+Words and the Word

I had a long and profound conversation with Alex last night, and also somewhat this morning.

We were studying calculus, but he’d mentioned he had a lot of stuff on his mind… and it seemed to me that he was really weighed down by it.  So I ended up suggesting we spend the rest of our time just talking about it, and he agreed.  (We made up the time later.)  Basically, this is a young man with a LOT on his plate.  Without going into detail, he’s got some pretty heavy family issues, identity issues, guilt over things he’s done in the past, wrestling with childhood trauma, uncertainty of where he’s going in life… The list goes on and on.  It’s so bad that he often wakes up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep;  nor can he manage to focus strongly on his studies.

He’s told me before that he finds me an extraordinarily easy person to talk to – he’s told me things about himself that his own family doesn’t know.  (And after our first long talk, he even said he’d never talked so openly with a white person ever.)  I’ve been hearing this sort of thing more and more from people lately;  I think God uses me sometimes for encouragement.  (Which is one reason why Irving’s reaction took me by surprise.)

Anyway, this time was no exception.  Alex got a lot of stuff off his chest, and we prayed about some of it together.  I felt moved to offer to give him additional help, and to be available to him when he wakes up in the night for prayer.  He doesn’t like to "bother" people, he says, but I assured him it was no bother.  (I have come to really love him.)

That night, I woke out of a sound sleep at 4 AM.  I felt I should pray for Alex, so I did…  And ended up writing a couple pages of a word for him.  (This is a first.  I’ve gotten words for myself, and I’ve given words to the community of the People of Praise at meetings, but never before for a specific individual.)  That’s not quite as much as it sounds, as my handwriting is excessively large and I wrote double-space.  But still.  It was very encouraging and a little challenging – mostly assuring him of God’s love and presence.

Alex came to Mass Tuesday morning (he wants to come twice a week now, Tuesday and Thursday), and I think God is ganging up on him, as Fr. Jesse’s homily nailed a number of his issues right between the eyes.  🙂  (He talked about the need for forgiveness and letting go of unproductive guilt, along with several other things.)  Afterward, I read the word I’d gotten to him (warning him that he’d have to discern how much was really from the Lord, of course) and he was silent for a long time before saying it moved him deeply.  He asked to keep it, so I gave it to him.  We also discussed the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

It’s very good to have a friend that one can speak deeply with.  I think that in Alex I’ve got a friend for a lifetime.

P.S.  Alex claims that he sometimes has unusually vivid dreams that invariably come true.  (He claims his mother has similar dreams.)  I don’t know how much truth there is in that, but I don’t dismiss the possibility out of hand.

Anyway, he told me of a strange dream he’d had about a year ago, a few weeks before meeting me.  It was of a mysterious person speaking to him with his back turned, saying something like, "I will be sending you someone soon who will show you the right path.  You may not recognize him at first, but when you have, listen to him."  It had disturbed him greatly, and he hadn’t known what to make of it.

The detail that I find very convincing is the bit about the speaker’s back being turned.  Alex is not very familiar with the Bible, and didn’t know about the passage in Exodus of Moses being permitted to see God’s back, but not his face.  When I told him of it, he found it downright eerie.  So do I.  He is now guessing uncertainly that the person may be me.  If that’s true – I don’t know, but I’ve certainly given him a lot of counsel – I find it very encouraging. 🙂