Believe

“Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep’” (Luke 15:6, NIV).

“Have you seen Hadwin?” Christina asked me. With those words, a very painful trial began. By far, it was the most painful for my daughter Anna. She gave me her permission to share this story with you. Hadwin is her beloved cat. He has been there for her through thick and thin. He has faithfully woken her up from nightmares during her sleep. He has comforted her in moments of deep sorrow. He has meant more to her than words can adequately convey. That day, he disappeared.

Anna hunted for him all over the neighborhood for two weeks. She put up fliers everywhere. She asked every neighbor she could find if they’d seen him. She wept copious amounts of tears. A group of neighborhood children did their best to help. One of them found the corpse of a cat Hadwin’s size and color that had been hit by a car. When he showed it to Anna, she gave up hope. Waves of painful grief ensued. They barely let up, week after week after that.

As soon as Hadwin went missing, I felt Holy Spirit prompting me to believe that he would return. Multiple stories of missing cats coming home came to my attention. One of them was particularly close to home: a high school classmate shared on Facebook of her beloved lost kitty turning up at her door six days after getting lost. Her intense distress evaporated into jubilant relief.

I felt Holy Spirit highlighting her story as a prophetic indicator that this testimony would become ours as well. “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 19:10, NKJV). What He has done before prophesies what He will do again!

A few days after Hadwin’s disappearance, we were feeling the strain of his absence keenly. A song popped into my spirit. This is a way that God often communicates with me. Loudly, I began to hear the lyrics in my heart and mind from Kim Walker-Smith, “I still believe! You’re the same yesterday, today, and forever…” The thing is, I hadn’t heard this song in years. This made it all the more noticeable as being from Him. Holy Spirit was insisting that I keep believing He would bring our treasured pet home.

After that, He kept reiterating to me the same message over and over and over again, to the point that I just laughed with joy each new time it happened. Song after song about believing came to my attention. In a million other creative ways that God has of getting His messages through to us, He did. Here’s one of my top favorites, though. I’ve been studying Portuguese on Duolingo. Look at the exercise the app had me do: Continue reading Our Own Extremely Special Miracle