Obedience and God's faithfulness

In the early 1980's I began seeking a deeper relationship with God. My brother had flown out from California to visit us and told us about an experience he had that had transformed him. His pastor had told his church people to draw an invisible circle around themselves and ask God to change the person inside the circle. They were not allowed to try to go into anyone else's circle, but stay in their own. I loved the concept so I prayed that prayer. I knew there were things I still had not totally surrendered to God and I was afraid to because they had become my security and I had no clue what I would do without those things, though they were killing me spiritually. I had finally told God that he could change me anyway he wanted to as I surrendered to Him. One day he told me to go to our church 20 minutes away and pray for revival until he told me to stop. It made no sense and I asked God why I couldn't just pray at home, but I had no peace so I obediently drove into the city. The church was locked so I sat in the parking lot and prayed for about 2 minutes. I had no "spirit" of prayer whatsover but I wanted to be obedient. The second day I drove there again, but this time the church was unlocked so I knelt at the altar for another 2 or 3 minutes and prayed and left. The third day as I knelt there and began to pray I was suddenly filled with an intense desire to pray and pray I did. I knelt there for a long time and left continuing in prayer. I prayed all through the day and would wake up in the night to pray. One of the things that troubled me is that I had asked God to fill me with his Holy Spirit but I didn't feel anything different. I truly hoped I would receive the gift of tongues but when it didn't happen I decided it was all bogus. I asked a friend to pray with me, and the two of us knelt at the altar together. While they were praying out loud I was praying to myself. Suddenly words in another language filled my mind and I began to pray in that language. I knew that God had given me a prayer language as evidence to me that He had answered my prayer. I do not put this on anyone else. I know there are thousands of Spirit filled Christians who do not pray or speak in tongues. But obviously God wanted me to have this, and I was a little amused. At that moment I realized God had a sense of humor and he was showing me that what I had come to believe was not true was indeed true! After we were through praying I drove over to a couple's house I knew to visit. I said nothing to them about what had just transpired. The wife was practicing a song with two other ladies and I was sitting on the floor in front of her husband who was sitting in a chair listening to him talk. Suddenly I was hit with so much joy I could hardly contain it. I didn't say a word, nor did I express it in any way. It was an amazing experience. God had given me a baptism of joy along with a prayer language and the joy lasted for a whole week. "Joy unspeakable and full of glory!" What I didn't know is that God was preparing me for one of the worst experiences I would ever have. About a month later I would lose the man in my life that the sun rose and set on, my Dad. I had no idea the kind of bond I felt with him until I lost him. He had already had strokes and a huge personality change. That had been devastating to see an outgoing man suddenly with nothing to say and suffering from extreme paranoia. I had a panic attack from it and ended up in the emergency room, and they sent me home because they said there was nothing wrong with me. I didn't realize what had happened until years later. About 3 years after his first stroke my parents were going to Florida to visit my brother, Richard, for a couple of months and then on to California to visit my oldest brother, David. Bill and I had driven them to the Syracuse airport to get their flight. We were waiting at the gate for them to leave as no prohibitions had been put on non-passengers at that time. As soon as they walked out the door to go down the ramp I was suddenly hit with a "knowing" that I would never see my Dad again. I went into deep grief and Bill had to hold me up as I walked out of the airport to our car. When we got home I laid on the couch in the fetal position crying and asking God to give me a promise to hold on to. Suddenly he filled my mind with the verse, "Unless a kernel of wheat fall to the ground and die it remaineth alone." John 12:24 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, еxcept a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. ... Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." I had no idea what that meant but I knew God had given it to me and that somehow God would use me to carry out what he had started through my Dad. Bill had some time off of work so we decided to go to Florida while my parents were still there. We spent a couple of weeks with them and flew home. We weren't home a week when I got a call from my brother one morning saying, "Dad's gone to Heaven." Bill was working night shift and hadn't been asleep too long when I woke him up sobbing. My heart was totally broken. When I prayed I told God I didn't want to talk to him, I wanted to talk to my Dad who was there with him. My Mom flew home with my Dad's body and made funeral preparations. I could not be consoled. Everything seemed to be in 3D to me. When they buried him I could see him lying in the ground. It was as though he was still alive in there. To say it was horrible is an understatement. At church during the singing I would always cry. It felt good in some ways to let out the emotion of grief. One day a man walked up to me after church and told me to stop that crying as my dad was in Heaven. It didn't help at all. Instead I felt very judged. A year later I was at a ladies event at church and a man was speaking and sharing his experiences on being a father to his children. It was more than I could bare. As soon as he was through I walked into one of the Sunday School rooms to the opposite side and faced the wall and cried. I didn't think anyone saw me, but suddenly the speaker, Tom Priest, came up behind me and gently spoke to me and put his arms around me and told me how sorry he was. God used that dear man to help heal my heart. I no longer sobbed my heart out but the pain was still there, and I felt it suffocating me. In prayer I talked to God and told him that he promised to be a woman's husband when he was no longer there and I asked him to be my Father since mine was no longer here. God heard that prayer and totally healed my heart. I am so grateful for a loving heavenly Father who will be to us everything we need. That experience 34 years ago taught me to never judge the way people grieve. I had no control over my response to losing my father, and neither does anyone else have any control over their emotional response to losing someone. Neither can there be a time put on grief. Since that day I lost my Mother and I lost a brother, and though I was sad to lose them I did not grieve as i did for my Dad.