Like this:

Last night, Friday, June 24th, I woke up at about 11:30 p.m. with an upset stomach of the mega kind. It was the beginning of a long 2.5 to 3 hours that ended, finally, at just before 2 a.m. as my first morning alarm was going off. (I’ll tell the morning alarm story another day.)

I was up and down during that period… each time with a sense of worsening… that dreaded feeling that a violent virus is at work and there’s nothing to do but stick it out.

At first it was the “stomach turns to blender” activity. I hadn’t eaten much on Friday, but whatever this bug was doing was producing a massive amount of fluid and pushing it relentlessly through my intestinal tract. My condition became warm and weaker with each jaunt to the half-bath adjoining my bedroom.

Sometime after 1 a.m., the worst of it hit and the fluid that had been going one way was now forcing its way up my throat as well… I couldn’t stand (or sit) and opted to lay down on the cool linoleum flooring in the half-bath. Expecting the worst, I said an almost involuntary and “I don’t know what else to do” kind of prayer… “Lord, please help me… please help me.”

The relief was instantaneous. It wasn’t a zap. There wasn’t a vision or any other miraculous “sign.” It was just gone.

As I continued to lay there, I thanked the Lord in the kind of relief that any of us feels when we’ve known we wouldn’t die as a result of our malady, but truly wished we’d at least lose consciousness until it was over if we didn’t have any way to make it stop.

Eventually I realized I was able to get up from the floor. The warm flush and weakness had immediately vacated. I couldn’t have run a race, but I was able to get comfortable and sleep. It was over.

This morning I cannot stop weeping and I don’t really want to. God has met me in other places for other reasons through the years. It isn’t an everyday occurrence. It’s always unexpected… and always transforming.

He’s made His love known to me… and certainly, in difficulty, flooded me with His peace. I live in an awareness that we are never alone. These are not empty theories or Christian-ease cliches for me… but the idea of the immediacy and tenderness of His response in this encounter is now turned to experience and foundational to my understanding of who He is and how He cares.

When He reveals Himself and theory becomes reality… transformation takes place… at least that’s been His way with me. I’ll never get over it. I don’t want to try.

What I’m trying to do by writing this down is to practice putting words together that could bring this life-changing work of His into view for someone who may believe that Christians are just brainwashed zealots… outrageously hypocritical… and/or prone to delusion.

There are many components to the Christian message… but forcing ourselves to learn to express these encounters is one of them… it is what we call our “witness” or “testimony” of God actively engaged and moving in our lives.

Here we risk being ridiculed, mocked, heckled… or the all too well known “look” that says, Well… okie dokie then… I don’t know that much about what she’s trying to say but I sure wouldn’t mind havin’ some of whatever she’s been smokin’.

The truth is that these encounters are what others climb mountain tops or cross continents searching to find in places dubbed “spiritual”. We have everything they’re looking for in our relationships with the Lord Jesus Christ… we just don’t do these experiences justice in the way we talk about them. We blither in ways only other Christians get. How do we get past that?

We try. There’s no other way around it. We try to learn to interpret what’s happened and we run the risk that we’re most likely going to be lousy at it at first. Having God break into our lives in these ways leaves us speechless and overwhelmed and, also, forevermore, different. We know Him more… we can share Him more effectively… but we have to try… we have to practice.

This is my effort…

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