The Tsunami That Is 2020

This past week, sleep has avoided me in the early hours of morning......I could write a sermon or essay, maybe even a book on the emotions, thoughts and personal opinions I have concerning what is going on in our country right now, let alone those of others out there everywhere.   I would also add the whole of 2020 has been quite a tsunami.  Not exactly how we pictured it, nor you, I expect.  But here we are in the midst of it all, trying to make sense of our world.

Instead of only listening to the voices of others and ourselves, maybe we also need to still ourselves to hear the voice of God when our hearts are breaking.  Oh, I know He can and does speak through other people, but at this point in my life, where I find myself right now, I am weary of the voices, so I turn to His Word. I ask questions.  I pray for protection for our family, and I listen for God to whisper as He does into my heart.   Yes, I listen to a few voices.  Only a few.....our sons and daughters, they have my ear. And maybe a family member or two.....and a couple of good friends we consider family.  "Framily", as my oldest would say. But God is often waiting for my ear............

It was on a December morning while we were praying that I began to see and feel something that was hard to identify. A deep heaviness came over me, weighing me down and I saw in my mind something hard to understand.  It was like everything around us, in our country, was falling in on itself.  Like walls of mud and water swirling and meeting and crashing together causing destruction.   I began to hear the word, "implode"....over and over again.  I told Joel what was happening and then I shared what I was feeling and seeing.  "Something bad is going to happen.   To our country, our government, our nation.  Whatever it is is imploding on us and causing great stress.....grief.......destruction...."  The feelings ebbed and flowed, then eventually went away  and to tell you the truth, with my mind focused on radiation I forgot about what I had experienced.  And then Covid-19 invaded our country and people were dying terrible deaths.  Two months into that it hit me.....oh, maybe this is what I was seeing and feeling......and then the death of George Floyd was played over and over again on our TV screens and our country erupted with anger, fear, and protests.  Some individual people and some instigator groups  took advantage and are causing great destruction, in our country.  And here we are..........imploding.

I don't doubt for a moment that God spoke to me in December about what is occurring now in 2020, I have learned to trust His voice, but six months ago I didn't have a clue why I had that encounter with God.  The framily couple we shared this with had good insights into what they believed the why was......and now with what has happened the last 11 days, I am beginning to understand the why even better. 

I have personally connected that encounter in December to what God also brought to mind today.  This occurred in  2017 when we went to Bethel Church in Redding CA.  We spent 10 days there and 40 hours at the church going to services, prophetic sessions, Bible Study, Healing rooms, etc. to take in all we could.  One night at a church service a young woman, named Olivia, sat next to me.  As we worshiped, she asked me if it would be okay to share what God had been saying to her for me.  I was certainly open to that and she went on to say, "God sees you as a prayer warrior who has the authority to pray over your family and see breakthrough.  You have the power to break things off in the spirit realm that the eyes cannot see."  I tried to take that to heart, but as years past and cancer came calling again, even though I always prayed for our family, I forgot those Words from God.  Words that He knew I would need to remember for our family in 2020.

Most of our family over a decade ago

This is our family, a picture taken many years ago when we all gathered as one group, but still after our son Kevin died, another left the family,  It is a difficult task to get a family photo anymore, so this is one of my favorite pictures.  In our family we have many ethnicities.......A blend of African American, Puerto Rican Black, Filipino, Korean, Native American, Chinese, Hispanic, and Caucasian that includes Norwegian, Danish, French Irish, European Jew, German, and more.  We have a factory supervisor, a teacher, a farmer, a church confirmation coordinator, piano teacher, business owner, MBA, police officer, CNA,  construction worker.  We have both Republicans and Democrats in our family and God is very important in our lives.  Our grands are now growing up with 5 graduated from High School, 4 in college, all 11 teenagers except 2.  As time continues to go by, as we age and as distance keeps us apart, we know our "job" is to keep loving and praying  for our family.  Oh how we love our family.

And we love our nation.  Our country is a mess, it is imploding on itself in many directions.  It should have us all down on both our knees praying to God and listening for His response.  He is not surprised by what is going on in government, in communities, in hospitals, in the streets of our country.  For reasons of His own He warned me (among many many others) that something was coming.  When I am afraid for our family for different reasons, when I weep over our nation for different reasons, I must remember to not only respectfully share my voice, but pray and pray some more, and listen to His voice.  When I get up at night I pray, when pain wakens me, I pray, when morning comes I pray, when fear and worry wants to rise within, I pray, when I get angry and want to point the finger, I pray.  When it feels like life as we have known it has imploded, I grab the hand of Jesus and hold on.   And I pray remembering and believing what I was told during worship in 2017 by a young woman who could have been my granddaughter.  As I have said many times before, we keep pitching our tent in the land of hope.  (Acts 2:26 in The Message), and I believe you are there too.  In the land of Hope.