Crossroads Retreat: The Beginning of a Dream
picture credit @valentinsalja
The Road Less Traveled, by Robert Frost, tells the tale of a person who comes upon a diverging path and decides to take the one- uncommon, less-known, less-traveled, less-predictable. The traveler knows that this is the less-worn path, and perhaps may require more from him, but he feels a pull into that direction. In the end, he concludes:
“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two words diverged in the wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
For years, my husband and I have dreamed of purchasing a “home” for Clayton King Ministries to do ministry. Because we are a para-church ministry, we have always worked out of a small office and partnered with and rented out spaces to do ministry, but we’ve always hoped for a place where we could invite people in- to find peace and comfort, teaching and training, fun and fellowship. This search has not been easy. In fact, it has taken twists and turns which followed a pattern of hope, frustration, doubt, and hope again. Honestly, I have had many questions along the way: Is this God’s desire or mine? Should we pursue the dream harder or let it go? Is this a “later” or “never” dream? However, on January 27th, Clayton and I, and Justin and Jessica Brock, toured a home on Lake Hartwell and knew that this would be the fulfillment of our long-awaited dream.
Have you ever found yourself envying the fulfillment of someone’s dream without considering the obstacles they’ve encountered in the fulfillment of this journey? It’s kind of like celebrating the life, death and resurrection without taking into account the struggles and victories of our Old Testament ancestors. Victories are certainly cause for celebration, but the celebration is so much more satisfying when one understands the obstacles along the way!
It is for this reason I’ve decided to write a series of blogs to tell the story of CKM’s divergent dream for this “home” on Lake Hartwell.
The Beginning
Clayton was 14 years old when he began preaching. His pastor and his parents were huge supporters of his calling. His parents drove him to preach at different youth gatherings in South Carolina when he was in high school, and Clayton continued to travel and preach on the weekends in college. Joe King (Clayton’s dad) was one of his biggest encouragers, but started battling diabetes at 35, and eventually became terminal when dialysis no longer a viable solution. Joe’s heath necessitated his selling of his electric motor repair shop, and he decided to donate these funds to Clayton King Ministries so that one day we could use it to build a “home.”
Years later, we felt led to use this donation to purchase some land on the Broad River where we lived in North Carolina and started to dream of building a camp and retreat center. After compiling land surveys, basic construction plans, and falling in love with the vision, we received the final cost of the project and realized we had to make a decision - Would we build the dream and dedicate our lives to permanent fund raising, or would we continue to make ministry our primary focus?
We chose to forgo building a permanent facility for our camps, events, and training.
picture credit @valentinsalja
A New Vision is Born
A part of my heart died with this decision, and another part of it experienced relief and freedom. Have you ever had a feeling of uncertain certainty? This is how I felt when we let this version of our dream die, and years later we understood why we had to let it go.
The country entered the recession of 2008.
Clayton and I experienced multiple deaths in our families.
I decided to start homeschooling our kids and traveling with Clayton.
Staff changes within the ministry.
The biggest reason of all is that our ministry, and all our employees, relocated to Anderson, SC!
What I understand in retrospect is that God had a plan all along. He wanted Joe King to donate the money. He wanted us to purchase the land, but he didn’t want us to build. Instead, we were to sit on it and let the value increase while the ministry prepared to move to a new place and build a new vision.
When a seed is planted, watered, and nourished, the underground growth is hidden, but nevertheless exists. I think this is how dreams are often produced. The one with the dream feels the anguish of being hidden, of breaking through the shell of the seed, of pushing its way toward the surface, and of trying to survive once it peeks its way through. Many times onlookers don’t celebrate the dream until it’s already become mature, and so the fulfillment of a dream is in many way deceptive because the fulfillment is the result of years of growth.
On January 27, 2023 we purchased what will be the culmination of years of exploring what kind of “home” the Lord wanted us to build after giving up the land we purchased in about 2010. That’s about 13 years of underground growth.
