The Wellspring
Please welcome my friend Hannah Brown to this blog space.
Hannah is a fiery leader for the nursery at The Wellspring for Moms. This year, she has taken an incredible healing journey, while caring for God’s precious little ones – allowing time for moms to study God’s Word together.
We don’t facilitate programs to check it off of a list. We run programs to perpetuate heart change that lasts. Hannah’s story is one of undeniable heart change that came through humble service, in a wee nursery in Saskatchewan.
So please, take a seat, hold your tea, and lean in to her story…
From a Nursery Worker to a Wellspring Mom
I don’t know you, but I know your child.
I know when they are hungry, when they are tired, when they need to snuggle.
I know what makes them smile and what makes them laugh.
I don’t know your reason for attending The Wellspring for Moms or what it has brought to your life.
I do know what it has brought to mine.
It brought me your child.
And with your child came so much.
What I didn’t know was that Jesus would use your child to bring healing and transformation.
Did you know that your child has already been used by Jesus?
I did not want to volunteer at The Wellspring. This was not on my list of “to-do’s”.
My priority was health and staying well.
I didn’t have room for your child.
They require too much.
Attention.
Snuggles.
Care.
Love.
They require LOVE.
And I wasn’t sure I had any left to give without shattering into a million pieces.
A text message appeared on my phone in October of 2018. The ask? Would I be willing to help with kids at The Wellspring the next morning because they were short on volunteers. And not just one ask, the following messages appeared on my phone (along with my responses):
First ask:
Hannah what are you up to
tomorrow morn??
Second ask:
Interested in helping with kids at the
Wellspring?
First excuse:
What time is Wellspring?
Third ask:
9-11AM… do you think you’d be
able to help out?
Second excuse:
What all is involved?
I just need to be very careful with my back.
Bargaining:
You could help with the older group
so you don’t have to hold babies or
anything.
Bargaining back:
Actually I would prefer little babies –
holding is better than bending and
moving with bigger kids.
Saying YES:
If I can do that I would come.
I showed up the following morning feeling like a fish out of water and wanting nothing more than to run and hide somewhere no one would find me. I didn’t want to make social talk with women I didn’t know and better yet didn’t relate to – I’m not a mom – my heart was angry for the yes I had given the day before and guilt and shame trampled all over me when I raised my phone and contemplated sending a text to say, “sorry, I can’t make it”. It took everything in me to keep my feet planted on the sidewalk and raise my hand to open the door – and not to send that text – and walk into the church. My skin was crawling and my stomach was doing back flips…
My Goal:
Sneak in past every single person
Get to the nursery
Do my time
Come up with an excuse not to be here next week
Sneak out past every single person
This couldn’t be that hard right?
It was more difficult than you’d think.
Jesus had other plans. Better plans. Plans I didn’t yet know.
As mom’s began to hand their babies over, something inside me shifted. My heart was flooded with the rawest of emotions. My plans to go unseen and list of excuses to not be available the following Tuesday’s vanished in an instant. There I sat in the nursery holding a little baby and all traces of anger and anxiety dissipated. One little hand reached out to touch mine and, in that moment, I had realized how hardened and guarded my heart had become.
My heart became undone in that moment.
Time stood still as I realized that Jesus was waiting for me to let Him enter in.
I had been excellent at building walls.
Survival walls.
Survival walls aren’t about keeping people out, right?
Survival walls are about hunkering down and waiting until the storm has passed… And my season was stormy.
This was the lie that I believed.
Walls do keep people out – survival or not.
And your child. Oh, your child…
Jesus has used each one of them in such incredible ways.
He knew. He knew it would take the innocence of your child for me to let my guard down and to let Him in, and do the work that only He could do. It took your child to realize my own inner child needed to return home and allow the Father to heal.
I think often times we hear, “Jesus can use anyone” but in our human limitedness we often impose our own rules on who will be the ones used and when and how this will happen. I think we often overlook how a child is perfectly positioned to be used to impact others for our good and His glory.
Week after week I would sit and hold babies who were content to simply be held – babies that I was told would be fussy, or not like to cuddle – and yet each week, we would sit and cuddle.
Me. Your child. The Holy Spirit.
And I would pray.
And as I prayed, I could feel the Holy Spirit love me, through your child. I could feel as He took His sewing kit to my heart and sewed up the broken pieces. I don’t know what kind of ‘thread’ the Holy Spirit uses but I do know this – His stitches are intentional; His stitches are perfect. And when He has completed sewing there is no evidence of what once was. It isn’t some patch job.
There is complete transformation.
There is complete wholeness.
There is complete newness.
The heart that once was, will never be again.
He has sewn a new heart.
It’s the newness of heart in me now that is not much different from the newness of heart in your child. It’s through that newness the Holy Spirit was able to work. Because your child’s heart was open to receive Him, I was healed. And because I now hold that newness of heart I am able to go and do the same for others, what your child did for me….LOVE.
As Christmas drew near and The Wellspring came to a close, I knew that I wanted to return and give my time in the nursery and so my prayer in the waiting became one of transformation. I believed there were more, like me, who were desperate to see their lives be transformed by the Living Power of the Holy Spirit. And so, I began to pray that Jesus would draw volunteers to The Wellspring, not only to serve and give of their time but that He would place volunteers who were longing to draw on Jesus to be their Wellspring of Life; their Source.
I believe that the Father wants all His children to understand, embrace, rise up and stand in the identity that He has uniquely and specifically spoken to each one of our hearts. To walk in the wholeness He intended each one of us to have, and to continually seek out that wholeness from Him, not just in the spiritual but in ALL areas of our lives.
I prayed that The Wellspring would be a place of complete healing, restoration, fulfillment and an overflowing of the joy of the Lord.
When The Wellspring started up again this past March, I was asked if I would ‘oversee’ the nursery and the volunteers that came each week and to get to know each of them … They are some of the most incredible people. Each person on a journey to become more like Jesus. Each with their own stories. Each on their own healing pathway to freedom and transformation. Each being refined every day, moment by moment.
In the past two months I have sat, as a witness, in that nursery as Jesus has been at work in the hearts of each volunteer and I have watched as transformation has taken place.
Volunteers who were unsure if children were their ‘thing’ are thriving taking care of your child.
Volunteers who had been through burnout serving in ministry are thriving taking care of your child.
Volunteers who were anxious and nervous are thriving taking care of your child.
Volunteers who doubted their abilities are thriving taking care of your child.
The same way Jesus used your child last Fall to work on my heart, is the same way He is using your child to work on so many more hearts this Spring.
The Wellspring for Moms.
It isn’t just for moms.
The Wellspring is for everyone.
It’s a stepping stone on the journey to a life of wholeness in Jesus.
It’s a way of life.
Like the old Sunday School song lyrics say:
I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me!
Makes the lame to walk, and the blind to see.
Opens prison doors, sets the captives free!
I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me!
Spring up, O well, within my soul!
Spring up, O well, and make me whole!
Spring up, O well, and give to me
That life abundantly.
I don’t know your reason for attending The Wellspring for Moms or what it has brought to your life.
I do know what it has brought to mine.
It brought me your child.
And with your child came so much.
Pictured below (from left to right): Hannah Brown, Kaitlyn Cey & Faith Rousseaux.
