March 25, 2016

I Believe

Photo by bela_kiefer at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Easter. Jesus has risen. We’ve heard that over and over again. We’ve read the scriptures. We’ve attended the sunrise services. But there is more. 

I am re-posting this for those who may need to read it again, and for those who might not have seen it. It bears repeating, time and again. 

The Resurrection is real. Jesus is real. He is not the figment of anyone’s imagination. I know. I’ve seen him. 

It happened on Palm Sunday. It was one of those lazy mornings.  I sat at the kitchen table enjoying my coffee, and a rare moment of quiet. Everyone else was asleep, even the dog and our three cats. Peace. 

Rather than disrupt it, I decided not to rouse everyone for church. Instead, I would read the scripture of the Passion and meditate.

This time, the often-read words took on a personal meaning. God didn’t die for faceless mankind. He died for me. For my sins. In my place. Willingly. I laid my head on the table and wept. 

March 22, 2016

My Hour Had Not Yet Come, Continued



God had other tests of faith in store for us on this fateful trip.

We stopped for the night at Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border. In the morning, as we were removing the chucks from the trailer wheels, my husband noticed one of the tires was wearing on the inside rim. Warning bells and red flags blazed. A blow out on a trailer is not pretty, especially one on a rig as big and heavy as ours.

We managed to pull into a tire shop in Kingman, Arizona without a blowout. An inspection revealed either the tire was at fault, or the trailer axles needed alignment. We bought a new tire and headed straight to the suggested RV repair a few miles down the road. Of course, they were too busy to look into the issue until the morning. We spent the night in an RV park close by, wringing our hands wondering how much of our vacation budget this would eat, along with the expenditure we already incurred with the new tire.

 The next morning, their mechanic deduced the axles were good, but not our tire pressure. We were running on sixty pounds psi when the tires should be at eighty. My thought, “Why didn’t the tire people notice that?”

With the tire pressure now at the correct level and feeling confident we had the issue resolved, we continued across Arizona and into New Mexico. We arrived at Pancho Villa State Park without further incident.

This park is the site of the famous raid by the Mexican rebel on US soil. We happened to arrive on the 100th anniversary of the raid and of course looked forward to participating in many of the activities. However, our bad luck had not ended yet.

March 19, 2016

My Hour Had Not Yet Come

I will die one day, but until then I will escape death, one way or another. The trick, of course is knowing if my hour has come, or not. I have mentioned several times that God promised my current husband and I would grow old together in health. I have stood on that promise several times, and yet, in the back of my mind, I know the hour of my death will eventually come. Will I know the hour? Or, will it come as a surprise?

So far, premonitions have preceded the biggest tragedies. In some cases, pre-knowledge allowed me to avert the danger. Most of the time, God sent the premonitions to prepare me for heartbreaking circumstances. Other times, the dreams and visions preceded a miracle.

The moment we planned an extended trip in our RV, the dreams and visions began. Over and over the same scene played out in my mind. I saw a steep narrow road, the ground falling away thousands of feet into a canyon. For reasons not explained in the premonition, we fail to negotiate the turn.