Sunday, January 27, 2013

=*p;hflYV98B hjr&js~gtuw0bsujd.


I’ll title this blog: =*p;hflYV98B hjr&js~gtuw0bsujd.


I’m thankful for the messages of encouragment to me in regards to my blog.  I was surprised the day after I posted my intent to write and heard from people I didn’t even know. 

My heart was filled with, how shall I say it?  =*p;hfIYV98B hjr&js~gtuw0bsujd.

And that’s it exactly! That is the only way I can describe it.  I felt something in my heart that I have never felt before, a collision of hope and deep healing.  I was stunned with a flood of new life.  Possibility.  A powerful glimpse of a new reality.  Thank you all for that.  And special thanks to my Pastor who’s been praying week to week with me for the last year to get me moving out of a prison of lies.  To just get moving and go forward and see what happens.

Scared?  Be scared but keep moving and move in the very direction that the fire seems the hottest and most terrifying.

Last Friday morning I felt something I never felt before because I took a little step, though somewhat pushed, into the direction of my fear.  Although I can’t describe for you, or myself, the emotion that was going on inside of me after I created a small little blog; I have seen what it physically looks like on somebody once.

Massachusetts began a statewide lottery when I was around twenty-years old.  For some strange reason, like all gamblers say, I thought it was possible I would win. I’m not into gaming, cards, gambling, or lotteries and never was, but at that time I sensed something had to do with me and that lottery.  It was so strong I was certain I was going to win.  I played and lost.  I don’t remember if I even picked one number correctly.  About two months later they ran a story about the guy who won and he was actually over in the next large town from where I was living.  He was a truck driver for a construction company and wasn’t sure if he was going to quit working because he liked his job. 

I wanted to get a look at the guy but the paper didn’t run his photo.  I wanted to see the guy that got what I thought was coming to me. I was certain that this lottery had something to do with me and couldn’t understand why I felt like I did.  And why, even though I was reading about the winner, I still knew something wasn’t finished with me and that lottery.

On a warm summer night a few weeks later, I was giving a girl I knew a ride home and I got a mad craving for ice-cream. There was an ice-cream store nearby that she knew of but never went to.  We finally found it and parked the car on a side street because the parking lot was so full.  We headed through the full lot toward the crowd waiting in line and that’s when I saw him.  In the dark, leaning up against his car, was a man in his early forties staring up and looking at the stars. Or past them. He was wearing a dark tee-shirt and his hands were in the front pockets of his jeans. He continued looking up as we walked past him.  As we passed him, within arms reach, I looked at him and saw his face.  That is, I saw something in his face.  

I stopped and quickly turned around.

The girl I was with asked me what I was doing and I quietly told her, “That’s the guy that just won the lottery.”

“How do you know it’s him?”

“I just know.”

She only saw a guy leaning up against a car and someone else would have probably seen the same, I saw something else altogether. She tried to stop me but I walked over to him.

“You’re the guy who won the lottery.”  It wasn’t a question.

He looked at me with surprise.  There was no photo of him in newspapers or on the news, only a few people from work knew he had won, and of course his family, that were now gathered around us with their ice-creams.  He was talking to me but most of him was still in the stars somewhere above us.

“How did you know it was me?”

I didn’t know how, but I knew.  He told me how he was having trouble taking it in and that he was still trying to come to terms with winning.  He was wondering how this was going to change his life and he wanted to keep things the same for his children. That’s why they took the kids out that Sunday night for ice-cream. He looked to me like he felt alone, overwhelmed, thankful and terrified all at the same time.  His life was abruptly going into a direction he never imagined.

His wife stood close to him in her own small, state of confusion because a stranger in a dark parking lot somehow knew her husband had just won the state’s first lottery. 

He tried to tell me how he felt but he couldn’t find the words.  I told him my story of how I was so sure I was going to win.  I shook his hand, wished him luck with his future, and left them standing there with another layer of strange to deal with.

The girl I was with asked me again how I knew?  How could I have possibly known that was the guy?
 
I didn’t know how but I just knew.  I just knew.

On Friday last week, the day after I posted my first blog, I caught my reflection while I was leaving a coffee shop.

 I saw that same thing in my own face, and this time, I knew for myself.

Have a great week everyone, one day and one decision at a time.

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