Head Up! Wings Out!

There is a place where they know your name but don’t care about your story. Have you ever felt a void from your soul, not just your heart? When there is so much love left and nowhere to place it for that person anymore. The kind that you know you just lost someone significant to you, but you don’t know which direction their spirit went.

I’ve seen my greatest oppression has come from the loss of relationships that meant something to me; whether by death or decision. Pastors I followed had been lining up with my spirit when they spoke on something coming in 2017 that would launch me into my calling. Not knowing that the untimely death of one of my very dearest friends would be the thing that would do just that.

There are a couple reasons that I know this is what the Lord was trying to prepare me for.  When he left my home on Christmas Eve, I had an odd feeling that it would be the last time. I rebuked it thinking that it was somehow my fears trying to tell me that we wouldn’t be friends anymore. Betrayal is very deeply rooted in my life story, so it’s the first thing that always comes to mind.

Rewind to my 20’s, where this very friend and I started laughing about how I should write a book.  Not only did the strangest things happen to me often, but he thought I always had a way with words like no one he’d ever met before. So, this became an inside joke between us for years to come.

When my spirit started speaking to it as soon as I gave my heart to Jesus, I laughed it off, until sermons started speaking to me in the area of a calling and a purpose for our pain.

I went to a Women of Faith Conference for my birthday in 2013, where I heard Angie Smith’s story of losing her baby that later spoke to my soul in her book “Mended” after I had a miscarriage of our beloved baby. It was during that conference I started having visions of a future I’d never dreamed of. I walked out one of the doors alone to go to the bathroom and immediately ran smack into a sign that was as big as Goliath that read “Answer the Call to Publish” and against my will, I walked over to get information.

Over the last few years, I’ve been putting this book together. I have the title that just came to me in traffic one day. I have the chapter titles that just came flowing out of me another day just sitting in front of the computer trying to figure out where to even start this project.

Now fast forward to 2017, this very friend goes into cardiac arrest and his sister calls me about midnight to inform me, however, I was asleep.  Our baby woke me up after 2:30am and I instinctively checked my phone to the voicemail that would change my life forever. When I got done talking to her and decided to lie back down and got back to my bedside table, it was then I noticed that my bucket of pens had been picked up and placed on top of my stack of books where this very book’s jump drive was sitting. The baby monitor had been knocked over in the process.  I had a thought pop up in my mind “write that book!”  I took a picture of how it looked, and I then put everything back how it was for over a week, which is how I know what it was like. I sent it to my mom who has always been the one that I speak to about the spirit realm. The next morning, I asked both my husband and my oldest son if they had moved it or got a pen out of it, and they both validated what I already knew. Sometimes the flesh doesn’t want to admit what the spirit is speaking. I could no longer sleep, so I got up and started searching for all the photos of my friend that I could remember.

I was finally able to fall back to asleep for about an hour, and it was then that I had a dream. I used to dream all of the time but haven’t in a couple years, that I remember. In this dream, I was at a funeral, but I didn’t know whose funeral it was. We were standing in a foyer area, just outside the doors to where the casket was. I turned around and saw an old friend that hugged me and asked me if I was okay. Then as I was walking away from them; a giant bumblebee fell from the air and skid on its side to the entry doors of where the casket and everyone else was. I turned around and kept walking and then noticed a bag where a nest of regular size bumblebees was starting to fly out and sting those around me. I had a few swarms after me and I ran to the bathroom where I had a few stings in the back. Then I awoke thinking about the giant bumblebee being the size of a cat. Then started thinking about my friend and how interesting it was that he was like a big, fuzzy bear that had just fallen.

It wasn’t until a few days later that the dream would start manifesting a message. The next day on the way to the hospital I had someone from my church speaking to me about the dream, breaking it down to mean our fears of death. I was receiving the message to mean I was fighting for his soul. Heading to the hospital that day I was fighting the enemy for my friend’s soul. When I got up there, it was just him and I; just like I wanted it. It was before visiting hours, they didn’t turn me away because I was a close family friend and knew he was on life support. They gave me 5 minutes with him because they “were getting ready to run some tests” and then the nurse corrected herself and said, “I mean they are getting ready to start their rounds”. I smiled and told her I understood and appreciated the 5 minutes I was getting.  I will not overstay or disrespect their need for time without me in the way. I knew that was God. I grew up around the heart floor of a lot of hospitals. I knew the signs of bad news by now. I knew that running tests meant that they were going to be looking for brain activity.

As I grabbed his hand, I felt it twitching, as if his nerves were running wild under the surface. I squeezed his hand as I told him it was me and that I was there. I told him I loved him. I would be going to work for a little while because it wasn’t visiting hours yet and that I would be back later. I asked him to cry out to God because He hears him, and his spirit would respond. I couldn’t muster up the strength to recite a prayer or eloquent request for him to repeat after me. I just desperately wanted him to know that I was there for his last dying breath and that I loved him all the way to heaven and that God was real. That was a lot to try and fit in to a respectable 5 minutes. I felt he heard me, and he recognized my voice as I felt his hand pressure mine. I can’t say for sure that he was trying to squeeze it but that’s what my heart told me was happening. The one thing that haunts my thoughts now is that I didn’t remember to look for eye movement. I went to work for about an hour to process something important and I was the only one who could do it. When I returned, he was deeply sedated.  I stayed for about 2 hours, just he and I, I prayed, I cried, I wrote the following on a small notepad that I had grabbed to stick in my bible for notes. It’s a day that will live forever in my mind.

As I sat there quietly next to one of my oldest and dearest friend’s hospital bed as his life hangs in the balance, I was overcome with grief for what was and what may not be ever again. I was overcome with concern for his soul and whether or not he was truly saved and/or hears me when I recite it with all the machines hooked up to him. I was overcome with anticipation for the opportunity to see God show up and show out as only He can. I was overcome with sadness that his family was not sitting here at his side, wondering if my faith was too late to save him, as if I had that kind of power. If they got an insight last night of a slim chance and may have given up hope. I don’t understand what else could possibly keep them away. As I sat there lonely, exhausted and sad, I wondered what his last thoughts were; if he had a chance to have any, outside of fear. How sad one’s life is when you are on life support and there is literally no one here to try to intercede with prayer, hold a lifeless hand, transferring hope to their spirit.

Then here I sat, trying to fill those needs alone. I sat there thinking what a difference one day, one moment, and one minute can make. All I kept thinking was what a waste of time to spend 19 years as someone’s friend to come to the moment that matters most and not have answers. Heaven or hell? Life or death? What is God’s purpose here? So, I will always make sure to share as much as I can about the need for salvation before your final day on earth arrives. That way I can know for sure that I did what I could. It is up to the other individual to receive it and believe it. It really is as simple as believing.

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.

Romans 10:9-10

I then started to notice my presence seemed confusing. To know someone is here worried about the patient on life support, they seemed cold and callous. Some even moved around as if I didn’t exist at all. Others seem to be tip-toeing as to not upset me or clue me in to what was really going on. I get the patient privacy act but as I sat there and listened to the news channel on the TV, they were sharing the new laws Mr. Trump was mandating and I started thinking of how I would like a law to change the bedside manner policy in hospitals. Why must we be so desensitized that we show NO compassion whatsoever? I wonder what they would do if I asked for a hug. Then giggled to myself, as I knew that would be the conversation he and I would be having if he would only wake up.

The difference between faith and no faith in God, you see Him in everything. After I took a break from writing, I went to hold his hand again and had a moment of breakdown as his heart rate was sporadic and dropping in to the 80’s, then discouragement started to set in.  Two nurses then entered the room asking if I was ok. I went to get a paper towel to try and clean myself up and stop the moment, to get back on my hope train, when the nurse that previously seemed to move around me as if I didn’t exist walked in with two boxes of tissues and spoke for the first time. Seems a few people have been calling and she had to tell them to call his sister. Maybe that was the reason for all the actions of avoidance I was noticing. They were trying to figure out who I was and then I thought about how funny it would be to him if he would wake up and we could laugh about how they are wondering what I’m doing with him, just like all the lunches and dinners we had together.

As I’m typing this, the sermon I’m listening to is talking about process reveals potential!! It is in the process of trying that reveals your potential. I’m not afraid of process. He keeps referring to our calling and our funeral.  (“The Power of Potential” Steven Furtick – 1/29/17)

It’s NOT over!!  As the Pastor taught the lesson of 2 Kings 13:21 in his sermon, which says “Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet”. I had an overwhelming question come over me “Is his spirit going to rise as this book does?” That was a very flesh like question to ask. God doesn’t work that way and I know that in my Spirit.

I walked in to that hospital room the next morning knowing in the deepest part of my being that there was no coming back from this.

The funeral home associate kept looking at me while speaking at the grave. After he was done speaking, and everyone was getting flowers from the casket, he walked over and asked me about the book I was holding.  It was the personalized bible I had gotten for my dear friend, as I felt lead to do while he was in the hospital on life support. He asked if I was going to bury it with him and I just got emotional and told him I didn’t know. When I finally decided to leave it on the casket, he went to check for the key in the van and didn’t find it.  He apologized and told me that if I left it, the cemetery would throw it away. It was all confusing me at the time; however, as the days went by and I thought of this bible and the situation, it became clear to me that God was giving me another message. 

He was showing me to trust Him and not to feel inadequate, just to do it.  The strongest weapon I have is my words. I have the power to cut off the devil’s head from my past by encouraging others, which is what this book was meant to be all about. Then God gave me the correct interpretation “Don’t allow this book to be buried. Don’t allow it to die.”  That bible was not meant for my friend; it was meant for me. He knew I’d spend the money without an issue. He knew my friend would gladly help me get it done. He knew that I would receive this message. He works in mysterious ways and as much as he speaks to me in these ways, I’m never ready, I never expect it and I never understand it when it first happens.

Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed – in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:51-58