I have been complaining for many years of my life that I
don’t hear from the Lord and I feel like its almost a joke right now for Him to
pour out every possible way that I hear all at once in the last week to
overwhelm my senses. I am not tired physically, but emotionally overwhelmed. I
sat in on 7 different team debriefs, with 7 new teams. I swear I teared up in almost
every single one because they could have not come together in any better way
than how the Lord planned it.
I talked to my mom earlier in the day on Skype. I told her
all the things the Lord had been revealing to our squad. The encounters and
visions the team was having. She reminded me of the one and only vision I had
when I was eleven.
This isn’t a story I tell often.
It was my second night in the hospital after being diagnosed
with AML leukemia. They needed to do a spinal tap on me to check my bone marrow
to see how far I had progressed. In 1997, Children’s hospital was not
accustomed to giving kids pain meds during spinal tap procedures. All that was
used was some emla cream to numb the skin. The pain was pretty was pretty bad
but mostly scary being only eleven years old and not knowing fully what the
next years of my life would look like. I remember crying out and yelling in
pain. Then I remember my mom whispering in my ear to call out to Jesus and he
will hear me.
This was the first time I really learned what suffering
meant and where God was in pain. See sometimes we are so concentrated on our
pain that we forget Jesus is in the room suffering along with us.
I remember closing my eyes and seeing what I believed to be
an angel or a figure of Jesus. It could have been my imagination, and I could
have rationalized it way. But I chose to see Jesus in that moment. I don’t
remember the pain subsiding, but I do remember feeling comforted that Jesus was
in the room with me.
Back to the Skype convo.
My mom began telling me I wasn’t going to be the same, that
I won’t be able to do ordinary when I come home, that she has prayer over my
life for years and years. My mom is not an over the top emotional person.
Meaning she doesn’t cry just for the sake of crying. But as we were talking on
the phone she began to cry. Not because she was missing me, even though I know
we miss each other. She started crying because she said that she hasn’t felt
the Lord’s presence on her in years like she did in that moment that we were
talking.
I couldn’t help but cry myself.
I felt heavy because the Lord was revealing his presence in
that moment, and it was so strong it was beginning to affect my family even if
it was over skype.
Aly, Sydney, and I were asked to speak later that night as
our squad leaders and team members blessed us and commissioned us for the time
ahead. I wasn’t sure what I would say. I was tired. I was asked to talk about
what I wanted our squad to look like. I was asked to strike some sort of vision
for where we were headed. I decided to wing it.
I talked about being tired. I talk about what pain and
suffering meant. I talked about the only vision I had when I was younger. I
talked about wanting our squad to be known for freedom. I talked about this
being a year of redemption. And I told the squad about being thirteen and
feeling like I had missed my blessing party, and as I started to cry again I
told them that I think the Lord has redeemed that and that tonight was my
blessing party. There was no part of me that could have spoke with the
composure and direction of speech that I had that night. I think the Lord was
with me in that moment. I will never forget the events of that night. I had to
begin to accept all the words of prophesy, prayer, and blessing that I had been
spoken over me since I was eleven beginning to come to pass.
And I was overwhelmed with the love that the Lord was
showing me.
Salley William Nathan
