God Moves in Mysterious Ways

 

The Lord moves in mysterious ways. Everyone’s heard that. It sounds like a dodge or excuse for the times that something doesn’t seem to make any sense and we just throw that out there so we can move on to the newest iPhone. But the Lord doesn’t make phone calls. He makes miracles. One such miracle was Kielia. 

 

Kielia came one night after a party. I went to bed properly anesthetized. I slept fitfully until around three in the morning. Then I woke. That disturbing wakefulness one has after too much party and too little rest. 

 

When I’d wake like that usually I’d sit at my desk and write. I lived in a garage apartment. Bed, desk, shower. Every day I’d write for the various publications I submitted for. All political. All soul draining. All destined for nowhere. Yet “the boxer still remained.”

 

I’d just returned from California. I’d lost my family. Lost my business. And lost my mind. Not all of it. Just the part that made me a member of the human race. In California I’d found Occatillo Wells. A spot of desert about five miles from Mexico and a few miles out of Yuma. When I was there, I’d go out in the cool desert air and talk to the wind. I discovered that with enough whiskey the wind would talk back. In my solitude I’d become a drunk. Not an alcoholic, mind you, a drunk. Alcoholic was much too sophisticated a category for me. 

 

Then one night the wind told me to return to Texas. To this day I do not know what possessed me to actually do that. I was busy dying. But I got on a plane. There was no great reunion. God wasn’t through with me yet. I’d been divorced. My wife of over thirty years had married someone else. I was broken and homeless. 

 

My new husband in law was a saint. He had adopted my five grandchildren, who’d been removed from their mother and father by the Child Services. Joe was a Vietnam vet. Three Bronze Stars with Valor. Two Silver Stars, a handful of Purple Hearts and a believe a Congressional something or other. All from one battle. Missing, assumed dead. He wasn’t dead. He just had to shop for a pair of black pajamas so he could report back to duty. And he saw something in me!

 

He had this house in town where he kept his daughter and granddaughter. Since I was as useless as they were he put me in a garage apartment that he’d built. It was nice. A fine tribute to an old soldier dying of Agent Orange. And that was where I woke up on that night in 2012. 

 

That night a runaway was sleeping on the floor. Young, too young, caught up in the street scene of an army town with a drug addicted boyfriend who would dump her on me when he’d prowl the town looking for drugs or something to steal to pay for them. She was curled up on a blanket on the floor. As I watched her sleep a story drifted into my mind. The story about a woman from the future who came to our time looking for the meaning of a word. A word that had been lost Love! A world without love. 

 

It took about two hours to write the story. Then I shelved it. It wasn’t what I’d usually write. It was not political, yet it was! It perfectly described the Woke world that we would be subjected to years hence. I couldn’t see that. It wasn’t time. 

 

Joe died, and time and tears went by. Spiritually I continued to fall. I tried to die but couldn’t even pull that off. Then one day while sitting on a porch in Tennessee my ex told me that God told her for me to call Vic Quinton. He was an old acquaintance of mine. We wrote songs back in the day. I kicked hard against the goads, but to shut her up, I called. 

 

I decided to send him a story idea that he right away turned into a screenplay. I was impressed. So, we began to polish the play. Then I jokingly suggested that we needed to start a film company. Vic didn’t catch the joke. He just started a movie company. So suddenly here I was working on screenplays. 

 

Then, one day while searching my files I ran across that short story from over ten years ago. Just for grits and grins I sent it to Vic. I’d called it Kiä-Lîa. Vic just called it Kielia. He, and Rusty Joiner took my hangover story, saw God’s message hidden there and made a movie. Guess the desert wind told me the truth. God moves in mysterious ways!