Lent day 37 - unexpected answers ( testimony)

Are you sitting comfortably?  Then I'll begin

Six months ago I embarked on a course at church.  Once a month on a Saturday a bunch of us have been getting together to look at making everyday life more extraordinary as we walk with Jesus.  At the start of the course we were all encouraged to think of something we really wanted God to do for or in or through us - and it had to be something which was really going to stretch us out of the old comfort zones.   They called it our ' impossibility dream' - a kind of ' what if ?' thing.   What if I had all the resources and time in the world at my disposal and there were no obstacles in my way..... then what would I really really want to be doing for God?

                                   
There is a dentist in our group.  His impossibility dream is to be able to provide free reconstructive dental surgery to women who have been victims of domestic violence.   Isn't that cool?  It is impossible for him right now because his business just cant afford to subsidise the very great costs of the treatments.  But that doesn't mean it's impossible for God.   He has started to pray and believe that God is the God of the impossible and that just maybe his dream could become a reality.

Lots of other people in the group have unsaved family members, or broken and estranged relationships as their impossibility goals.   One young woman is the only christian in her workplace which is a very crude and worldly place to work.  Her dream is to be able to be herself at work, to let her colleagues know she has a faith and to start some conversations.  In a hard drinking, loud swearing, badly behaving culture this seems impossible.  But she believes God can change things.  She just doesn't quite know how or when He is going to start.

My impossibility dream was to do with my memory.   It has always been terrible but in the past two or three years it seems to have got worse.   I have started to have huge gaps and blanks.  It came to a head when I was in the car one afternoon with the boys and for a scary few minutes suddenly forgot which side of the road I should have been driving on!   eeeeek   So I went to the GP who put me on thyroxine for underactive thyroid.  And that does seem to have helped a bit..... but I was still pretty sure I was starting with alzheimers or dementia.  So I made my impossibility dream that God would heal my memory.

The course we are on is all about us being partners with God in what He is doing in our everyday lives.  So as part of the impossibility dream thing we had to write down the dream and then write down some steps we might be able to take to start to make it happen - alongside praying for the dream and sharing it with others on the course so that they could pray too.
I decided that I was going to get my memory prayed for as much as possible.  So on my monthly worship leading session at the healing service in Belfast I made a bee line for the ministry team to ask for prayer.   But what happened was rather odd.   Because despite asking for prayer for my memory what the prayer team actually said was ' no, we aren't going to pray for that.  We are going to pray that you stop worrying about it.'     I was a bit annoyed.  a) Id asked them to pray and they hadn't really prayed and b) I wasn't worrying about it and they had told me I was!!    However, I was aware that God might have been trying to tell me something - so I went away a bit perplexed not knowing quite what to think

That was before Christmas.  Since then I've got a new job and gone from working two mornings a week with Jo Jingles to working four days a week and I suddenly find that I'm really really busy.  Not just physically, but busy in my head.  With lots and lots of stuff to remember.

On Monday I was at Gladys's funeral and a really odd thing happened.  One of Gladys's elderly friends, who I have met a couple of times before, came up to say hello to me.  And having said hello she suddenly launched into this story about how she had been really worried for over a year that she was developing alzheimers.  She had gone to her GP and the GP had told her to stop thinking about it.  So she had taken his advice and had stopped thinking about it.  And now she was feeling much better and she wasn't worried about her memory any more.   As she was talking to me I was simultaneously thinking ' why are you talking to me about this?  This is a really random conversation to be having at someones funeral with someone you barely know'   and at the same time I was thinking ' this is so weird it must be God.  She knows nothing at all about me and my memory.  I need to listen to this'

I came away from the funeral having reached the conclusion that God had told me twice that I don't have alzheimers or early onset dementia and that if I stop thinking about it and get on with being busy then my memory will sort itself out.    This was not the answer to prayer I had been anticipating.  Not at all.   But funnily enough at the start of the course I had written down that I was giving God till March  ( when the course ends - it actually finishes this Saturday) to do something about my memory.  If He hadn't done anything then I was going back to the GP to ask for more thorough tests.
It is the end of March - and what God seems to have done is not to have answered my prayers to improve and heal my terrible memory.  But instead He has reassured me that the key is to hand it over to Him and get on with doing life.   So that's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to keep busy, not think about my memory and see if, just like Gladys's friend, in a year's time I can testify to the fact that I dont have a problem with my memory any more.