Holy Spirit, was that you?
Whoa. I’m in it now.
Imagine you are waking up … maybe your alarm goes off, maybe your cat meows for breakfast, whatever typically gets you out of bed.
Now imagine those rare days when you wake up before your alarm, before your cat starts getting all up in your face.
Can you picture a day like that? Good. That’s what kind of morning it was for me today.
Usually many of us have what sleep scientists call sleep inertia — the transitional state between sleep and wake — and that’s loaded with grogginess. But some days our brains start working pretty quickly, kind of like an adrenalin rush that gets us jumping out of bed. I’m usually starting with more than a few driving thoughts when that happens to me: Did my cat see me wake up? Do I have time to fall back to sleep? Do I have to pee? (Because if you are also a cat owner, you know, it’s over if you get up to pee.)
OKAY … stay with me here … because now I want you to picture the moment just before you open your eyes or stretch or become conscious that you are waking up. You haven’t even gotten to the level of thinking I referenced above. You don’t try to remember if you set the coffee maker or what’s on your to do list. You have barely opened your eyes to see if it’s daylight. You’re in THAT stage. (I think it’s NREM? I’m not a sleep expert so don’t hold me to that.)
Are you with me? I’m barely awake, teetering on wakefulness, and I think a thought that … well, it was not my thought.
“By the Grace of your Counselor, you are Saved.”
So … okay … WHAT HAPPENED THERE?
Full disclosure: I am a Christian woman. I know what Grace is. I know what being Saved means. I also know that God is known by many titles … Counselor being one of them.
I wasn’t reading the bible right before bed and I don’t have a habit of reading it first thing in the morning. Technically, I haven’t prayed or even remotely focused on God since last week. (I said I was a Christian, I didn’t say I was a “good” Christian. Don’t judge, that’s God’s job.)
So why am I sharing this with you this morning? Ahhhhhh … it all comes full circle with this … God wants me to tell you about what happened to me, of this I am sure. And there’s one other thing I know …
God is a part — if not THE part — of my Hero’s Journey
If you have been following me, you know that I’ve been struggling with what to write, what’s the writerly hero’s journey I’m on. I’ve written about heroic writers and setting writerly goals and being in the belly of the whale. I’ve taken breaks from Medium as I think, nobody really cares what I have to say. I let imposter syndrome get the best of me.
But today … I’m realizing I have SO much to tell about why to write. And someone here might need to read it. And it all begins with God.
Sorry, God. I’ve been such a fool.
Friends … God has been telling me for years what to write about. I have ignored Him. I heard him respond to my prayer audibly once, that was legitimate. He has winked at me more times than I can count. He has shown up in my Morning Pages and published my work and … man, He even made a Covenant with me. And it took me until today to feel so much conviction that … well, I’m not writing for ME. I’m writing for God.
Writing for God is what’s relevant. My Counselor. My Savior.
So … what stage of the Hero’s Journey am I on? It’s clear, isn’t it? God himself, in the form of the Holy Spirit, just met me on my Road of Trials … FRIENDS I JUST MET WITH THE GODDESS!
In Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey meeting with the goddess is the stage when the hero encounters … well, here … I’ll let him tell you (right from The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell):
“The meeting with the goddess (who is incarnate in every woman) is the final test of the talent of the hero to win the boon of love (charity: amor fati), which is life itself enjoyed as the encasement of eternity. And when the adventurer, in this context, is not a youth but a maid, she is the one who, by her qualities, her beauty, or her yearning, is fit to become the consort of an immortal. Then the heavenly husband descends to her and conducts her to his bed — whether she will or not. And if she has shunned him, the scales fall from her eyes; if she has sought him, her desire finds its peace.”
Now, if you’re not Christian, and totally into all things God and Holy Spirit and that level of Supernatural, you might not get it. I’m sorry. Because to me, the message in this journey of mine, the one I’m on, it’s EXTRAORDINARY.
My life itself is enjoyed as the encasement of eternity.
The heavenly descended upon me … I am writing down the truth that there is no greater love, that’s the all-powerful love in God’s Saving Grace is all I need to continue ahead.
As a writer, I’ve won the boon of love. Not because of anything I’ve done — nothing I’ve written, nothing I’ve planned, but because God gifted it to me.
It’s that simple.
Onward I go.
