A couple of weeks ago I went to work with a splitting headache and sat through a staff meeting while it pounded away and I felt like throwing up. At the end of the meeting, when everyone else had left the boardroom, my boss asked me if he could pray over the headache. He put his hand on the side of my head and paused, silent and waiting.
“Yvette”, he said. “I have a picture in my mind.”
He gets these mental pictures. It’s a way God speaks to him. I knew just to wait.
He explained that he saw me with a shroud over my face that making it difficult for me to see clearly.
“I think that’s what the headache is about,” he said.
He was right, but I didn’t say anything.
That morning Leigh and I had discussed how difficult my job and my study was, how tiring my plans were, and how tough it was to hold it all together. That morning I felt like quitting all of it.
This year I’ve become quite sure that I am meant to be a pastor. I’ve made steps toward the vision that God gave me three years ago when I had tea in the city with a complete stranger. A stranger who had spoken things over me that he couldn’t possibly have known on his own.
The morning of the headache, I’d told Leigh I was too tired to keep trying. Exhausted from trying to be a great wife and mother, a good student, a writer and a wanna-be pastor. I was going to quit everything except my family. I was going to try baking and housework and ironing school uniforms and just let the other dreams die.
And then I went in to work with the headache and my boss prayed.
With his hand resting lightly on my head he spoke with God on my behalf. And he said to me, “Yvette, God wants me to tell you to remember the calling he has given you. He says the calling is still good. Don’t give up. He hasn’t given up.”
Not giving up.
