Warfare takes many guises. For Kerri and I, it usually happens right before something spiritually significant. The latest fun was right before my church's men's retreat. To be honest, until this past weekend, I had never been on a retreat. At least not one that wasn't required by my school. Anyhow, I took Friday off so I could go with Kerri to her ultrasound (it's a boy) and leave early with my community group. Well, as the enemy's humor would have it, he didn't really want us to sleep. We went to bed around 11pm. Right at 1am, Kerri found Page screaming in a pool of vomit. She got her up, put her in the tub and started cleaning her off. Of course, Emma was up from Page's wailing. So, after Page was cleaned up, dried off and in bed with me, Kerri went to put Emma back to asleep. Page threw up again while Kerri was in the other room. We now had to change our sheets too. Sheets off the bed, pillow in the washer, new sheets going down. 1:45am at this point. The pillow ended up gaining enough water to cause the washer to teeter out from the wall enough to pull the drain hose from the wall. As his humor had it, it was the hot cycle. Scalding water on my feet helped me realize that pretty quickly. Tally: two puked covered beds and an overflooded washing room. We grabbed every towel in the house and managed to mop up the majority of the mess. Washer reset, hose placed bask where it needed to be, towels washing. The house was relatively calm again. The kids had stopped jumping on the bed and hollering with midnight delight. No leaking from the hose. All seemed good. I turned off the light and asked Kerri, "What else can happen?" About 2 minutes later I heard the all-too-familiar jolt of a transformer crashing. The power went out and our 30 degree temperatures started chilling the house off pretty quickly. This was about 4:30am. 5:30am, Page threw up...again. Then, 7am came, she popped up and announced, as she does on an almost daily basis, "The sun's up, it's daytime, let's get breakfast." The day began. It seemed like it was going to be a great trip indeed.

I just wonder what it was really like for Isaiah, Joseph, Daniel, Jeremiah. Sure, we get to experience a little of what it is like to have the enemy coming against us. And, of course, the closer we are to God, the more intense it is. But, I know it's nothing like that for me. I remember hearing of Luther, as he wrote his Theses, and his flying inkwells. Whether it really happened or not, I have not idea. Putting it beyond the realm of possibility seems foolish to me, but I have a hard time imaging what sort of craziness holy people truly experience. There's the old story of a kingdom being run by insane people. I wonder at times if Christ was the king, looking around seeing nothing but sick, insane souls, tormented and blind...he being the only one truly capable of seeing. I know I'm not Christ, not even remotely close to holy people but I wish I had eyes to see, not light visions or impressions, but real eyes to see. Not that I long for, or even want the attack that comes with call and annointing, but I do long for gifting to rest on me.