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I dashed out to Target this morning to pick up a few things and left the kids home with Paul. On the way home, I had a conversation with God regarding our current circumstances. You see, I vacillate between panic and peace every day. Sometimes I feel a deep sense of, “it’s-gonna-be-OK.” Then, the next moment I start to hyperventilate, break out in hives and feel my stomach twisting and prickling.

“Dear God, please open a door for Paul. I need to be home with my kids and working from home. He can’t make money at home, I can and I don’t want to move to another state and be ripped away from friends and family. Can’t we just stay right here? Nathan has five therapies a week. Miika needs to be taken to and from school. I need a sign, I need a pillar of clouds, some fire by night, something, anything, just show me the way.”

Well, as I was praying in traffic waiting for a red light, I pulled up behind a little blue car with a sign in the rear window that said, “PLEASE BE PATIENT.”

It stopped my frantic, rambling prayer in its tracks. That had to be a message for me. It’s not the first time typography has screamed out at me with words that I needed to hear. Yes, the perfect scripture has been read to me, or I’ve read it, or a sermon has been apropos to what I’ve been going through. But on several occasions, I believe God has used other means of communicaton to get my attention. After Nathan’s birth, a piece of junk mail had words that I needed to hear: change my opinion, change my persuasion, change my life, change my mood (a really cool piece from gettyimages). I was scrambling around the house today trying to find a fortune cookie message that I kept for the same reason. I was pregnant with Nathan and the fortune cookie said something about how we’d have a new addition to our family who would bring great joy. Yup, God speaks in ways that we as individuals understand.

All of this got me to thinking how a few weeks ago I sat at a table with the parents of some very prominent missionaries to Pakistan. They mentioned how many people were still coming to Christ in the Middle East because of a dream or a vision that convinced them that Jesus was and is the Messiah. These experiences with messages from unsuspecting sources should be tested and aligned with scripture in order to be believed. But then again, some of us are just simple people who need simple words of wisdom from unlikely places in order to keep us on track.

Yes, we have scripture to dig through and hold on to. But sometimes God just jars us or taps us on the shoulder to let us know that he’s really watching. It’s not a coincidence, it’s a little sign to keep us from wondering why we are going through hard times and a reminder to trust.

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