Tuesday, August 14, 2012

(23)Tempting Fate by Nora Roberts


This is the Caine half of The MacGregors.

I have read my share of love stories in my teens. Yet no other romance author brings interesting side issues to life like her. If you have been reading the notes I have written on Roberts’ books, you will realize that I pick them not for her talents of describing what happened in between the sheets.
As I read about Diana Blake, I was comparing her at the back of my mind to a young lady who has a gift with words (we’ll call her Leela). For my readers who have not read Tempting Fate, Diana’s parents died when she was six. Her brother, who was sixteen, took her to her aunt and left her there. For twenty years he did not see her, not because he did not want to. It was the aunt that made the condition. He quietly sent monthly checks until she graduated from law school. She grew up suppressing her love and need for the only brother she had, thinking that he abandoned her. It seemed that the in-grain habit of operating on logic had severed her emotions until she could no longer be comfortable with her feelings.

On a few occasions I met Leela. She is a young mother of three, managing on her own in a foreign land. After I listened to her mother’s struggles, I began to see why she had a problem in her childhood. A short summary would be her own words: by choice, she separated her emotions from logic to survive the pain many years ago. Now, she is surrounded with four males, her husband and three sons. It would not be unusual for at least one of her sons to take after her father, who seemed to be the source of her painful childhood.

It is probably unlikely I will see Leela in the near future. I am glad of that. I wish her well, of course. Since I am not a psychologist, I cannot be of help to sort out the tangles in her heart. Now, a few days ago I was asked to pray for a lady, she was so concise with her statement of prayer point that I confessed I did not know how to ask God to help her. Then and there I resorted to praying in tongues for perhaps forty seconds as that usually help me to pray when my mind was a blank. To be honest I cannot remember even one phrase out of the prayer I uttered on her behalf. It must have been reasonable as those around the table took what I prayed in their stride. After I prayed, both in tongues and in words, it became clear to me that this lady has a similar problem like Leela (As the days passed, this conviction deepened). Now, you must be wondering if I am going off my rocker!

Let me explain, since young I have been periodically having flashes of insight that I cannot command nor explain. They often came when I did not expect nor want them. It helps me to see people for what they chose not to reveal to others. I might blurt out the precise thing my conversation partner was trying to avoid. Some people thought I was mediumistic. But I have checked, there was not a single medium on both sides of my family lines for 4 generations.

After I became a practicing Christian, folks said it is the gift of knowledge. An unbelieving family member said it is what was described in Blink by Ted Dekker (I hope I have the correct name down). Whatever you call it, I am stuck with it. Part of it was probably in born: the ability to see patterns where others fail. God could have sanctified the natural talent to become a gift of the Holy Spirit to serve others. What remains is if I have a chance to speak to this second person alone sometime in the future, I would have to thicken my skin to tell her what I heard while praying. If it is indeed from God, then that could be the root of the problem to her Eczema.   

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