Choosing to SEE - Mary Beth Chapman [4]
“Mary Beth, as I told you in the text, I had a dream. And I don’t have dreams. Not the kind that mean anything, anyway. I mean, God has never spoken to me in a dream before in my entire life. But I think He did this time.”
I was hedging. Not sure how to say it. I could hardly make the word “Maria” come out of my mouth because, after decades of interacting with women, I knew that the name of every lost child is sacred to the grieving mother. A person is wise to use it with great care and caution because the stab of pain it will invariably cause had better be worth it. I awkwardly made my way through the dream with a completely silent partner on the other end. When I finished telling her about it, I realized how brief it really was. It could only have lasted a few seconds but, when I had it, it seemed like everything moved in slow motion over the course of a half hour.
“And that was it. My dream. Mary Beth, it was so real. I’m so sorry. I know it hurts, but I so hope God means it for some measure of healing . . .”
Then she bawled. And I nearly bawled with her. When Mary Beth began to tell me with tears that, just prior to the night I received it, she had specifically asked God to let her see Maria in a dream, I had to pull the car over and park. My chin fell to the ground. God hit me with such a sense of awe that I could hardly form words, yet I had a knowing in my heart that I will never be able to understand.
“Mary Beth, God allowed me, another mom, to have the dream for you. I think He knew that if He’d given it to you so early in your healing, you might wish you could just stay asleep. He wants you to know He heard you and that He even gave you what you asked, just through a means that might bless and do no harm in the long run.”
It was as sacred a moment as I’ve ever shared with another woman. As it turned out, God did indeed use the dream to confirm what He’d already been saying to her. I knew that would be the determining factor for its legitimacy. I don’t believe God often cold-calls His children through others. He’s mostly a one-on-one kind of communicator with people who are apt to listen. Usually He employs others to confirm what He’s already been telling us or preparing us for. Mary Beth and I pledged to talk soon, then we hung up the phone, both, I feel sure, overcome emotionally. I have had many wonderful moments with God through the years when, for whatever reason, He’d grant a sudden revelation of His majesty, mercy, or love. These are times when, even for a few seconds, the veil almost seems to thin. I can’t think of many other times in my life, however, when I was more overcome with God’s flagrant tender mercies. All I could say on the way home was, “O, God! O, God! You, God! I can’t believe You just did that, God!”
Stunned, I pulled up into my driveway and walked into the kitchen to a happy husband who greeted me with the usual, “Hey, Baby! Had a good day?”
“Uh, yes. You are not going to believe what just happened.”
True to form, my rugged husband cried. An unbelieving onlooker could reason that, to have a God who cared enough to orchestrate something like the timing of that dream, we’d have a God who’d never let such a tragedy happen to start with. These are places where God exercises His sovereign right to retain mystery. We cannot fathom the intricacies of the divine plan. But make no mistake, when we are in the driest desert, we can receive the manna to make it all the way to the other side where trees bud again and children laugh. God sometimes delivers us from evils we never see. Other times He parts raging oceans before our very eyes. Still other times He says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers they will not sweep over you. . . . Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west” (Isa. 43:2, 5).
April 27, 2010
1
Winter
It was the day the world went wrong.