40 is the New 716

This is a story that only a few people in my life know.  And now I'm sharing it with all of you. Which feels very vulnerable but also powerful.

It started more than two years ago and I began the see the connections with both increasing alarm and clarity.

The number was everywhere.  This number that represented awful choices I'd made, people that I'd hurt, and insecurities and fears that dwelt so deep inside of me that the light of truth hadn't even yet shone on a lot of them.

It did not strike me as coincidence that I was seeing this number at a time when I was about to repeat some of my same mistakes and make more choices that would hurt those I professed to love. Still on that search to artificially heal what was so deeply broken and lacking inside of me.  That lack of coincidence helped me to see this appearance of the number as a warning sign from God.  A flashing red light that He brought into my path time and again.  Which I ignored. Time and again.

First it was that casual glance at the clock soon after I'd woke up in the morning and there it would be.  7:16    Bold and red.  I dare you to look away.

Then it was the last three digits of an invoice I was entering at work.  Or on the back of a semi trailer I was following down the highway.  It was on license plates and road signs and price tags.

And the clock.  Always the clock.  I wouldn't glance at the clock for hours and then I would check the time and, as if my attention had been pulled by some mysterious force, there it was.  7:16

I remember the time that I was flying out for a girl's weekend.  I was on the phone with a man who was not my husband and I walked up to the kiosk to get my boarding pass printed out.  I remember looking at the time down in the bottom right hand corner and sending a picture of it to the man who was not my husband and saying "Notice the time down in the corner?"  I had told him the story and the significance of the number to me.

Sometimes I would actual startle when I would see the number.  It would be in red, or black, white or green.  Unexpectedly.  That was how it almost always showed up.

I learned that you see what you look for.  The number 716 is not an easy number to see.  But when it has significance to you and especially a significance that you would rather ignore, you somehow see it everywhere.  The universe can be persistant like that.

And then I had the dream.  Which was as real to me as anything has ever been.  I was away for a few days of alone time.  October 2013.  I had been reading and praying and just being in silence and then I felt tired and I lay down for a little nap.

I would up with such a start that it was as if a gun had gone off in my room.  I sat up in the bed and I only had one thought in my mind.  The dream I had just been startled awake from.  In this dream, God showed me that I would know that I had conquered my long standing issues surrounding the belief that there is someone out there that would make me happy...when I started seeing the number 40 instead of the number 716.

Does this sound crazy?  Yes.  Is it true as true can be?  Yes.  And I knew it. Without a shadow of a doubt.

One would think, using powers of logic, that the number 40 would be much easier to see than the number 716.  One obvious reason is the number of digits that need to be present.  Another is the fact that 40 is a round number of even ten's and 716 is a very random number somewhere between 500 and 1,000.

But could I ever see the number 40?  No.  Never.

Until about exactly a year later.  When I again went away for what is now becoming my annual couple of days of solitude.  I spent time praying. I spent time in silence.  I read. God miraculously (different story for another time) brought a book into my path that I read during my time alone in that big vacation house.  I cried.  I marveled.

And on my drive home, I passed through a town that had not one, not two, but three huge 40 mile per hour speed limit signs.  I laughed. I cried. I praised.

For the next day or two, I saw the number 40 a few more times. I thought "This is it.  This is my sign." And then it stopped.  Just like that.  I didn't know how to change what I was seeing and I figured it just meant I wasn't far enough along on my journey yet.  But that there was hope.

Fast forward to early June of this year.  The kids and I set out on our amazing road trip adventure.  A lot had been changing in me in the past year or two.  I knew that.  But we are always hardest on ourselves and sometimes until something makes us take a step back, we can't see the distance between point A and point B. It can feel like all we've been doing is climbing, and when we look up, the top of the mountain is still just as far away and obscured by clouds.

It started with one speed limit sign.  40 MPH.  Isn't it usually 45?  But no, here was a 40 MPH sign. And then there was another.  And another.  Down through Iowa and into that small town in Missouri that we wound our way through.  Slow down.  40 MPH.

I smiled to myself as I kept seeing the number 40. I texted my friend from back home and said "I think this trip is going to go well.  I keep seeing the number 40."  She was happy for me.

That's been 2 months ago and it hasn't stopped!  I see this number everywhere.  In the time on the clock when I glance over and it reads 9:40.  In the calories I've burned on the eliptical at the gym. In speed limit signs.  On license plates and road signs and price tags.  On invoices I enter when I'm doing bookwork.

It's a miracle.  It's my miracle!  It doesn't have to make sense to anyone else.  It doesn't have to match anyone else's story.  But that's the power of our experiences.  They are ours alone and the telling of those stories and what they mean to us is powerful. The way our life has been shaped by those stories and the driving force (God) behind them is powerful.

Have I conquered my demons, as my dream had indicated?  Some days it certainly doesn't feel like it. The struggle is still there.  The insecuries and fears and old ways of thinking die hard.

Once this spring when I was alone at the cabin where I sought solitude, I cried out to my loving Father God and I said "Show me what you see when you look at me!!"  Please.  I sat there with tears running down my face.  Tears fueled by long years of seeing myself through a very distorted and negative lens.  You know the kind of thoughts? Those demeaning and defeating words we speak to ourselves?  The kind of words we would be appalled to have another person say to us.

God so firmly and gently and lovingly spoke this to me, and I wrote it down in my little red, leather diary.

Audrey, you are...

Faithful

Honest (because He knows me)

Sane (because He made me)

Pure

All of these words represented things I doubted about myself.  Things I wondered if I would ever be. I have thought of this encounter with God so often since then in moments of self-doubt and self-hatred.

So can I say I have arrived in my journey because I now see the number 40?  Probably not.  But you know what it means to me these days?  It represents hope.  It represents strength that is greater than my own. It represents a power that I have access to...within me.  It represents a journey and the promise that while I'll never "have it together", I will always have the tool necessary to make the right choices.  It flashes in front of my eyes when I feel unable.  It literally has shown up seconds after I've had discouraging thoughts about where I am on my journey.  It encourages me.  Daily.  And He knows ALL of that.  He knows ME.

God has seldom shown up in my life in ways that I have expected.  But He has always shown up in ways that were meaningful to me when I have opened my eyes and surrendered my heart.  What they say about perception is true. We really do see what we look for!

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