After shocks
I didn’t realize it was possible for a body to be so traumatized by a few words. I finally fell asleep only to wake up repeatedly with my heart pounding as though it would leap through my chest wall. My breathing so rapid and shallow and then sometimes not at all. “Breathe,” I would say to myself. “Make yourself count to three slowly. Breathe. You have to breathe.”
When morning came my body trembled uncontrollably.
Breathe. You have to breathe.
As I drove home from taking Adam to work, lightbeams shafted through the trees. I realized I was unconsciously singing, “Light of the world, you stepped down into darkness. Open my eyes let me see……” Oh, Jesus, please help me see.
Later that day as I was sitting with Jesus and thinking about Liam I had a vision. It only lasted a few seconds, but I was certain it was a message from God. Liam was standing in front of me surrounded by a thin rim of light. The light was brighter than anything I’ve ever seen, but it was surrounded by a thick, impenetrable black cloud. In the same instant my mind remembered a conversation I’d had with Liam a few weeks earlier. He’d been playing with a neighbor who told him we need to take the pillow and blanket off our front porch because it looks like a person. In the same conversation he told Liam that his sister’s boyfriend talks to dead people.
I’m not an interpreter of dreams, but I sensed in that moment that this battle was spiritual as much, if not more, than a physical fight. The words that kept coming to my mind were words God had impressed on me the summer of 2019. “Praise precedes the miracle.” I wasn’t sure what all was ahead of us; but I felt very strongly that we were about to fight the powers of darkness like never before and that much of our warfare would be through praise to God.
Liam wasn’t ready to tell people at first, but by Tuesday he wanted prayer support and wanted people to know. As soon as people started praying, my heart stopped racing. That night we mercifully all slept through the night.
My mom had a conversation with Liam. She asked him how she can pray for him and he said, “Can you pray for my mom? She took this pretty hard.”