Mindfulness

Okay, I've got to be aware when God is leading me to think about something. Sometimes I sense that I'm being told something and kinda dismiss the thought, sometimes I sense that I'm being told something and actually (YAY!!!) do what I'm supposed to do, and sometimes I don't sense that God is speaking to me at all.

Sometimes I'm good. Let's say, I suddenly start thinking of someone out of the blue. I say to myself, "Uhm...maybe you should be praying for this person, or maybe this person will call you, or maybe you should call this person." Or sometimes I suddenly get this idea of doing something....And I actually do the thing. For instance, two weeks ago I dreamed of an old friend. I said to my husband, "uhm....<-- all the above!" Upshot? Old friend contacted me yesterday...after not seeing each other 8 years!

But sometimes I am totally clueless although the clue is given to me. I have this measuring cup, quart sized. I've had it for about four years. I use it to drink tons of water. I mean tons!!! It's very important in my life because it's pyrex and that means I can drink cold or hot water...and water is very important to my well-being and health. So if anything happens to this cup well, I'm in deep-sh*t because I just can't bring myself to actually drink 8 little cups of water at 8 times rather than ..well, you get the picture. So I'm on my bed about a week ago when out of the blue I start thinking about buying another one of these...maybe even buying a pint measuring cup. It seemed like such an odd thought and such a lavish luxury to actually buy "another" of these cups. But there I lay pondering and pondering where I could buy it.

Now, did it occur to me to say to myself, "uhm, Carole, you're thinking about buying a new measuring cup again after all these years! Could it be Holy Spirit is telling you something?" Oh, no!!! yours truly just thought it was all very odd of her to be suddenly thinking of buying two measuring cups of different sizes when she already had one. So what happens, younger son picked up my measuring cup a coupla days ago and threw it to the ground where it smashed. Yeah, I had been warned. Holy Spirit had seen the thing coming. And now that I am two days without this cup I realize it wasn't a small thing at all. Water is such a part of battling this illness that it wasn't that Holy Spirit was merely being sillily prophetic and playing little games. He knew I needed the cup. I have been totally unable to drink water the past two days. And I haven't drunk enough. It has to be warm water, or hot tea in the middle of the winter. So, gotta get this measuring cup.

Anyway, I'm trying to be as obedient to these nudges as I am to be obedient to other weird odd spiritual nudges. I remember my friend Joan. A sweet woman, a good Christian woman, living with a man for about seven years who had left his wife to live with her. (Man had never loved his wife btw, but ..whatever.) So I kept getting this nudge, "Call Joan and tell her to read her Bible." I thought, "Well, this is weird." I finally gave in and called her, wondering how the heck I would start a conversation with a woman about reading her Bible. When she picked up the phone she said, "I'm so glad you called. I've been in a lot of pain lately. But the doctors operated and didn't find anything. Know what? It's good you called. Remember that book 'Lost Books of the Bible' you let me read once?" (okay, this was back in the day when I was into all that extra-biblical stuff and was easily deceived.) So I said, "I was wrong about those books. Right now you have to read the Bible and only the Bible." Now, I didn't know if God wanted her to read the Bible because the living words of the living God would heal her, or if he wanted her to read her the Bible to spare her from hell so she could repent. Upshot? She died very soon after this phone call. Of cancer. Yeah, doctors weren't honest with her.

Satan had been trying to get her to focus on spiritual things that weren't of the Bible but God had wanted her to read the Bible. In my life I've found that whenever someone is dying God gets very insistent on it being the Bible and only the Bible. More and more I see that the Bible is very very very oddly important to him and very special in that way. I could tell you tons of examples but it's weird how he honors the Bible like that.

I leave you with my poem that I wrote for my friend Jestine. As they say, "true story." Follow those nudges, my friends! On the day Jestine died, all her friends and family simultaneously, out of the blue, with no one calling to them traveled to see her at her hospital room. All except me.


For Jestine
by Carole Stewart McDonnell

I did not visit you on the day you died
although my mind was on you
all that day

because

when I mentioned visiting you
my driver said
the hospital parking fee was high
and I said
I might call him anyway at 3:00
but then at 3:00
another friend called
and invited me over
and although you'd been on my mind all day
I immediately forgot you

because

the afternoon sun was so bright
oh so very bright
and the afternoon air was so sultry
and a certain sweet someone I loved
would be there
and for five months
I=d been forgetting you anyway
so it was easy enough
to forget this time
although the thought of you
on that particular day was so pressing

and never once
all that day
and all that night
as I worked that party
did it occur to me

that this hospitalization was your last
And that you were dying
And that God was telling me
to visit you to say goodbye.

God's sheep DO hear His voice. We just kinda don't think he's talking to us, or that what He is saying is that important.