We landed in Charlotte without difficulty.
Ten minutes later, the airport shut down, as a tremendous storm cloud unleashed.
Though the airport reopened, many flights were cancelled.
I changed flights to the 10:40pm! I would get home the same day!
Five extra hours: additional time to think and plan and prepare.
Renounce the death wish.
Bless myself to overcome the curse I said over myself.
Renounce all works of the devil.
Cynthia prays to release me from the word “disfigurement” and from all shame, to move forward in beauty.
Carolyn and Allison pray for Joe’s healing, and for me to have perseverance.
A dancer blesses me as a dancer.
Generational healing, in responsive reading style.
You feel like a daughter.
Weariness of heart?
May the joy of the Lord fill your heart to its full extent.
Maybe you have not allowed yourself to receive love much?
You need to break the bonds of chronos.
You need to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Put your feet up here.
“Lord, I break the dust of performance off Amy.”
Blessing prayer in the Spirit by LeeAnn Rummell and Cheryl Williams.
Anointed with oil by Bonnie and Tony: I wanted to believe Jesus’s words more than Satan’s.
Personal prayer of renunciation of my death wishes.
Healing prayer for my face. Oil on my palms, palms to face. Then I wept uncontrollably for a long time.
Four others laid hands on me and prayed for me. Two gave me prophetic words.
Shaken, I sought out Cheryl Williams. She said, “You feel like a daughter,” and prayed for me and talked to me.
Conception to Birth Prayer: prayer ministers kept their hands on my shoulders for the whole 45 minutes.
Resting in the Holy Spirit for a long time.
Judith MacNutt asked who would like the receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit, even if you’d asked before and felt nothing. “That earlier prayer did something, because it always does. But if you’d like a greater event, come forward.”
What I really wanted was to rest in the Spirit. I don’t like the words “slain in the Spirit” because that sounds horrible, frankly.
I could feel the physical weight of the Holy Spirit coming. My left arm started to vibrate, just a bit.
Then I felt like I was about to either throw up or faint. I wanted to put my head between my knees, but also wanted to hold on until someone touched me. I think I did have a gentle touch on the shoulder, and it seemed easier to lie down. So I laid down intentionally—didn’t need anyone to catch me. I turned to the left, bent my knees, and stretched out, in the position I always slept in as a child: knees bent. After a bit, I stretched my legs out. My hands were firmly stuck in place over my heart, right on top of left, eyes closed.
My body jerked a bit. Not unpleasantly.
I didn’t ever lose consciousness, which was important to me. My arms felt too heavy to lift. Off and on I would wonder if I should get up and go to my seat, but I didn’t. It seemed like too much effort. My eyes opened just a bit a few times, enough to see sparkling lights.
My body would be wracked by sobs and my tears would stream through closed eyes. Then I would lie still. This happened over and over. I cried from relief that that earlier prayer was not null and void. I cried with relief that I didn’t really feel different, which made me relieved that I had been carrying the Spirit (perhaps at times coated with the things of the world) with me. I cried because I had not welcomed my children as gifts from God. I cried because I was sad for the sorrows of the world that I have walked with—Joseph’s divorce as probably the primary one. I cried because I was not rejected and because God knew me. I cried because I was so thankful, and because I think I do cry when I’m thankful.
There were people who started laughing uproariously off to my left. And it seemed so odd to me. My middle name is Joy, but I feel like ministry right now is one of lament. And I’m perversely happy about that, because the times that I feel the most in touch in prayer and worship are the times when I weep.
After a while I had cried so much I couldn’t nose breathe. I had to lick my lips a few times.
Melissa, who sat next to me and came up next to me, laid down next to me, touching my arm. She was totally still, while I shook periodically. After a long time, she stood up.
Twice a few gusts of wind came by. They might have been the air conditioning, but maybe not.
I spoke in tongues for a bit. My prayer language didn’t change. It kind of makes me happy.
After a long time, I moved my hands up to my face. My hands were physically prickling, but I could put them on my face, and my face didn’t notice extra heat or anything.
I heard people praying next to me. I heard a woman say that her knee was healed—she sounded so happy. The curious part of me wanted to look around at other people, but it was too much effort to open my eyes and look around.
My neck started to hurt. I bent my knees up, then put my legs back down. I moved my hands to my neck, then down to my belly.
When my hands reached my belly, I started to smile. I don’t know why. I just did. While I had felt like I was home the whole time, with my hands on my belly, I felt like things were going to be all right.
After a long time, with laughter still happening to the side, I felt like I could get up. I opened my eyes to see the ballroom lights and ceiling. I stood up slowly and walked slowly, and sat down in my chair for a few minutes.
The service started at 7 and ended at 10. There had been perhaps a half hour of worship and a half hour of teaching. I made my way to my seat right as Gary Webb announced the end of the night. So I think I lay there a long time. I was the only one at the front by the time I stood up.
It wasn’t what I was expecting. I think I was expecting some sense of enormous love washing over me. But since I didn’t, I wonder if I’ve been living in that love all the time, but I don’t experience it in a more ecstatic way.
I so appreciate that the entire situation felt like me. It didn’t feel weird or unexpected (other than public lying on the floor for 90 minutes or so isn’t normal). My thought patterns were recognizable. I didn’t ever feel out of control. I felt ministered to.
And when I went back to my room, I had the munchies. And I wanted to take a warm bath. I read The Silent Gondolier, which I loved, and fell asleep for eight hours.
My friend mentioned that she wants to be a recluse,
But also feels called to pray.
I told her about my impatience,
And how that makes me want to summarize.
We spent a moment celebrating that God
Can use all of us.
I liked Disneyland as a place to visit for a few days,
And enter in to the silly sweetness of the false.
But I wouldn’t want to live there.
So why does the end of the Squire’s Tales upset me so?
I was using it as a five hour daily escape from reality.
From year-round school. From unwelcome assignments.
Maybe I have more fantasy loving than I wish to acknowledge?
After perhaps the third tantrum,
I realized that Caleb was love-hungry.
So I carried him to the trampoline,
And held him while I jumped.
He crumpled into tears if I set him down.
But after a few minutes, he recovered himself.
Then we traveled to the peach tree
And picked a half bucket of small, not all ripe peaches.
He sat on my shoulders for a bit, reaching higher.
Then we returned to the house.
He had no interest in my presence then,
Preferring to play side-by-side with his brothers.
I left him to it.
He was missing his daddy. He needed to know I loved him.
And once he did, he was content.
Camelot was no more.
Godwulf the hermit, struck down.
Gaheris and Lynet also.
We kept a running total
Over the last two books,
And it eventually ran to a full page.
Beloved characters
(And a few stinkers).
I can see now, with a day of distance behind me,
How much of my sorrow comes,
Not only from loss of characters,
But from the loss of the experience,
The end.
I want those precious hours of counting down pages,
Of unexpectedly beautiful moments that made me gasp
And get prickly behind the ears
To keep going forever.
And I confess to feeling
More than a little devastated that
Camelot was no more.
We raced through the 2700 pages.
And as we reached the end,
I was unprepared for the actual end.
I had wanted to finish by my trip,
And I succeeded.
But a larger part of me,
The part that feels tears welling even now,
Wants to keep reading like that
Forever,
The two sons listening intently.
A knife, magically crafted as a weapon for murder,
Becomes, instead, a source of rescue.
A son, conceived for hate and conquest,
Chooses to carry out his mission.
Whatever the original intent,
Everyone has a choice.
“I want to be like four people.
Dad, Abraham, and Jadon
Because they all earn money.
And also Jadon because
He is a master at games.
And myself!”
Said Caleb.
When your son asks for a drink in the middle of the night
And you hold the water bottle under the spigot,
Still in the dark because you don’t want to wake up too much,
And the water gushes onto the floor and your feet
Because the bottle wasn’t actually under the spigot.
“You have been bothersome again, squire,”
Morgause hissed.
“Do you think you can save Arthur forever?”
“I know nothing about forever,”
Terence said.
“But I can save him this time.
It’s what I do, you know.”
“Did you not hear me?
It will succeed.
The end of Arthur’s kingdom
Is in sight.”
“Did you not hear me?
I don’t stand with Arthur
Because I believe he can win.
I stand with him because
I will not do otherwise.”
Spending time with God,
I realized that I value short, efficient,
But outsized in meaning things.
Don’t give me a thousand page novel.
That’s gratuitous.
How about a novel in verse?
Don’t write a book
If a blog post will do.
Give me the bottom line,
But wrap it in stories if you can.
Perhaps my impatience
Is actually part of God’s greater design.
I had never thought of this.
As much as I love The Squire’s Tales,
I dread the approaching destruction.
The body count begins to climb,
And continues to go ever higher
Through the last two books.
Terence goes to seek knowledge in the underworld.
Tieresias asks why he cares.
Whether Arthur dies ten years earlier or not,
In light of the length of eternity,
It makes no difference at all.
Terence, enervated by this jaded weariness,
And lacking any significant response,
Turns to go.
Then hears the sound that is, perhaps,
The most beautiful in that place or any place.
Whistling.
Sisyphus, known worldwide
For the pointlessness of his task,
Cheerfully—but not idiotically—
Pushes the rock up the hill,
Again and again.
But he is not dismayed by this waste.
He maintains his essential self
And gives Terence the words he needs
To return to Tieresias and say that he cares
“Because to serve my friends
Is who I am.
Not to do so is to deny myself.”
Hephzibah.
“God’s delight is in her.”
Does it mean that God delights in her?
Or that she delights in this to the extent God does?
Marvelous, either way.
The Jewish Study Bible says
Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh means
“My nature will become evident from My actions.”
I AM that I AM.
What a name.
I prayed, prepared for anything.
The answer was not what I expected:
Do extra Sonlight work.
I read a lovely book,
And received a new box.
Then got an unexpected call:
“Can you come get the boys?”
Had I been in the midst of intense thought,
This would have frustrated me to no end.
But as it was: yes!
I could drive and pray
And drive and listen.
God worked it out.
I have many good options before me:
Work ahead to get in hours for next week, when I’ll be away
Work on the Prayer Pip Challenge, figuring out integrations
Work on the Better Homeschooling Challenge, to move that forward
Get rid of so many line item notes on my phone
Go through emails on hold
But which of these is what God would have me do?
For years this book has almost repelled me,
A random slapdash of crazy stories,
Culminating in the knowledge that
One of my favorite characters
Had a child out of wedlock and didn’t know.
I wanted to see this story with new eyes.
I’m not sure how I missed it before.
This young man, his whole life,
Was protected.
His mother had provision from an unexpected source.
His upbringing kept him full of innocence and love,
So he was raised without fear.
And even his father knight, I can see now,
Had growing he needed to do,
Acted not out of malice but out of youthful thoughtlessness.
And, looking ahead,
I can see that a human offspring from that valiant man
Is better for the world than none.
My oldest drove his two brothers to church.
First long solo drive.
I expected them home forty-five minutes
Before they actually walked in the door.
It was dark. It was rainy.
How tired were they?
Did they need to get in touch
But were in a dead zone?
They nonchalantly entered,
And when I asked if the car had any new scratches,
One quipped, “Only from my fingernails in the interior”
And another said, “There was that time we did a 360.”
They were cheerful and safe.
Thank God for his protection this day.
The dump truck filled with wood chips,
Intended to cover the stinkiness in the chicken pen.
But with so much rain, the dump truck got stuck.
And the wood chips ended up outside the pen,
Not in it.
Much of the day, Jadon worked outside with Phil.
Pulling out the dump truck (twice).
Weed whacking. Shoveling. Connecting.
No complaining, and with competency enough to be
Helping.
“Did you see your sons today?
If I died tomorrow, I don’t see how I could be
Any happier.”
I had planned on tortilla soup
And hummus bowls,
But without a stove,
Couldn’t heat broth,
Couldn’t process garbanzo beans.
By flashlight,
Caleb ate blueberries and
The unusual treat barbecue chips.
“This is the
Best
Dinner
EVER!”
He declared.
Saturday night, Phil and I chatted.
I talked and talked,
And we laughed.
I don’t think I do that enough,
Just hanging out with my spouse.
It wasn’t officially a date,
But it kind of was.
Your purpose is:
To be loved.
Your calling is:
To heal the sick, raise the dead, proclaim the gospel.
Your assignment is:
What God has placed on your heart to do.
But even if you were just on the couch every day,
You would still be fully loved.
May that truth sink deep
Into my soul.
As I drove to Richmond,
I almost wept.
So
Much
Guilt.
The delay in the reading program.
Guilt.
The days I miss reading or vision therapy.
Guilt.
Am I writing too many blog posts?
Guilt.
I’m not learning enough.
Guilt. (And a laugh, because . . . really?)
No wonder I never wake up eager!
I wake up every day,
Mired in quicksand.
The prayer emails I sent
Went unread, mostly.
The reading program
Never seems to move forward.
Always tired.
Is it a lack of prayer?
Too much prayer?
An honest need for more sleep?
In any case,
It’s not the joy of the Lord.
A woman told of her childhood sexual abuse.
Separately, she mentioned
Ten spontaneous abortions, all before 14 weeks.
Her body is crying out for healing.
It is breaking my heart.
A western woman lived there five years.
“I never met an Afghani woman
Whose husband didn’t beat her
Sometimes.”
We have no idea how hard other people’s lives are.
I brought the boys
To sit through a lecture on
God’s Redemptive Purpose.
All of them should have had
Some idea already.
Maybe they did.
Of the audience,
I suspect most already knew
And could have delivered
The talk. But then,
There weren’t that many of us
There.
I read a story.
Joe and I laugh.
I read a page.
Joe reads the page.
It’s not perfect.
But it’s progress.
“Then the smith’s hard, craggy face twisted. Tears began to flow down his cheeks, and he dropped to his knees before Parsifal. “Tell me, sir, I beg you. Let me not wait another moment. Is it well with my master?”
The faery armorer,
Maker of Arthur’s
Excalibur,
And Gawain’s
Galatine,
Sees the armor he made
Return on the person
Of Parsifal,
Who healed King Anfortas.
“They set off, so many years ago, to find the one who would break the spell and heal their brother. They didn’t find him—they created him. Do not mourn these two; save your regrets for those whose lives serve no purpose at all.”
In this version of the Parsifal tale,
The knight has grown weary of his quest.
After failing the first time,
Embittered,
He has little hope that he will ever succeed.
Yet, with the help of his page,
He finally gets back to the fisher king,
And asks the question
That heals the land.
There were three who had set out
Many years before,
In order to find the one who was to come.
And he set out,
Relieved and joyful,
To tell the news of restoration.
Two, however, had died.
One was his mother,
Who gave him life.
One was his uncle,
Who gave him hope.
The third, yet living,
Was the father of his page,
Who kept the hope alive.
I lay down to sleep,
Remembering that seventeen years ago
At this very moment,
My body was in labor
For the first time.
As I sat on the stoop and worked,
I noticed something new.
Caleb’s hole, now filled with rainwater,
Had caught the eye of a dragonfly.
Hovering, she swiftly dipped her abdomen,
Again and again, in this small muddy puddle.
Each dip, she laid an egg,
A hundred times or more.
And I watched, both entranced
And repulsed.
Beautiful blue body, perfectly balanced,
But to lay in such a temporary site.
Mama, your efforts are sure to be wasted,
Your beautiful offspring destroyed.
And yet, if I scared her away,
There’s still no guarantee.
So I watched in silence and awe,
And was relieved on the morrow
To see the pond intact.
I watched this healing service online,
As words from the Holy Spirit came.
Healing was on its way. Just stand,
Or raise a hand. Come and be prayed.
And those in the audience,
If your hands are burning,
The Holy Spirit is ready to do something.
Come. Be a part.
After thinking about it all week,
And watching many snippets,
I finally paid the $20
For one online ballet class.
A video, I can watch again at will.
I had been trying some of the moves all day,
And by 11:15pm, I was ready to sleep.
Ten minutes yet to go!
And how fun to do something so easily completed.
A single class, and done.
I can find another class,
Or I can quit.
But either way . . . I’ve done it.
Abraham, imitating Zits: “Thanks, Mom. Dinner didn’t suck.”
Caleb: “Thanks, Mom. Dinner did suck!”
Abraham: “No, Caleb!”
Caleb: “Yes! Today is turn-around day.”
Reading through The Squire’s Tales,
Books 1 and 2,
Joe keeps chuckling out loud,
The perfect response
To the sly sense of humor.
They aren’t perfect books,
But they are deeply satisfying.
I had prayed for protection
So when the call came
That the chipper tire was flat,
And it would be a few hours delay,
I felt frustrated momentarily,
Then realized: I didn’t know the whole story.
Tire went flat on a stretch of road
Notorious for bad cell coverage—
And Phil had connectivity.
He had space to pull over,
Not on a blind corner.
Martin was dropping off wood
For a fellow tree guy,
Who happened to have the jack they needed.
Mollie was home to take photos of tires . . .
And the truck tire matched what was needed,
So Martin drove to exchange tires.
It was an inconvenience, but it was covered.
I am almost in tears.
After two weeks with
No vision therapy,
No reading practice,
I wish more than I can say
That this was all over.
I just want a reader.
As much as possible,
I read The Squire’s Tale.
Joe still came looking for me
Every twenty minutes
To ask me to
Keep reading.
Caleb came in,
Cheeks aglow.
“I caught four fireflies!”
Somehow he still held them,
Uncrushed, in the cave of his little hands.
And he released them all
In the house.
The overhead lights were on,
For we were reading and working yet,
And I saw only one feeble glow
As the four flew.
But Caleb’s enthusiasm overflowed.
“We have glitter! We have glitter!”
He clapped
And danced
And crooned
And spun.
Rejoicing and celebrating
The magic of
Creation.
I liked this sermon illustration.
The mice in the piano enjoyed the music.
One day, an adventurous mouse
Climbed up and realized that strings
Were the thing
Creating the music.
Later, another climbed and brought back
Stories of hammers and complexity.
And so the mice ignored the player,
Focusing on the mechanism.
But all the time the player kept on playing.
In the past, I have sometimes given up on prayer
Because I get too much in my own head,
Until I feel a bit neurotic—
Confused and guilty and upset—
Which is not part of my normal life.
It happened again.
I had forgotten.
When I said, “It’s an interesting question . . .”
Phil started laughing and said,
“It’s not really an interesting question,
Rather fairly mundane,
But your state of uncertainty
Or complexity
Might make it feel interesting.”
