Growth - One Step Forward, Five Steps Back

Rrrring, rrrrr-ing!  Click.

This is Mrs. Flowers with the Place Where Miracles Happen Every Day! I hear the familiar friendly voice.  How can I help you?

When she answers, the pit of my stomach remembers why I hate confrontation of any kind and suddenly I feel an urge to hang up. Dismissing the option as more fitting for an adolescent than an adult, I clear my throat, introduce myself, thank her for her time and for the cue cards.

Yes, I’ve had opportunity to look them over. Yes, they sound very positive. However, there is a very small problem - just a trifle - that we need to solve before we move any further.

A problem? She asks genuinely surprised.

Well, y-y-yes… I stutter.  You see, Mrs. Flowers, the cue cards are all nice and good, but that’s not what the Gardener has been telling  me all this time.  There is no mention of the manure pile, and no mention of the…

Mrs. S., Mrs. Flowers interrupts, are you... telling me... that Gardener is talking to... you?

I grind to a screeching stop. 

Now, in that moment, in that split-second moment before I answered, I wish… I wish I thought before I blurted it out…. I wish I said something diplomatic, and self-deprecating and humble and politically correct… Like, I know it sounds crazy... or, I know it sounds preposterous, or even, I realize I have overactive imagination which I have passed onto my children... I write wildly fantastical and unrealistic stories about...  

But, I didn’t.  I said none of that. 

I was so shocked, so completely caught off guard that without batting an eye I blurted it just as it was spelled out like a neon sign inside my brain:

Mrs. Flowers, are you telling me that the Gardener is NOT talking to you?!!!!

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; a stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. John 10:27,5,28