Missing The Moment and Paying Attention

A Short Personal Exploration

When I met my daughters’ father, I was eighteen years old and didn’t yet know the Lord. What I also didn’t know was that he - David - was what some would call a backslider, and he had a mom who was a prayer warrior (she’s the one who prayed me into the Kingdom of God but that’s another story). And somewhere along the way in her journey she had met the Lord and she had raised her two sons (minus the daughter that died at age five) in the Lord. But I knew none of this when he approached me at the park and asked if I had a light.

And the fact that he’d known the Lord didn’t surface right away, especially as he was the one who helped transition me from a lifestyle of getting high on the weekends to getting high on a daily basis; his lifestyle simply wasn’t conducive to witnessing about the Lord or anything related to spiritual matters. So when David started talking about visions he’s had, I wish I had paid more attention - although I can count on one hand the number of times he spoke of his visions. I didn’t realize the weight of the words he spoke at that time, and what he was really trying to communicate. Because I was too busy getting high. But one of the things he saw in his visions was the end of his life, and he spoke of that. And of things that would happen after he was gone.

But one of his visions was of me. He saw me before we met, he said, and he tied it to something spiritual, which I don’t remember. This was the guy passing me the joint so I hardly paid attention. What I’m trying to say is that I missed the moment. I missed too many moments, not just with him, but with my own children. And hindsight may offer 2020 vision but it also offers regret if one chooses to dwell in that chair. Life truly is a vapor, even more so if it’s not lived well and with intention. It’s all too easy to drift. Especially without an end in view and not noticing the markers and the things that mark you along the way.

But my message is two-fold – it goes a bit beyond “don’t miss the moments.” But yes, pay attention. And as the word “pay” implies there is a cost to truly paying attention. One can hear but not really listen. And that was me. And I now know he carried some type of revelatory insight. And whether I believed him or not (or whether you believe me or not) I can no longer discount the words he spoke. Because the day or two after my salvation encounter with Jesus I boarded a greyhound bus to go and visit Dave and meet his family for the Christmas holiday with my baby daughter and very large family Bible in tow. I was still soaking in the word; I couldn’t absorb enough fast enough. And when I was sharply awakened from a God dream only to segue into a fast moving three-part (internal) vision. Each picture, as it flashed before my mind’s eye, came with a short-sentence message, which I heard audibly. And one of those pictures was that of a man sitting across from me with a chessboard between us. He had curly brown hair and glasses and he wore a short sleeved collared shirt. And this was the man who became my husband, the man I did in fact play chess with for a week’s duration after he gave me a ride home every night from some week-long church event we were having.

Only God could foresee and orchestrate such a thing. And only God could seemingly close my remembrance of this while I was actually meeting and encountering my husband-to-be. During these months of working with him on the drama outreach team I had no remembrance whatsoever that this was the man in my vision. It was as if I forgot the vision entirely. It was only during our seven-week-long engagement that the remembrance came crashing back and the eyes of my heart were “enlightened” (Ephesians 1:18). I literally did a spiritual backflip. Oh the mysterious ways of God! And we think we can contain him with our understanding. How silly we can be at times. I say “silly because I stop short of using the word “foolish.”

But I have meandered; I started with one man, and ended with another, in this recollection. Because another realization came during my seven-week engagement to the man I knew as “Bruce David.” I learned that he’d had a legal name change. Because his given name at birth was “David Bruce.” Another David for me. The first David (named “David Crocket” Bray at birth) fathered my first two children, and the second David would father my second two. And the one and only man who ever talked to me about Jesus (on a Friday night before my Sunday salvation) had also talked about David, as in the “keys” of David. Because God speaks in mysteries, God speaks in riddles and parables, and God speak in layers. After all, He is a Master of Communication

So I’m learning to pay attention to the details. Because God is in the details. He doesn’t miss a thing. And the more all of us pay attention the more we will see. And hear. And know. And sense. And feel. And discern. And learn. Because at times the end of one matter is the beginning of another.

(And the photo is mine, taken in downtown Houston while visiting my brother-in-law, one of my former pastors, and his wife.)