Vitamin Doug!

Interesting dream the other night.

I joined with a friend (no one I knew in my real life) in an undercover effort to expose a "vitamin-sales" scam. The highly successful scam was run by my friend's friend and was overseen by the "godfather of vitamins" Ricardo Montabon (?!?!).

So we met with the guy at his "estate" who told us he was making "$700  a day. A day, man!" selling these multi-paks of bogus vitamins that ostensibly helped people lose weight. He showed us a pack and the vitamins looked like large caplets of blue-green liquid with a red "booster dot" on the side of each caplet.

We settled in for a stay at the estate, pretending to just be visiting while we gathered info to bust the scam. At one point I was lounging in the sun by laying on a cot on the side of the road in between several vehicles and a construction dumpster. A truck approached and I had to move my cot out of the way so he could haul away the dumpster. (Very strange mid-dream interlude).

Later, my old falconry mentor, Michael, showed up. We talked falconry and kids - I showed him photos of my TWO kids (Andrew and a daughter). He didn't have any photos and was acting friendly but "cool". I sensed something odd but couldn't tell what it was. Like he was "playing friend".

I told Mike I needed to run upstairs for a minute and as I started up the stairs, he said over his shoulder, "Hey buddy, do you want lose some of that weight?" I turned and spotted his "vitamin-selling kit". Sure enough, my friend was part of the scam.

I sub-consciously rolled my eyes (as in "I hate it when my friends get pulled into multi-level marketing schemes") and said "Sure, I'll be right back and we can talk." I jogged upstairs to the den and found Doug F there, ministering to a young child. I felt total relief wash over me and locked eyes with Doug as I walked in the room. I said, "I need your help." And then woke up.

Freedom!!!

God speaks to me through others sometimes and yesterday was a good example. At fellowship, Josie brought a message that was meant for me (if for no one else). She described both how she has been struggling with certain emotions and how the human brain creates "cell memories" (in a very scientific yet understandable explanation!) of certain responses. These memories are actually a physical build-up of nerve cells that are activated when hit with a certain trigger, causing an automatic response. (Think about driving the same way to work everyday; if you head out on the weekend and end up at your employer, you have been a victim of automatic response caused by cell memory.)

Her point was that just because she has realized she is under the sin of a particular emotion--envy, say--and has acknowledged it, repented and moved on, her brain will easily bring it back up the next day, or the next when triggered. Reason being, her brain has developed a memory of how to respond to the triggers, even self-consciously. In order to get past the envy triggered by a certain person or thing, she has to not only repent and move on, she has to do it again and again in order to build a new cell memory of the new response--loving and celebrating the person's accomplishment instead of envying and cursing the person.

What struck me was the fact that, after I confessed my "slug secrets" to several friends (including Josie) six months or so ago, I was on an emotional high of freedom and relief, a cleansed spirit. And it lasted all of a week before I found myself falling into the same patterns and responses to triggers: distrust, deception, hiding my feelings, embarrassment at the tiniest thing. (Example: I don't trust people's motives if they are friendly to me or seem to like me. If someone expresses an interest in me or in some accomplishment, my first response is to wonder why--as opposed to thinking they truly find me interesting.)

Of course I had two-and-a-half decades of cell memory built up. It might take a while to build new ones. But the message God delivered to me through Josie was, it's time to get started.

And the way to build new responses to old triggers is to repent from these reactions, pray for a new response (and respond differently, even if only on faith) and renew my belief on a daily basis that I am a beloved child of God, not a corrupted, worthless sinner. I have been washed in the blood of Jesus Christ and that covers everything from past sins to future sins, to my responses to triggers, and to every time, from twenty years ago to twenty years hence. I am free.

Truth

I had this dream one night:

I arrived home to find my wife and her friend visiting, drinking coffee, doing whatever two best friends do. I had brought home one of our favorite treats—a seedless watermelon. I decided to serve the two of them a slice. So I took a large knife, cut the watermelon in half and covered the one half with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator.

When I turned back around to slice the other half, I was shocked at what I saw. In the center of the melon were two squirming slugs, a small one on the top surface and a larger one deeper in the red flesh. I threw it away and retrieved the other half. I pulled off the plastic and there were two more slugs, one large and one small. I was speechless and stood dumbfounded for a moment before I woke up.

Once again, the combination of incomprehensible aspects and vivid detail in the dream, not to mention the fact that I remembered every little detail, told me that God was speaking to me. And after thought, prayer and talking to a trusted friend, I arrived at this interpretation:

The watermelon was fruit that I wanted to and attempted to share with my wife and her friend. But the fruit was tainted, unworthy, and defiled by two ugly secrets from my past. Bottom line: these two secrets, one small and one large, were preventing me from sharing spiritual fruit with my wife and friends.

The message was clear: God wanted me to rid myself of these secrets. And until I did, any fruit of the spirit would not be received by those I wanted to share it with.

The secrets were shameful and painful and I had hidden and guarded them so well for 25 plus years that even I had grown oblivious to their damage—damage to my relationships with friends, family and especially my wife.

The small secret, lying on the surface, was something my wife knew a bit about, as I had revealed parts of it to her when I first realized its truth several years earlier. And, being the perceptive woman that she is, there were aspects of my personality that she could see through to their root. Duh!

But my friends, my spiritual family, they knew nothing of my childhood abuse. And yet it colored my ability to trust people, make friends, love freely. And affected—and still affects my relationships with them.

And the larger secret, the one hidden deep inside me, only added layers of silence and deceit to the protective shell in which I had sealed my heart.

I wrestled with God’s message for a few days, and then told my wife. She accepted the truth behind the secrets. And then I told a trusted friend, and then another one. With each telling I felt freedom wash over me. Freedom and cleansing.

The bump in the road came when my wife told me several days later that she was struggling now. Not with the secrets, which like the small slug on the surface, were to her small and already surmounted in our lives together. The truth of my past was a part of me, the man she loved and couldn’t imagine life without. What bothered her was the fact that I had not divulged the secrets to her earlier. That after 12 years of marriage I didn’t feel I could trust her. And this hurt her deeply.

And that’s when I heard God’s true message: It’s not the secrets that harm; it’s the keeping of them.

And by the way, true to her character and God’s calling, my wife forgave me. And she still loves me! It truly is amazing how much "collateral healing" can be accomplished by healing.

I was sexually abused as a young child by a person unknown (small slug) and it happened again in my teen years by someone I knew and trusted and could have stopped (big slug). Those are my secrets. Am I less a man or less a beloved child of God for having those secrets? No. Am I not a strong father, hard worker, decent human being because of what happened in my youth? Do my talents, capabilities and skills wither to insignificance because of my secrets? Of course not.

The big question is how much better a son, husband, father, brother, worker, artist, friend would I have been if I had not buried those secrets for most of my adult life? What heights might my empathy, confidence, success, and potential have reached? I’ll never know for sure, but I can guess.

What we secret-keepers need to fear—and resolve, is the damage done by the hiding and protecting of our secrets at all costs. Because that lifestyle wears a heavy pricetag.

Pizza Delivery

Last night I watched a co-worker, a man of simple means, become the hands and feet of Jesus. Like me, he also took a 3% pay cut a few months ago, he also has a son--actually two--eating him out of house and home, an apartment on which to pay rent, grocery and utility bills, and way too many car repairs.

And yet, not only did he offer to share the pizza he ordered for his dinner, he walked from desk to desk and delivered a slice to all who partook of his simple offer. There was less than half a pizza left when he was through. And he's a linebacker-sized man with muscles to feed!

I didn't realize what I was seeing last night, other than a co-worker whom I like and respect being generous to his co-workers.

When I woke up this morning though, God pointed out to me that I had seen Jesus in action. A man with little to go around, sharing with any and all, baring his servant heart as he walked from cubicle to cubicle, and taking the cooling leftovers for himself.

Jesus told his disciples, "for where two or three are gatherd together in My name, I am there in the midst of them."

I can't say how many were gathered in His name at Transport America last night, but there must have been at least two or three.

GodSpeak

There have been three times when God has actually spoken to me audibly--where I actually heard His words. When He does this, He uses my own internal Scott-voice, the same one that says things like, "a chocolate shake sounds good", "my wife is tougher than she thinks", "I don't think my boss likes me". But when God uses my voice, it has wisdom and insight and truth that I do not possess.

The first time was as I drove away from a very successful business meeting. I was so happy with the way things turned out I was giddy and grinning as I pulled out of the parking lot. I started immediately praying and thanking God for His presence at the meeting and his obvious providence. At one point I told Him, "You are an awesome God!" And I immediately heard at the back of my mind, "Then why don't you tell anyone about Me?"

Sadly, I had no answer for the Creator of All. And so I set forth to tell folks about our wonderful God. Not in the conventional, religious (I hate that word!) ways. But in my own way. And I am still doing it in various ways. (If you are reading this, consider yourself centered in God's crosshairs!)

Another time, when I was not so happy, I was doing the old whiny prayer, you know: "Oh, woe is me! Why am I constantly under this dark cloud. God, where are you? Why don't I feel you near me anymore?" This time he said, "You need to let me love you."

Now how do you respond to that? How was I, a mere mortal, preventing the Creator of All including me, from loving me? But I knew He was right. I was blocking Him, turning away from His love at times, at others only paying attention to Him when I wanted something. And always trying to do things my way instead of trusting Him to take care of me. I had to ask Him to show me how, but I have slowly learned to "let" God love me and I feel it daily.

The third time is still hard to talk about.

My biological father left when I was very young and I knew next to nothing about him most of my life. Then, when my son Andrew was born, I couldn't fathom turning my back on this wonderful, snuggly gift from God. How did my dad do it? Why? I wanted to know. I needed to know what the hell he was thinking.

My sister and I tracked him down, arranged a meeting, met and liked each other. He was a decent man and we made plans to build a relationship or at least get together again in the future.

Then nothing. He occassionally sends a little token to me or Andrew. But there's no relationship. No plans. No father and son anything.

And one night I was feeling bad about that. Angry. Sad. Self-pity. So I started praying. I asked God why He let this happen. Why I was one of those kids, who grow up without their real father (and with a substitute father who, may he rest-in-peace, was an SOB when I was growing up). I asked God if He even realized how much of my potential was wasted because I didn't feel the love of my dad when I needed it most. I actually asked Him that!

I asked Him about my childhood: my mother dating and bringing home men I didn't know; her callousness toward me when I bothered her when she had a visitor. Living half the time with my grandparents (which was a breath of fresh air in a suffocating existence).

After Mom married my stepfather, I spent a year or more, forcing myself to stay awake at night for fear someone would break into the house. I was sure they would kill my whole family and I wanted to protect my family, despite the fact that we now had a protector of the family. I was a six-year-old watchdog. I asked God why did I feel so unsafe now that I had a "daddy".

And God whispered to me, "Because you were told your family was in danger."

What?! Who tells a 6-year-old kid something like that? And then God said, so very gently because He knew this would floor me, "Someone who wanted you to keep a secret."

And for a little while, my whole world tilted.

I don't remember who or what or when the secret happened. I just know it did, against my will. (I always suspected it, before that conversation--I had way too much knowledge about sex when I was young. And there is other evidence).

And for about an hour that night, I sat at the dining room table, with my wife and son upstairs sleeping in peace and oblivious to my plight, and cried. God was quiet, but I know He was with me.

It doesn't happen very often, but I like to cry. My eyes feel clean afterward. And my soul felt clean after that night. It was something I needed to remember, something I needed to know, and God told me as gently and softly as He could. Because before that night, I had refused to see it, look at it, even open the box. But once it was open, the healing could begin.

The healing is ongoing. My wife is beside me, helping me. And God is inside me, urging me on. He wants to see me whole. Because that is what He had in mind all along.

Jeremiah 29-11. Again.

A little fiction with a lot of truth

I wrote this little story a few months ago. It's my thank you to Father God.


Thanksgiving

As my mother died, so shall I. A disease that robs me of my motor skills, my muscle strength, my ability to smile. As she died, without dignity.

Not because in the end I avoided her bedside. Not because I avoided bringing comfort that I felt devoid of but that she might have embraced.

That is not why, because God does not work that way. The whole “karma industry” is a falsehood. A lie. A ploy by the Accuser to lure one into hating God. Grace is a gift, not a salary.

I succumb to this disease because of a simple molecular anomaly. A chromosome here, an extra protein there. It doesn’t really matter. I have the disease and it will embrace me. I will not embrace it.

For ten years it has stolen bits of my life away. Some I didn’t notice until they were gone. Some I would wonder at, perplexed, and then move on. But I cannot move far. Without mechanical aids.

I can no longer speak. Early, when the words came out crooked, they were often humorous. But now they circle my mind like a pigeon without feet.

A good anchor brings control, and an end to movement. My legs are anchors.

My hands are dead birds on the ends of a branch. They grasp the pencil, but they cannot take flight.

But, after many days, I managed to scratch out two letters for my wife to read. Sweat and furrowed brow and muscle aches in my fingers. She read them at chairside: m and p.

She spent weeks trying to unravel the riddle, watching my eyes for the blink that would reward her quest. But eventually she cried on my shoulder. Then slept from exhaustion.

So I tried again. Three letters this time: m o i.

For a while she thought I had revisited my lost high school days. I’d have laughed if my lips and throat would awaken. I’m sure my French teacher would have guffawed. She had a great laugh.

One day my wife arrived home from a field trip with her niece’s kindergarten class. She was excited, singing and pirouetting in a sundress as she prepared a simple meal. When I saw the picnic basket, I grew excited too, though she could not tell. She loaded the van: blanket, oxygen bottle, picnic basket. My excitement runneth over.

And she lowered the ramp and locked my chair in place. She brushed my hair.

When she made the left turn I knew she had it. When she parked and looked at me, I blinked three times: I love you.

And here I sit, my hand gripping a pen, writing in flawless script. Complete letters. Complete sentences. Complete thoughts. It is here, at Moir Park, that I first felt your presence, Father God. And here that she and I shared shy picnics as we grew to know each other.

And it is here, on this late spring day that believes it is summer, that You have uncensored me. You have loosed my mind and hand to tell a love story.

You are uninterrupted here, save the birdsong and the tree-sway and the pollen-laden breeze that cools my forehead.

I thank You Lord, for meeting me here. Thank You for meeting my needs. I thank You for the shade.
The wind, your breath, sends maple seeds helicoptering onto the notebook. Your fragrance, green and earthy and alive envelops me. Your whispers of peace and proclamations of joy bounce from tree to tree, beak to ear. I thank You for that.

I sit in a snowstorm of seeds, caught in the middle of dueling cardinals. Both proclaim themselves the prettiest “pretty bird, pretty bird”. But I know the truth: both are as beautiful as You say.

For You are all that matters, Father. My disease, my worries, my confessions of past sins, all pale to insignificance in your presence. I thank You for that.

And I thank You for a wife who took solemnly her oath to You, and holds it tight to her breast: to love me forever, in health or unwell, in good times and in the darkness I bestowed on her. To never give up. I thank You for a wife who uses words like gallant and humble to describe me, even though I am neither. In my estimation.

I am simply beloved. By You. And her. What more. Can ask for.

Thank God you. But moments to express. Thoughts. Birdsong. Wife’s touch. Love.

Ninevah

I’ve been thinking about my three sisters lately. They are three successful, amazing people with incredible kids and big hearts. And I haven’t spoken to any of them in several months.

Another way God talks to me is to put an inescapable thought on my mind. Like a dream you can’t quite remember from the night before, but all day the person in the dream is just a thought away. Today, and yesterday, Vivian, Brenda and Joyce have been on my mind.

I suspect God is saying, "You are pushing them away." To which I want to argue, "No! They are pushing me away!" And though I think both statements are correct to a certain degree, I know God is right. Duh!

I don’t know why, in our old age, we have no real interest in maintaining a relationship with each other. In some ways—a less than happy childhood, abuse, frequent moves—we should cling tightly to the alliances we built as children. We needed the mental safety our siblings provided.

But as we’ve grown older, we have grown apart. And that chasm has never been wider than since our mother died this year. The mother who was certainly partly to blame for our childhood.

Maybe it’s just part of growing up. Minda and her brother go several months at a time without speaking to each other. My friend Nate says he and his siblings rarely talk. But I have other friends who will move mountains to go visit their sister or brother.

Perhaps it is a “mirror effect”: those we grew up with are too strong a reminder of all our childish foibles, sins and family dysfunction. The ones we long to forget. The ones our family will always remember and if not condemn us for, remind us of them just by their very presence in the room. Or our life.

I think we forget that the only opinion that matters is God’s and he’s already gone way past our foibles and forgiven our sins and repaired our dysfunctions.

A couple years ago I had a prayer-vision concerning my sisters. I was praying, just after laying down to sleep for the night (morning actually, as I was working third shift at the time). As I prayed with eyes closed, the dark field in front of me became a black field, black as in total absence of light. A palpable black.

Then a glowing ball of silver threads appeared and moved into the center of the field. Despite the bright silvery glow, the field remained mostly black, only illuminating the area immediately around it. It was a warm glow (not that I felt it, but I sensed the warmth of the Presence in the glow).

The silvery threads were dropping off the ball, landing randomly on the ground, still glowing. I started gathering them up and making vertical stacks, like sheaves of wheat. And then I gave the sheaves to two women, whom I knew, somehow, were two of my sisters.

My interpretation was that the glowing ball was God and the threads were strands of His love and I was gathering them and giving them to my sisters. I wanted to share God’s love with my sisters.

To this day, I do not know which two of my three sisters I was meant to share God’s love with. Maybe the two were representative of the three. A friend suggested they represented all my “sisters”, the ones whom I love in the Body of Christ as well as my birth sisters.

I think all three of my sisters are Believers, but only one has professed to me a living relationship with God. Sad that I don’t know for sure where the other two stand. And isn’t that a more important failure on my part than any childish foible I may be embarrassed about?

If God was telling me that He wanted me to bring His love to my sisters, I have not only failed in that mission, but like Jonah, I have run from His instruction. I hope it’s not too late to head back to Ninevah.

(Darrell, welcome to my blog!)

We had church at Josie’s house today. And right after a few songs—including my all time favorite, “How Great Thou Art”, Josie asked me point blank, “Have you had any dreams lately?”

Well yes. This very morning, just after dawn.

In the dream, I was building a large scale outdoor game that encompassed an area with a running stream. I built several stairways and paths to the stream on the grassy bank on one side, while the other side had a flat, layered rocky surface. Once it was complete, I gathered together the guys from our men’s meeting to show them the game.

I don’t know what the object of the game was or how it was played other than the first player, which was me, rolled a single 9-sided die. The die bounced over the stream to the rocky side, ricocheted a few times and disappeared into a sandy area at one end.

So we all started looking for the die. At one point, Darrell was nearby and I looked over my shoulder at the playing field, at the stairways and stream, and told him, “I’m really proud of the way this turned out. It looks good.”

Right about then, Darrell pointed in the sand and said “There it is.” But as he picked the die up, we could see that the die had broken into several pieces.

My interpretation: The gamefield I had built represented this blog, something I recently built and am “really proud of” (my pride usually pops its ugly head up somewhere when my writing is involved). I have worked hard at making it “look good” (not the actual appearance of the blog, of course, but the writing and the exposition of the idea that talking with God happens all the time).

And strangely, it is something that I consciously chose not to tell Darrell about in an email I sent yesterday to a couple other people, including several members of the men’s group.

Why didn’t I tell Darrell? Darrell is certainly someone I like and respect. And I have learned a lot, from him, his insight into God's nature, and his own fallible walk with God. As a father of a son, Darrell is a valuable model when it comes to trusting God with all.

But for reasons I don’t fully understand, I felt less than confident in revealing my blog to Darrell—at the time.

I believe the dream was God telling me that not only should I tell Darrell about it, but that Darrell might have valuable feedback on the content of it. Perhaps some aspect of the message I am trying to deliver is broken, like the die, and Darrell can tell me what it is and how to fix it. Darrell is very good at clarifying things for me.

A new email has been sent!

Josie had another take on the dream. Her thought was that the broken die was God saying (reminding us) that He doesn’t roll the dice. He doesn't play that way. He blesses whomever He chooses. And he chooses what/when/where and how He blesses.

Jill (with a little help from Minda) pointed out that Jeremiah 29-11 says: For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”.

Darrell’s presence in the dream was as a representative of the Body, pointing out God’s lesson to me. Like he often does in real life.

I like Josie’s picture much better than the picture of God rolling dice to decide my life and future. And I am reminded also to be thankful that God follows His plan and not mine! So many of my prayers over the years, had they been answered my way, would have been a disaster!

God, how great thou art!

Escaping Prison

One of the more vivid prayer-visions I have experienced, and one with a comforting message, came during prayers when we were still fairly new to our homechurch. And when I was still getting used to the whole idea that God would put pictures in my head to coincide with something He was teaching me.

The picture was like a 3-D snapshot: rough-hewn stone walls formed a box, much taller than a man and wholly insurmountable. Down the middle of the box was a man-made block-and-mortar wall, just slightly taller than, but easily climbable by a man. The stone walls formed a prison around the sole figure kneeling on the grassy floor of the box. The block wall cast shade on the figure.

The one and only feature in the picture that managed to transcend the walls was a stream of cool, clear water. It entered at one end, flowing under the stone wall, under the block-and- mortar wall and then under the other stone wall. I could see the stream outside the stone walls as well, flowing to infinity in both directions.

The kneeling figure was scooping water from the stream to his mouth.

The interpretation for this came after several hours of thinking and praying on it. What I got was that the stone walls were a prison, the prison of the “flesh world”. The walls were impossible to climb; there was no escape. The only hope for escape appeared to be the man-made wall, easy to scale for the average man. The block wall represented religion—man-made and offering the promise of escape, but falling for short of its promise. It was dead center in the prison, too far from the perimeter walls to facilitate climbing or even jumping to the top of the stone walls. There was no escape, no hope. Except…

The stream of water. Jesus’. His love streamed through the prison, offering refreshment, hope, and salvation for the prisoners. Only Jesus has the power to enter and leave the prison at will; stone walls mean nothing to Him. He even transcends the manmade wall of religion, flowing right through it, unchanged, determined, inexorable.

That is what Jesus is in my life: cool, clear, refreshing hope and freedom. Freedom from concerns about this world. Escape from the prison of this flesh world.

Goin' Deeper

I was thinking I should explain the title of my blog, Talkin’ with God. I know non-believers have a good time when someone says they "hear God". They grin and roll their eyes. It's especially bad when a televangelist says, “God told me X” where X usually is some form of asking you, the unwashed and unsaved, to send in large donations “for the Lawd” to build a new radio station or college building. I grin and roll my eyes at those too.

But I do talk with God on a regular basis. And He talks with me. He has not asked me to ask you to send in a donation to help keep this blog going. Yet. But then again, it’s free!

What He has told me, through various ways—music, dreams, prayer-visions, other believers—is usually an answer, to a direct question or one I wasn’t even aware I was asking until He provided the answer.

Once, while praying with head down and eyes closed, I became aware mid-prayer of a picture in front of my mind’s eye. (That’s how most of my prayer-visions happen: I’ll be subconsciously looking at the vision for a few heartbeats before I realize it's even there and think “wait, what’s this picture?”)

This vision was a white tree-stump, maybe 3-feet across and cut off about a foot tall, a few exposed hips of roots disappearing into the ground. It was as if the tree was bleached white, to where even the age rings were just barely visible. The picture was still, like a photograph, but as I became aware of it, a branch of brown grew out of the side and green leaves sprouted. As the leaves unfurled, I heard, in my own internal voice but not “generated” by me, the words, “You think you have reached the end, but I have a new direction for you.”

At the time, our homechurch was going through some turmoil, with one family cutting ties and leaving us with hurt feelings and confusion. At the time, I believed the vision was in regards to that situation. But after awhile, I realized God was talking directly to me. And maybe to everyone in our church, through me.

What new direction did He have for me? The only answer I have is “deeper”, like the roots of the tree disappearing into the ground. As in my relationship with Him. In the two or three years since that vision, I have learned more about me and my status in the world then I learned in the first 40+ years.

What is my status? Most importantly, I am a beloved son of God. And that is something I did not know even after nearly four decades of living (and being a superficial Believer). At the least, I am a fool, trying to make my way in a world that makes less and less sense every single day.

The truth is, with each sunrise, my mind is boggled anew at the utter insanity of humans. Should I try to fix things? Should I even keep abreast of human events? (My wife says no!) What about my son? What kind of world am I leaving for him and his children? Shouldn’t I make a stand for him?

As a child of God, I have the exquisite gift of not needing to make sense of this crazy world. It is temporary. It is irrelevant. It is a scenic (and scary) overlook on my journey to Jesus. I just need to remember to look to Jesus instead of the world when things get crazy. And when things get beautiful. And when things are just…things.

As for my son, the most important stand I can make and the best gift I can give him is this lesson: If God tells you to go deeper, go deeper.

I have asked God how deep (it was the fool in me), but He hasn’t answered that question yet. I must not be there yet!

Highway of Holiness

So my dream the other night involved a highway. I was traveling this highway, at various times, in a car with Andrew and alone on my butt. This highway was, at various times, exasperating, dangerous, unfinished and very high in the air.

At church on Sunday, in response to a different conversation altogether, Corey read Isaiah 35:8-10, which reads:

8 A highway shall be there, and a road,
And it shall be called the Highway of Holiness.
The unclean shall not pass over it,
But it shall be for others.
Whoever walks the road, although a fool,
Shall not go astray.
9 No lion shall be there,
Nor shall any ravenous beast go up on it;
It shall not be found there.
But the redeemed shall walk there,
10 And the ransomed of the LORD shall return,
And come to Zion with singing,
With everlasting joy on their heads.
They shall obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.


Minda looked at me with eyes wide, as she pointed at the scripture in her bible. And I looked...oblivious, according to her.

Later I realized, that perhaps this was more of God's answer.

According to this scripture, the Highway of Holiness will not have danger or the unsaved.

Obviously the dream highway I was on was not the Highway of Holiness: it was filled with danger--not lions, but careening traffic and detours that made no sense.

What about the car I followed across the shortcut? Was that driver a fool, like me, looking for the Highway of Holiness. Or an angel who led me to the other side?

And on the other side, I found my wife, helping to build the Highway of Holiness. I looked to her for help, in my dream. And it can be said that in my life, she helped lead me to Christ.

I love it when God talks with me.

Building Ramps (part 2) (see "Sharpening My Saw" below)

When I first suspected that God’s answer was contained in Haggai, as excited as I was, I was still wondering if I was “hearing” God’s answer correctly. So as I lay down to sleep that night, I prayed that God would make it clear to me that He had indeed provided my answer.

That night I had this dream:

I am driving the highways of the Twin Cities in the Saturn, with Andrew in the backseat. I am frustrated because everywhere we go there is road construction. And every detour requires us to go two steps backward for one step forward. As I start up yet another exit ramp for a detour, I notice a straight shot across the highway and median that would avoid the mess ahead of me. So I back off the side of the exit ramp, slipping in between two of the orange and white pylons to wait for an opening in the traffic. I have to wait for a clear shot across two lanes, the median and then onto the lanes going the opposite direction.

It’s hard to see if the way is clear, but when another car makes the left turn across the median, I race forward and follow it. I make it across to the other side and shoot up a very high ramp, suddenly with no car, no Andrew, just me on my butt. The ramp is narrow, about five feet across and when I look over the side, it sways to that side. I know I can scoot back down, but every movement causes so much sway that I am too terrified to move. I’m at least fifty feet in the air.

I look to my left and there’s a crew working on another ramp perpendicular to the one I’m on, about twenty feet away. I notice one of the workers stretching a white rope diagonally across the end of the ramp to strengthen it. The worker does it in the opposite direction as well, forming an X.

Or a CROSS of white.

The worker, I now see, is Minda.

Attempting to interpret this dream, I draw these conclusions: the confusing, tangled highways I travel represent my life: tangled and confusing, and hard to really get anywhere. I am trying to lead Andrew, as a good father should, but my anger gets the better of me and I make a rash decision, losing him on my mad dash across the highway. By following and trusting someone I don’t know, I squeak through, apparently safe, only to find myself alone and in more danger. And the one who offers me an answer—Jesus, as represented by the white cross—is my helpmate, Minda.

Thank You, Father God for the answer.

Sharpening My Saw

After thirteen years of fairly reliable service as a fossil-fuel burning member of our family, my wife Minda’s Saturn appeared to be giving up the ghost.

In very short order we replaced the battery, starter, radiator, coil packs, spark plug wires, fuel pressure regulator, motor mounts (right side), and the serpentine belt. After approximately $1500, I said “Enough!” And the Saturn took it to heart and has been running beautifully ever since.

The next day my Ford’s alternator went out and the battery died!

Some might look at the situation and say “What a weird coincidence!” Others might curse and say, “Man I have bad luck!” I did a little of both and then wondered, “Is God trying to tell me something? Or is Satan sending his combustion-engine-minions out en masse?”

My friend Doug suggested I ask God straight out what was going on. So I did. Didn’t get an answer right away, but the next morning I noticed Minda had written out chapter one from Haggai and left it sitting on the table for her women’s bible study evening. I read through it bleary-eyed as I sipped my coffee. About halfway through, it hit me: this was God’s answer!

You see, God tells Haggai to ask the people and their leader, Zerubbabel, “What about my house?” They had laid the foundation for the new temple, but then started working on their own homes, planting their crops, and living a life with God down near the bottom of the list.

That certainly pertained to my situation. I had a good relationship with God, and as head of our family, felt I was doing a good job of building a residence for Jesus to live in our life. But, I hadn’t cracked the bible in the last few months. I had stopped my daily reading of Oswald Chambers a week-and-a-half ago. I had even let my morning bible study with my son Andrew, fall to the wayside.

I had stopped building the temple.

The Israelites noticed their harvests were dwindling because of drought. I suspect if they had owned cars, the radiators would have leaked.

Fortunately, the people heard Haggai’s word and “showed reverence for the Lord” (1:12). And they got busy on the Lord’s temple.

God rewarded them, first by reminding them that “I am with you”. Twice in fact. And He told them, “from this day on I will bless you.” And He told Zerubbabel, the leader, that “…I will make you like my signet ring, for I have chosen you”.

I would love to be God’s signet ring!

I believe God used the car problems to call me back to His side, to remind me to “build His house, so he can build mine.” I’m sharpening my saw.