Supernaturally Compelling May 3rd

J. M. Huxley
Apr 24, 2019
4 min read

Evidence of the supernatural is never more compelling than when you get a prophetical message that proves true. Even when the communique is something you don't understand. When it's something you don't want to hear.

In 1989 when I suddenly exclaimed, "May 3rd is a date we will always remember!" I had no idea how prophetic those words would be. No idea how the date would hurt and torment, and then, years later, be reason for celebration. How I knew the date would be significant is unearthly. How it would come to represent healing--out-of-this-world, cosmically celestial, magnificent, wondrous God-healing, was something I could never have foretold or truly comprehend at that moment.

I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around it all thirty years later.

On that May 3rd, not only did I make the aforementioned statement, I followed it with more:

"There is going to be a plane crash today."

The fact that I was at the airport getting ready to fly with my 8-month-old son and a sedated cat in a carrier was, perhaps, an environmental leg up to any suggested ability in this regard, but the feeling was, nonetheless, quite strong. I had a terrible time getting on that flight from Philadelphia to San Diego, and every minute of our time in the air was unnerving. I thought for sure we would fall from the sky, or crash upon landing, or collide with another aircraft at Lindberg Field. When I finally made it off and into the terminal to see my mom, I almost collapsed with relief.

My plane had not crashed after all that day!

But the commercial plane that had been carrying my father at the same time had.

My Father and Me at the San Diego Embarcadero for a Summer Pops Concert in the Late 80s

The phone had been ringing with the news as we'd walked in the door at Mom's house. About the time my son Taylor and Gizmo the cat and I had crossed over the Great Plains, I had lost my father.

It was May 3, 1989.

He'd been flying from Vancouver Island to the mainland for a connecting flight to St. Louis, where he was to receive an architectural award: an American Institute of Architects fellowship.

Aside from the tremendous anguish that losing my father cost me, the fact that I had heard correctly, that I had foreknown something was in the works, was nearly as grievously unsettling. It completely freaked me out. Honestly, I didn't know what to think! So I asked God to stop it. To take away any and all ability in that regard. You see, it wasn't the first time that sort of thing had happened. I was way in over my head.

And then I distanced myself further from God. Obviously, I knew there existed out in the great universe a power of some kind. I just wasn't ready for it, or him. I wanted to stay grounded in more ways than one.

But here I am decades later, begging to hear the voice of God. I've come to know him, you see. And so he is what I think about, write about, talk about, sing about. He is amazing.

I found him when I decided I was ready and I found him waiting for me. When I decided I'd finally had enough of the mystery and opinions and philosophies of the world, and myself, I went looking for him. I finally asked him who he was.

So, he told me.

He is Jesus.

Now, I follow him and hear him, but truth be told, I don't hear nearly as well as I would like to. Not by a long shot across the width and breadth of the earth. But I do try. And miraculously, sometimes it's as easy as it was that May 3, 1989.

Like when I heard him while I was pumping gas on May 2, 2017, asking me what day it was. "Well, it's...hmm, let me think. It's May 2nd," I said.

"If today is May 2nd, what is tomorrow's date then?"

"I guess if today is May 2nd, that would make tomorrow May 3rd," I replied, watching the numbers click higher at the pump. And as I replaced the nozzle back in its rest, authenticity hit me. Tomorrow, May 3, 2017 would be a significant day! My daughter Kelsea was due to deliver her daughter--my first granddaughter--at the end of the month. But that was not going to happen. My granddaughter would arrive tomorrow, May 3rd!

I've never allowed the date a place of melancholy remembrance. I've not idolized it with any ungodly observances or unhealthy wallowing. I am aware of it, however. How could I not be?

Of course God had a plan and Kelsea went into labor later that night. My first granddaughter was born on May 3! (I must add Kelsea's pregnancy, and with a girl, was an answer to prayer!)

Now, in 2019, I'm getting ready to launch my first book and I could write another on the setbacks I've experienced getting to this point. I have wanted to give up on the project and move on more times than I can count, but I've hung in there, waiting on God mostly. As I've watched release dates come and go, and I have wondered, exasperated, at the tediousness of it, I have had to constantly remind myself that the date of release was God's, not mine.

So you know where I'm going with this. May 3 is coming up again. And May 3 is going to be the date my memoir, MILK & HONEY LAND: A Story of Grief, Grace, and Goats, is launched. I had again lost sight of this date as it approached from afar, so when God told me a couple of months ago that May 3 would be the date my book came out, I wondered why I hadn't though of it! Of course. And when I did the math and realized it would be exactly 30 years since I lost my father, that my story of good through his loss and so many others would come out, I realized the prophecy in it.

Only God could create understanding for good, and good from tragedy.

Only God could offer prophecy as an opportunity for partnership, something supernaturally compelling as evidence for his intimate involvement with his creation.

May 3 is indeed a date to remember. Especially between God and me.