“Wellspring” Fourteenth Anniversary & Birthday Edition

Thank you for joining me in my annual covenant celebration with this year’s “Wellspring” Fourteenth Anniversary & Birthday Edition!

Fourteen years. I could ask “where has the time gone?!” but I already know the answer to that question. It’s passed one day at a time through seasons of scribing in Wellspring. And 365 days a year for a growing-up life, now in her teenage years.

Happy Birthday to our 14-year-old granddaughter, Rielyn ♥, born the day I began this blog. Happy Anniversary, Wellspring of Life! For both, I rest my hope on ‘nothing less than Jesus’ love and righteousness’ for all that age 14 presents and represents.

There is a definite phase through which a 14-year-old passes while held in the Lord’s strong Hands and Mercy heart. The perfect faithfulness of His timing is significant in biblical number 14, reflective of His continually working deliverance and redemption.

The Father’s Commitment to Fourteen

Throughout scripture, the number fourteen has reinforced the Lord’s assurance, indeed His swearing by Himself,¹ that His word is perfection (complete), and His purposes stand firm. Seven is complete. Fourteen seals it. The Lord is unwaveringly committed to His Word. Our lives, families, the nations, and our world move in accordance with Him. For all the ways that reads and looks like the biggest lie ever, know this: the Lord Jesus has not abdicated His throne.

Family Cycles of Grace

To RJ, your grandma was once 14. That age held a lot of bearing years later as I learned to listen to my life and process it, tucked in with Jesus’ safe heart and some of His companions. Fourteen brings with it a sense of me-ness, with all the angst of a tender heart’s feeling all the feels. So much ‘me and others’ occurs between age 7 and age 14.  

How well I know what goes on in a 14-year-old’s heart and mind. More importantly, our heavenly Father’s heart and mind knows well the concerns of those He loves. You are Rielyn, whom He knows and loves. Created and formed to bear His image, His nature, and to be a carrier of His light and Spirit of life. On the days it’s hard to care, He still does. And He teaches us how to return to caring, even if it’s been the long way around. I pray for you Abba’s straight paths.

For all who relate – don’t give up caring, even when it feels like it would be easier to do so. Hopelessness in the face of God’s faithfulness cannot remain where his own strong arm is working His divine plan for deliverance and redemption. He is our Solid Rock, intentionally building beloveds by blueprint.² Don’t preempt His hands or His heart.

Faithful Cycles of Grace

For the past fourteen years, Wellspring has been a repository of testament to the Lord’s faithful cycles of grace. I began writing nineteen years ago – just not for public consumption. And that, not until fifteen years had passed by.

When I started the blog, the first few years reached back to capture life lessons previously learned and un-learned; even as I was leaning in and learning more of the heart of this One I had come to know and love in some measure. There was so much (and still is) that He was redeeming in me by His love and truth, that I wanted to write about it. But besides “point them to Me,” the other mandate I knew was that it had to be experientially worked in me first.

That process is still at work. God is continuously working His deliverance and redemption in fuller, growing measure. He gives more in the growing; then I circle back to capture it. His ocean waves roll in and out nonstop. It’s why this wellspring has said more than once that it feels like water rising behind the dam, needing release.

It’s been five years since I re-did my coaching website to focus on the Redemptive Gifts teaching and writing. All those lessons in Wellspring, and often captured in coaching posts as well, have provided a lasting, firm foundation. I’m far from done, because of His grace upon grace. Nor is my Abba, Bridegroom-King, and Holy Spirit exercising Life.

Lift up your head, dear fourteen!

After fourteen, He introduces new beginnings, the fruit of deliverance and redemption working together. Here’s to ours, beloved Rielyn and Wellspring of Life!

With my grandmother’s heart that will always hold close your granddaughter’s heart as you move through life, happy 14^th birthday with much love, Rielyn. And in turn, I bless you with growing to know this with all certainty – Jesus holds us closer still.

To my Beloved for and with Whom I write ~ Your love – how can it be? Yet this I know. It is Real and ocean deep.

~ Grandma Nanc & Gracefully Free

 ¹ Hebrews 6:13                                                 

² ©2024 Nancy C. Bentz     

Photo │ personal of Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, OR – for Rielyn, who is loving ocean blue these days