There are defining moments in everyone’s lives. Events that shape our world view or our sense of self. Joyous occasions such as a wedding, the birth of a child, realizing along sought after dream. Sad moments like the death of a loved one or the loss of something deeply meaningful. Even damaging interactions intersect our lives and change us forever.

For me, one of those defining moments was the first time I looked at someone and saw something about that person I should not known. Heck, I couldn’t have known. I was in high school, hang with friends at youth group. More accurately, they were hanging together and I was hanging on the outskirts, observing and longing to be a part of the easy friendships. In my forties now, I know that high school friendships are anything other than easy, but my adolescent self didn’t know the complexities of human relationships. All she saw was social ease, laughter and belonging. Oh, the siren song of belonging.

I often journaled when I was younger, and those journals were never far from my side. If I wasn’t going to join into the melee and the laughter, I would observe it and write about what I saw, what I felt. I would try to make sense of the life that was being lived around me. Like King David of the Old Testament, my journals were also my cries to God and my attempt to build relationship with him.

My journal open, I was writing my thoughts and my prayers and asking the question of why it appeared so easy for this one girl, we’ll call her Sally, to build friendships and it wasn’t easy for me. As I wrote, the page began to blur and I saw Sally. I saw her parents verbally abusing her and withhold emotional support if she didn’t fall in line and meet their expectations of who she was supposed to be and how she was to act. I saw Sally run to her boyfriend for solace, only to be taken advantage of sexually.  I saw how Sally viewed her own worth – as a being to be used to live out her parents’ dreams and expectations or to be used by boys/men sexually.  Sally didn’t see herself as beloved, as precious, as real outside of these two extremes. But God did. I felt more than saw that God loved Sally and didn’t hold her choices against her. He saw her as perfect. As whole. As radiant and adored. He wanted Sally to feel this, to see this and to be healed by the immense and total love He held for her.

I didn’t know what to do with what I saw and felt that day. I know I treated Sally differently. I was no longer jealous of her. I sometimes felt sorry for her. And in weak moments, I felt superior to her. But I never told her what I saw. I never told her what I had felt that day. And to this day, I regret that. I hope Sally has been able to meet God in that space He is holding for her.

Ever since that day, I have felt things, seen things, sensed things about people. I thought I was just highly intuitive and decided to put my skills to use as a therapist. After earning my degree and working in the field for some time I soon learned that while I love the act of learning about therapy and psychology, I do not like being a therapist.  So I left the field and bounced around in jobs in special education and higher education. And through all this time I remained slightly to the outside, observing, seeing, sensing.

It wasn’t until I met a dear friend, we’ll call her Claire, that I learned I wasn’t just intuitive. I wasn’t going crazy. I am a seer. A prophet. It is part of my gifting in the Spirit. This wasn’t exactly news to me. Every time I have taken a spiritual gifts assessment, prophet, wisdom and teaching always appear. Always. Yet, no one could tell me what it meant to be gifted as a prophet in the 20th century, let alone the 21st. Growing up, I was taught that Jesus was the last prophet. Or that John the Baptist was. And that the word really meant being able to understand scripture and exhort.

So I hid my assessments and didn’t talk about my gifting and I used wisdom, discernment and teaching in my ministry and my life. But it was there. Waiting for me. God was holding open the door and I refused to walk through it. I argued and ranted and turned my back on the gift. Prophet, who would want such a downer of a gift? Not me.

Then I met Claire through a quirk of fate (or providence if you’re more into that) and we got talking. There were many similarities to our lives, just as there were many things that were incredibly different. But we both had a deep desire for relationship with God and others and we both saw, felt, heard, sensed things.

It was Claire who told me  I couldn’t hide what I was any longer. Claire who patiently took me under her wing and started to teach me about my gifting. Claire who loaned me some teachings by Graham Cooke, a gifted teacher and prophet.

It’s been almost two years since I have acknowledged this part of my being. I’m still learning and failing and learning some more. I am also learning that being married to a seer is no easy undertaking. Opening myself up to the prophetic and to the filling of the Holy Spirit has changed me and my marriage. My husband is very black and white and as such doesn’t understand my journey. That’s okay, most days I don’t either.

This blog is my space to chronicle my journey  of discovery and how this impacts my life and marriage. I don’t know many prophets. We don’t tend to put out a shingle and announce to the world we are here. We aren’t mediums or psychics. We don’t do readings, we don’t speak to the dead. We see what God shares with us,  which may also include a message to be shared, or a need to bring to prayer.  We observe.  We pray.  We love our fellow man and we extend grace.

I am a seer. A prophet. This is my journey.