Be supportive (Ch 2 pt 4)

 Instead she decides to pull him into what is going on around her.  She shares with him the delight of the boys in their uncle and Christie enjoying the baby and the explosion of color in the sky in front of her across the lake.  The breathtaking view in the sky, reflecting its color on the lake in a mirror view with trees in the distance, adding to the flair captures her. She tries to portray the feeling and shares it with him the best she can with the poor substitute of words over a phone.

“I wish you were here, I haven’t seen a sunset this beautiful in a long time.  I am not used to us being a part, being here without you is weird.  I miss you and look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

After a bit of silence on the other end, Steven replies, “I just asked God to teleport me there to share it with you, but I guess he said no, since I’m still here. It sounds great. The funny thing is right now I believe he could just ‘beam me over’.” Steven thinks that he can almost feel a tangible force around him.

“I know he could do it too, but I guess I haven’t heard of anything miraculous happening to anyone I knew before.”

Steven laughs.

“Well Hon, I would like to go. We are about to head back to the house and Lana is waiting for me to ride with her.  I will talk to you later ok. I love you.”

“Alright.” Steven says reluctantly. Lynnette has done her job well of making him feel as though he were with her. Though more than a thousand miles separate them,” I love you.”

 

It’s the last night before reuniting with her husband and Lynnette has just a little while to ask her dad about Steven’s questions.  It’s late and the boys are all in bed.  She goes into the T.V. room where her dad is watching a movie, Transformers, and sits down to talk to him.  Her father, a man of medium build with a regular daddy tummy and very white hair is sitting in the recliner. He is quite a hairy man from head to toe and many times he refers to himself as a gorilla.  Her dad, who was given the “riddle” earlier, moves to pause the film and asks, “So what is the deal with that riddle?” 

“Is-he-n-u” the daughter replies.” She realizes that a few years back, her dad would have already figured it out and much faster than she did. Lynnette continues the conversation, “Yes dad, Steven has been in a revival and I have been tagging along.”  We have been digging into some very interesting things and searching for what the truth is as we each understand it without influence from others as much as possible.”  Larry Sr. asks for further explanation and Lynnette provides a little insight into the website on a very minimal scale, she doesn’t know much depth at this point. 

“Dad, I am beginning to believe that God is leading Steven, and I assume myself, somewhere; I don’t know where and maybe this website is the thing.  I am a little afraid but excited and want to be a supportive, godly wife.”

“From what you have shared with me, dear, it sounds like Steven is headed for some study into eternal security and some tough questions. I think this might could be much bigger than you think Lynnette and you need to be prepared. Listen to God, and be supportive.  If you aren’t supportive, it will be difficult for him to follow God’s direction.” 

His daughter takes counsel; the level of calling her dad is describing is fear-striking.  She wants to be in God’s will and do what he would have of her, but also fears what it could require of her. 

Go to next part (Ch 3 pt 1: The laxative quality of airplane pressurization)

Down at the lake (Ch 2 pt3)

Uncle asks them if they would like to go fishing and of course the answer was an overwhelming  “Yes!”.  Larry and Christie have a small stocked pond behind their house complete with a rope swing, spillway and pier.  After gathering supplies, both boys climb onto the Mule, a cross between a four wheeler and a golf cart, and ride down to the pier. The eldest, cautiously walks out to the wooden structure and grabs some fish food to throw out into the water.  He looks so much like his daddy with his thin body, blonde hair and blue eyes; acts like him too.  Rylan, grabs some food and his mother’s heart stops as he runs for the edge of the pier stopping just short of falling in and releases the food. Lynnette attempts to calm her fears by having the boys lie down on the tummies on the pier and looking off into the water searching for fish.  They see small glimpses of fish coming up for food through the murky water that is usually so clear that one can see all the way down to the last year’s Christmas tree at the bottom of the pond. 

The crew is not getting a single bite on their fishing lines, the boys decide to ride the mule down to Lake Palestine and try fishing on the large pier, one large enough that it has picnic tables.  Lanna and her “Aunt Net” climb onto a four wheeler and ride down to the lake, while Christie and the baby walk.  The family bird dogs run along the pathway eager to enjoy some swimming in the lake and fetching a fake bird that their master throws out repeatedly to the great entertainment of the nephews.  Everyone is enjoying themselves.  Once again there is no luck on the fishing end and Uncle takes one more step to possibly get the boys some fish before they depart.  They load a small fishing boat and prepare to go out and bait the trotline, retrieving any fish that may be on the lines.  Christie and Lynnette sit on the pier with the baby watching while the sun sets. 

The phone rings and Steven is on the line.

“I figured out the riddle”, says Lynnette.

“Oh yeah”

“I get it, is-he-in-you.”

“It wasn’t a very hard riddle, but I thought it was pretty cool” Steven says, “so the other side of the coin is the website ‘heisnme’.”

 “That’s pretty cool.”

Steven begins sharing about the different sites and what would be on each.  Lynnette on the other hand wants to spend the very short time she has with visiting with the family right now.  She is torn between wanting to share in the excitement in her husband’s voice and what is going on right in front of her.

Go to next part (Ch 2 pt 4: Down at the lake)

The Riddle (Ch 2 pt 2)

On the other side of the phone, Steven’s mom and mother-in-law have gotten in the car with his wife and they are trying to get the sleeping baby in the car seat and get back home.  Steven senses that he is loosing his audience so he decided to leave her with one last thing. “I’ve got a riddle for you.” He says

 Lynnette breaks from her distraction, “yeah?”

“It’s a word.” He spells it out “I-S-H-E-N-U, do you get it?”

“Not right off the top of my head” Lynnette replies “hey I’ve gotta go”

“Ok, let me know later when you’ve gotten it” He says a bit disappointed to be cut short from his game but also glad that she wasn’t able to solve it right off, even if she was distracted.  

 

On the way back to her mother-in-law’s house, Lynnette asks both of the other women in the car about the Holy Spirit question Steven had.  Steven’s mom, Ann, says, “That’s over my head.  You must have been speaking to my son. He’s been so deep recently.” 

“I have another one for you.  Steven gave me a riddle, well he called it a riddle.  It’s the word ishenu.  It’s the title for a website.  Any ideas?” 

            Lynnette’s mom, Karen, looks a bit puzzled and confused.  “You should ask your dad.” 

            “Yes, Steven wanted me to ask dad. Funny, everyone seems to think of my dad when they think of bible knowledge and riddles.”  He is a very intelligent man, although he has been slowed by recent illness.  His processing takes much more time these days. The sharpest times he has right now is when he is talking about the word of God.

 

As evening approaches, the five foot three inch mommy of three chooses to take all three of her boys to their dearly loved Uncle Larry’s house for one last visit before leaving the next day.  After arriving and spending some time in girl talk with Christie, her sister-in-law, who is ten years older, wiser and beautiful, she decides to share a little about what has been going on with her and Steven.

“Steven’s been in a bit of what I would call a personal revival of sorts.  It’s been fun and scary both. He and I, as a tag-along, have been studying and reading a tremendous amount pushing each other along as we dig deeper and deeper into more and more.  It has been a bit overwhelming.” She shares the riddle and at that moment, Lynnette realizes what it means, but doesn’t share. Larry, her brother walks in and the energy level in Zander and Rylan, the two older boys jumps about ten times.  Larry is a bear of a man, tall, muscular, freckled and hairy. Rylan runs at him first and is bolted up toward the ceiling, as a loud giggle and smile explode across his face.  Larry laughs with delight as he knows it is the last visit for probably six months.  The two year old comes back down to the floor through his legs and down to the ground where he runs around him in a circle looking up at him to do it again. Instead, Uncle looks at the baby in his wife’s arms and decides to steal him away for a moment, gives him a kiss and is surprised at how big Kaden is.  He hasn’t seen him since he was three months old and he is now approaching eight months and trying to crawl.

            Zander is watching from a distance with his cousin Lanna.  Lanna has been playing with him for a while but now, he wants the attention of his Uncle Larry.  He finally decides to run around to the back side of him sneaking through another doorway and poke him in the rump.  Larry, passes off the baby and turns around quickly, grabs the older nephew and spins him around in the air. Uncle pretends to throw him in the air like his younger brother, but doesn’t let go, since he knows that Zander isn’t the dare devil Rylan is. Fear is in Zander’s eyes, perhaps uncle has forgotten his dread of heights. Larry reassures him and plays with him in a much calmer manner; a level perfect for the four and a half year old boy, and still the energy level continues to rise. 

Go to next part (Ch 2 pt 3: Down at the lake)

 

MeanWhile in East Texas… (Ch 2 pt 1)

    The smell of pine is in the air from the nearby forests of Tyler, Texas. The over whelming color in the pallet of the land is green. Tall pines spruce, grass shrubs many of these cleared away from the rolling hills to make room for housing and commerce. In front of a shopping strip, a thirty year old woman sits nursing her baby. She gently rubs her hand over his brown hair and looks into his chocolate eyes that he inherited from her. Kaden looks up with a smile then goes back to nursing. She had to ask her mom and mother-in-law to stop and let her feed the baby. The Nanas ran into the dollar store nearby to look for some cheap entertainment for their grandkids.  The children will be leaving them tomorrow to fly back home and it will be a number of months before they see them again. 

            As the Young mother sits watching the many people come in and out of the payday advance storefront.  As each goes in, they hurry as if they are running from something at a quick walking pace; on their way out, each looks around as if they are checking to see if there is anyone around that might know them.  Then they try to appear as if they are coming from another store in the strip, rather than the payday advance.

            As the woman sits watching, she thanks God for the beautiful child in her arms, her two older boys and the man in her life who she misses very much.  He should be home now and she wonders if he misses her as much as much as she does him right now. Lynnette picks up the cell phone to call him.  Steven answers and he begins talking sharing the many things he’s been busy with while she has been gone the past two days. 

“Man, Lynnette…this thing is so big; I don’t even know where to start” 

“What’s that?”

“Well you know how we’ve been studying a lot lately? Well I’ve still been studying and struggling while you’ve been gone and I think God is calling me to a ministry. I think the main objective will be getting up a website that will help answer questions of skeptics, moving them closer to God. It should be tailored to the person and their objections creating a path that they can walk down that leads to the cross, sort of like Zander’s head sprout program.”

Lynnette has to break into the conversation since Steven is so enthusiastic that she hasn’t been able to get a word in. “I’ve actually had experience with a system like that for education where we give kids a survey of questions. Then the program builds a custom learning plan for that child.”

“Oh yeah, that sounds great” says Steven “Boy you can really be a big asset on this project with all your experience as a virtual teacher.” He continues sharing for a while about a variety of discussions he has had on the discussion board online.

 

Steven hits her with an odd question “Do you know if the Holy Spirit was ever in more than one person at a time in the Old Testament?  

 

“I don’t know. I don’t think I have ever looked that closely at it.”

“Ask your dad; he knows a lot of those things. Your grandpa too.  Let me know when you find out.  I need to know the answer to that question for an argument I’m trying to make.”

“Ok, I will do that when I get back to my mom and dad’s house.”

“So… I bought a couple of websites.  I used some of the money from the painting that the guy picked up from me.”

“Did he like it?” 

“Yeah, he seemed to.  Ray thought it looked even better than he expected from seeing it on the internet. He also was pointing out his name on the gas station to his friend that drove him over. “Steven continues to plow on making the conversation into a monologue again. “So I bought the domain names right before that and it felt like the Holy Spirit told me a joke. I was standing there with the 500 dollars in my hand and wondering if I should tithe off that money and I heard in my head, “you already tithed 11 percent, because the domains totaled up to 55 dollars. Anyway, I feel a real calling to do the websites, but know that it will take a good deal of time to do them in a way that’s relevant to a modern internet user. I just think skeptics have been asking good questions and getting lame answers.”

Go to next part (Ch 2 pt 2: The Riddle)