Somewhere in the midst of normal work, normal life (if such a thing exists!) and preparing to move across the country, I have been working on the production of the album “Intro to Spiritual Structures”.  This is the studio recording of the teleconferences I taught last year.  On a side note, I actually recorded it three times!  I just knew the first two weren’t right.  And then God had me wait until after a significant land assignment where there was a huge personal shift and THEN it was the right time.  “Third time’s the charm” ain’t got nuthin’ on God!

Anyway, this week I have been pondering the first fruits dedication.  I have a deep connection to land, so my immediate thoughts are where I could go.  Should I go somewhere to climb and declare the King over all structures?  A friend gave me that idea and I thought it was a great one.  I also thought about special parks, and yes, even abandoned buildings.  All of them seemed doable, but nothing was quite right.  Until God reminded me about dreams.

Structures are a significant piece of my design.  This album is an introduction to the concept.  It presents some foundational tools and common applications, but at the core, it is far bigger than that.  It represents a tremendous facet of God’s redemptive power.

For years and years I was tormented by nightmares.  The primary recurring theme was a chasing dream where I was in a house or building and nothing was what it appeared.  Or, rather, it changed from what it appeared.  So, I would see a door and run for it, and soon as I got there, it wasn’t a door anymore.  This cat and mouse game would go on until just before “it” got me and I woke terrified, my muscles tied in knots.  The other common theme would be things moving on their own accord – I look and it is there, I look again and it is gone.

Well, it was in the process of doing a whole truckload of inner healing and deliverance and interpreting the patterns that we came to realize I have a deep connection to structures.  It was the nightmares that clued us in.  The enemy did a whole lot of damage with them, but at the end of the day, God used them to show us an enduring piece of His design that has already transformed lives and land.

And then the Holy Spirit brought to mind the idea to have this album dedicated by myself and others who have walked a journey of redemption with dreams.

This is an unusual approach for me because the album is not about dreams, per se.  I mention the nightmares as part of my personal history, but the album is about spiritual structures in other realms – our emotions, spirits, bodies, etc.  So, there are some dots I can’t quite connect with my soul, but my spirit is ALL over this idea.

I think there is a celebration of the fruit God brought out of the enemy’s attempts to destroy.  That is a theme we can all relate to.  But there is something deeper here too.  Why did the enemy choose dreams as the primary way to do it?  There is something more to the connection between spiritual structures and dreams that I don’t have language for yet.

So, I am leaning into what I feel the Lord is directing me to do, regardless of whether or not I have all the data!

And with that thought in mind, I would like to extend an invitation.  If you are someone like me who has walked through a redemption story with dreams, I invite you to write to me so we can explore your being part of the dedication.  I would love to have a handful of people who can pray into this album all of the fruit God wants to release, all of the redemptive power, all of the “X” factor we don’t have language for yet.  This will be a bona fide Mercy approach … our brains and souls lagging far behind!

If you are interested in being involved, please write to me at Megan@GoBeyondtheHorizon.com so we can explore your story and see if it is a good fit.  The cutoff date for writing is the end of the day on the 4^th, this coming Sunday.

Looking forward to partnering with God on this one!

I couldn’t go straight home from the grocery store.  This was one of those nights when I needed to drive.  I didn’t realize it until I found a particular song on my playlist and then I knew.  Something was tired of being contained and well-behaved and I needed some speed and some wind.  There is one particular road that has a flow anointing and I made a beeline for it.  We will leave the details about my driving to your imagination.

The road more or less begins in Fullerton and winds its way through three or four different cities.  I have taken it pretty far before, but tonight I took it to the end.  Along the way, my mind was wandering all over the world, as these kinds of moods are often the result of things churning and needing room to expand without life getting in the way.

I think I could have driven on the road all night, but eventually it did end.  Then I had to make a decision.  I chose to turn right and continue the exploration, though not with quite the forcefulness I had been enjoying up until then.  It didn’t take long after my turn to discover that I had stumbled upon a very upper scale part of town.  The houses were huge.  I drove by a couple of blocks of these mansions and then caught a glimpse of water.  What?  Yes, water.  And then more water, and then I realized I was driving by a small lake.

So, understand, I am still in the middle of the city.  I never left it.  God graced me with decent enough traffic flow and empty spots between cars that I could actually enjoy something of my mood, but I never left the city.  And here, plopped right in the middle of it was this lake, surrounded by all of these monstrous houses.

My curiosity was definitely perked.  I had never seen this place before.  So, I kept making right hand turns so that I could basically do a circle around the lake.  And mind you, it didn’t take very long.  There were little cul-de-sacs every so often for access to the houses that had this lake front property.

These kinds of moods are existential in nature so God could not have timed this encounter more perfectly.  By the time I got all the way around and back to the corner where I first spotted the water, the examination of the universe had taken a whole new turn.

These mansions were packed in like sardines. They were all similar in design.  I could smell the chemicals in the water.  I was still right smack in the middle of the city.  All this money, all this prestige connected to having one of those houses, and it felt fake. They aren’t actually in nature.  They are in the middle of the concrete jungle, living in a huge house that looks just like their neighbors’.  Their environment is completely manufactured.  Yet, they seem happy with a wealthy non-reality.  Not only happy, but proud.  I can’t even imagine how much it would cost to have one of those houses.

And that is the part that struck me the most.  The sense of pride over having all of that when at the core it was all show.  It felt ludicrous.  Yet, it must not be to them.  Nobody would spend that kind of money if they felt like it was a joke.  That means they don’t see it.

I think it was the desperation that grieved me so much, and left me deeply pondering.  How badly we need to know that we have it “made” that this many dozens of people shelled out a whole ton of cash to have lakefront property on that little chemical pond.

My drive home included some new grist for the mill that was already working overtime.  Where in my life am I doing the same thing?  It doesn’t have to be about houses.  It could be any area of my existence. Where am I happy and proud and hollow?

Or wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked?

It was well over a decade ago when I packed all my worldly possessions in my Geo Prizm and a minivan and my Dad and I made the cross-country trek from Michigan to a foreign land called California.  To a bona fide Midwesterner, it felt like falling off the edge of the earth.  Which, incidentally, was something we often prayed California would do.

On that long trek over, my Dad and I made a couple of sightseeing stops to break up the monotony and to prevent our bodies from fusing permanently into the shape of a car seat.  The first stop we made in California was not too far from the Arizona border off of Interstate 10.   It is called Joshua Tree National Park, and it straddles the Colorado and Mohave deserts.

I still remember crossing the border from Arizona into California, quiet and in awe of this new life I was embracing.  I felt such a special welcome from God, as if He was there waiting for me when I arrived.

I had learned that the park was on Mercy land, and I wanted to check it out.  My Dad and I had a wonderful time there. The best part was the climbing.  There are all kinds of really cool mounds and rock formations in the park.  It is a bouldering paradise.  You can do a lot more than bouldering, but that’s what I like the most.  The rocks are a type of granite, but the formation and erosion processes have roughened the surfaces and your shoes grip them fabulously.  We went joyously from one pile to the next like a couple of kids.

Over the course of the years I have gone back a couple of times.  My connection to the land there was positive each time.  I have gone back to do more climbing, and I have gone back just to be quiet and wait on the Lord.  That land holds a special place in my heart.

So, now, here I am, more than a decade later, and I am leaving California.  This fall I am moving to South Carolina, with the company, Sapphire Leadership Group, which I came here to work for.  It is a change of seasons, and it feels right.  But there are some goodbyes I need to make before I leave.

And God provided me the perfect opportunity to do one of those goodbyes this past weekend.

I drove to Phoenix to visit some of my Mom’s family for the long holiday weekend.  I had a whole day to make the 6 hour return trip, and it was basically the exact same route that I took ten years ago with my Dad.  I knew I had to stop at Joshua Tree again.

When you enter the park from Interstate 10, you drive for about twenty minutes before you get to the visitor’s center.  I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do this time, but since I was alone, I knew it wasn’t going to involve much climbing.  So, I just drifted along, looking for anything that jumped out at me.

When I arrived at the center, the exquisite timing of God started showing itself quite beautifully.   The first timing piece was a free entrance day.  I was there on a federal holiday, so maybe they do that every time, but it was a first for me!  But don’t worry, I ended up supporting the park even more than if I had paid to get in.  I was drawn like a magnet to these beautiful handmade clay tumblers and I realized that I didn’t have anything from the park to take to South Carolina with me.  So, I bought four of them for special occasions.  Cha ching!  Timing piece number two.  A win/win for me and the park.  When I went up to pay, I asked the ranger what was around.

Now, most of the time, I don’t ask.  I get a map and follow my spirit.  So, it was an unusual move for me to make, but it was such a God thing.  The ranger pointed to a three-mile loop trail that went past an abandoned mine.  The miners may not have found much there, but I just struck it rich!

I have a thing with abandoned buildings.  And I have wanted to go to an abandoned mine for a long time, but it has just never happened.  And here it was served to me on a silver platter.  And why hadn’t I heard about it before?  If my Dad and I had known about it, we would have gone there lickety-split.  And I had been back to the park twice since then.  This was apparently one of God’s best kept secrets from me.

But not anymore!  He spilled the beans, and I had a feeling He knew exactly why now.

The trail was easy to find and there were a good number of people there, but it wasn’t too crowded.  I did a lot of reminiscing as I walked.  I savored the past and all the things that had transpired since I was there the first time.  Some of it was wonderful, some of it awful, some of it bittersweet.  A lot of intense living and growing, crying, and laughing.  God was so on with the timing of the people.  I ran across quite a few at the beginning, but as I climbed higher, they thinned out.  So, I could stand and listen or sit in peace or talk out loud to myself as I am apt to do when emotionally processing.   Or when I have been too long at home alone.

After sitting on top of one ridge for a while, I clambered down and came around a curve in the trail to the sound of tin roofing clanging in the wind.  It was the mine.   There were timbers strewn about and some wooden structures still intact.  The mine shaft was visible, but fenced in with enough iron to survive Armageddon.  It hadn’t been a huge operation, but some poor soul had expected to make a whole lot more money there than they did.  I wandered around and stuck my nose into as much as I could get into and then I sat down and pondered.

Then I realized why now.

My attraction to abandoned buildings is layered.  And weird.  I know.  Here I am in the middle of God’s wild creation and I want to sit by a pile of tin and rotting wood.  Part of it is the mystery of the story.  What happened?  Can I reverse engineer it?  What kinds of cool things can I find?  What kind of emotions will it awaken in me?  A huge part of it is the effect it has on time.   The contrast of the story that was frozen in time against the story that marches ruthlessly onward causes me to feel the flow of time almost palpably.  It takes me into a spiritual space that I don’t go to anywhere else.

As I was sitting there, I realized that as I was revisiting a place I had been to in the past, reminiscing about the process of life since then, I was at the same time making new memories, living life in the present, as the person I am now, on the same land that I was on then.  My exploring that old mine was something new, even though it was in the context of savoring the old.  God brought me there now because He knew what it would do to my connection to time.  He knew what happens to me when I am around abandoned stuff like that.  He made me weird.

He brought me to the mine because it would tie the two seasons together.  There, in that place where I feel time so powerfully, I could reach into the past and unite it with the present and the future.  On the Mercy land that marked the beginning of it all, I could ask Him to take all these individual stories and make them one story moving into the future.   He cared enough about the process that He kept that mine a secret from me for over a decade, until just the moment when He brought me back to the same land to step into the flow of time, to tie together the past and the future and to launch me into yet another new season of life.

I am still in awe and moved to tears by His planning, His care in protecting the process, and the masterfully elegant way in which He fulfilled it.  He is the God of our individuality and He is the God who executes with finesse.