Bonus Post: Personal Revelation

    I have only recently come to the conclusion that I don't have any idea how much I rely on the Lord in my everyday life. It's not common for me to have big spiritual breakthroughs and experiences; I've never had prophetic visions, dreams, or impressions of any sort of magnitude; I don't feel like I'm constantly hearing God in my head.
    And yet, He is there in my mind, telling me things instants before I need them, keeping me safe while I'm walking into and out of school or driving alone on the road. He nudges me to take different routes, to pause for half a second before crossing an empty street, to keep my mouth shut--or to open it--at just the right times to help other emotionally.
    I don't know how much I rely on God. But I am learning.

    Take last Tuesday, for example. My Lifespan Development professor gave us a six-chapter(!) reading assignment out of our textbook. It didn't connect in my brain that the assignment was six chapters long, and so I didn't get started on the assignment until Tuesday morning. To be fair, Labor Day was a busy day for me, and I wasn't home much at all, but as my mom pointed out, I could have been reading that assignment over the weekend. So I was struggling, Tuesday morning. I needed to complain, and so I did--for an hour and a half. Sorry, Mom.
    When I was done complaining, my older sister came in with a need to complain, which complaint pertained to her relationship with her fiancée, and a few things they still needed to work out. To put it shortly, communication is hard.
    I was listening in on this conversation, and near the end of it, Mom used the following analogy: "We are each other's laboratory experiments. We try things out on each other, and what we try doesn't always work."
    And then I, in a sudden bout of impulsiveness, said, 'And sometimes we explode!'
    In the instant after I said that, I worried I'd just opened my big blabbermouth and made the situation worse.
    And then all three of us burst out laughing. My comment broke the tension in the room, made us laugh, and somehow--somehow--helped my sister feel like everything was going to be okay.
    That... doesn't normally happen when I make impulsive comments.
    Which means that this one had to have been instigated by God, and oh how perfect was His timing!

    Update as of 9/24/23: There are now two accounts of this incident, one from me and one from my sister. If you want more details as to the context of the situation, visit my sister's post here.

    Here's another example:

    Today, on my way out of my high school so I could come home, I was about to cross a little access road that the school buses drive on to get to their docking point at the back of the school. I checked both ways, went to take a step onto the street...

    ...And hesitated on a sudden impulse.

    It wasn't a long hesitation--maybe half a second. But it was enough time for me to hear engine noise coming from around a little bend in the street, beyond what I could see. A moment later, a guy came roaring down the access road on a four-wheeler-thingy (not actually sure what it was) at twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, which is way too fast for a little road that school buses come into port on.

    If I'd taken that first step onto the street, I would have had to jump back, jump up, or dash across suddenly, depending on how far I got before this guy came along; and he would have had to swerve. Either way, chances would have been very high that I would have been hit while I was crossing the street.

    And remember, I thought the coast was clear. There was nobody coming from either side that I could see. But God knew, and He prompted me to stop for half a second longer than I thought I needed to, and as a result, I am safe at home writing this blog post rather than being splayed out and injured in the middle of an access road behind my high school. Maybe I'm being dramatic.

    And then a third example from last week:

    I was driving home from Irish dance class, and I reached a particular intersection where I needed to turn right in order to complete my journey. It was dusk, the light was red. I stopped behind the stop-line like a good little driver, then pulled forward a bit so I could see better. Unfortunately, there were no good gaps that I could pull into, especially since I drive a 4-cylinder stick-shift and can't accelerate to 45 miles per hour very fast.

    When the light turned green, here's what the person behind me saw:

    The light was green.

    I wasn't going anywhere for about 15 seconds.

    Thus, the person behind me, like a sensible person with some information about their surroundings, honked.

    In my car, I heard them honk and said, 'Shut up. You can't see what I can see.' (I have to admit, people honking behind me really ticks me off. It shouldn't, but it does. I suppose it's a failing of my humanity.)

    See, just as I was about to go (because the light was green), God tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Hey, Elia. Look over there.' I looked, saw two pedestrians entering the crosswalk. By law, I am not allowed to turn, even on a green light, while there are pedestrians in the crosswalk. And so I didn't turn, and was honked at as a result.

    I then applied that experience to God, because He sees things we can't and is patient with our impatience. But let me explain something, in case you missed it.

    When I was about to go, the pedestrians had just barely entered the crosswalk. I could have easily made it through before they reached where I was.

    However, if I had, the person behind me would have followed closely on my tail, and by the time they reached the crosswalk, the pedestrians would have been right where they were turning, which could have led to a collision, which could have resulted in one or both pedestrians dying--which would cause the person behind me to incur a charge of manslaughter. Not a great situation.

    Because I waited, the only damage done was to my patience as a result of the person behind me honking at me. Nobody was injured or killed, and nobody was guilty of causing that injury. As far as I know, we all made it home safely.

    All because God knew to put me, a person determined to drive the way the law says I should, in front of a person who was in a hurry to get home right at the time those pedestrians were crossing the street.

    And hey, let's be honest. Not all inspiration moments have that big of results. Sometimes, the extent of my inspiration is to look at the clock and realize it's bedtime. Sometimes, it's remembering I still have to do my chores while I'm on my way out to shut the chickens in.

    Sometimes, it's as small as when I started to do the dishes without even thinking about it. Even though I didn't get all the dishes done before I had to leave for seminary, it still made a big difference in my mom's morning because I started the dishwasher, which hadn't gotten started the night before, so that she could empty it and have an open dishwasher when she went to work on the dishes later that morning.

    I rely on the Lord in my daily life a lot more than I ever realized I do. He keeps me safe. He helps me get everything I'm responsible for done on time. He uses me to help others.

    If you like challenges, here's mine. Spend this next week paying attention to the moments when you do things you weren't expecting yourself to do, like hesitating half a second before crossing a street. Pay attention to the moments when you get strangely impulsive, and say something you didn't intend to say, and help someone else's life as a result. Pay attention to those moments, when you do something because it seems like a sensible idea at the time, and it turns out that it was just the right thing to do at that moment, and how did you ever think of it?

    Pay attention to all that. Maybe you'll come to realize that you, too, rely on the Lord a lot more than you think you do.

P.S. -- I upload on Mondays. But this one was time-sensitive, and I'm ahead on uploading, so I didn't want this to come out next month and be totally out of context/timeline. Thus, it is a Bonus Post. :)