My body needs water. I cannot get away from its daily demands. In my kitchen I gulp a few sips to down my supplements. I grab a bottle from my garage on my way out the door. My coffee has water in it. Surely that counts? 

My routine consumption rarely approaches the eight to nine glasses a day recommended by health professionals. I run a constant deficit, staying on the verge of dehydration. 

Why? 

Water is continuously available to me. It is canned and sparkling in my fridge, Colorado-fresh and free-flowing out my spigot, melodious in the creek by my home. Majestic in the expanse of wind-churned peaks across the surface of a nearby lake.  Thunderous and powerful over the falls. Thoroughly drenching from the skies. There is no lack of water in its availability to me. 

Even so, I barely quench my thirst when there is nothing else as refreshing or satisfying as water. 

I awoke this morning to Holy Spirit’s invitation to recognize His offer to drink deeply. My thirst is not met by His ubiquitous nature; it is met by my intentional consumption of Him. Not a sip here and there, not a gulp along with supplements, not my morning hot brew to awaken me for my day. His offer is saturation, steeping, ingesting, filling myself with Him. On cool days and scorchers alike. 

I need Him.

​I remember the rush of bitterness washing over me in the bowling alley. I was less than ten years old, spending my Sunday afternoon along with my siblings being entertained by our father. It was our weekly visitation day, after the divorce, the day we got to represent our mother’s righteous demand for child support before a man who valued other things above his family.  As an adult I have far more grace for the brokenness behind failure. But when Holy Spirit returns such memories, there is a reason. 

The memory was triggered as I hiked a familiar trail alone in the isolation of the COVID-19 mandate to stay cloistered. Families are out in droves, staying in their cocooned clusters of “just us”. Stepping aside for a wife, toddler, and infant strapped to his daddy’s back, the memory flooded back to me in a flash. 

As a jaded child, I thought to myself looking around that bowling alley full of fathers and children, “If you had been there for your family when they needed you, you wouldn’t have to be here now in this meaningless ritual,” judging every sans-mother father there assigned a lane with his brood represented what our grouping did. Abandonment. Divorce. Feigned connection. 

My first response now is to invite Holy Spirit into this memory, into this pain that is still trigger-able for a reason. A wound unrecognized and therefore untended. 

What memories is this current crisis triggering for you in this time of unpredictability and even chaos? What are you feeling? 

The temptation is to quickly sweep the discomfort to the side, to walk past without addressing the underlying wound or even the fresh gouging of new assaults against your heart. But there is an invitation in the pain, a wooing into communion with the Great Physician, the Counselor, the One Who bears our grief. God brings beauty straight out of the charred remains of ashes. 

Come Holy Spirit. Lead us into all truth. We invite the healing Balm of Gilead into our most hidden places of wounding, in Jesus’ name.

Should we seek divine healing for our children with autism and other neurological differences? ​
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I serve a living God who heals not just emotional wounds, but who literally performs miracles in pursuit of the hearts of mankind. He reveals Himself this way sometimes.

When I was ministering in Myanmar exactly two years ago, I prayed for a Buddhist woman who was incapacitated by broken bones in her ankle. A Japanese pastor's wife and myself prayed for a miracle and God responded in under 3 minutes with an inexplicable miracle, the kind of life event that is so profound the woman immediately gave up her familial belief in Buddhism for our global God of creation, the God of the Bible. She joyfully surrendered her life to Him, to this miracle working God of love. ​

When I was two I used to toddle around our home looking for the dregs of creamed coffee and settled sugar to slurp with glee left in the bottom of china cups on saucers adorning table tops within my reach.  But one morning, my father had doused his filterless Camel cigarette butt in the liquid goodness, and the remains lurked undetectable under the surface. As a 54 year old woman, I remember the "swig-gag-overwhelm of betrayal" moment I downed the contents of that cup. Innocence lost.

​From that incident forward, even the smell of coffee nauseated me. Starbucks? Cream based Frappicino please. 

​We tend to accept the way we are as gospel truth, claiming it's just the way we are wired, whether born that way or got that way through life experiences.  "I'm afraid of heights" or "I don't multi-task" or "I'm not a very patient person". The truth is, our Creator reserves the right to re-wire our brains. After all, He made us. 

Recently I did a ropes course, an obstacle course suspended high above the ground, and discovered I wasn't afraid. Heights terrify me. Or at least they used to.

I was amazed.

So amazed that when I visited the Royal Gorge last week, I offered my guest to join me in a bungee sling out over the canyon. Now that's a REAL test of my new found "no fear" I mused. I was not awash in nauseating adrenaline. It was actually FUN, and even more fun with world traveling Pastor Wendi screaming by my side creating a life memory for both of us. 

What are you facing that you are not wired for? I wasn't wired for raising children with disabilities. But LOVE and tapping into the resources of my all sustaining God rewired me for that.

 And now, with this heights thing, I think God is just showing off.