A quick update since my surgery: everything has gone according to plan and my scars are healing well (they are actually pretty cool and allow me to sense the presence of Voldemort). I have been getting back into the normal swing of things and am on track to go to Virginia Tech in the fall! I also got to swim for the first time since surgery in the Chesapeake Bay a few days ago. It was special because swimming is one of my favorite things to do and it had just rained so I had the entire ocean to myself. I have been continuously learning and praying since my surgery. I have never so fully committed to Lord as I am now because of that sickness. I am thankful it happened so early because what I am learning is that, before, I was not even alive.
The Holy Spirit has recently been a topic on my heart and in my studying. I have prayed to be granted its command and, as for all who ask, I have been able to feel it's miraculous power. I have experienced it when I was getting violently sick and blood was coming out of my drainage holes. I shrieked and I cried and I could not physically handle the pain. But I gave my burdens up the Lord and the pain became a mere object which held no power. What else will the Holy Spirit do if we only allow it into our hearts?! I can only imagine what being "built... into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit" can mean for our lives on this earth. So, for the first time, I am following where it leads me.
This past Saturday, my friend, Danielle, and I went down the Virginia Beach Ocean front at 10:30pm. God must have had a hand in it because we had no business going out there so late. We were not going to drink or smoke or party or anything that people do there at night, but we still ended up on the corner of 23rd street, wide-eyed with no expectations. Wearing maxi skirts and sandals in a sea of skin tight dresses and 4-inch heels, we stuck out like sore thumbs but our night's adventure was only beginning.
A man named Aaron was standing alone holding a sign that said 'Free Spiritual Reading' and soliciting healing to all passersby. We, being inquisitive young adolescents, went up to talk to him. Aaron told us he was a third year at Oral Roberts University using his summer night to spread the love of Christ. How cool! We asked if he could join and initially just observed his methods. We watched as he told any interested people that he prayed in the name of Jesus Christ. If they decided to hear him out, he would go on to ask what they needed prayer for: physically, emotionally, spiritually, anything. Depending on the person, the conversations ended in varying strata of depth but Jesus was the topic of them all.
Death was tangible and I have never been so spiritually attuned in recognition of it. The very real presence of the Holy Spirit begets the very real presence of the enemy. As we laid hands on people, both visibly and invisibly broken, we were scoffed at. A Russian man mocked us for fifteen minutes. He proclaimed his own beliefs that pleaded for the simplicity of the Gospel. A passing group of men cussed and laughed at us. A woman even shouted at us to go away from where we were. I waited for a pit of dread in my stomach in the midst of all the sneering but it never came. I was entirely protected by a Presence far greater than any other. A fire was merely ignited and fanned in my heart to carry out the work He set before me.
And we kept going. For the power I witnessed in a new and radical way that night was not going to yield to any matter of secular persecution. A man who insisted that he did not believe in an Omnipresent Being was still inexplicably drawn to our conversation and could not seem to carry on his way. When he allowed us to pray over him, I felt a surge of energy that compelled me forward still. We met a woman in a wheel chair scheduled for a surgery that only one surgeon in the country can perform. The hope and excitement she had as we kneeled down to pray with her served a powerful reminder that we are all called to childlike innocence. I met a woman whose desire for faith was being suppressed by her fiance's militant atheism. She claimed to have gotten a stress ulcer around the same time as the engagement (coincidence?). I do not tell random people I meet about my recent surgery but something drew me to tell this woman. As I spoke, I began to cry. I did not mean to nor did I want to but there was something bigger at hand as she began to cry, too. When I laid down to sleep at 2am, I was persistently eluded. I could not stop thinking about the life I saw that night. A life only found after death.
The next afternoon I attended an incredibly Spirit-lead gathering at Big House church. I was overwhelmed by the effervescent joy and spiritual movement throughout the time of worship. I was also overwhelmed by a God that puts on our hearts what we often do not know we need. As the time progressed, a very sure voice in my heart pressed, "You are important. You are worth it. You are loved." I was broken down. A creeping doubt that I did not know I had was answered by a most-loving God. Answered in timing with my choice of inheritance. As I said before, I have never so fully committed to abandoning myself for Jesus and heeding the call of the Holy Spirit. This is often scary and opens up a whole new spectrum of vulnerability in our hearts. But, knowing the ways of His enemy, He reminded me of what it is all about. Towards the end of the service, a man felt compelled by the Spirit to speak and his words were big. Yes, jumping into the life of what our feeble hearts can be uncertain of is hard. Dying to our sins, dying to ourselves is scary. But it can never be matched by the second half of the process. We are born into a covenant of life. Everlasting life in the Spirit. We are alive in Jesus Christ.
What I am listening to:
"Emmylou" -First Aid Kit
"Nothing To Worry About" -Peter Bjorn and John
"Memphis Tennessee" -Mason Jennings
"It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal Himself and to make known the mystery of His will, which is that people can draw near to the Father, through Christ, the Word became flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature.
-I picked up a catholic bible for the first time and read part of "Divine Revelation Itself" from the Dogmatic Constitution On Divine Revelation. Pretty cool stuff!
"by which He has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature..." 2 Peter 1:4
