The Whole Penny Story

In every life there are defining moments and usually those moments have a story associated with them. Mine has to do with pennies and these pennies prompted the idea for this blog.

To set the stage I have to give you a little background information. I grew up in the church. At an early age I discovered one of my spiritual gifts was prayer and that God spoke to me powerfully through symbols and even dreams. This might seem strange to some but to others commonplace. The Bible is filled with symbolic imagery and lots of dreams and visions are described. If it seems weird to you I’d like to ask you to think of it as just different than what you’re used to.

With this bit of understanding about me here’s when the penny thing started. It was July 11, 2006 and I was out walking and praying which I do every day. It was a particularly hard season in my life. I had just left my work at the church I was at which wasn’t easy. Physically I was in a tremendous amount of pain and the doctors were having a hard time finding answers to their questions about the different symptoms I had.

Something was terribly wrong with my body. My entire left side felt like it was on fire and my body was clearly fighting off some sort of infection but what was it? I was losing weight, losing my balance, my vision was changing, I couldn’t sleep, my blood pressure was dropping and my lymph nodes were the size of golf balls.

These weren’t the only things going on with me. Lots of other stuff was happening but some things you just don’t talk about. We’ll leave it at that! I’m one stubborn lady though and so I was determined everyday to be as functional as possible physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Taking a break from life just wasn’t palatable to me. I wouldn’t give up.

The morning of the prayer walk two friends had called that felt as if they were at their breaking point in life. I promised to pray for them about their issues and set off on my walk. While I’m out another friend calls to tell me he has unexpectedly lost his job and asks for prayer I stop the walk and sit down on the sidewalk to talk with him. As I was praying I leaned back and put my hand in a pile of pennies. It was four pennies. I hadn’t seen them when I sat down. I finished the conversation, picked up the pennies, and kept going on the walk.

As I was rolling the pennies around in my hand I felt like God was trying to say something to me with these pennies and so I asked Him, "What is the message?" Quickly it came to me - believe for (four) my provision. Trust me. I took this as a message for my friends and eventually gave each one of them the pennies and kept the one left as a reminder to me to pray for them.

Like anyone I sometimes miss the most obvious point of an experience but after the pennies kept coming one after another I realized God was speaking to me personally. He was telling me to make the changes in my life that I needed to and trust Him to see me through that process day by day….penny by penny.

I started to look at what needed to change in my life. It wasn’t easy. The list seemed so long. The most immediate issue was I needed to get well. My journey toward recovery started by changing doctors and seeking help outside of conventional medicine. This required recognizing that my body and spirit are connected which meant I had to look at what was making my spirit sick. What was suppressing my health and vitality to the point that my body couldn’t fight off a common virus that had been discovered? What was my body bearing the burden of?

This process was filled with many painful discoveries and forced me to admit things that I didn’t want to admit because the emotional pain would be as great as the physical pain. What I began to realize was that in my life I had resigned myself to the fact that some things could never change or at least I’d convinced myself that the change couldn’t be handled by all involved. Lives are interconnected and when one person makes changes in their life there is a ripple effect whether we like to admit that or not.

For days, weeks, months I felt like I was hanging upside down by my heels so that everything that needed to go would shake out. If any pennies were falling out of my pockets the next day God would replace them and whisper in my ear, “Trust me with this change”. The pennies I would find became so dear to me.

At about midpoint in the journey I had the wonderful experience of flying on the trapeze. After several days of learning how to do a knee hang with a catch I was so bruised and beat up that I had to learn a new trick or I wouldn’t be able physically to keep going. This was when one of the real fliers (vs. amateur) suggested I learn how to do a “heels-off”. Of course this guy didn’t know that I felt like I’d been hanging by my heels for months so I could only laugh with disbelief.

I couldn’t conceptualize how I could hang upside down from a bar mid-air even for a minute by my heels (not ankles) and actually be caught by someone on the other side of the rig. Everyone with any experience kept telling me it was possible but I couldn’t believe it. Finally after lots of practice, the catcher took his place. I left the platform on his go and got those heels on the bar mid-swing and let go with my hands and there he was to catch me.

It was personally a very profound experience for me because I knew before I even flipped out of the net onto steady ground that I’d learned hanging by your heels doesn’t have to be scary. Taking a leap of faith and changing the things you need to in your life can happen and while you may fall you will also get to experience flight even if just for a moment. This is a wonderful thing!

The week I fell in love with the trapeze I was in Mexico and you know what I found a penny everyday there. Go figure…a French owned resort in Mexico. I should have found pesos not pennies. I gave some of those pennies away to one of the fliers but kept some to remember the experience.

I’m happy to tell you that the bruises have healed and my heart and body are healing. My health is better than it has ever been. My life is very different and it’s still changing in wonderful ways…penny by penny. To say I’m thankful for God’s graciousness with giving me all these pennies is an understatement. I think I’m a very blessed lady to find so much change!