The Mayor of Bizarreville

If Bizarreville was a town, I would be the Mayor
Ya know how the things you think mean something turn out to mean something totally different?
Well, I know what I mean anyway.
A few months ago during a fit of the lonlies, I decided to try the online dating thing, after all, it worked so smashingly the first time (sarcasm). My whole experience this time lasted I think 3 days. That was about all the bull shit I could stand. However, there was a couple or three folks seemed interesting enough that when I deleted that crap, I texted them and said, "I deleted that crap". "Call me if you want to." So, to my surprise, I get this text wanting to have dinner that night since she was working out my way. So we did. We hit it off great, which I have learned is the kiss of death, relationally speaking. Also a kiss of death, "you are a great guy", "you are a really good fella (and/or man)" or the ever popular "I love you as a person". Somehow though, three weeks later it was determined that in that 40 minute dinner of chili's appetizers, we didn't have romantic chemistry, little cart before the horse if you ask me. Keep in mind, hadn't seen her since. Anyway, none of that is the story I'm writing about, although I could rant on the shallowness of people for hours and their loose use of the word friend, but I won't; that was just the history.
The story is, that during that 40 minute dinner she mentioned a friend of hers, I'm guessing an actual friend in the true meaning of the word, who is very sick with cancer. I won't say my ears perked up when I heard this, but I felt something in me. My new buddy and I have semi kept in touch, since I am of course, "a good friend" and our brief chats always come back to her friend.
This friend has laid heavy on my heart ever since that evening. Everyday I would look at her writings on facebook. A truly faithful human like her I have never encountered. Through a stage four storm like would kill most of us and certainly kill our faith, hers has exploded. She saw her disease as a tool to reach people, simply beyond any words I can feebly write here.
It was gnawing in me deeply not to just sit in my car and pray but to go to her, to take elder and oil and pray with a fervency like never before.
Last week, I'm sitting here, feeling extremely cocky and sarcastic, so I email my non chemistried buddy and say, "hey, for such good friends, we sure don't seem to talk much"...I'm a notorious pot stirrer. So, after a stream of excuses, the subject turns to the sick friend, again. So I tell her of my deep desire to go and pray with our friend and what did she think of that. She replied that maybe she would be ok with praying on the phone. So, I bit at the chance. By that night, I had her number and the next day I sat outside at lunch and actually talked to her. What a wonderfal chat and person. I was able to ask her flat out, what do you want? I didn't want to assume. She told me and I began to pray.
We seemed to speak well and she seemed comfortable so I pushed it a bit, I told her of my desire to bring elders and oil and simply do what the word says do even though it makes no human sense. Next week, it will happen.
In telling this story to a brother tribal misfit, he said, "can she get out to go worship?", well, I didn't know that answer. He said, maybe we can take worship to her. So, I thought, we're on a roll, lets just ask. So I emailed her and asked.
She is traveling this weekend, but I suspect that the weekend after that, we will make it happen.
So, the story here isn't just about a person I've never met that has become someone the warrior in me will go to battle for, although that is a good story. The rest of the story for me is how He took my weakness, my loneliness and used it to launch a chain of events that I now expect nothing but glory from. Let it be so.
Oh, and by the way, last report was she has regained her appetite, feeling stronger and as of today was told by a new doctor they have a treatment for her they have great hope in. And the thing she wanted, she wanted to hear God again, to be inspired to write again. Saturday, she wrote. She didn't want a miracle, she simply wanted Him back. Not that He left, but for those of us who have been where we thought He had left, you know what I mean.

10/5/11 Update: Tumors in lungs and liver have shrunken to half what they were.. Today, your faith has healed you!!!
Yes, I expected to hear, cancer? what cancer? we just can't explain it.. But this is wonderful news and we will take it and praise the one who came to set it all right again. She said to me, "I don't want to sit here too sick to move and then die. I either want it over now or be well for 10 years, see my grandchildren grow up and then go." It is looking like that will happen. However, I still expect much more for that is only what she has imagined. Good good stuff.