Define "Big"

 

Three of our people being in Japan for two weeks means Rich and I are missing the pitter patter of little feet around here for her weekly 48 hour stays with Pappy and CiCi.  We miss her.  We miss all three of them.  There’s just something about knowing they aren’t three miles up the road, but instead, on a different continent.  Still, our excitement for them getting to have this experience rivals any feelings we could have of missing them.  When Kyra and Quinton starting dating at 16, all they ever talked about was how they would travel someday, so we are thrilled to watch them make a dream come true!

With my extra time I thought, do I want to write? I have been so busy birthing a new company these last 9 months, I have had no spare time to write.  Well, let me rephrase that.  I most certainly have had some spare time, but have been too exhausted from starting the business to even think about writing.  Do I want to sing? I miss singing more than anything.  But so much has happened and I have so much to say that writing won out.

Rifling through the last nine months to find a starting point is like sifting through a five-pound bag of sugar to find a grain of rice.  We ended November with a beautiful, long-awaited wedding that had been in the planning stages for a year and eight months.  There’s just something about our kids and their high school sweethearts becoming their spouses.  We are so blessed.  As the wedding approached, Kyra stopped her Lyme treatment as she was the maid of honor and her treatment protocol took a hideous illness and made the illness itself look tame.  She wanted to be 100% available for her bestie and future sister-in-law.  She never went back to treatment (we totally get it!) and so I stopped writing about the disease that we have all grown to hate so much. 

Then I began having massive female issues.  Two doctors told me nothing was wrong with me, that my hormones were stellar and I had not even started perimenopause yet….one told me that when I turned fifty and another just this last December at FIFTY-TWO.  Oh, I beg to differ (of course I always beg to differ with doctors, its why I don’t usually go, lol).  Then I came into a contact with a nutritionist who, unbeknownst to me, specialized in menopause.  When she heard my history she said, “You realize you have probably been in perimenopause for six years!” Then she showed me the part of my bloodwork that BOTH doctors I saw missed to show that was the case.  Finally, I no longer felt like I was losing my mind.  Pure exhaustion, an unexplained SEVENTEEN-pound weight gain (ya’ll, I’m 5’1 and take great care of myself, this was devastating!), and symptoms too numerous to mention.  The weight of the world fell off my shoulders when I realized this was in fact what was happening to me.

As we began to see the light at the end of the tunnel with many things, Rich and I decided to take one of our many trips through De Luz to head to the beach and go for a long walk next to the ocean.  Once we arrived at the beach, we both decided to make a pit stop to the bathroom before we started our journey in the sand.  But Rich never came out of the bathroom.  I waited and waited and thought, what on earth?  Did I miss him somehow and he’s already down at the ocean starting without me?  Well, that didn’t sound like him so I stayed put, until he finally came out of the bathroom walking along side some random guy. Dressed in pants with a perfect pleat, shoes with not one speck of dirt on them and a tidy, military haircut, Rich said his name was Omar.  Omar had been in the bathroom listening to a podcast about God when Rich walked in.  Some of you are laughing right now if you know my husband.  There is no required invitation for him to start talking to someone about God, he just does.  But the podcast was definitely a door opener.

As Omar began to talk to us, he said his spiritual gift was knowing.  Our curiosity was certainly peaked at what he meant by that when he asked Rich, “May I put my hand on your shoulder?” Rich said yes and instantly Omar said, “You might be a firefighter, I’m not really sure, but whatever you do it is brave and you save people, like knock down doors and run in and save people”.  I was taken aback for, even though Omar was wrong about Rich’s profession, he had no way of knowing how brave my husband was, that he has actually saved lives on deployments, as well as always being on a mission for soul-saving and telling people about Jesus.  The skeptical side of me won over quickly though.  I thought, come on, we are on a military base, 95% of these people are brave and he already knew my husband had an interest in talking to people about Jesus for they had already been talking for fifteen minutes or so.  He certainly could have been referring to “save” in reference to soul saving.

Then the man turned to me and said, “May I hold your hand”. 

“Sure” I said, reaching out my hand.

His eyes closed instantly and he said, “You help people, day in and day out, every single day, its what you do.  And you’re a mom, I’m not even sure if you have your own kids but you are a mom to everyone you meet.” At this point he teared up, pulled his hand away and hid it behind his back.  He said, “I can’t touch your hand anymore, I have to keep my hand behind my back because your reality is too big for me to handle and my hand is where I feel it, see?” He had goosebumps up and down is arms. 

My reality was too big for Omar to handle.  What does that even mean? I’m a normal wife, normal mom, grandma and I have a pretty normal career as a therapist.   He was almost spot on with everything else he felt, what did he mean by that?  It was at that point that we found out Omar was homeless, which is a rarity on base and he explained to us how he came about having a military ID.  He also began to say some really crazy things.  I tried to keep an open mind and think some of what he was saying could have a grain of truth to it, but some of it really seemed like a stretch.  So, Rich did what Rich always does, he bought him some food, gave him his phone number, and eventually we said our goodbyes.

That was two weeks ago and I have not been able to stop hearing the comment about my reality being too big.  Analyzing it, deciphering it.  I still have no idea.  Someone suggested, if Omar truly did have this gift, then when he touched my hand, he may have felt the stories I have to hold inside of me day in and day out of all my clients and that theory made a lot of sense to me.  Don’t think it hasn’t occurred somewhere in my trauma brain that he felt something BAD, like I am sick and don’t know it, or who knows what else, and he couldn’t take it so he had to stop feeling it.  The thought did cross my mind.  But in my heart of hearts, the place where I can truly pause to try and get a feel for what the Holy Spirit is trying to get through to my stubborn mind and heart, I think it is just what he said, “Big”.  And I don’t know exactly what that means, but I do know his wording, his tone, it all resonated with something I have felt since I was a kid and sang into my cassette player at nauseum.  I wanted to be the next Dolly, in other words, I felt like I was supposed to be something BIG (no pun intended, lol), until I switched to writing and poured through journals and won writing competitions, because I had an amazing English teacher, Ms. Horovitz, tell me I was going to do BIG things in writing, until I decided to become an actress, and did act until we decided to move to Massachusetts.  But to this day I see everything in life as a movie, I thought everyone did.  Every song I hear is a soundtrack to something.  And just yesterday I heard a Dolly interview where she said everything she hears is a song, that’s why she’s been able to write so many hit songs. 

Just since I wrote the rough draft to this post a few days ago, we have had something come to light about what Omar said about Rich.  That’s a post for another time, however, we realized Omar was not referring to Rich’s past, but his future, and, more importantly, Omar was right about something we didn’t even know yet.  We have no idea what he was referring to when it came to me, but we know full well that God will reveal it to us in His time.  Any thoughts out there on what you all think Omar might have meant?  I am taking any and all input, lol!