by Titus and Angela Watts
It all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to say NO WAY!
One week ago the heated debate began as I declared, “I don’t like camping”. I mean, come on, who doesn’t prefer the king-sized, complimentary buffet, with lavender shower gel over a tent, bugs, and dirt. Had I become so spoiled with the finest of luxuries that I had lost my childlike adventure of faith? Help me God! And He did.
I was sitting in at one of our weekly Whirlwind Prophetic church services and a young lady ministered to me and told me that she saw me and my family having a GREAT time camping, with the tent, barbeque and woods! WOW! God knows me so well and He knows how to break me out of my wildly stubborn Filly attitude. A day or two later we were wolfing down a Bento Box at our local corner Sushi house with close friends and agreeing with joy about how good God was and suddenly we darted home and began packing for a two day camping trip. The “suddenlies” had just hit me over the head and with my husbands perpetual grin and my kid’s enthusiasm, I knew God had a plan and we were off to the wilderness.
In all of our zeal and excitement, we totally forgot that it was the 4th of July weekend. You know the one weekend out of the year that EVERY campsite in the USA is booked a year in advance. We did an extensive search and found out that the only site left in the state of California was dockside on the Delta river banks…not a perfectly safe spot for young children! Think again! This piece of reality did not discourage us at all because God told us were we going and we knew He had a place for us to rest our heads under the moon lit sky.
Wouldn’t you know it, an hour after we searched the web thoroughly for a camping site, one of our co-workers found out that there was a first-come, first-served site only 45 minutes from our very home. God had the place and we didn’t have to climb all over the internet, like so many of us do a zillion times a day. He brought it to us! Within 10 hours we were setting up our ten-person tent and slathering on the mosquito-be-gone ointment. It was time for me to let it all go! Let the one-year-old sink his hands, face and hair in the dirt, let the six-year-old ride his dirt bike anywhere he wanted, while letting the three-year-old take his shoes off and run wild while caking on a concoction of dirty marshmellows under his fingernails. And then there was having to walk to the bathrooms at least two times in the middle of the night. (All the while I affirmed in prayer that God had my guardian angels escorting me to and fro during one night of the wind howling overhead and another night of the still, calm air.) It was a wonderful two-day adventure.
We met God on the mountain, away from the “to do” lists, the emails, the city noise and from the luxuries…ahh the creature comforts. That’s it, I figured it out! I had become a creature of the fleshly habitation, wanting the high end from now on, the abounding as opposed to being the abased, thinking a clean hotel room was better than the great outdoors that God had created. I had gotten particularly choosy and my mouth complained over such things. Wow, God used what I thought were my dislikes and turned them into my “I-likes.” My NO WAY became the only way.
Angela Watts is the team-leader in Accounting and Travel. She has handled location scouting and securing for the WYSIWYG feature films “Guardians,” “The Roman Trilogy,” and “Gravity.”
