The God Who Plants Our Dreams
Two years ago just after our two oldest sons had left on their own new adventures, God began to speak to me. During hours of stillness out on my BOS (Bright Orange Swing), He laid out His plans for my future. They were so big and unlikely that for days, I fell silent, pondering. The dreams that had been planted in my heart had, for years, gone silent, and all at once, He was breathing Life onto those very seeds, and I could feel them starting to sprout.
Then came a season of intense grief, a valley I had not foreseen. For months, utter exhaustion weighed at my limbs and left me broken in spirit. I cannot now describe the devastation and the dark night of the soul that colored my days. My energy forsook me and for the first time in many summers, I was not even able to go out and run my three miles on my beloved country roads. I could only walk, and that occasionally.
Over time, Jesus, the Great Physician, applied His healing balm. He mended my tattered and broken heart, and He built me back up. He addressed my cries to “make the crooked places straight” that trauma had injured in my physical brain, and He redeemed my clouded identity. He brought me into my own. How I love Him.
Then. At the inner prompting, I began calling talk show host Rush Limbaugh because of my great burden for this land that I love. To my utter surprise, I found so much favor with his call screener, the inimitable Bo Snerdley. Time after time, I would call, get through, and then bam, I was speaking to Rush.
One day, my Rock of Gibraltar (aka Mr. Schrock) suggested that I branch out and call Sean Hannity, another conservative media mogul. So I did. I began calling his show and again found favor with his call screener, a young woman named Kylie.
Over time, Kylie and I got acquainted. Perhaps a month ago, I found her on Facebook and we began to connect on social media. She was now no longer just a faceless voice on the end of a telephone in New York City. She was my friend. And one day several weeks ago, she sent me a link. “We’d love to see you there!” she said. “My mom is the chairwoman.”
It was an invitation for three days of events in Washington, D.C. with Women for America First.
For years, I had longed to go to Washington on a mission. For months, my heart had desired to kneel on the steps of the Capitol and to pray for my land. For a year, I had longed to see the White House at Christmas time, decked out in all of its finery.FacebookTwitterGoogle+DiggPinterestBlogger
God gave me the desires of my heart, and He moved my husband’s heart to do it. For when the message came, Mr. Schrock expressed his doubt. It really was last minute, so the next day as I mopped my floors, I said aloud to the God Who Plants Our Dreams, “This is what I want. If this trip will do nothing to further my calling (and You know what that is), then I don’t want to waste the time and money. I do not need to do this. But if You know that it’s needful, that it’s the next step for me and my calling, then I want You to move my husband’s heart to do this because I know He hears from you.”
Minutes later, the phone rang and on the other end, that smooth, bass voice that I love was saying, “Would you like to go to D.C.?”
And so it was that on a Wednesday in December, I found myself heading for the nation’s capitol. That night as we went to bed in a faraway town, I prayed, asking God to bless our trip, and then I made a simple request, “Lord, I want to talk to the group. Would You give me that chance?”
The next morning, there in the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, waiting for the event to begin, I heard my name. The woman at the front of the room was saying, “Is there a Rhonda Schrock here?” Surprised, I went forward where a stranger thrust a microphone into my hand. “Go ahead. Introduce yourself. You can pray if you’d like.” And before a room full of strangers, I shared the reason for my hope. I told how God had healed me and set me free from all my fears.
“I have learned,” I said, “that I cannot give what I do not have. If my heart is not full of peace and joy and love, then I will not have it to give to my fellow man. I am going to pray now and ask God to fill our hearts with His peace and joy and love so that we will have it to give away,” and I bowed my curly head. In the quiet room, I asked Jesus the Christ to come and fill our hearts with Himself so that we would have Him to give. “Amen.”
Walking back to my seat, I was greeted with thumbs up, smiling faces, and whispered words of gratitude for my prayer to the God that I love.FacebookTwitterGoogle+DiggPinterestBlogger
God is amazing, pure and simple. Not only did He take me to the White House for a policy briefing, but my boy and I got to take the Christmas tour and see it in all of its glory. I got to put my knees on the Capitol steps, to bow my head and clasp my mittened hands and to pray for God’s intervention. In the President’s own home, I prayed again for him and for his family.FacebookTwitterGoogle+DiggPinterestBlogger
This, I know, is just the beginning. Because I know the Author of my story, I am content to let Him keep writing it and to bring me safely and triumphantly to its conclusion.
How I hope that you know Him as well.