God speaks through His word, through others, circumstances, occasionally through dreams, and one day He spoke to me through a song. I know it was from Him because only He would have known the perfect moment for my ears to hear something that I desperately needed during the brink of a total breakdown.
As a child, my favorite color was (obviously) yellow. My favorite church dress was made of yellow cotton twill, bought from the basement of a clothing store in downtown Lordsburg New Mexico.
"Miss Katheryn" was an elderly sweetheart of a woman, whom Stephen King would describe her as a "smoker's widow" ---with dentures. She'd drive up most Sunday mornings in the same pea-green battle tank and tap her car horn.
After a single honk, I'd prance out in my recurrent yellow church dress. Miss Katheryn would have a cigarette dangling from her lips and she'd talk and smoke at the same time.
"Good morning Miss Yellow!" she'd say. She had two favorite dresses that she alternated between Sundays. But, always the same lace-hemmed slip that hung lower than the dress. Miss Katheryn's slip problem was embarrassing for me, but I never said anything to her.
As soon as the preacher started his sermon, Miss Katheryn would nod off with a soft snore. When she started sounding like a train, my job was to poke my elbow into her side.
I didn't really understand too much of what the preacher talked about, so I'd get lost in the little yellow furrows in the fabric of my dress. I guess you could say that in such a young mind, I was tranced out with yellow, listening for Katheryn's train and God was being talked about throughout. To me, He was a very bright Yellow God. He was all yellow.
Several years later, Miss Katheryn was long passed away, and I was no longer that little girl going to Baptist Church in Lordsburg. Instead, I was a mother of three daughters, freshly divorced and living outside Seattle.
It was Sunday morning and I was attempting to mill through last years piles of clothes that had laid on the floor for the past several months. Depression and loneliness had consumed my days and nights. I subverbally uttered a few words of prayer in request for some strength to just get through another day.
I picked up a heap of clothing and a music CD fell from the pile. It had the word C O L D P L A Y written across the front to feature the band. The CD was obviously not mine, I hadn't kept up with the names of bands in decades. I was still stuck on Patsy Cline and the Golden Oldies from the 60's.
Nevertheless, I put the CD in my stereo and pressed 'play'. That's when the voice of God spoke. "Number five, skip to number five," with goose bump clarity. I had never heard number 5 song before, but it was a gift to me that day from a very Yellow God.
Look at the stars; look how they shine for you--And everything you do
Yeah, they were all yellow
I came along; I wrote a song for you--And all the things you do
And it was called yellow
So then I took my turn--Oh what a thing to have done
And it was all yellow
And Your skin, oh yeah your skin and bones
Turn into something beautiful
D'you know?
You know I love you so
You know I love you so
Click here for Yellow on #5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAME8GDRTfI&NR=1
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