God has always been very tangible with me and when He wants me to do something, He tends to poke thru my life rather dramatically. Usually it is with something visual, as I am a visual learner. Sometimes when my life was quite hectic, He poked thru it in the only place where I was still...
Like Mass, prayer, the bathroom, my dreams or in this particular case, when He woke me from my slumber.
Allow me to take you back a few years...
My three children were in elementary, middle and high school and my life was quite hectic as I also working. My gift in life is intercessory prayer and since God meets us where we are, He (who is love) chose to meet me where He could best get my attention.
I was in a deep R.E.M. sleep when I was awakened in the middle of the night by a breeze rustling through the tall pine trees in our front yard. Whenever this occurred I got a bit nervous, as the trees tended to fall over a lot and I worried one might hit our house.
The night in question was no different and as I awoke and glanced out the windows, I saw the trees bending and sashaying back and forth. The moon was casting a glow upon them and I could see the trees quite clearly. I said a little prayer and as I turned to my left, to re position myself on the bed, I was startled by something I saw in my bedroom.
I did a double take because it was so extraordinary to me! With the wind whistling thru the trees, some branches somehow situated in such a way, that they cast a silhouette of a baby in utero sucking its thumb! I stared at it dumbfounded. I was taken aback because it wasn't simply a token image but the identical image that had been circling pro-life literature for ages!!! I was paralyzed with awe at the wonder and majesty of God and simply could not take my eyes off it.
The extraordinary thing was even though it was windy outside and the trees continued to sway, this silhouette of the baby sucking its thumb remained still.
I stared at it a few minutes and then tried to go back to sleep. But the baby in my bedroom kept pursuing me and I would open my eyes and there it would be... beckoning me. This was what I would eventually term as "the night of the Father," as God the Father was asking me to do His will. I figured there was a reason this image had come to me, so I offered a few prayers and eventually fell back to sleep.