Yesterday, I began getting a headache in the evening. Assuming I must be dehydrated, I kept sucking down the water.

Earlier in the day, I had spent some time in the sun. It was 99 degrees outside, so I was pretty sweaty and gross. Since I was so gross, I decided the best follow-up activity would be sweating some more at the gym. Anyone who gets a lot of headaches has probably been told plenty of times that they just need to drink more water. Truth be told, this is the reason that I drink more water than anyone I know. I spend a large percentage of my day swallowing water or using the restroom. (We can safely assume that dehydration is rarely the actual cause of my headaches.) But, I’ve heard it enough that I still assumed my headache that began forming in the evening was due to a drinking failure.

As the night went on and my headache progressed, I realized how much water I had taken in, the frequency with which I needed to empty my bladder, and the reality of how great I felt when I got back from the gym and was in the kitchen, baking. If anything, I might have overdone the water intake for the day.

11:00/midnight rolled around and I started my prayer time, logging into to the blessed prayer room webstream… a lifeline for extended times away. Rose (a beloved part of the extended IHOP-KC family) had surgery coming up within a few hours and there was a lot of emphasis on prayer for healing. And there was A LOT of life on the prayers. I was definitely feeling it, from my little prayer room extension… my bedroom.

Around 1:20, Emily Russell prayed. And that was it. I don’t know what happened, but it was like she cracked something open. I sat weeping on my bed for the next 30 minutes.

Now, crying tends to make my bad headaches worse. (Probably no more than refusing to cry, though.) So it wasn’t looking too good for me and my headache. But I was really dialoguing with the Lord about His desire to heal, His promises to our community, and the promises of scripture. He IS a God who heals.

This might sound weird, but in all of my investigation and searching for my migraine triggers, there is one thing I have noticed that has been terribly consistent (well, kind of two, but I won’t go into the second). You won’t find this trigger listed anywhere that talks about migraine headaches. My “trigger”? Prayer.

The more I have broken my agreement with consistent headaches in my life, the more I have woken up from my place of resigning to it, the more I have asked God to heal me, and the more others have partnered with me in praying for healing… the worse and more frequent they have gotten. Every time I stand for healing prayer in the prayer room or sit in the back row for healing prayer, I am almost guaranteed noticeable backlash in the very near future.

So, as I sat there joining my heart with the prayers of my community and asking the Lord to do what He longs to do, I couldn’t help but laugh at the rapid worsening of my headache.

I don’t understand why it is like that. I definitely don’t fully understand warfare. I’m not OK with the fact that prayer, in essense, seems to make my headaches worse. But I am taking it as evidence that the Lord has finally awakened me to the real battle for my physical healing. He is able to heal me. And I believe that He will. And the “backlash” has given me hope that sickness is desperately fighting against me… grasping on as it ultimately looses its grip on me. I also take it as a sign of hope in my once apathetic and numbed heart. As Moltmann has said: as freedom gets closer, the chains begin to hurt.

By 3 AM, my headache had landed and settled in to its usual loction, right behind my eye. Definitely a migraine.

It was pretty miserable, but not bad enough yet that I couldn’t sleep. It was well after four before I managed to be unconscious, but I did, happily, get a little sleep. A little. Until I finally reached the point where that was impossible.

I spent most of that morning (when I should have been sleeping) pleading with the Lord, trying desperately not to move, and in far too much pain to have any hope of being unconscious. You wouldn’t believe how long I resisted my miserable trip to the bathroom before the desire to NOT wet myself won out. I probably should have let myself throw up at that time. It took a lot of restraint not to. And I might have felt a little better if I had. But I despise vomitting. (As helpful as it sometimes is.)

I returned to my bed, updated my status to ask for prayer, and continued to lay there, pleading with the Lord to do something about the pain.

After some time, sleep came. That in itself felt like a miracle.

I woke up a couple of times to find that I wasn’t in excruciating pain anymore. I would thank the Lord, roll over, and go back to sleep. Such joy!

I finally got out of bed at 2:30. And my head didn’t hurt at all. No, really… not at all. I know migraine headaches can be as short as a few hours, but I can’t say I’ve ever been that fortunate.

I’m usually pretty dizzy and nauseated, with a low-level headache for the day or two after a migraine. But…

I continued through the rest of the day feeling wonderful. As if I hadn’t just suffered through one of my most horrendous migraine headaches. In fact, it didn’t even feel like the day after a migraine. I think twice in the entire day, I felt a little sick/dizzy. But it passed almost immediately and may have been a food thing.

I have never had that happen before. I have never had a headache of that intensity so quickly and completely disappear.

So… my conclusion: prayer works. Thank You, Lord!

As far as I know, that’s the last one. And until I know otherwise, I will continue to live in the hope and possibility that it is.

That’s the tension of waiting for healing. True hope causes you to live every day in the possibility that maybe that’s your day. (Thank you, Leah Morgan, for reminding me of that and helping give me the courage to continue hoping as the circumstances overwhelmed me.) Hope is dangerous. It opens you up to pain (and joy). Because hope deferred truly does make the heart sick. Disappointed hopes are painful because hope is the stubborn resistance to the temptation to be unfeeling and indifferent. Hope like that is only possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are too weary, without His strength, to continue in the vibrant life that hope awakens.

So, I am still choosing the life of hope. I am leaning on the Holy Spirit, daily being renewed by His life within me. And the God of Hope is filling me with all joy and peace in believing, causing me to abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit (Romans 15:13).

And I am grateful for His healing power, manifesting itself in the world, in my life.

So, I’m really in love with the Holy Spirit right now.

Fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit is one of the wisest things Mike has ever told me to do (from the platform). Fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit is one of the wisest things I have listened to Mike about and done. The Holy Spirit is so easy to talk to.

Most of my childhood, I struggled with anxieties related to abandonment and neglect. (…Despite that fact that I was the only child of two fantastic, godly people. They weren’t PERFECT, and the accuser is all about working fear in our hearts.) The Holy Spirit never leaves. He is ALWAYS with us. He will be forever. His presence is inescapable.

It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we abound in hope. As many of you have surely realized by now, hope has become one of my big things… the things that I think about and talk about and pray about all the time. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives me joy and peace. He is the one who teaches me and reminds me of the promises of God and causes my heart to come alive in waiting for those things.

John 14-17 is my current obsession in the Bible. Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit quite a bit in those little chapters. And it’s beautiful. I love it when one of the persons of the Trinity speaks about another person of the Trinity. Few things are as beautiful as one person’s description of another that they love and know perfectly.

The Holy Spirit serves me all the time. What humility! God lives in me. God serves me. (How much do we ask for the ministry of the Holy Spirit.)

The Holy Spirit is my Comforter. When you stop numbing pain and running from it, a Comforter is a pretty handy thing to have.

He is the Spirit of Truth. I am becoming a lover of truth. He is making me a lover of truth.

He is the Spirit of Life. He has awakened my dull, deadened heart and made me alive. He has made me love life. He is renewing me. He is renewing the earth. He is preparing a bride for the worthy Bridegroom.

He leads me into all truth. I want to pursue the knowledge of God and all that He would reveal to me with all that I am.

He gives me strength and grace to overcome. He empowers me to love.

He reveals Jesus. Jesus reveals the Father. I know God by talking to God. And He delights in giving revelation as I hunger and search.

He makes me love Jesus. He makes me love the Father.

He leads me perfectly.

I LOVE the Holy Spirit. He is my friend. He is  my companion. He is God… WITH me.

Holy Spirit = WOW. (Like, hours and hours and hours of WOW… in tears and joy and wonder and love and all of the richest of emotions.)

So, during our midnight intercession set tonight, I’m pretty sure that Ms Leah Chandler was praying for me. Well, she was praying for the church in Kansas City… but as she prayed it felt like she had been eavesdropping on my conversations with God. Or at least my conversations with Amanda… or my reading blog. I haven’t had a prayer hit me like this in a long time.

I would tell you how many times I have listened to that prayer on the webstream… but it would be moderately embarrassing, and I stopped counting anyway.

See… this is what happens when you pray the word. You find people in the midst of their deepest struggles and give them strength, courage, and hope.

Leah’s prayer was good. So good that I decided to type it up (and the antiphonal stuff that the singers were doing). All of the bold font is Leah… the choruses are italicized. It doesn’t really matter. They were all praying together.

Here it is:

I’m going to continue praying for the church in this city out of 2 Thessalonians 3.

Pray for us that the word of the Lord would run swiftly and be glorified, just as it is with you, for the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one. Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ.

Lord, I pray, that today Your light indeed would break in. That it would be like a hedge, like a fire, all around the hearts of every Christian, every believer in this city. Lord I ask that the evil one would not have access to Your bride in this city. Lord, that he would not be able to come and steal the truth from their hearts. Lord, that the word that has been planted within their hearts would be guarded. Lord, I pray that nothing would come and snuff out the truth that is within the hearts of the believers in this city. Let Your word be a hedge around them. That they’d be guarded from the evil one. Guarded and established in the word of God. Lord, that they would stand firm against the attacks and the schemes of the enemy. Lord, I pray that Your bride would rise up and take a stand with the sword of the word of God in her hand and use it as a weapon. For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but is against principalities of darkness and every wicked force of this world. Lord, let Your bride arise with the word in her heart. With the word in her mouth, speaking it against the strongholds over this city. Lord, I ask that you would guard Your bride. Guard her and establish her from the evil one in this city, I pray in Jesus’ name.

Come guard Your bride from the evil one

Having done all, just stand

Guard us with Your word

With Your word in our hearts. With Your word in our mouths.

Would you put your word in our hearts.

That we would stand firm, with the word of the Lord

With truth in our hearts.

That having done all things, we would stand

We would stand

That we would stand
With the word of the Lord
And Your truth in our hearts
Oh, guard us from the evil one.

Release Your truth. Hedge us, God. Come, God. That we would stand. The truth in our hearts. Guard us God. Let your truth bind us up and hedge us in. Establish us, God.

I just declare over this city, “The Lord is faithful. The Lord, your God, is faithful. He is a strong tower. His name is a strong tower, a mighty fortress.”

Lord, I pray that your bride in this city would run into the strong tower of Your name and find refuge and security in the strength of your name, in the power of Your word. Lord, that we would not be tossed to and fro by the winds, by trials and tribulations, but that we would stand in the confidence of Your name and who You are. I declare over this city, “The lord is faithful. The Lord God is faithful. Faithful to those who say yes to the king of kings and the lord of lords. Those who are marked with the blood of Jesus have a strong tower, run into the strong tower of the name of Jesus Christ.” I declare over this city, “The lord is faithful.”

Let us run into your name and be saved.

A mighty fortress is the lord.

Faithful and true

We find our hope in you, oh God

We find our hope in you

Strong tower

We find out strength in you

We place our trust in you, Lord

All our trust, God. You are able to guard us.

A mighty fortress is the lord, our God

You are able to keep us. This is who You are. We trust you, God. You’re able to keep us. Able to guard us. This is who You are. You are faithful. Mighty God.

A mighty fortress is the lord, our God
(You’re faithful and true)

I love what we do.

I was at church (St. Andrew’s Episcopal church) from about 5:15 PM to 3:15 AM tonight. Ten hours. Ten of them.

Overall feeling about the evening: I love holy week!!!

Today was Maundy Thursday. A day that sounds like three different days of the week, if you’re really a nerd about it. (Maundy sounds like Monday. There was a Seder… and Seder Day clearly sounds like Saturday. And, of course… we have Thursday. Which sounds remarkably like… Thursday.)

The evening of much churchness kicked off with a Seder. I had never been to a Seder before. Talk about some interesting tastes. Mmm… bitter herbs. The dinner they served was really good, though. You should ask Aaron Swanger about the french toast carrots and the trident lamb. Speaking of lamb… I really love lamb.

After the Seder, we headed upstairs for the Maundy Thursday liturgy. Unlike the Palm Sunday service, tonight’s liturgy was back to the three-books-and-a-piece-of-paper juggling game. When they don’t kill 50 trees to put everything in the program for each service, it’s a little tricky to keep up. (Of course, I usually just skip the Bible for the scripture readings. They are, in fact, READING said scriptures out loud, so there isn’t much point to my staring at the words as they go along. Especially since I only have two hands … and three other very important materials to navigate.)

They put a little music and a general outline of the service on the program, giving page numbers for everything that you will need to turn to in the book of common prayer, references for the scripture readings, and song numbers for the hymnal. I always feel like I am missing some layer of whatever is happening in the moment as I flip ahead in the books to ensure that I don’t ACTUALLY miss something later. One of these days, I’ll just have most of the every-day stuff memorized. Of course, today was tricky, because we were doing Rite II… and we do Rite I in the early-morning services that we attend. Or it’s the other way around? Oh I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m barely keeping up with this stuff!

The highlight of the Maundy Thursday liturgy, if you ask me, was the foot-washing. Not that I get excited about touching the feet of a stranger… or having a stranger’s fingers between my toes… or walking back to my seat (and my shoes) on a somewhat dusty floor with slightly damp, bare feet. But foot-washings always kind of mess with me… in a good way. While washing someone’s feel almost feels natural, I have a hard time letting someone else wash my feet (never mind the fingers-between-the-toes part). Seriously… I usually find myself on the verge of tears every time my feet are washed (excluding daily self-washings of the feet, obviously). Tonight, of course, was no exception. I seriously need to learn to receive. (He’s getting me there… gradually.)

I ended up washing Father Mann’s feet tonight. The thing that’s funny about it is… it’s Father Mann. He’s like the Senior Priest and Chief Executive Something-or-other of the church. I see the man up front every Sunday (so some degree of unreal familiarity) and really don’t know him personally at all. (I’ve at least had conversations with Father Spicer and Mother Hutchinson.) But Father Mann’s feet and I… we’re actually fairly well acquainted, at this point.

(For the record, that no one was keeping and no one wanted to keep, his left foot was much more thoroughly cleaned than his right. About half-way through the first foot, I was like… Wow… should have done that differently. More water, Christine… more water. I may have overcompensated on the other foot. Who knows. It’s not like his feet were actually dirty, anyway!)

The Maundy Thursday liturgy ended in silence. Talk about an awkward dismissal. Actually, it was really good. It just seemed like it should be really awkward. (You know you’re writing a great blog when you immediately contradict your own statements. Go, Christine, go!)

The silence was the beginning of the Maundy Thursday Vigil… and continues until noon today (Good Friday).

To cover the vigil, they had a board where people could sign up for hour-long shifts to come and pray. Since we do that kind of thing every night… we decided it would be a good idea to stay all night. Well… Richard decided… and I started to get really excited about the idea of it. Hours upon hours of silence and solitude. It’s something I really don’t do that much of, but I knew would probably be very (challenging and) good for me. Sadly, Richard and I were the only ones (in our group) who stayed.

Lesson learned: Next time I decide to do something like that… I might need to bring my own chair or something. Those wooden pews are not very conducive to six hours of sitting. Not at all.

I actually really enjoyed the hours of silence. OK… so I had my moments of boredom and restlessness. But those mostly took place every time I had to get up to go to the bathroom. Seriously, I’d be having a great time in the room, I’d get up to avoid wetting myself… and I’d suddenly have a hard time getting myself to go back into the room. Part of it was the simple pleasure of walking around and getting my butt off of that wooden torture-bench. It felt great to stand and walk. Huh… maybe I should have just done that in the chappel. OK… new strategy for next time! (Although, I think that someone standing or pacing around might make some people a little uncomfortable. Everyone pretty much… sits and kneels.)

When you have more than 6 hours of near-silence, it’s nice to get to dive into the word for some of that. I spent a lot of time in the book of Exodus. Wow. And Psalm 22. Wow again. I took Psalm 22 especially slow. It made me cry. Fortunately, I did not cross into the heaving sobbing weepiness of the night before (when I was sitting on the FRONT row in the prayer room). I just had the moisture spilling out of the eyes bit… while my nose reached a point of manageable runniness. (No snot gushing uncontrollably out of the center of my face.) I ventured briefly into other areas of the Bible… but those were the parts I loved the most and gave the most time to.

We actually ended up leaving early. Around 3am, I guess Richard got the brilliant idea of coming back to church at noon. So… he needed to get home and sleep. The trip home was slightly delayed by Richard’s kind offer to buy a massive energy drink for the officer who was stuck watching the church from 8 PM to 8 AM. We went in search of a gas station that Richard had accidentally found with his GPS earlier in the night… and didn’t find it. So we had to go with a gas station that was probably closer and definitely easier to find (and that we had known the location of from the very beginning of our journey to get the drink).

When I came home, there was a very active (and, lets be honest, loud) gathering of friends at my house from the usual Thursday night hangout. Aaron said I looked like I was experiencing serious culture shock when I first entered the scene. It was a HUGE contrast from the blissful silence of the last several hours. (Richard did spend about an hour singing and chanting. It was the one hour of the night when we were the only ones in the room. To be completely honest, it was actually a really good hour. I enjoyed the generally unobtrusive interruption to the silence. And his voice carried nicely through the large, empty space. And… some of the stuff he was singing… oy.)

Oh… by the way… the little “Resurrection Chapel” (sign on the door) where they had the altar of repose, was super cute. Lots of wood. Each section in the ceiling had 20.5 boards. (Yeah, counted those right after one of my boredom-inducing bathroom runs.) It kind of reminds me of a log cabin… the same kind of feel. OK… so the whole church is absolutely beautiful. I love it. But… I really enjoyed that little area tonight.

I’m still recovering from the 2-2.5 hours at home after all of that… but I feel really good. I like prayer. I like God. I actually like silence, too. I wish I could have more nights like that.

On Saturday night, during our team’s set, I was not running screens and simply sat in the room, participating in the intercession set. When it came time for small group prayer, I did something that I haven’t done in months. I actually got up and prayed in a small group.

To be completely honest, the experience made me want to continue avoiding small group prayer for another 8 months or so. One of the people in my small group just kept praying… and praying… and praying… and praying. And Richard wasn’t playing a particularly small-group-friendly song. I can’t tell you how many times I started to turn to walk away (from the other two girls in our group of 3) before I would stop myself and continue to wait it out. (Yep… I’m pretty weak.)

A couple hours later, however, I decided that I might want to keep doing that small group prayer thing.

At the beginning of that gruelingly long small group prayer, I prayed for Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church.

Richard began attending Saint Andrew’s when the Nazarene church he was attending stopped having their early morning services on Sunday. Once he has been going for a while, he kept talking about the experience, and I eventually decided to try it out.

I ended up crying through about half of the first service that I went to. The liturgy was just so rich… the scripture readings, the truths we sang, the things we declared… the creed… the Eucharist. All of it was amazing and so alive to me. And I have been going each Sunday that I am able, ever since that day. I intend to go through at least a full year of the church calendar. (And things are getting really exciting about now, as Holy Week begins on Sunday. Lent is nearly over!)

Back to Saturday’s 4am set (technically Sunday morning).

In our small group, I prayed that the Lord would breathe life into the scripture readings and sacraments… every bit of the liturgy at Saint Andrew’s that day. That, as the word was being read and the songs were being sung, He would move hearts. I especially focused on the scripture readings… that He really would really break in as His word was being spoken.

Well, about two hours later, I found myself standing between the pews of that beautiful church, facing towards the center of the church where they were about to begin the gospel reading.

The reading was John 11, the story of Lazarus and his sisters. “I am the resurrection and the life.” About a dozen or so verses into the reading, tears began spilling down my cheeks. My heart was absolutely tender before the Lord and I was overwhelmed with emotion. I started crying several other times throughout the remainder of the service, as well.

On the drive home, I was thinking about the service we had just left and realized that my experience at church that morning was exactly what I had asked the Lord to do. I cannot speak for the hearts of the rest of the congregation. But the Lord was speaking to me, to the deepest places within me, throughout the entire service. I’ll take that as an answer to my simple little prayer.

And that’s more than enough to make me keep asking.

I have had at least 10 blog posts that I wanted to write in the last week. I just haven’t had the time to write any of them. So they have just kind of been bouncing around in there. Which has lead to an unecessarily high amount of traffic in my head.

That’s something I have realized about blogging: it helps clear out some of the traffic in my mind. I’m constantly thinking about a ridiculously dense assortment of things. Sitting down to write is like sending much of the traffic off on an exit ramp. It opens up some needed space.

The nice thing about my frequently high-traffic thought-life is that God can totally keep up with the conversation. When I am thinking at Him, He doesn’t get thrown off by the chaos of it all.

That said, I still like it more when I can find that still, quiet place of communion with God. Where He isn’t just helping me keep my sanity in the midst of that chaos, but is drawing me in to the place where I can rest in Him.

Yeah… so I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. I guess I’ll just assume that I got there and end it at that.

Awkward ending number 106.

Seriously… all of my best moments in the prayer room happen after 6am… ’cause here’s another one.

Around 6:30 am on the day of this post, I found myself praying for someone who’d hurt me. (For the sake of simplicity, we will call this person Theophilus. And since my randomly selected name is masculine, I’ll be using he, him, and his.)

I’ve prayed for Theophilus MANY times since the infliction of the pain and what-not… but this time… I was REALLY praying for him. I don’t even know what brought me to that moment or how to describe it… but I was truly gripped in the place of intercession. I was weeping and desperately crying out to God with a deep desire to see Him move.

It was like I really caught a glimpse of God’s heart for Theophilus. Suddenly, I was outside of my own hurt and saw his pain and his suffering. And it totally messed me up. He was wounded. He was broken.

I found myself asking for his healing in a way I never had before. My cries for God to strengthen and free him rivaled my most desperate pleas for myself in those times when I most truly recognize my need for a Deliverer, Savior, and Redeemer.

I was asking the Lord God, merciful and compassionate, longsuffering and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness to come and be Himself to Theophilus (Exodus 34:6). I was calling on the God of the promises…. the God who restores and heals and saves; the God who looks on the poor and lowly with compassion; the God who makes all things new; the God of hope; the God of peace; the Father of glory; the One who is called Faithful and True and is coming to bring justice on the earth.

It’s been a long time since I prayed for anyone or anything with that kind of a burden… with that much intensity… and that much face leakage.

I don’t know if it would be more accurate to say that this time of intercession was a sign of healing or a further step in my own healing. Perhaps both. Surely both.

God did something in my heart to bring me into agreement with His own desires for Theophilus… His own desire to come and do what only He can do. And there was something significant about me asking Him to do those things… something powerful in God bringing me to a place of speaking those blessings over him. It’s the power of forgiveness and letting go.

And while I know that God is faithful to complete that which He has begun, I think it would be folly to say that my own healing has reached its completion. There are so many walls to tear down. So many lies and accusations to chase away with the light of the truth. So many fears to cast out in His perfect love. But I know that He is doing it.

In fact, God has been pulling up a lot of that stuff in the days following that time of intense prayer. In the last two days, especially, I am crying a lot again. But I know that He is bringing me to the place of trusting Him and leaning on Him. And as my heart pants and my strength fails me, I am learning to live in the reality that God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psalms 38 & 73).