Back
during the summer of 2012 I had been caring full-time for my father-in-law,
Paul, for almost 10 years. I finally reached a point where I had come up
against a wall and desperately needed a respite. Paul came to live with us in
2003. He had Parkinson’s disease and it was no longer safe for him to live on
his own. The level of care he needed was continually escalating. Shelley, my
wife, agreed with me that I needed a break and my brother Kim would help her
care for him while I took off for a few days. My plan was to pray and meditate
at my cousin’s place at Table Rock Lake, not far from Shell Knob, Missouri.
Ready
to leave, I had my suitcase completely packed. When I went back to get it to
load it into the car I forgot that I hadn’t zipped it up yet. I picked it up
and dumped everything on the floor. Not an auspicious start. Then on my way out
of town I decided to gas up. Try as hard as I could the access door to the gas
cap wouldn’t open, no matter how many times I pushed the release button on the
dash. Just as I was thinking that I was going to have to take a chance on
breaking the switch or physically pry open the door to the gas cap I realized
that the trunk was wide open! The switch to open the trunk was right next to
the switch that opened the door to the gas cap.
My
cousins have a place right at the edge of the lake. On their property they have
a for real full-scale, traditional tipi. This is where I planned to sweat,
meditate and pray. There was a drought that summer so in addition to taking
care of some prayer requests I also intended to pray for rain. My main prayer,
though, was to have the strength, patience and ability to continue taking care
of Paul. We all knew what his prognosis was too well. He was going to get
worse. A lot worse.
The
first time I went to the tipi my cousin LeAnn had some trepidation. Mainly she
didn’t want to send me home…you know…dead from heat stroke. I could see the
front porch of their house through the open flap of the tipi. Periodically
before I settled into a nice meditative state I would see her coming out to
check on me. For some reason when Shelley’s not around people seem to think
that I need extra watching.
I
finally did hit a transcendent state. That doesn’t happen for me very often.
While I was praying for rain I felt drops falling on my face. It took a bit for
it to sink in that it was raining on my face. You might remember that I said I was
inside the tipi. I opened my eyes and looked up. Though I wasn’t sitting underneath
the vent opening, the rain was swirling down in such a fashion that it came
down on my face. I looked outside through the opening and could see rain
hitting the ground. It was so dry that the raindrops made little puff clouds of
dust as they hit the ground. It only rained for about 30 seconds. I kind of
wished that I had prayed for a specific amount of rain.
Unsure
of what to do next, I decided to pray some more even though I had been sweating
in there for over an hour already. So, I closed my eyes again and prayed about
what I should do next. A few minutes into prayer I again felt something on my
face. I opened my eyes and discovered that I was covered with granddaddy long
legs spiders. I was sitting cross-legged on the floor with my back against a seat.
The seat was covered as well. Nothing else. Now normally I would have been
freaked out by this but as it was I was utterly calm. It was time to leave.
I
went into the tipi other times but I never reached that wonderful state of calm
and acceptance again, though I did sweat a lot. That isn’t a bad thing if one
of your goals is to do that very thing. People pay good money to go places to
sweat and I was doing it for free and having a pretty good time to boot on the
hot summer day that the Lord provided.
All
good things have their time and at last I had to return home after being well cared
for by all my cousins. On the way home I was having major trouble staying
awake. Probably all the carb loading that I had done during my stay was making
me drowsy. When I say drowsy I mean slap yourself in the face to keep from
nodding off while you’re driving drowsy. Not good.
I
pulled over at a rest stop not far from Parsons, Kansas. I thought that if
perhaps I could just get 20 minutes of nap I could make it on home to Park City,
just north of Wichita, KS. Unfortunately I was low on gas and couldn’t leave
the car running with the a/c on. I tried resting on a bench underneath some
shade trees at the rest stop but it was just too hot. My only option was to get
on down the road. I figured that I could make it to Fredonia, only another
half-hour away and where I planned on gassing up.
I
pulled over again to the side of the road as I was leaving the rest stop and
prayed, “Lord, I’m in trouble here and I can’t stay awake. I need your help to
safely make it home.”
With
more face slapping I made it to the gas station outside of Fredonia. While I
was gassing up I was absorbed with my thoughts of what do I do next because I
really needed to make it back that day. People were counting on my return to
take care of Paul. Shelley had to go back to work and Kim was taking care of
our mother at the family home as well as helping Shelley, so he was carrying a
heavy load.
The
next thing I knew someone was tapping me on the shoulder and talking. I turned
and there was this face just inches away from mine and he was jabbering. All
that I could really make out is that he was calling me “Boss” every few words.
He was standing way inside my physical comfort zone. I asked him to step back
and let me finish gassing up, then we would talk.
After
I finished I sized him up. He was a young, long-haired guy dressed up in something
that looked very much like a toga. Back in the day he would have been called a
hippie. (I was one for a while.) He was driving an old beat-up van and wanted
to know if he could trade some jewelry that his wife had made for some gas. His
story was that they were musicians and headed to a church in Wichita where his
wife’s dad was a pastor. I told him that while I didn’t need any jewelry, I
would give them enough gas to get to Wichita. He thanked me profusely.
After
taking care of them at the gas pump I went inside and picked up some munchies
for the rest of the trip home. I couldn’t get the whole incident out of my
mind. It was just so unusual. I was just outside of Augusta and about half an
hour from home, when it dawned on me that I hadn’t been drowsy even once since
my stop. One of my many prayers had already been answered, just not in a way
that I expected.
I
made it back to Shelley and Paul feeling renewed. And we did make it all the
way with him on his life’s journey. There were more tough times but we knew
that God was with us every step of the way.