Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

I started talking about COVID19 in February, after following it closely *yet silently* since the first reports came out at the end of December.

I did choose to talk about it before it was everywhere, and in one of the most profound examples of why I need to trust my gut – ended up with countless PM’s and emails from people in the two weeks that followed.

• “Because of what you said, I was prepared. I didn’t have to clamor at the store like everyone else the day after the President spoke in the Oval Office to the nation.”
• “You literally woke me up to putting contingencies in my business and now we’re okay today because of what we did just a month ago.”
• “Because of your daily takeaways in your Facebook group, I decided to email my list of 500k people to help them get prepared.”
• “We took measures to pull our kids out of school before they shut down because you said you were doing the same. Now it’s everywhere, but we are all healthy and home.”

Since first speaking about it, I have set up a Facebook group where I post two threads a day…

1. One is a thread for people to link up articles they are reading
2. The second thread is my daily takeaway. It’s just a smattering of thoughts and information I gather throughout the day based on the science of the virus, the public health, the economic ramifications, etc.

When people ask me why I do it, I say simply, “Because my gut tells me to.”

But I’m starting to think my gut instinct might be mislabeled, and I’ve been taking credit for something that isn’t me.

What lots of people don’t know about me is that I carry a deep faith and belief in Jesus. Prior to being a marketer, I was a worship leader, pastor, and heavily involved in the Church. My entire life, whenever I’d go to prayer meetings or conferences, the same message would be spoken and prayed over me. It happened even as a very young child. I had a strong prophetic gifting that people needed.

I had a supernatural experience at age 6, where my mom describes me sobbing as a young girl – in my living room – listening to worship music trying to describe the presence of the Holy Spirit to her in little kid language.

When everything in my life fell apart (in 2014), I walked away from my Church. I lost faith in most every religious body, and clung onto my belief in God (barely) and in small ways where I could. But I was also reasonably sure that any favor or blessing or gifting given to me had been immediately revoked. I’d fallen too far into sin.

I lived with this belief for the last five years.

And then something strange started to happen. God started speaking to me through other people. Other people who had NO idea of my past, and in some cases, didn’t even realize I was a Christian. They’d say, “I know this is going to sound nuts but…” and then launch into a prophetic word so accurate, it’d leave me weeping uncontrollably.

This past fall, I started to hear God speak to me again, without needing someone else to say it. You can find some of the posts on my Facebook profile in October/November. I knew He was doing something, I just wasn’t sure what exactly.

Now I understand.

He knew I would need Him more than ever in 2020. He also knew that people would need me. They would need me to be a voice of clarity in the midst of so much bullshit and noise.

There were a number of decisions I made “with my gut” that were difficult to explain. I just had a sense, a feeling, a premonition – that I would need to be nimble, flexible, adaptable. And there were also a number of decisions I made (IGNORING my gut) that cost me deeply. I started to see a pattern emerge, and it wasn’t without help from a therapist, and also people who were diligently praying for me.

It’s funny. People like to separate spiritual stuff from intellectual stuff from emotional stuff… we’re so separatist in the western world. And it’s just not real. God uses therapy, He used instincts, brains, emotions, all of it. He created us as these amazingly integrated human beings and what used to be a thorn in my side (my intellectual brain being chided as faithlessness since it asked too many questions) is actually a gift He’s using. Just like using therapy too. It all works together, and the patterns are there if you look.

There are a number of ways we all exit this crisis. If we do this whole “pandemic” thing right, you’ll know it because scores of people will say the world over reacted. That’s how you know we beat it. If we mess it up, and deaths start to recklessly pile up in cities all over the world, there is no better time to start using all the parts of you – your spirit, your brain, your emotions – to stay connected to the One who knows you better than you know yourself.

Lastly, I want to make something very very clear. 

Most of what I find, read, post, speak about is NOT somehow spiritually downloaded from heaven. God gave me a brain and wants me to use it. So I do. However, what I’m noticing now is that I’m better able to see how God is using BOTH my brain and my spirit to help guide me, that I am leaning into what my instincts say because I believe they are Him… and not me.

He’s helping me to find the doctors and scientists to read and listen to. He’s helping me sift through mountains of information to figure out what’s most important to remember, and what I can ignore. He’s putting smart people in my path that know way more than I do, and prompting me to listen. In all of this, it was high time I give God credit for the work He’s doing in and through me.

If anything I’ve said over the last month has helped your family or you in some way, that should be an unwavering indication that God loves you very much. He’s here. He sees the end of all this, and He isn’t moved or shaken by a wobbly economy, joblessness, lost customers, clients, or sickness. He’s got you, just like He’s got me.

And that really is the best news of the year.

xx