I have been part of a "Women's Ministry" Leadership team at our church for several years. One of the biggest events we plan every year is our weekend-long retreat, called an "Encounter." It is a weekend away from life's distractions and a time for women to focus on their personal relationship with God. Fifteen years ago, I would have rather been hurled carelessly off of a cliff into the razor-sharp, disease-infested teeth of sharks than to participate in anything remotely "religious." I thought just like everyone else in their Pre-Truth years:
"Religion ruins lives." Not people making bad decisions, mind you, but Religion itself. That is another story.
All people are vulnerable, and can be easily distracted. Everyone in the galaxy and their friends struggle with procrastination at one point or another. Considering the aforementioned pitfalls, life is hard. Except on Neptune, of course. They're pretty organized, and the living is easy. I personally am relocating as soon as I can. I'll probably get to that later.
As with any other area of our lives, our spiritual knowledge and faith too must be practiced and exercised, and kept alive. It is easy to ignore our spiritual component in our busy, busy lives. It can be pathetically easy to excuse away our prayer life and turn further and further away from God. That, in turn, can drive us further from the Only One who can fix us. We become further and further entrenched in our issues. We start blaming God.
Again. Whatever you don't spend time on...will diminish. These little respites are an opportunity to learn how to deal with our lives as wives, mothers, and women.
During one of these "Encounter" weekends, the Ministry Team, (myself included), noticed that the general feeling among the nearly 60 participants just
wasn't right. As on almost every Encounter, there were a few women sitting in the back of this big open classroom, with their arms crossed, scowling and projecting the
"talk to me and I shall slaughter you with my bare hands" vibe. I used to be Them...I used to do that.
It can be awkward and fragile. Religious doctrine, and Christianity no exception, is especially vulnerable to being corrupted and misinterpreted. It's equally frustrating and frightening to share highly personal, intimate testimonies of how Jesus changed
our lives when the audience already thinks we are old-school wacko. It is an extremely vulnerable place to be. But...I know this:
"...with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26, NIV).
In one rushed, and albeit spontaneous decision, the four of us stood outside in the calm sunshine, just outside of the doors to the big conference room.
What do we do? We were discouraged, quite frankly. My friend, Sherry, who is a praying FIIEEND was the voice of reason,
"Let's just pray." Oh, yeah. That. Ooops! That
"praying-thing. We might be able to pull that off..." we were all humbly thinking.
We started praying together, holding hands, up against the building, and backed into a covered corner. When it came my turn to pray, I just started speaking,
"Lord, we are discouraged. We want to do Your work, but it is hard to overcome ourselves. We don't know what to do! But, God...Father, first we humbly ask that You drive the Spirit of Discouragement and Fear from this place..." I instinctively raised my right hand as if I was Moses
himself parting the Red Sea. I shudder now thinking I may have been microscopically blasphemous. At that precise moment, we were bombarded with a 100-mile-an-hour wind that came from directly below and behind us; and, as if I was pulling it up and away from us!
That wind came out of nowhere. I am
not kidding. In the secluded corner of a quiet, calm day, the wind came up and
through us, that I thought for a moment I was actually being pulled up off of the ground. We all clasped each others hands tighter and said something super-spiritual like,
"Waaaahhhhhhhhhhargggha!!!" or something like that. We all looked up into the center of this freak wind tunnel that we were circling, and were part crying, screaming, praying, and laughing hysterically. I don't even remember what the rest of the prayer was, but I distinctly remember feeling as if I was frozen for the briefest moment in time. I had my eyes squeezed shut, and it took everything in me to open them. VERY clearly, there was, in that windtunnel, haze and flickering light. I attest upon my physical life that
that is exactly what I saw and felt. That wind about literally blew all of us away, and it lasted for not more than ten seconds..tops.
I will admit that I have had some awesome, beautiful soul-wrenching experiences in my life. This was
the best. Sorry, Babe. Sorry, kids. After that ten seconds, the air was suddenly still again, and we all just hugged each other and laughed and cried, and couldn't believe what had just happened.
"WHATTT was THATTT?!!" And, more importantly...What was in that chicken we had for lunch?!
Windblown, and outwardly projecting the embodiment of a human trainwreck; with crazy 80's-Madonna hair and red cheeks, we sort of stumbled into the classroom to finish the day. The rest of that weekend was powerful and awesome and beautiful. It always is so with God. A few more rogue "wind" occurrences happened that afternoon that truly and seriously had to defy physics. More on those later, too...
The next morning our pastor's wife was teaching an in-depth study on The Holy Spirit. Laura has a Master's Degree, and is ferociously intelligent. The Holy Spirit is an exceptionally and theologically deep concept. Before I became a Christian, I didn't even know that Christianity could be that complex and wonderful; amazing and overwhelmingly real. It is
mindblowing. Literally.
She was quoting
Acts 2, when the early church was facing intense persecution, but still meeting together to eagerly hear and spread the words of Jesus. Soon after enduring the heartbreak and sheer horror of their friend's crucifixion, the disciples were starving for a revelation. Jesus had promised that when He rejoined the Father in Heaven, He would send the "Comforter" to His Believers. God was taking His people a level further, and fulfilling every single prophesy and promise. Enter...the Holy Spirit.
"When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting." (Acts 2:1-2, NIV).
Now, look. I have read this before, and I understand it
conceptually. But, as God often does with me, He shook me to the core. This is so I would be acutely aware of what He was about to unveil. He began revealing yet
another facet of Himself. Please believe me when I tell you, that once you
allow God to reveal Himself to you, it will blow your mind like no wind has ever done. Literally. I thank Him nearly every day that He gave me the chances and time I needed to turn around, and put Him first in my life. As soon as Laura read that Scripture, we all looked at each other, and just started...weeping.
There are many accounts in the Bible dealing with the physical manifest presence of God. In the Old Testament specifically, Jehovah God-the
Father of the Trinity, was very often revealed in wind, fire and cloud. The early Israelites were protected by God in their Exodus from Egypt and escape from Pharaoh's whip with
"fire and cloud."
"The angel of God, who had been going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them; and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them." Exodus 14:24, NIV.)
"At the morning watch, the LORD looked down on the army of the Egyptians through the pillar of fire and cloud and brought the army of the Egyptians into confusion." (Exodus, NIV.)
(Psalm78:14, NIV): "Then He led them with the cloud by day And all the night with a light of fire."
These are not images or allegoric representations, they are real, physical manifestations of God meant to strengthen and encourage. People have always asked, and continue to ask God to "show Himself." Well,
voila! There He is. The fact that we can recognize wind, and measure it never separates God from it. Either from creating it or being in it.
We all agreed that we would never view
the wind the same ever again. We left that weekend and headed back to the church to meet back up with our families to share what we all had learned. During that time, we do not have contact with anyone. So, no one said a word about the Wind Experience, because the first-time attendees are the ones who get to share their testimonies when we return.
When I got home, my husband told me that he had been "compelled" to buy me a few things. I was presented with an overstuffed gift bag. My husband said to me,
"I thought you would like these. I know when you are at your computer writing, you love to open the window..." I carefully unwrapped 5 beautiful wind chimes. Now, remember that I had not yet told him about the wind experience at all.
Then he said,
"I thought you would like to listen to the Wind."
Yes. I would, thank you. And, I will never tire of it. Never.
One afternoon recently, I was deep into another self-imposed, "Five Gajillion Things To Do List," when I got a phone call from a nurse asking me some questions about an upcoming surgery. Aside from standard information like my name and birth date, (which is pretty important), previous surgical history and allergies, I was also quizzed about my history of "tattoos, metal plates, surgical clips, radiation exposure," and other things. OK. 
