Hosea was prophetic. Joseph interpreted dreams. I do neither of these things.

When I was a child, I had my sixth birthday in Oklahoma. That birthday, I a little girl who was enamored by gifts like helium balloons weighted down by a can of Coke, and angry at my father. Well, angry is an overstatement...I was hurt that he wasn't there to share in my birthday and give me the attention a baby girl "deserved" on her big day of the year. Not only was he not there, he had taken away my mother with him.

Of course, this was the point of view from a little girl in her egocentric world. The reason my mommy and daddy weren't there for that birthday was because my dad was hundreds of miles away, receiving brain surgery for an acoustic neuroma- a tumor which was hidden deep in his inner ear. Clearly his health was so much more important to the health of my family and to my future than that birthday.

Often, things that bother you in your life don't go away, the problem just morphs in some aspect...it holds up a different mask, affects you in a different way, grows into a bigger giant than when you last faced it. At six, I was upset at the physical distance I had from my earthly father. These days, I get upset with my feelings of emotional distance from my Heavenly Father.

Blessedly, He never changes. The problems might, and the situations will. But He is constant, and is never any farther away than you let Him to be...He is always there...we just need to cry out.

When my father was healing in the hospital, two things happened...one which has been a daily reminder of God's faithfulness, and the other a true sign that his Father in Heaven really did have a spiritual army on his side.

As my dad lay in the hospital bed, half his head shaved due to stitches running up the whole left side of his skull, my mom worked diligently away at another type of stitching. She was working on a picture which has hung in the front entryway of every house we've lived in since then; a version of "Footprints in the sand." It has been a constant reminder of just how much the God of the Universe cares about the ins and outs of our lives...the good and the bad. "When there was only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you." Through all the darkness, my parents have learned, and instilled in me, that we don't carry the burden ourselves. He carries us *and* our burdens.

The second thing that happened was that my father was prayed over by an angel. "Yeah, right, Kristin..." is what you are thinking right now. C'mon...admit it. I didn't believe at first either. Until I heard the ending.

Due to the surgery, my dad's sense of balance was weakened. So as he recovered, he would take a wheelchair as an aid to walk up and down the hallway outside his room to practice walking with this new change. My mom was coming to visit, but she was late, so he walked the hall as he waited. There, he saw one large group of people huddled on the opposite side of the corridor, and a bit farther down, a man was standing quietly all by himself. When my dad slowly approached him, he noticed something interesting about him. He was exactly the same height as my dad, able to look him directly in the eyes. My father is 6'5", so it is not really a daily occurrence to find himself eye level with another man. The man asked "May I help you?" and my dad said he'd rather walk himself to the end of the hallway. When my father turned around to go back to his room, he saw the man still waiting there, talking to no one. "May I help you?" the man asked again, and at this point my dad was fatigued and rendered himself to the help of this kind man. He supported my father back to his room, helped him to bed, and immediately asked: "May I pray for you?" Surprised, but pleasantly, my dad consented. And there, the man knelt down and prayed silently over my father for quite some time. When he arose, my dad thanked him for his prayers, and asked the man what his business was at the hospital. "I'm here for my father" he simply replied, and say goodbye to my dad. At the exact same time he left the room, my mother finally arrived.

And she never saw him.

Last time I checked, a 6'5" guy is hard to miss. Especially when it is a stranger in street clothes coming out of your husband's room who has just had brain surgery.

As I said, God never changes. He carries our burdens for us, and, He speaks to us in the way that we can understand.

At the darkest times in my life, God gives me a drawing or a vision (not prophetic, mind you) in my mind, and it is ALWAYS full of Hope...as long as I cling fast and trust deeply in Him. Two nights ago, I closed my eyes, and was struck with this vision.


Ask any of my friends, and they will agree that I love the ocean. "Mildly obsessed" is probably getting close to an understatement. But, I love the ocean only at specific times, and with good reason. I love it when it is blue and I can see down to the sand and rocks on the bottom, for instance. When the garibaldi are glimmering with the light reflecting off the waves. When the crash of its waves lull me to sleep. But then, there's night. And storms. And undertow. And of a sudden, you are faced with the horrific power that it can have, and the creatures within it that are not more scared of you than you are of they.

In my vision, I was in the ocean..and it was a dark blue/steely grey color. Cold, in other words. And choppy. There is a ring of buoys... all bobbing up and down with the tumult, and they are there for me to hang onto to give me rest from treading the water all by myself. I swim to the closest one, but, like the rest, it is wet from the ocean and smooth with nothing to hold onto, and moving with the ocean, making it hard to grip. As I cling desperately, hoping for my strength to be renewed through this buoy taking on some of my strife, it slowly moves around and on it I see the word "Friends" in black letters on the white buoy. Expecting to see something like "Swim Area: No Wake Zone" instead, I am surprised, and I look at the other dozen buoys in this circle. From where I cling, I can see the words "Family" "Shopping" and "Guys" on three other buoys.

At this point, I know things were going to go very wrong if something else didn't come soon to save me. I knew I couldn't last forever on my own in the water, and these buoys weren't doing much good either. But where else to turn? There were no boats anywhere nearby.

Where to turn? Suddenly in my vision I see a great huge concrete and metal post like the ones they support huge bridges with erupt from the ocean. Bridges, particular really long ones over large masses of water, have always been a curiousity to me. How do they possibly know how to sink a post into the ground , at the right spot, to the right depth in the ground, and perfectly straight up so that it can support a bridge!?! ALL through millions of gallons of water!?!

Despite my lack of understanding of how this support came to be, there are bars on in which to climb, and a shelf on which to sit. All I have to do is acknowledge this giant structure - which extends past the bottom of the water and stretches to above it, swim to it, climb and sit on the perch which will save me from the sea.

It was at that point that I felt and was deeply and profoundly reminded of the nearness of God. Life, like the sea, can be great. But it can also be filled with trouble. Jesus knew that! He told his disciples, "In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!!" (John 16:33). And, God put other things in our lives for a reason. Somethings are worthy of our love and attention, like family, friends, and husbands/wives. Others, like material things, are necessities, though can quickly become false idols. But no matter how wholesome and good, wretched and obscene, the things which we cling to in life are, they are still but like buoys which are affected by the good and the bad times in our lives, and they cannot support us for forever, or give us our everything.

ONLY God alone can do that. And He is always going to be there, no matter what the sea of your life is going to be like. You just need to cling to Him and His cross for the security that He alone can give.