Waiting on the Lord, the First Collision

Gretchen was a college friend. All went well with our relationship until after that Meeting for Worship in the Name of Jesus. We’d both been Christians prior to that Meeting, and were accustomed to tell each other about our spiritual lives.

After that pivotal Meeting, I next stayed with my father at our family cabin in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Prior to this visit, I’d experienced unmistakable signs that my relationship with him was toxic. For example, about nine months after Mom died, on a May visit to my father in Casper, Wyoming—in the house where I’d grown up—I spent the entire first night vomiting.

I visited him twice more that summer, driving the approximately 1,000 miles from Wisconsin, where I then lived, to Wyoming or South Dakota. On the way back to Wisconsin, both trips, I had diarrhea. But the last cabin trip of the season was after the Meeting for Worship, and I was wrapped in God’s power and love.

During that August cabin visit, my father behaved as he always did. This included baiting me by attempting to serve food to himself onto a plate from which he’d just removed a dried-up mouse dropping. He knew I wouldn’t stand for mouse-contaminated dishes, so it was a guaranteed way to make me jump like a token in a game of Tiddlywinks.

I’d been attempting to deal with this behavior for years, and I always fumed. However, this visit was different: I still became angry, but could silently ride out a wave of anger, sustained by God’s power. I don’t recall how many similar episodes occurred at this visit, but God helped me through all of them. Better yet, I experienced no diarrhea later.

This was transcendent. I had no idea how practical the power of God could be. So, in a state of wonder and gratitude, I next traveled to Laramie, Wyoming; about 250 miles southwest, to visit Gretchen.

She’d converted to Christianity about five years before I had. Sometime during these years, maybe soon after I converted, I dreamed she was spitting hot coals at me, with retching, choking sounds. Her face was ugly and twisted, and her hair looked dead and was tufted up. Although in real life, Gretchen was pretty, and had dark, curly hair, I knew it was she in the dream. At the time I didn’t realize it was a prophecy and a warning.

After I converted but before the Meeting for Worship in the Name of Jesus, we enjoyed close fellowship. So when I arrived at her house in Laramie, of course I wanted to tell her about this miracle. I don’t recall exactly what I said; not a lot, but I had to relate my story.

There was a brief pause. Then she said kindly, “We each think our own way is the best way.”

I was shattered. How could she have been so deaf? How could she possibly have interpreted the episode as “my way?”

I saw that she was “trampling on the life of God,” as George Fox related in his Journal, telling of his various encounters with people who professed to be Christians. (AMS Press edition, Vol. 1, pp. 19-20) Furthermore, she clearly had no idea she was blaspheming the holy name of God.

In what I’d said, she apparently heard some implied criticism of other Christians; and that was when I saw the bedrock of her “faith:” not Jesus Christ, but “never criticize another Christian.”

Our conversation lasted at least two hours, and the entire time, I felt run over by an express train, my shock was so great. I also felt compelled to focus on waiting on the Lord during this unbelievably difficult encounter. God did not call me to attempt to correct her, but only to participate in the conversation as best I could, and to maintain my equilibrium.

After this, our relationship was headed for the rocks. We lasted about five more years. In retrospect, I understood that dream of so many years before.