through Friday from here on out.
Today I went back to church.
I haven't been to church in a good long while..nearly a year.
yeah.
So for some reason, I woke up this morning and thought.
I really want to go to church.
So...I go.
with my youngest, my oldest had a pressing social engagement lol.
I go..
It's a 'contemporary' service.
Now, I love contemporary christian music..most of it anyways.
(that being said, I like hymns better..)
Some of it seems a bit self absorbed to me..All the hand raising and flailing.
The music was loud and jarring for some reason...and there was 30 minutes of it.
I held on through that because the pastor there always gives a good message.
And I wasn't disappointed.
It was about how being a christian means being a servant.
To put yourself under others and lift others.
I liked that.
It was about Jesus washing his disciples feet in john 13.
Question at the end..
What is your gift, how can you serve?
Good question.
So, we are done with service...and my little one wants to play on the playground.
I go out and sit on the bench to wait.
a gramma comes out and I move off the bench cause it's the only (little) seat.
I am sitting in the grass next to a woman who is on the phone.
She is crying.
Me, I never met an awkward silence I couldn't muck up.
So I say
"Boy, I'm glad to be alive today....it's a perfect day."
(It was, in my defense I have never seen, except in San diego...such perfect weather.)
She says, "Yes it's beautiful"...
Then within minutes she is talking to me.
It happens to me alot.
lol.
probably because I am the only one who feels compelled to approach the truly distraught in public places.
She is at the end of her rope in her marriage.
He is self absorbed, he cheated and came back cause 'He knew it was what God wanted.'
but he is miserableand complains constantly... and blah blah blah.
so, I tell her my little 'my marriage was crap a few years ago' story.
I told her the best thing I did was find out who I am and what I wanted and got happy.
Then tell them what you want. They will either straighten out or leave.
And if the unbeliever departs, let them depart.
I told her I knew why she was trying so hard...coming from a bad childhood I laid it all on the line trying...but eventually had to be willing to let God take it, love myself enough to BE myself and not what I thought everyone wanted.
Then she said...
I was thinking last night "I am trying so hard to be what he wants that I had forgotten who I was. I thought because he had left before, that there was something wrong with me.

I said "there was something lacking in him and there still is..and you can't give it to him."
You have to fix you.
She said 'you're right'
(I love that..lololol. No but seriously...you do have to love yourself...who did he fall in love with anyways...not some creation but YOU.)
Then she said My name is Kristin.
I said My name is Chris.

She was Where I was five years ago.
It was her first time back to church in over a year AS WELL.
Tell me God doesn't have us in the right place at the right time.

Hugs,
Chris