decisions

12-11-10 my life changed forever -- and it didn’t really take much to do it.

John and Carol Arnott were at GCC. I was walking toward the bus stop and my right foot went down on a patch of ice and flew out. As I fell I saw my ankle wobble sideways and knew it was broken before I hit the ground. It was literally one of those ‘time slowed down’ experiences. And thus began my new life.

A man stopped to help me. I told him my ankle was broken. Another man, someone I recognized as one of the homeless guys who stay around here, came to help too. He really was the hero of the whole thing -- he made the other guy give him his cell phone, called 911, got the ambulance. I protested that I couldn’t afford an ambulance and he began telling me that there was provision for people who couldn’t afford medical care.

A woman walked by and asked if she could pray for me. I said Yes, please do -- I was on my way to the conference when this happened. She began to pray, and the woman who was in her car at the bank came to pray (I slipped right in front of the community bank, landing at the corner, right in front of the gutter spout -- and she couldn’t get out) and the homeless guy came to pray too. The woman on her way to the conference wanted me to come on to the conference, tried to get the woman in the car to drive us, but the homeless guy kept saying, “DONT MOVE” and finally I realized that I could not get up and get into a car -- my foot was flopping uncomfortably at the end of my leg and I knew I couldn’t make it into a car. The only alternative I had was to agree to go in the ambulance.

The police woman who came to the scene started snapping pictures, the homeless guy gave her his name as a witness and told me so. The ambulance got there and I asked them to take me to Stroger and they said they couldn’t. I remembered a few weeks earlier my new friend Deb told the story of her ex husband James when he had two successive strokes, how they had been taken care of at Loyola and helped financially. So I asked them to take me to Loyola and they said they could take me there.

Once I was there they said I had made the right decision because they have expertise in bones -- and I would need surgery. I kept making it clear that I had no insurance so nobody asked me for my card. They took care of me quickly, efficiently, and told me they were going to get me a spot as early as possible for surgery.

I made my way home alone; no family, no insurance, no money, and a huge medical situation looming imminent. But instead of fear, excitement began welling up in me.
__________________________________________

Here's an amazing thing:  I only discovered how trustworthy God is after my ankle snapped and the thing that I most feared happened. I watched God sweep into that moment like a rushing river and begin to carry me into a revelation of who He is through it.
__________________________________________

Mark Chironna said at a Kim Clement conference last May 28th that pain (by which he also meant the helplessness, grief, loss and fear pain wrenches out of us) is the locus of real praise -- the moment it is able to be conceived. He said this (re: elisha taking up the mantle of the double portion) "You will never cross the threshold into a new level of kingdom authority without suffering loss. They won’t tell you this in Tulsa, but I’ll tell you in Chicago: Grief is God’s preparation for change. What looks like loss is actually gain, and grief opens a chiros moment. Job said as he was processing what had happened to him, 'Thou hast opened my ear in oppression.' When you go through a particularly dark, difficult season and the oppression of the enemy is bearing down on your soul, God will open your ear to hear him in a fresh way.  You learn how to differentiate between His voice and the lies of the enemy. (Those lies) have been part of the personal unconscious scripts you were hypnotized into believing because some authority figure told you 'this is reality, this is the way the world works'. You accepted it (as truth) because (an authority) said it, but it doesn’t match up with a Biblical worldview. God, in taking you through oppression, is (reorienting) you to (see the truth so you) flush that stuff out of your unconscious, bring it to your conscious awareness, dump the files and move on down the road because (lies prevent you from) seizing chiros moments."

A lot of things have happened to me, but until recently I still had youth and sensuality on my side to fend off disaster. It wasn't until my ankle snapped that I was able to experience HOW His strength is made perfect in weakness. It is no longer a tensely held theory I never want to have to rely on. Now I can relax, for the first time, like I have never relaxed before because I am seeing Him save me from what I truly fear, which is anything I am helpless to control.

It's true, what Chironna said. It's not popular doctrine, but it's Bible, and more useful in navigating the life of the Spirit than beliefs that seem right but end up landing you in a wrong place without knowing how you got there. That's the thing about things that seem right but aren't -- it makes it really hard to track the cause-and-effect relationship.

There is nothing I can do to protect myself from vulnerability and poverty and disaster today. I can barely use the crutches, I have to have surgery and have no idea how I am going to pay for it, and there's ice everywhere outside so I have no idea when I will be able to go back to work. The rent still needs paid, the world still goes round --

A perfect scenario for helplessness. A perfect proving ground for my new mantra: Those who trust in the LORD will never be put to shame. (I Peter 2:6)