Wet Wednesdays In November

When I was about 9, my dad started to get sick. I can remember during one bout of his extreme headaches, my brother who was 10, my sister who was a baby, and I lay in bed with my dad. He was weeping and kept saying that he would never see us, especially my sister, grow up. My dad was afraid; I was afraid.

For 2 years he wasn't able to work, putting additional strain on the limited finances we had. I remember avoiding the bill collectors, hiding and turning the TV off. I can recall feeling sorry for him as he tried to get work and attended a special training for machinery class. He came home very proud of a clamp he had made and I think we still had that clamp right up until we cleared our family home out this year. That feeling of pity was pretty hard to stomach, dads shouldn't be pitied by their ten-year-old sons.

He did get some work as a security guard at a printing firm close by. It was all off the books work, the kind that pays terribly.

On November 6, my mom woke me and asked me to sleep in the room with my sister, she was three at the time, I was eleven. My dad hadn't come home and my mom was going to walk the streets looking for him. This was the 70’s. Sectarian murders were not uncommon and fear was normal. I remember praying, asking God (not that I had a clue who He was) to bring my dad home. The next morning, Sunday morning, I woke and my dad was home. He had blacked out in his security hut and everyone was thankful that my mom had found him. His coat had been burnt as he had fallen close to an electric fire.

The next night, my mom came in again and told me the same thing. I said a quick prayer and fell asleep. The three of us, my brother, sister, and I woke the next morning and no one was home. I decided I would stay off school and look after my sister and my brother put on his school uniform and was ready to go. Around 7:45 am, my mom came in and told us that my dad was dead. My response was ‘You are joking, you are joking, this is a joke’. She explained that he had suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and that he had been found by someone who called an ambulance. They had operated on my dad but by the time my mom got to the hospital, he was dead. His body was still warm and my mom took some comfort that maybe, just maybe he was still there when she said goodbye.

That was Monday morning, November 8, 1976. Two days later, on a wet Wednesday in November, my dad was buried and I wasn't allowed to go to the funeral.

I want to suggest that all of us, every single person on the planet, has a life event that shapes them. An event that when the news breaks and you are in the middle of it, it is hard to even breathe. Then come the 'wet Wednesdays'.

Wet Wednesdays are days when you want to simply crawl up, let the world pass by and stay in bed. I think they are pretty common and if you are experiencing one right now, know this, they do pass. Wet Wednesdays in November have this way of becoming a brighter Thursday.

Jesus told His disciples that they could ask anything from Him and that he was going to go to the Father, who loved Him. He then explained that they were going to have their own Wet Wednesday in November and "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

Take courage, not just that this will pass but because there is One who overcame.

Your overcoming is inevitable but it might be time, in the middle of your wet Wednesday, to start prophesying.

Start prophesying over who you are and what it is you are called to do. Write these things down. Dig out those prophetic words you have been given and start declaring them over yourself, your loved ones, and your nation. You are a blood-bought child of the King of the Universe! You belong to a Father who is present with you at all times, you are called to disciple nations and bring the Kingdom to earth as it is in Heaven.

You are not alone, abandoned or forsaken. You are loved with an everlasting love. You have a cause good enough to live for and these clouds will give way to a brighter sun.

Ian