I have been trying to write about this one particular instance at Training Camp since it happened almost three full weeks ago, and kept being met by total brain cloggage instead.
I’ve been sitting in front of this computer all week determined to get this out, and still, nothing. So, I decided to take a new approach to the event by asking a friend to give me a word to mindlessly write about. He came back with: haptic.
haptic: the process of recognizing objects through touch.
Thought provoking. So I took to my journal.
“We rely on touch to give our life meaning more than often acknowledged. Every word has its own feeling, our sharpest memories are sparked by physical touch–or the absence there of. In the garden, Adam and Eve didn’t know God simply by voice or by sight, but they physically knew Him, knew what His presence felt like. Sometimes I get lost searching for God in sights and sounds that I forget to feel His presence intimately with me.”
Before going to training camp, I asked the Lord what was going to happen to my squad as a whole, what He wanted to say to me about them.
“The God they have always heard about, they will hear. The God they have known about, they will know.”
Sunday night. Twenty-four hours into camp.
All around me N Squad is singing, dancing, standing still, crying out, laughing. Worshiping the Lord our God.
I join them, I watch them, I cry more than most of them. I ask the Lord for a whole-heck-ton of guidance in leading this group of people because I can see the POWER He has placed in each of them.
“Go pray with them. Go meet them meeting Me.”
Uhm, what? I have only memorized their names, faces, and hometowns. I know nothing about them! What will I say? Aaaaawkward!
“GO”.
So I begin walking among them (more like creeping) waiting for the “Stop”. I hate being interrupted when I’m in the midst of total intimacy because it’s so hard for me to get there, so the last thing I want to do is do that to someone else!
Finally I see the proverbial stop sign dangling above one girl’s head with a giant arrow.
I walk up to this girl who looks like she’s about to cry.
“How He Loves” begins to play.
I grab her hand and pull her out of her row, and out of nowhere I wrap my arms around this woman with a death grip that won’t release. I start to ask the Lord “what do I pray?”
“Just hold her, be with her. I am here”.
And sure enough, the tears begin–first from her, then from me. And the longest embrace of all time continues. I know more than anything I am not supposed to let go.
Suddenly, I know He is there. And I know she knows He is there.
Both of our tears keep coming and keep coming. We’re laughing and gripping each other, faces buried in each other’s shoulders.
“The Me she’s always known about–she knows. Right now, she really knows her Daddy.”
That night, I finally understood how sweet it is be in the Lord’s embrace–more than hearing Him, more than seeing Him. His presence is tangible, His presence comforts, brings peace, transforms, releases, heals.
Do you need to have a haptic revelation of the Lord? A moment where you stop talking/ asking/ begging/ demanding Him to speak, and instead be still in His Presence?
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–photo credit to Ms. Cassie Wilson of N Squad! (Get used to seeing this tag, as she is photographer extraordinaire!)
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