“She said that she saw a horizon, and suddenly a big burst of bright light came up from that horizon line. And when she saw the vision, she heard God say that a breakthrough that we had been praying for was coming.” – 2022
Tonight was a particularly hard night.
Actually, let’s be real…
It’s been a horrible month.
The kind where there is no light at the end of the tunnel. When you just want to scream that you don’t understand. That it’s never going to get better. That you’ve been cheated from the life you thought you were going to have.
And God??
Where is He?
He keeps saying He’s here, but right now…it doesn’t feel that way.
Right now, it would take Jesus literally standing in front of me for me to be fully convinced He’s here.
Doesn’t sound like the girl who has been writing the last few blogs, does it?
The girl who loves the name of God, El Roi, the God who sees me.
Because this girl has a lot of emotions going on right now, and what God is seeing is a straight-up snarl in His direction. And in two seconds, He’s going to see me break down and cry.
But I’m afraid if I break down and cry at this moment, I might never stop.
Because tonight, it just feels like too much.
Matthew 11:28
“Then Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.’”
To anyone who reads these blogs, and for the platform I’m building, I want to be clear about one thing.
God is not asking for perfection to have a relationship with Him.
And thank goodness for that!
He’s simply asking us to come as we are.
And my hope is that during our times together, you will see that in me.
I want you to know about the goodness of God. The beautiful relationship that I have with Him.
But I don’t want to just be the Christian blogger who is trying to tell you that with God, life is always wonderful.
That would give you the idea that you would have to have it all together before God can be in your life.
No.
I want to be the Christian blogger who is willing to admit that there are days that I feel disheveled and a mess. That I don’t know God’s plan, and I’m having a really hard time understanding why He is letting things happen.
I hope that in my emotional confessions, you can find grace for yourself if you’ve ever struggled and wrestled with God.
I’m thankful that I have found that relationship with Him over the last several years.
The no-pretending relationship.
No, I don’t believe He loves when I question Him. Or when I have moments where, even though I know that He’s here, I say that I don’t see Him.
If I’m being honest…I think my statement above, where I said, “Right now it would take Jesus literally standing in front of me for me to be fully convinced He’s here,” was less about questioning God being here and more about trying to hurt God back.
If that isn’t honesty for you…then I don’t know what is.
I mean, think about it.
Have you ever just wanted to fight with someone?
You can’t control what’s going on around you. So instead of fighting what you can’t fight, you fight what you can.
And often, that’s God.
For me, It looks like blame, lack of trust, questioning, control.
To others, it might look like addiction, abuse, hatred, anger, resentment.
Even as extreme as denying God’s existence at all.
But here’s the thing about God’s love.
He’s got big—huge—shoulders that can take it.
And tonight, even though I silently (in a public blog) made a purposeful jab at Him to not be the only one hurting…He still loves me.
Is God mad at me for that?
No.
Is He right here holding me in my meltdown?
Definitely.
Does He forgive me?
Without a doubt.
Have I hurt His feelings?
I actually think so.
I think at this moment that He is feeling the same sadness that I am. For me and my situation, but also because I’m taking it out on Him.
My thoughts keep going to John 11:32–36, the passage where Mary has herself a similar moment to the one I’m having and pushes at Jesus after He arrives after Lazarus had died.
In a nutshell:
- Verse 32: Mary falls at Jesus’ feet and says, essentially, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
- Verse 33: Jesus sees Mary and the others crying, and He is deeply moved.
- Verse 34: He asks where Lazarus was buried.
- Verse 35: “Jesus wept.”
- Verse 36: The people see His tears and say, “See how much he loved him!”
Mary basically says, “Jesus, where were You? If You had been here, this wouldn’t have happened.”
That’s not a statement of polished faith.
That’s grief talking to God honestly.
And Jesus doesn’t say, “How dare you question Me?”
He doesn’t walk away because Mary is angry or disappointed.
He stays.
He weeps with her.
And then the people around Him recognize exactly what His tears reveal:
He loved Lazarus.
Mary’s words didn’t make Jesus love her less.
Her disappointment didn’t disqualify her from His presence.
She came to Him with the very thing she didn’t understand, and Jesus met her there.
So I need to retract my initial statement.
God is, in fact, here.
I’m just hurting, and it makes it hard to admit He’s here.
And tonight, like Mary, I questioned Him myself.
Because in 2022, God sent a vision to my husband and I.
And on the bad nights, my Mary moment is this question:
“If You were going to give me this promise, that vision, why are we still here? Why is my son still hurting? Why did You let me hope?”
It’s time that I share the next chapter of my testimony.
I’m going to cheat a little.
I told you that for a long time I heard God tell me that I needed to write.
And I did write it out one time…but I thought small.
I sent an email.
At that time, I didn’t realize that God had bigger plans for me and my testimony that I see now.
But that email allows me to share with you now a couple of things.
One, you’re going to see where God has been woven into my story from the beginning.
Two, that He clearly is here.
But also three, that if God calls you to do something, He won’t let it pass you by.
That this email below would turn into a blog and a platform that God can use.
And number four is just for me.
Because on nights like tonight, or months like this month, I need to remember how God has walked with me through it all.
When I’m currently having trouble seeing it ….
December 29, 2022
My name is Kelley Carter, and my family and I attend Crossroads Mason. I’ve felt for a while that I needed to share my camp testimony, but I haven’t been able to fully put it into words. Maybe I’ve still been processing. But I’m going to try.
When I am at camp, I always pray for a “burning bush moment.” A moment where God is so vivid in front of me that I can’t miss Him.
This year, it was as if God said to me, “Take off your sandals, for you are on holy ground.”
But my story doesn’t involve just one camp. God had a running dialogue with my family and me first at Couples Camp, then Family Camp, and finally with just me at Woman Camp.
I have a 7-year-old son. The most precious gift that God has ever given me.
For several years, though, we have been in a very difficult season. When he was 3, he was abused at a daycare, and because of that, he learned fight-or-flight behaviors with stress. For several years, we have struggled with him having violent outbursts. Outbursts that had left me injured and tired.
I was living in constant fear, trying to be one step ahead. I couldn’t enjoy the happy times because I was dreading the struggle. I used all of the energy I had to get him help, and nothing ever seemed to work.
I’ve so many times said, “If he’s not okay, I’m not okay,” and that was the truth.
I felt hopeless.
Couples Camp
Going into 2022, I was struggling. After years of the same struggle, it was finally taking its toll. My marriage was starting to struggle with the stress of everything. We found ourselves fighting with each other when we couldn’t fight with the situation.
Couples Camp came at the perfect time for us.
We needed to step away. We needed to focus on us and, for once, not the situation we were in.
I don’t know that we ever had an actual conversation about it, but it was like we had a silent agreement to only talk about ourselves and not about the specific struggles we were dealing with at home.
And we did just that.
Between the services, campfire chats, solitude time, and finally our date in the woods, we really worked through some of the struggles that we were facing. I had those warm fuzzies you want to feel with your spouse.
But at the same time, in my mind, I hadn’t really seen God in a huge way.
I knew we were reconnecting, which was the point of Couples Camp, but nothing like a “burning bush” moment.
The last night there, we were all sitting around the fire. It was getting really late, and someone mentioned going to the prayer tent before it closed for the night. Several of us walked up there together.
I’ll never forget the knot in my stomach that I felt when I was about 10 feet from the tent.
I wanted to leave.
I didn’t want to go in.
Something was telling me to turn around.
I remember having enough of a reaction that my husband looked at me funny. But I knew those feelings were not of God, so I pushed through it, and we went in.
We were placed with a husband and wife. I wish now that I could remember their names, but it has escaped me.
But what happened that night started us on a path that led us to the next camp and then the next, till finally I’m here tonight writing this.
When we sat down, the husband told us not to think anything if his wife paused to listen to God. He told us how God speaks to her, and he didn’t want us to be surprised if a moment like that happened.
We discussed our marriage with them. Again, not letting them know anything that was going on at home. This camp was just for us, and we had stuck with that.
When they began praying over us, the wife started praying first.
Right in the middle of her prayer, she stopped and was quiet for a few seconds.
And then I felt her shift.
Her knees had been facing in toward the middle of our little circle, but in those moments of pause, I felt her shift my direction.
Then she continued to pray.
After her husband prayed, she looked at us and apologized for the brief pause in her prayer. She said that in that moment, God gave her a vision.
She said that she saw a horizon, and suddenly a big burst of bright light came up from that horizon line. And when she saw the vision, she heard God say that a breakthrough that we had been praying for was coming.
I think I stopped breathing at that moment.
Inside, I knew it wasn’t about our marriage. I knew it was about our son.
That’s when we shared with them what we had been dealing with, and then we prayed again.
We were there so long that it seemed like the entire camp was asleep as we walked back.
My husband and I went from speechless to then trying to wrap our heads around the vision that God had given her.
The next morning, I woke up early and was making my way in the quiet toward the porta-potties. I was halfway there when, as clear as if someone actually said it out loud, I heard in my head:
“Did you miss it? I gave it to you. Your burning bush moment.”
That same morning, I baptized my husband along with Brian.
How faithful God felt in that moment.
Obviously, my husband and I came home feeling refreshed. And I truly believed that in those moments, God healed our son. That our struggle was over.
But it wasn’t long before another outburst happened.
Then another.
Then another.
And with each outburst, I think I became a little more bitter.
I remember even praying, asking God why He would show someone else a vision and not me.
I mean, after all, it was about MY life, about MY breakthrough, right?
I had moments of doubt that it actually happened. I felt stupid, to some degree, because I had so wholeheartedly believed that God had healed my son and it was over.
I felt even more stupid that I had told people about it.
Our struggles became more raw.
I think before Couples Camp, I had grown numb. But after camp, it seemed to hurt my heart more than it ever did before.
The Dragonfly
There was one night I was reading to him out of his children’s Bible, and we were on the story of Gideon.
When I read how Gideon specifically prayed to God, asking for a sign, I felt inspired.
When my grandmother passed away, the preacher had preached at her funeral about a dragonfly. How when dragonflies hatch, they are under the water, and they stay there for sometimes a long while. Even years.
But when a dragonfly comes out of the water, that is when they get their wings to fly, but they can never go back to where they were before.
That has always stuck with me.
I mean, granted, it stuck with me because every time I would see a dragonfly, I would joke that it was my grandma. But the theme of coming into a new life and not being able to go backwards always stuck with me.
So that night, I prayed a specific prayer, like Gideon.
I prayed that when my son was healed, God would send a dragonfly and have it land right on my son.
Would you believe a week later, a dragonfly flew onto my porch?
It didn’t land, but it flew right by my face, past my son’s face, and then disappeared.
You wouldn’t think it odd except I don’t live around water. I’ve lived in my home for almost 20 years and have never seen a dragonfly before.
I just remember smiling from ear to ear, and I don’t believe it was a coincidence.
I told my son that day what I had prayed for.
After that day, I saw a dragonfly almost on a daily basis and typically in places you’d never expect to see one.
I had gone years without seeing a dragonfly, and I was literally seeing them every single day.
It became a special moment between him and me, looking for our daily dragonfly. And when we would see it, one of us would acknowledge that God sent it.
There just couldn’t be any other explanation.
It renewed my hope that I felt like I had lost after reality set in after Couples Camp.
Family Camp
When Crossroads started talking about Family Camp, we immediately knew we wanted to go.
We bought a bigger tent and had so much fun as a family preparing for it.
However, in the days leading up to camp, our son had significant struggles and outbursts.
I lost count of the times that my husband and I would say, “There is no way we can go.”
About a week before camp, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream.
When I woke up, my stomach was in knots and my heart was racing. But I remembered what the dream was.
I dreamed that God told me that our son would get baptized at Family Camp and that he would be my dragonfly that I prayed for.
A new beginning that wouldn’t go back.
I’ve been a Christian a long time, but that was the first time I ever felt God speak to me in that way.
So I knew we needed to go to Family Camp, regardless of my apprehension.
I didn’t share my dream with my husband or son. I didn’t want to influence a decision that he needed to make on his own.
So regardless of what was going on, I pushed that we still went.
The night we got to camp, my son had an outburst.
He rarely had difficulty in environments other than home, but here we were, in a tent, in the rain, dealing with our biggest fear.
We got him calmed down — thankfully due to a little toad that hopped into our tent — and were able to get up to worship.
I didn’t feel like I had any ability to worship.
And if I’m being honest, I didn’t feel the ability to even sit next to my son at that moment.
We stayed for the rest of worship, but my son was just “off.” He wasn’t fully out of the episode, and I knew at any moment we could flip right back into it.
I was thankful he fell asleep without problems that night.
We started a fire, and I sat outside — again, in the rain — and pouted.
I pouted to God that this wasn’t what I signed up for.
Family Camp was supposed to have the same breakthroughs as Couples Camp did.
So why was I in the position we found ourselves in?
The next morning came, and like it often does, my son was back to himself.
So we started doing all of the things.
The adventure hike, the animals, lunch, and best of all, the water slide.
It felt wonderful to hear my son laugh and enjoy himself.
I started to feel myself relax the longer we played.
After we got cleaned up from the day, we decided to hit up the family prayer tent.
As we walked to the tent, our son was adamant that we needed someone to pray with us.
I explained to him it wasn’t like Woman Camp or Couples Camp — he had heard us talk about prayer tents — and that the containers in the family neighborhood were how it worked at Family Camp.
He just kept being insistent that we needed to pray with someone.
And even though we were in a prayer tent working through the activity in the containers, he just wasn’t having it.
I knew if God was putting it in his heart that we needed to find someone to pray with us.
But how?
Literally the first night they said, look for someone with a rubber bracelet around their wrist.
Out of hundreds of people, how could we ever find someone wearing such a small bracelet?
So again, I found myself praying.
As we were walking up toward the main tent, I just started praying and asking God that if He had put it in my son’s heart to be prayed over, that He would direct us to the person.
Right as we came up on the dirt path, Chuck and his wife were walking straight toward us.
So I asked him if there was someone who could pray with us.
In that exact moment, a gator drove up, and Chuck pointed and said, “There is your person right there.”
Within 5 seconds of asking who could pray with us, they literally drove right up to us.
Again, it just couldn’t have been a coincidence.
Two women got out of the gator and agreed to pray with us.
One being Laura Willis.
We walked over to the prayer tent of a neighborhood, and I just laid out our story with tears rolling down my cheeks.
I typically don’t talk about it much around our son, but at that moment, I needed it all out there.
In that moment, I was craving prayer and specific prayers.
So they prayed over us and cried with us.
Our son had a moment of shyness, but the more they prayed, I just felt his body relax.
Laura prayed over him from the tip of his head down to his toes.
He was getting what he asked for, what I think God placed on his heart.
Afterward, we walked up to the main tent for prayer time, and when we got up there, I heard someone say, “Look at the rainbow.”
When I turned around, a rainbow was coming down from the sky and looked like it was directly going into the prayer tent that we had just left.
Another person said, “God’s promises fulfilled,” and I remember thinking, “Yes, they are.”
Sunday morning came, and when we woke up, our son told us that he wanted to get baptized.
That he had a relationship with God and he wanted to make it public.
I still hadn’t shared with him or my husband my dream that he would be baptized.
I’d like to describe to you what I felt in that moment when he said it.
I think it was a little bit of every emotion.
Throughout service, he kept asking when it would be over. He had made a decision, and he just couldn’t wait.
When they finally dismissed us down to the pond, he left us and took off running as fast as his legs would carry him.
He was the first person down there.
And he ended up being the first person baptized that day.
It’s one thing to see your child get baptized.
It’s another thing to have the honor to do it yourself.
When the three of us entered that water together, it felt like it was going to be a new beginning.
And for a few weeks, it was.
When we got home, things were great. He told everyone about camp and how God sent a rainbow and how he just couldn’t believe he got baptized.
And again, just like before, I believed it was over.
I believed that God had healed him and our struggles would be instantly gone.
Till they weren’t.
A few weeks after camp, the outbursts came back, and they came back with a vengeance.
He was the most violent he had ever been.
To the point we ended up at Children’s Hospital ER having to make the decision to admit him into inpatient psych or not.
I was heartbroken.
And I think at that moment, everything I had believed God had said to us earlier in the year was a lie.
I don’t know if I didn’t believe He had actually said things or not, but I sure as heck didn’t believe any of it was coming true.
And then we just existed.
Every day felt like waiting for the next outburst to occur.
My husband and I had lost those warm fuzzies we had had at Couples Camp, and we were either surviving together or at each other’s throats.
And the worse it got, the madder I was getting at God.
Why did He bother to let us have those experiences at camp if things were only going to get worse?
At least before camp, I was living in a situation that felt hopeless.
Now that I had been given hope, it all just felt like a smack in the face that hurt so much worse.
I’m just thankful that I serve a God who can shoulder the fact that I was angry at Him.
I just kept figuring that as long as I talked to Him about being mad at Him, it was okay.
So three weeks later, when Woman Camp came around, I was definitely not in the right mindset.
And bad news: I had agreed to be a camp host.
How was I supposed to lead a group of women when I wasn’t feeling I could even take care of myself?
And how could I leave my husband alone without backup?
Things were bad.
Really bad.
In the weeks between Family Camp and Woman Camp, we had been referred to Cincinnati Children’s for a psych consult, and I believe with the help of God we were able to get an evaluation almost immediately.
Until that time, there had been a waiting list for an appointment that spanned months.
We got in within days.
As a result of that referral, our son was diagnosed with ADHD.
Could that be why we’ve struggled so much?
I wasn’t sure, but I had to wait until I saw his primary care doctor, which was scheduled for the day after Woman Camp ended.
It was all feeling too much, and I was not in the right head space.
I’m telling you now, if I had not read the email asking more people to be camp hosts and become one, I never would have gone to camp.
But I couldn’t abandon our group.
So with every doubt I could think of, I packed my gear and took off for camp.
I went in there wanting to hear and see God, but also not wanting to hear and see God, if that makes any sense.
I’m glad God understood it at least.
Woman Camp
When Everything Got Worse
Woman Camp was wonderful, and I began to feel my bitterness starting to crumble.
But just a little.
God and I had a throw down during solitude time, and I really gave Him what for.
But then I took communion alone-ish in those woods, and it hit me.
God knew exactly what I was feeling.
He also watched His Son suffer. He watched His Son hurt to the point of death.
And He suffered some of the same feelings that I was feeling over my son.
He did that so that I could sit there in that moment and lash out at Him.
God was able to handle my feelings that day.
And in reality, He was hurting just as much in that moment as I was because I am His daughter, and He hurt because I was hurting.
I left solitude time feeling much more at peace than I did walking in.
But even though I had that feeling, I still didn’t feel that “burning bush” moment.
Looking back, I probably should have.
I honestly think I’m processing a lot of it now that I’m writing it than I did that day.
I remember thinking, “Now is the time that I need to go to the prayer tent,” because I was wanting to force a burning bush moment.
But the line was huge, and I wanted to make sure my girls got lunch.
That night at dinner, the double rainbow showed over the tent.
Everyone was running out taking pictures and talking.
I stood there in awe.
The rainbow came down to the earth in the exact spot that it had at Family Camp.
So many times since Couples Camp, I had tried to force the vision of a bright light coming over the horizon like God showed the woman who prayed with us.
I had even had a friend who knew someone that did prophetic paintings, so I paid him to paint me a picture.
It’s a beautiful picture, but it never felt right.
But seeing that rainbow reaching down to the horizon, in the exact same spot that it had at Family Camp, I thought to myself:
“Could that be it?”
What better light to shine over a horizon, to provide the promise of deliverance and breakthrough, than a rainbow?
I know that rainbow meant something to a lot of people that day, but I’m holding onto that little piece of it that was just for me.
But still, I didn’t feel my moment.
Again, now that I’m writing and processing it truly for the first time, I’m questioning why I didn’t see it then.
But I hadn’t.
That night I went to the prayer tent, in my mind to finally have “my moment.”
Only to find that they had stopped the line for the night.
I kind of moped back to my campsite and planned to go the next morning.
Crabby me went right back to my dialogue with God and accused Him of not giving me my “moment” because camp was practically over.
When I went to the tent the next morning, I was lucky enough to have not one but two women to pray with.
And I broke down.
Everything started spilling out.
Everything I felt. All of my fears. My anger.
It all came tumbling out.
And they just cried with me.
Before they even prayed with me, they cried tears that reached God’s ears probably more so than their words.
One of the women’s name was Jill, and the more I talked, I could see an understanding in her eyes.
She shared that she had similar struggles with her child.
Although the statement was brief, suddenly I didn’t feel alone in my fight.
We just, for a moment, talked about the ADHD diagnosis and the improvement she had seen with medication.
It helped calm some of the fears and questions I had for our appointment the next day.
Someone else had lived through some of the same struggles, and she not only survived it but had a relationship with God that even allowed her to pray for others.
It gave me hope.
I left feeling like I had a kindred spirit with her, and I had only met her for a few minutes.
After service, I had the privilege to baptize three of the girls in our group.
And suddenly, I went from feeling broken and useless — I mean, what else would I be if I couldn’t help my son, right? — to feeling like I had a purpose.
God was using me.
God allowed me to feel that even though there was a circumstance that I couldn’t change, God could still use me.
And maybe God could still use me at home with my son.
So I left thinking that maybe the baptisms were my burning bush moment.
That maybe my moment at Woman Camp was just more of a match flame vs. an all-encompassing fire, but I should still count it.
The Beginning of the Breakthrough
The next day, I went to the doctor with my son, and we were prescribed medication.
I can’t tell you what I felt hearing the doctor say that all of our struggles could be directly linked to ADHD.
It allowed me to walk away from the trauma I carried that my son had been abused at a daycare.
It gave me hope in the future.
But, of course, the medication wasn’t an immediate fix, and I found myself feeling overwhelmed and afraid again.
Afraid to hope things could change.
Afraid of what the medication would do.
Afraid I’d make wrong decisions.
It was a struggle that week, and I felt myself creeping back to a world of negativity and fear.
The high I was feeling after camp just a few days before was gone.
But Sunday morning rolled around, and when I walked up to sign my son in for Kids Club, there was Jill, who had prayed with me in the prayer tent.
At that moment, I knew what my burning bush moment at camp was because I immediately felt it in my heart.
She was my moment.
God had sent me a friend to walk beside me during this journey.
Someone who had been there.
Someone I could talk to and ask for medical advice just as much as I asked for prayer.
We had never met before camp, and with a campus size as large as Mason, to find her standing right in front of me again was not a coincidence.
A New Beginning
I’m writing to you tonight with what I want to say is a new beginning.
Things haven’t been perfect, but the more I research the diagnosis, I’ve learned that they’ll never be.
And that’s okay.
I at least have answers.
But I do believe that God has finally brought us to a season of healing.
Our life the last couple months has been dramatically different.
I think the breakthrough that God promised us at Couples Camp has been fulfilled.
In fact, I think God gave me one more burning bush moment just the other day at the Christmas Eve service.
During worship, my son was raising his hands in praise while we were singing.
Something I haven’t seen him do before.
The hands that used to only reach up for me now were reaching up to a Father who can give him so much more than I ever could.
And that’s when I noticed he was wearing my Couples Camp buff around his neck.
I don’t know why he had it. He had never worn it before.
But that day, something in him made him grab that buff and put it around his neck.
The sermon specifically asked:
“What breakthrough are you praying for?”
The same words of the promise that God gave us at Couples Camp.
The same place my son was currently wearing around his neck.
And in that moment, I felt it.
I felt God give me confirmation that we had finally arrived at the breakthrough He had promised so many months ago.
God used all three camps this year to meet us where we were.
He used camps to put the right people in our lives to pray over us.
He used the holy ground to speak to us directly.
And He used a rainbow to show me the vision of that promise.
I want to finish this letter with a verse that God gave me somewhere along the way.
I’ve always been the type to pray and then open my Bible, hoping that God would miraculously have a new page inside that was a letter directly to me.
Sometimes that method works, and I hear God’s voice.
Or it can cause severe anxiety, especially if you open to certain books in the Old Testament where God is really angry with someone.
Sometimes God grants you a verse that you know is meant to give you answers and peace.
Sometime after Couples Camp, when I was having a bad night and needed to hear God in my situation, I was directed to this scripture from a simple prayer of tears and the opening of my Bible:
Habakkuk 2:2–3
“Then the Lord said to me, ‘Write my answer in large clear letters on a tablet so that a runner can read it and tell everyone else. But these things I plan won’t happen right away. Slowly, steadily, surely the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. If it seems slow, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.’”
I don’t believe any other scripture could have better fit our situation and our experiences with God at camp.
It was a scripture I clung to when I felt our situation was hopeless.
When I questioned if God was really going to show up.
“For it will surely take place” finally has found its way into my heart.
God is so faithful.
Kelley
Four Years Later
That email was the prologue and chapter one of my testimony.
I think I’ll title it:
COME ANYWAY
Learning to Find God in the Middle of the Story
Come to God angry, come exhausted, come doubtful, come disappointed, come messy—but come anyway.
And the cover will be this image…
Because after four years, God finally showed me the vision
Two weeks ago, I was back out at Woman Camp.
In a similar but different sort of way.
I still came empty and questioned God about the same struggles.
I’ll save how He revealed to me that being empty meant He could fill me for another blog.
But this time, I came as part of the prayer team.
On Saturday night, the prayer tent closed at 10 p.m.
As a team, we had prayed for a total of eight hours that day, open to the 1,800+ women who were there.
The theme this year was “Lighten Up,” and leaned into the things we carry that we are not meant to carry, or the things we try and control that we are not meant to control.
God’s presence spoke to those places within the hearts of the women, and we had the privilege to pray with them.
But when Saturday night ended, there was a heaviness that I couldn’t shake off immediately.
So while everyone went to their tents to sleep, I started walking.
But my legs felt heavy.
They didn’t want to carry me.
So I turned around and found myself standing, in the dark, on a hill, all alone.
Below me was the pond that my husband and son had gotten baptized in.
Behind me was the prayer tent that God had met me at so many times.
And on the horizon was the most beautiful sky I had ever seen.
It was close to midnight, so everything was dark.
Off on the horizon, on the left, there were two large, fluffy clouds that kept lighting up on the inside from a lightning storm.
Occasionally, there would be a zigzag bolt that looked outside the cloud but never went down below it.
Every few seconds, the lightning flashed inside them, each little bump and layer of the clouds catching the light differently.
To the right of the clouds were clear skies.
And so many stars.
And one beautiful shooting star.
Being on hundreds of acres away from significant light pollution, I was able to see the distinct contrast between the two.
I sat there for the longest time just watching the sky.
Just me and God…
(and 1,800+ women)
I sat in silence.
I prayed.
I worshiped.
I rested.
It wasn’t until I got home that, for the third time in my testimony, I heard God say…
“Did you miss it?”
It was the vision.
The bright light on the horizon.
The vision God had given someone for me.
He finally showed me just like I asked Him to.
And it was more beautiful than I could have ever imagined.
Four years…it was worth the wait.
…….
But what I imagined as the promised breakthrough didn’t come with the vision.
And, in fact…
that hope felt so far away.
Since I’ve been home from camp things have been…hard.
Sitting in the parking lot of Children’s Hospital praying you didn’t have to go in and have your child admitted type of hard.
The heartbreak hard…
But God had shared the vision with me…
Why?
It wasn’t until I started researching the scientific components of what I saw that night that I began to see things differently.
Maybe the breakthrough isn’t something I am supposed to see coming.
Maybe it is something I am supposed to learn to recognize during the storm.
Maybe I kept waiting for the darkness to disappear, when God was showing me that light can exist inside it.
Maybe I kept waiting for the answer, when He was already giving me glimpses of it.
Maybe I kept waiting for someone else to tell me what God was saying, when He had been waiting for me to look up.
And maybe, when I finally did, He whispered:
“Did you miss it?”
Sometimes darkness isn’t removed; the light is revealed from within it.
What I saw that night.
The clouds weren’t actually producing light themselves.
The lightning was happening inside them, and the clouds revealed the light.
Light was happening inside the darkness.
The clouds were still there.
The night was still dark.
The storm hadn’t gone away.
But suddenly, for a split second, I could see light where I thought there was only darkness.
And that is such a different picture of breakthrough.
We often think breakthrough means the darkness is gone.
We tend to imagine God’s answer looking something like:
Problem → God intervenes → problem disappears → light.
The diagnosis changes.
The relationship is restored.
The financial situation turns around.
The thing we’ve prayed about finally happens.
The storm passes.
And sometimes, yes, breakthrough looks exactly like that.
But sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes we’re still standing in the same circumstances, asking the same questions, carrying the same hurt…
…and something inside the darkness changes.
Not necessarily the circumstance.
Our ability to see God in it.
That’s what the clouds that night did.
The lightning didn’t make the night disappear.
It didn’t turn midnight into daytime.
It didn’t remove the clouds.
It didn’t even make the storm stop.
It simply revealed what was already happening inside the cloud.
The light was there.
You just couldn’t see it until it flashed.
And there’s something incredibly comforting about that.
Because maybe there are things happening in our lives that we can’t see yet.
Maybe God is moving in places that still look dark from the outside.
Maybe the answer is forming before we can recognize it.
Maybe something is changing underneath the surface.
And every once in a while, God gives us a little flash.
Not enough to illuminate the entire path.
Just enough to say:
“Look. I’m here.”
Sometimes we pray:
“God, take this darkness away.”
And maybe sometimes His answer is:
“I’m going to meet you in it.”
Not because He wants us to stay there forever.
Not because the darkness doesn’t matter.
But because His presence isn’t limited to the places where everything is already bright.
He can be present in the middle of the thing we’re begging Him to remove.
That night, I didn’t remember the 2022 vision when I was standing there.
I wasn’t trying to recreate it.
I wasn’t searching the sky for confirmation.
I simply was drawn to be outside, and I found myself looking at a dark sky where light kept bursting through the clouds.
And then…
“Did you miss it?”
What if this changed the entire meaning of breakthrough?
Because if we only recognize God when everything works out, we’ll miss Him in an awful lot of our lives.
But if we learn to recognize the flashes—
the unexpected peace,
the perfectly timed encouragement,
the tiny bit of hope,
the person who calls at exactly the right moment,
the strength we didn’t know we had,
***flash of light***
The flow of this blog in one setting (it’s almost 1am on a work night) because every word I typed felt God inspired and comforting medicine to my hurting heart.
***flash of light***
It’s going to be okay—even if it doesn’t feel like it. That’s was the purpose of my vision.
This song has been on repeat for me this week and the perfect closing to this chapter…
“I didn’t know the Healer ’til I needed healing
I didn′t need a Savior or some kind of anchor ’til I lost my way
And I didn’t know the Father ′til I felt like an orphan
And I didn′t need a river, a gracious forgiver, ’til my soul was stained
You took my hurting and gave it purpose
Thank God for the anger that forced me to pray
Thank God for the silence that taught me to wait
If He spared me from breaking, and God knows I did
Then I never would′ve ever known how good God is
I never would’ve ever known how good God is
I didn′t know the Spirit ’til I felt His power
I didn′t see the light ’til He opened my eyes in my darkest hour
I didn’t know the Lion ′til I heard His roar
When I was surrounded and couldn′t fight without Him, not one second more
So thank God for the anger that forced me to pray
Thank God for the silence that taught me to wait
If He spared me from breaking, and God knows I did
Then I never would’ve ever known how good God is
Thank God for the weakness that showed me His strength
Thank God for the fire that forged me with faith
If He spared me from drifting as far as I did
Then I never would′ve ever known how good God is
I never would’ve ever known how good God is
God is good
God is good
God is good
No, I never would′ve ever known how good God is
I never would’ve ever known how good God is
Thank God for His kindness to give up His Son
To sit there and watch as He says, “It is done”
If He spared Him from thorns and the nails through His wrists
Then I never would′ve ever known how good God is
I never would’ve ever known how good God is”
❤ Kel
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