By Margaret, The Rope Editor

“Aha!” moments. Do you know what I’m talking about? Those moments in time where you just know exactly what you want to say or what you want to do or you caught someone in the midst of their sticky web of deceit (siblings are the most annoying/proficient at this) — those are the normal “Aha!” moments.

So take that everyday moment of immense clarity and assurance, add a smattering of holy water, just a dash of righteous fear and let it simmer for … oh, about forever, and you’ve got yourself an authentic, God-inspired “Ahaa!” moment (not to be confused with the “Aha!” moment, as the “Ahaa!” moment holds a note of reverence and a continued utterance of the second syllable … hence the second “a”).

These amplified moments are intense, mind-boggling and completely terrifying. When God drops these thought-bombs, do you realize that the same Being who created the first man out of “the earth” also just reached into your mind and spoke to you? Can our baby human brains even compute that sufficiently?

As a side note — have you ever noticed that Genesis is hopelessly vague about the actual man-creating process? This is slightly annoying for my inquisitive nature, but it’s also kind of incredible because it prompts the thought that the process of creating an entire human could’ve been as short as a breath, making it too insignificant to God to merit explanation. Can you say uhmazing?

Jumping back on track, I’ve only experienced an “Ahaa!” moment twice. I’ve experienced feelings of peace, extreme contentment and certainty in varying degrees throughout my life, but the jolting “Ahaa!” moments have happened only twice. Each time prompted a major life change that I wouldn’t have been able to enact without divine intervention.

The first moment resulted in my parents and I moving across the state the summer before my senior year in high school — oh, the hazards of being a preacher’s kid! The second moment resulted in my taking a job with a production company in California that took me away from everyone I knew and loved for ten months.

If you knew me in high school or even college, you’d know that either of those decisions were wildly out of character. That’s because God’s “Ahaa!” declarations fill you with the other-worldly confidence that His way is the absolute only road to take in spite of your personal tendencies, fears, desires and prior decisions.

It’s a feeling that’s so hard to explain because it’s very complex and so much stronger than I’m able to express. It’s a feeling you want to feel because knowing exactly what He wants is so empowering, and it’s a feeling you don’t want to feel because you know it means the obliteration of your comfort zone. It’s what you’ve always wanted to know, but the thought of actually acting on it makes you nauseous.

I think describing it as “incredibly terrifying” while smiling hugely is an appropriate definition of the “Ahaa!” If you ever feel it, let someone know. These are the kinds of feelings that you share with others. When God moves you to act like someone stronger than you actually are, it’s an experience worth sharing.