Invitations

I've been working hard lately on developing my spiritual ears. It's a work in progress, of course, but I had two small experiences happen this weekend that indicate I might be getting better :)

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Experience #1
The kids and I were playing in the backyard this afternoon and our new neighbor was outside with her dog. We don't know this neighbor very well, but we're friends with her yippy, high-energy pup, Henry. We like Henry. I suddenly had the idea to invite this neighbor and Henry to come play with us in our backyard. And I actually said it out loud before stopping myself :) We had a genuinely good visit. Henry may be yappy, but he's not jumpy or nippy. He likes to chase anything that runs, and the kids love to run. Anyway, to most other people, this would not seem like a spiritual experience. But for me (the person who fears spontaneity, and new people, and dogs) it took a spiritual prompting and an immediate action on my part to make this happen.

Experience #2
In our church, women are prayerfully assigned a partner to go visit a few other prayerfully selected women in the congregation. It's a kind of ministry and watch care called "visiting teaching." For introverts like me, it's pretty much the opposite of a "natural and comfortable" interaction, but I try to see this as following Christ's example of ministry, and that gives me courage. Anyway, there is one woman I have been asked to watch over who hasn't come to church in years. She struggles with severe depression and anxiety and a host of other chronic health problems, but she loves God and genuinely wants to get involved again. I usually touch base with her every month and offer rides to church and various activities that she rarely attends.

April was a really crazy month for me and I realized on May 5th that I had completely forgotten about this woman all month. As I thought about calling her, the distinct impression came to mind that I should invite her to a special church meeting the next night. She hasn't been to church regularly in years. Why would she go to an EXTRA meeting on a Saturday night? I decided, though, that this was a spiritual matter and I should listen up. I called her and invited her to the meeting. She said the missionaries had invited her to the meeting earlier that week and she had wanted to go, but forgot about it. She was especially depressed that day, barely able to get her shoes on and leave the apartment, but decided that she needed to go to this meeting tonight. She accepted the invitation! We attended the meeting together and she told me at the end that she felt so much better for having gone.

Stories like this one get told in church meetings all the time. I never thought it would happen to me, though, because I never thought I would genuinely love someone who wasn't already a close friend or family member.

That is the miracle here. I thought I would have to be a different/fake person to reach out to people in this way. It's seemed so unlike me. I've actually tried making invitations like these in the different/fake Susan way. Not good. It turns out in this case that I still got to be me. 100% me. I was just a "me" that loved this person now. My actual heart has changed towards this woman. The invitation wasn't fake or forced or extended out of a sense of duty. I have very little in common with this person. We wouldn't be friends under most circumstances. And yet...something has changed in my heart so that now I can follow a spiritual whisper like that one in a normal and natural way.

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Neither of these experiences were things I would have done on my own. That's why I'm recording them here as moments when I have used my "spiritual ears" to obey a spiritual prompting to act.