Was That Who I Think It Was?

Today has been a day. Around one this afternoon, my sister called me about a procedure my grandmother will be going through with tomorrow. She's got a weak heart so they are going to try and fix it by doing two operations. But she might not even make it through the first one to try the second one.

Death has not touched my family yet. I have no idea what its like to lose a loved one. Which is a blessing, but hasn't equipped me for even the possibility for death. How do I prepare for that? More importantly, how do I love on my family through this?

I go to cg tonight and get loved on famously. They aren't even aware how gracious they are and that tonight I'm just soaking up every little bit of affection they'll give me. And my cg leader did something he's never done before. We pair up into a straight line, then encouraged each other for 30 seconds and then rotated. It was wonderful, even despite the fact that I looked like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer after because I was trying so hard not to cry.

After cg, I called Katie and asked her if I could come over. She said she had to walk the dog and I said, "I'd love to walk the dog!" Anything to get my mind off of my gma. So I meet her at her house and sniffle my way through what my heart is feeling and not feeling at the moment. Then we go walk the dog. I'm talking about the fact that death scares me. A lot of my family is not saved and to be eternally separated from God is the scariest thing I can possibly think of. We are walking down the sidewalk, Katie is quietly talking to me. I reply to something she's asked me and she all of a sudden says, "Hello." I look up and there is a man standing there on the other corner of the street looking at us. The way the light is hitting his face, I see every feature of his face but his eyes. They were just black holes. His expression on his face was what got me. Like he had to move across the street because we were walking there. We turn the corner and I turn and look back and he's still watching us. I don't say anything to Katie, I'm very quiet. I get the distinct impression that whatever he was, it had to make way for God's presence and it didn't like that very much. We walk about half a block, still not saying anything. Then I say, "Was that evil?" Katie's response? "I don't wanna talk about it, I wanna talk about Jesus." So that's exactly what we did, all the way home. Then we stopped at the bottom of the stairwell and thanked Him for His protection.

I love that He was listening to my heart cry out while still protecting us from the evil that seems to be lurking around everyone lately. That's my Protector, my Defense and my fierce God!!