Choices and Community: Choosing Faith, Community, and Change

Lisa Fraze: So this morning we have the privilege of having Mrs Brenna Wilson, who is an alum from 2006,
give us our Devo Thought this morning.
Brenna grew up in a small town of Throckmorton, Texas, and has come to love, yeah, go ahead,
and came to Lubbock Christian University in 2002.
She loved her time here, and shortly after college, Brenna started working at Osteogenics
Biomedical, where she dedicated almost 17 years to that company.
In 2012, while at Osteogenics, Brenna met Josh Wilson, and they married in June of 2013,
and they have two beautiful children, Knox, born in 2015, and Mia Bell, born in 2018.
Recently, Brenna transitioned to a new role as the Director of Advancement at Lubbock Christian
Schools.
She and her family started going to Monterey Church of Christ, where they have stayed deeply
involved in the community.
In addition to her professional work, she is passionate about giving back and serving
her community.
She serves on the Eat Scripture Board and the Foundation Board here at Lubbock Christian
University, where she is able to contribute to the growth and impact of both organizations.
Outside of work and family, Brenna loves to travel and is always up for being outside,
and especially if there's live music involved.
So please help me welcome Brenna Wilson.
Brenna Wilson: All right.
Like Lisa said, my name is Brenna Wilson.
My maiden name is Bundy.
So there may be some Bundys out there.
I don't know, unless they tried to skip today since their cousin was speaking in chapel.
I don't know.
I loved my time here at LCU.
In fact, I begged my parents to stay an extra semester or even year so that I could continue
this good time here.
My husband is here, and he knows my storytelling abilities, you guys.
I don't know if you're like me, but I just need to know all the details.
I need to know what day it was, what time it was, all the things to get my point across.
So I know some of you all are now concerned about the 10 to 12 minute talk that I have,
but we'll figure it out.
All right.
So my first thing that I'm going to do, I have a coin here, and I'm going to divide
this auditorium in half, okay, right here.
You guys, I'm going to ask y'all this first question.
And again, this is going to be by coin flip.
Okay.
Do I need to stay closer here?
Sorry.
Okay.
You have no choice in the matter, right?
I'm just going to flip a coin and it's going to decide for you.
Okay.
The question is, are you going to graduate college?
Okay, here we go.
See if I can catch it.
You are not.
You're not going to graduate college.
Okay.
Now this half.
All right, let's see.
Y'all aren't either.
Guys, it's a flip of a coin.
Okay.
When I practiced that, it went a little different, but okay.
How does that feel?
Just by a flip of a coin, you're not graduating.
How does that feel?
How many times in our lives we are living this way?
We're living by a coin flip without thinking that we actually have a choice and there's
consequences for the decisions that we make.
Now how many of you decide where you're going to eat dinner by a coin flip?
Okay.
Keep doing that.
I do that because I never can decide, but let's talk about some serious things here.
And the older you get, the more your coin flip matters.
Decisions get greater and the consequences, they start coming at a higher price.
So I want to talk to you a little bit about choices and how important community is.
We'll, we'll land that plane here in a minute because you might be thinking why those two
things, how do those go together?
But I want to tell you a little bit about mine and Josh's life.
And here's a picture of our family.
That's me and Josh and Mia Bell and Knox.
And if you were to tell me that that picture would be up there six years ago and have a
genuine smile on our face, I would call you crazy.
And I would actually even say, I'm shocked that that family is still together today.
Choices that the first five years of our marriage landed us.
Okay.
I'm going to go through these in no particular order, but this is what all happened to us
the first five years or the choices that we made.
Alcoholism, deception, lies, the crazy cycle.
A car accident going 90 with a DWI, two beautiful babies.
So there's some good things.
Jail time, distrust, addiction to pornography, lack of joy, fights, some sweet baby moments,
absolute chaos, yelling, fun family vacations, the silent treatment, weed, doubt, mad about
this life.
And the list goes on.
We were coin flippers.
We were just flipping a coin through the first five years of our marriage.
So November 28th of 2018, Josh came home from work.
He had grabbed our kids this day and he was drunk.
So I don't know, the Lord took over and I told him as he was going to sleep, this one
off.
We won't be here whenever you wake up.
Again, I've never said anything like this in our marriage before, but I took my eight
month old and my three year old packed our bags, packed the pack and play and I headed
out the door.
I went to my brother, I think he's here, my brother and my sister in law's house.
Well, before I went to their house, I called them and asked if they would take my kiddos
to church with them.
It was a Wednesday night and of course they did.
And I kind of said, Hey, I might be spending the night with you guys tonight.
The next text was to a friend, um, Cammie Noble, her and her husband.
And I asked them that Wednesday if they would come out to my car after church and if we
could visit about a decision that I was about to make.
We prayed and we cried and we talked and we prayed and we cried and we talked.
And the decision that we had made was that I was going to go ahead and do what I told
Josh.
He was going to be there when he woke up.
Now please hear me say I wasn't giving up on Josh.
I wasn't giving up on our marriage, nor do I think when things get hard, you just leave.
But what I am telling you is that something had to change.
The Lord had to get ahold of us both and our marriage and our family couldn't look the
same that it did the last five years.
I was so tired of pretending it was also fake.
So I had to make a choice and I knew it had to look different.
In Ephesians leading up to Ephesians 4 20 and I'm going to read that here in a minute.
Ephesians 4 20 through 24, Paul is urging the believers to live in a way that reflects
their new identity in Christ.
But that is not how you came to know Christ.
Assuming you heard about him and were taught by him as the truth is in Jesus to take off
your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires to be renewed
in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self, the one created according to
God's likeness and righteousness and purity of the truth.
We needed a new identity in Christ.
So I stayed that night with my brother and my sister in law and my nieces and nephews
here and here and they were asking a lot of questions about Aunt B and my kids are staying
the night on a Wednesday night.
But on the flip side, Josh was alone.
He woke up alone at our house that next morning.
The next day he begged us to come home and we did.
Another choice that I had to make.
We did.
Knowing that the next day we were actually going to be seeing Dr. Hardin, our counselor
who worked here for many years, some of you guys know him.
He said, "You know what the Bible says about confession?"
And Josh and I are looking at each other.
What does that look like?
I said, "Josh, how are we going to go to church and just fake it until we're going to walk
up front?"
He said, "Honey, we've been doing that this whole time."
So Sunday Josh and I went forward at church and the congregation surrounded us.
No more faking it.
No judgment or if there was any we didn't know about it.
So many letters were sent to us in the mail.
So many encouraging words.
Sherri Dement, I know some of you guys know her, she prays for us still every single day.
Every day.
She has an alarm set and does that.
This is community.
This is what community looks like.
My brother, my sister-in-law, Cammie, Tanner, our church family, and I have so many here
today.
That's community.
Okay, I'm going to land the plane.
I know y'all are all a little worried here.
Choices and community.
Let's go back to the coin flip at the very beginning.
These little day-to-day choices that you think don't matter will actually determine if you're
going to graduate.
Okay?
Not a coin flip.
You get to decide that.
Your choices will.
Just like it did with Josh and I.
Although at the end of this we had to make some really tough decisions, but learn from
us.
Choose to walk with God.
Ask Him.
Let Him lead you.
Get in His word.
And then stay connected to your people.
And if you don't have your people, find them.
It's very important.
They'll help you get through the tough times.
You can't do it alone.
Now this isn't about me.
This isn't about Josh, but it's what Jesus can do.
We've got to take off our former way of life and be renewed in the Spirit.
That's what He tells us.
So Josh has been sober for over six years now.
Yeah.
Praise the Lord.
And we're both choosing to allow the Lord to bring us joy.
That day was a day for us to put that former life of life, the former way of life behind
us and start looking different.
A lot of times we'll say, "We have actually been married for over 11 years."
But a lot of times we say, "We've been married for six years."
Because we don't recognize that marriage.
We're different people.
Okay, now some of y'all are saying, "Oh, that's cool.
That happened to her.
That's not me.
You don't know my situation.
You don't know what I'm going through."
And that's true.
But if you do not hear one single thing that I've said this entire time, it's gone in one
ear and out the other.
You don't hear anything else I have to say.
The same God that raised Jesus from the dead lives inside of you.
Let that sink in.
When you think you can't, you can.
The same God that raised Jesus from the dead is right here.
So I want to end with Ephesians 1:17, and this is my prayer for you.
I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the spirit
of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of Him.
I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the
hope of His calling, what is the wealth of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and
what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe.
Adding to the mighty working of His strength.
Thank you so much for having me.
You are dismissed.
[applause]