I will preface that while I am writing this story the bibliography reads God all over it.
The next day team leaders decided to have a day out in Bucharest. Mostly we just wandered the city catching up on each others month’s experiences, highlights and lowlights. I needed to find a potty because of my young, overactive bladder. As we were walking down the street I saw an older women sitting on the side walk with a sign reading something to the effect of cancer slash procedure. As soon as we walked by her I felt like if I did not go back and pray for her I would be missing out on what the Lord was saying. We ducked into the next fast food joint and I still hadn’t said anything to the group about going back. It wasn’t until buying some water and pulling a few bills out of my pocket to take back to her that I told them we needed to go back and pray for her.
I also prefaced this with, “this is not my strong suit, hearing things from the Lord, and it might sound kinda cliché Christiany, but I feel like I would be disobedient right now if we did not go back and speak to her.” As soon as I said that Syd the Kid Sample, said she felt the same way.
See what happens for me in these situations is I don’t want to come out and say something that may sound weird unless it’s already backed by someone else. It’s kinda freaky to tell people that I might have just “heard” or felt led to act by God.
We all agree to go back. I go ahead of the group and kneel down to talk to her. I start by saying “this might be weird and I doubt that you understand everything I am saying, but I am going to pray for you right now.” Within the first two sentences of me talking to this woman, whose name is Mariana, she began to cry. I don’t think she understood all of what I was telling her but she understood that eight random strangers loved her because God loved her. I wanted her to know that the Lord takes notice of her and her cry does not fall on deaf ears. That even though she is suffering right now, God sees his child and has not passed over her. She told me that she was so glad that we didn’t pass over her like so many had that day. We prayed healing over her. We listened to her as Dan translated the broken Spanish. We heard her story and then we told her what God thought of her.
That she was His beloved.
That even if she was not healed physically, that God would be her Protector.
Mariana felt like she had sat out much of her life; she missed the beauty of what God had for her; she missed a chance to live at times and is now realizing it with little time left. We too could have missed the beauty in that moment if our group didn’t go back.
I could have missed God telling me to Rise Up.
