Hints of Failure Part 3.5

If you haven't read them yet, catch on up with Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Part 3.5: The Knees Continued

On the second day of the tournament, I watched my sister's team win another game. While them play, stepping periodically into the spirit to make the blanket of clouds recede, I noticed five or six girls with knee braces either playing, warming up, or watching. I reflected on my own knee injuries. I thought about the first time my friends and I laid hands and witnessed healing - an ACL.

I want to heal every knee I touch, I thought. 

Then you’d better start touching knees, Dad replied. 

Just then, as if cued by a script I wasn't given, a girl entered the gym on crutches witha familiar looking brace on her knee. She wore the colors of Blue Mountain Community College - a team well favored to win the tournament (and did, in fact, go on to do so).

Blue Mountain was cheering for Spokane from the sidelines, shouting in support of Eastern WA. The girl on crutches sat down several rows in front of me, surrounded by a boy and friends and parents. You'd better start touching knees...

After Brittany’s team won, and before I said my goodbyes, I pulled Brittany aside. “Let’s go lay hands on that girl with the crutches,” I said. 

“That is the coach of Blue Mountain’s daughter,” she said. Apparently this was reason to shy away from appearing crazy in front of her. 

“Do you know if she tore he ACL?” 

“Yeah, she did. A week ago. And she’s still on crutches. Isn’t that weird?”

“Did your doctor give you crutches?”

“No, he told me not to baby it.” We laughed, and I made my way to the girl on crutches. By now, Blue Mountain was on their own court warming up. The girl was standing near the bleachers, bearing no weight on her left, braced leg, still surrounded by a gaggle of people. 

I put my hand on her should to get her attention and said hello, trying to look friendly. “What happened to your knee?” I asked. 

She smiled, trying to act like she knew me, because I was acting like I knew her. “Tore more ACL right in half,” she said.

“So do you play for Blue Mountain?”

She didn’t, she explained, but helps her dad. She tore her ACL hitting with the team during practice. While we talked, none of the surrounding gaggle paid us any attention. They turned to each other and let the girl on crutches talk with this other girl no one knew. 

“We don’t know each other,” I said brightly. For a moment, relief replaced the girl’s well-masked confusion. The confusion returned quickly, though, when she realized that didn’t explain why we were talking.  “I’m Kaylani, I played for your assistant coach in high school. My sister plays for Spokane. I actually need practice healing knees, oddly enough. My sister tore her ACL too, and I’ve done damage to my own. Do you want some healing?”

Her smile never flickered, but the idea that I was crazy was clearly settling in. “I can’t walk or do anything until next week when I go back to the doctor,” she hastily explained, turning back toward her gaggle of followers. 

“I’m not asking you to do anything with your knee. You don’t have to move at all. I’m just going to heal you.”

She turned back to me, still smiling. “I’ve got to go sit with the team soon, maybe I'll hit you up after the game.” Again, she turned away toward the people ignoring us. 

For a split second, images from a dream about a rhino and a peach tree streamed through my mind (readable in Part 2). I saw myself bowing to the stubborn, immovable rhino who threatened to keep me from my fruit. I responded to the rhino with the opposite spirit - a spirit of gracious welcome - and subsequently we ate the fruit together. 

Jesus, I want to respond in the opposite spirit, I thought. When I spoke, redrawing her attention, she seemed honestly surprised I was still talking. “Sorry what?” she said, half way through my statement. 

“It’s healing, not surgery. We don’t need more than thirty seconds. Is your healing worth your thirty seconds of your time?”

She sighed. “Well, what does that mean?”

“What? Healing?”

“Yeah, healing. That’s pretty vague.”

At this point, I understood I wasn’t in Olympia any more. In Olympia, the word “healing” doesn’t confuse people. Everyone is familiar with the concept to some extent, be it Reiki, crystals, magic stones, kombucha, hydrogen peroxide, what have you. You’re a healer, I need healed. You’re going to do something that makes me feel better.  It’s not talk of healing that causes people to shy away from me, but talk of Jesus. Not the case in Eastern Washington, I was now recalling. The difference between Eastern and Western WA are as drastic as the difference between a rainforest and a desert (literally). 

I paused, looked her in the eye, and took a deep breath before continuing. Usually, I’d have given up by now and walked away before things got any more awkward. But I was feeling more bold than usual, and less willing to be taken lightly be someone who didn’t seem willing to engage in anything more than a surface level conversation with me. If I could talk a rhinoceros into sharing peaches with me, I could talk this girl into sharing the fruit of Jesus with me.

“Jesus of the Bible,” I began, “Healed every person he came upon. Sick, injured, demon possessed - it didn’t matter. He healed them. Even in his own home town, where disbelief was so heavy he couldn’t work any other miracles, he healed. 

“He then told his disciples and followers, all the authority and power I have is yours. And he commanded them to go out and heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, and cast out demons. Once he was raised from the dead, he reiterated - go do the things I’ve commanded.

“So, I, being a follower of Jesus, heal people. Because that’s what he demonstrated, and commanded we do.” (See Matthew 10, and 28:17-20)

She nodded and smiled, and to her credit, didn’t roll her eyes. “So you’re going to bless me,” she explained to me. 

And whatever I'd learned from the rhino dream escaped me. My mind was fried, and I was wondering how to get out of the situation. “Girl, I’m going to bless the shit out of you and you’re going to be healed.” 

Blunt, but not ineffective. “Ok let’s do it. Go ahead,” the girl said. 

Rather than press the issue further and ask to place my hand on her knee, I simply put a hand on her shoulder. She bowed her head respectfully. While I waited to hear what words God would have me speak, she grew restless. My thirty seconds were dwindling. 

Before I heard a whisper from Dad, I decided to make some frantic declarations of my own  about Jesus’s authority, release some peace and confidence, say ‘In Jesus Name’ for good measure, and hope that despite my hollow words, Holy Spirit would flow through my hand anyway. 

I paused once more, hoping to actually hear God speak, but the girl on crutches took that for the end. She looked up, smiled, thanked me. Without asking if she felt better, I simply thanked her in return and left. 

After hugging Brittany and my parents, assuring them we weren’t done with Brittany’s healing, I left for home. 

Whatever confidence I possessed, was mine no longer. Where was that random stranger to gasp, "Wow! You are so sexy!" when I needed it?