It continues...
I know what you're thinking, that that picture looks exactly like me! I know! It's so hard to keep myself from bragging.
Welcome to Blog #3! I am so glad that you are taking the time out of your day to read this-it means so much to me and hopefully it will be a blessing to you in some way today.
Let's jump right back in where we left off yesterday, shall we?
Since the trip to Colorado was very obviously *cancelled* I knew that I was supposed to go to the Women's Conference. I didn't know anything about it-only that Rita Springer was going to be there and that was pretty much it. I went expecting to hear some great truth from God, but before I went, I knew I needed some new perfume! That's what every girl needs before a road trip, right? Actually the real reason I was buying it was because I just to happened to have a gift card and felt the need to treat myself to something as a reward for my pain. There were probably a few other scattered rewards to myself such as sodas and snacks of all kinds, but I can't remember.
I walked into the store. They had some new smells which I'm sure now are discontinued. The one displayed at the front was "Gardenia". "Hmmm, that sounds familiar, what is that?" I thought to myself. I gave it a spray. "Mmmmm! That smells so familiar!" I couldn't place it and figured it would hit me later. Then I bought it. Little did I know that this was my first "clue" and it hit me hard.
***
Important Sidenote: I have to mention that I was supposed to have been in North Carolina long before this point. When I did all of my missions work, it was based out of Colorado through YWAM. I was originally signed up to be stationed in North Carolina, but the only reason I changed my mind to go to Colorado was to be near my boyfriend, military guy. God went to all that trouble to let me go to the opposite end of the country and around the world, to bring me right back to where He had originally told me to go. It took me 3 years to get back there. I don't really believe in mistakes though, at least not when God's involved.
***
I packed the necessities for the trip, most importantly the Gardenia perfume, and drove the 7 hours through the hills to Fort Mill, NC. I was met there by my dear, dear friend, Therese, who, strangely enough, had just bought the same perfume as me! Strange, huh? Or, maybe not so much?
The first meeting at the conference was the night I arrived. I was feeling disoriented when I got there-lost without knowing that military guy was just a phone-call away. The excitement of taking my life back by going on an awesome road trip to fill the void was already wearing off.
The Worship started. I swear there was something like a Holy Wind that literally blew Rita Springer's hair in it's breeze when she started playing the piano. It may have also been the stage fans, but who really knows for sure? :)
After the worship, a woman made an announcement that now they would be handing out hand-crafted, what they believed to be "prophetic journals" that the conference leaders had made themselves from random newspapers and magazine clippings. There had to have been hundreds of these journals, and they were all different. They had prayed over all of them, praying that each journal would fall into the hands of the right woman, as they were handing them out completely at random throughout the audience.
I got mine. Just look at it for a second.
I looked at my journal, and because this is where the mind of most young, single girls goes, my first thought was, "Is there anything on here that might mean anything about my future husband???" Let's get real, that's what we were thinking about. Even when we were trying to be so religious and not think about it, we still were. I actually tried to avoid looking at for a few days. That was the last thing that I need to be thinking about in my current situation, and I knew it. There were things on there that definitely sparked my interest. I mean, who isn't interested in a mysterious, prophetic journal that a stranger gives you with a promise that it will reveal the secrets of God for your life? Even if you don't believe in signs, you're interested.
But what I was more interested in honestly was the journal revealing that there in fact was a shot at me and military guy getting back together. He wasn't married yet, maybe it would work out?
Not a chance.
Later that day, it finally came to me-the perfume, where I recognized it from. This is the part of the story that I never tell because it seems so incredibly far-fetched and cliche, but yes, this actually happened.
I had bought some kind of oil from the same store that I remembered had gardenia extract in it. I even remembered exactly when I had bought it and when I had worn it. I was wearing it before I met military guy, when I was planning to go North Carolina (which, I must mention, gardenias only grow in the south. I had never even seen one before since I'm from Ohio). I wore it every single day, but never considered the gardenia element because at the time it meant nothing to me.
And then I thought, "Why did I stop wearing it?" I thought that maybe I even still had a little bit left in the bottle and then was wondering where it was. I realized why, and I think I actually gasped. Because I had bought a new perfume when I met military guy. Not to please him, but it so happened that I grew tired of the oil around the time we had met. It was called, "Love Spell".
"Whoa. Weird", I thought. And no, I'm not saying that the perfume had a magical spell over me; it was the symbolism of it all that shook me so much. There was something about Gardenias that God was telling me was so important. It was the buying of the "Gardenia" perfume to replace the "Love Spell" perfume I'd been wearing all of that time that told me a new thing was about to transpire...
Another Sidenote:
I know that there are people from all walks of life reading this blog. Some Catholic, Agnostic, simply non-Christian, Charismatic Christian, some non-Charismatics who believe that "the gifts" or whatever you'd like to call them, don't exist today. Well obviously you've already figured out that I believe that they do exist, but I'd also like to give the disclaimer that I don't think it's supposed to be this way for everyone. God works with us all in such a different way, and at this point in my life, this was how He saw fit to do things. At the current stage of my life, He's much more subtle and less mysterious, and something about that makes it all much more wonderful.
Conference Day #2:
This was the big day for everyone-the prophetic day. I know what you're thinking, "This has C-U-L-T written all over it." Ha! Maybe so, (I guess we can never be sure) but a darn good one.
Therese and I were going in to prophesied over together, and we were feeling in an especially rebellious state that day which was not out-of-the-ordinary. See, we believed in it, but also mocked it. Strange how that works but that's how the cookies crumbled back then.
I won't give every detail, but when we went in there was a group of 3 people to give us a word from the Lord. Now, this isn't fortune-telling, but merely words of encouragement-which is really what the word prophesy means to begin with. It is overspiritualized today but really it is a very simple and useful tool for church edification, it just is unfortunately abused by many.
There was a middle-aged woman in the group with long and straggly brown hair. She studied me for a moment. We were encouraged to bring pens and a pad of paper to write down what they told us, but I actually took in my video camera! Hence the air of rebellion about us that day, I guess. She studied me, and mind you, these people know nothing about us. They don't even know our names. She told me, without knowing what I had just gone through in the past couple of days with much seriousness, "I want you to know, when you meet the right one, you'll know without a doubt in your mind that he's the right one."
I tried to not let on that my interest was peaked so just nodded and wrote it down in my new journal. She then rattled on about how she saw my friend Therese and I going into some kind of business together, selling our art. I don't think this will ever come to fruition but she may have been partly right as I did end up becoming a photographer and Therese and her future husband run an amazing T-Shirt printing business along with being musicians. You have to pick and choose from those things sometimes, what's true and what's false.
So, I would know without a doubt in my mind? How would I know? How could there possibly be no doubt in my always questioning mind? In my last effort to find out, I simply asked God, and His answer truly surprised me!
It was the second night during worship. I asked Him, "How will I know when I've found him?" It was spoken SO clearly, God said, "He will come to you dancing with gardenias."
....
