A Strange Prayer

OK, my friends, time for something serious. A little testimony, if you will. It's tedious reading at first, but hopefully it gets better the further in you go.

A little over a year ago, I was faced with an interesting predicament at work. My then supervisor was promoted to Director of IT, who then promoted one of my coworkers to be my new boss.

Now this made for an interesting development, because, as it turns out, the Director of IT (who I will refer to as Sheila) was a woman, and my new boss (who I will refer to simply as Bo) was a man, which may not be immediately apparent as any cause for concern, but as we shall see in a moment, was.

Bo and Sheila were remarkably good friends. Bo was the only manager that ever got to travel on business trips with Sheila. The other managers were understandably jealous (and suspicious), as there was no obvious (business) reason why Sheila would need Bo's company. Bo had a wife and two young twin girls at home, yet he insisted on working extremely late, working into the night in Sheila's office behind closed doors. I would sometimes get emails from Bo (my boss) at extremely odd hours, like 2:00 AM. Veddy stwange.

And then it started to affect the rest of us. His little "relationship", or whatever you want to call it, launched a major power-trip-o-rama. We were routinely summoned to emergency meetings because he had suddenly gotten wind that one of us had "disrespected" him in some inane way, and he would yell at us for as long as he felt compelled. What was maddeningly frustrating was that he would never say exactly why he was upset, or who he was upset at, but would just go on and on ranting and raving while we all wondered if somehow we were the cause of the offense.

For example, one night just before we were about to leave, several of my coworkers (basically anyone who hadn't left yet), were summoned to one of these emergency meetings. We were told it would last 5 minutes as we filed around the walls in a room with no chairs. Two hours later we filed out, exhausted and wondering what the meeting had been about. Someone had offended Bo somehow, but none of us knew who or why. Just don't do it again, please, whatever it was, and whoever did it.

That year I came down with the worst case of the flu I've ever had. I had often heard that when you catch a bad case of the flu you think you're going to die, and I soon learned that was far too true. I lay in bed for several days too sick to move. I took 2 sick days, and when I asked for yet another day off I was told I needed to come to work to finish the project I was working on. I'm not one to routinely take sick days... I probably average one sick day a year, and considering that my employer generously provides us with five weeks of paid time off I was a little incredulous. But I came to work anyway. For the rest of the week I sat at my desk too drained to do much of anything. My boss was working from another city, so when he called one of his emergency meetings I had to skip it... I was so sick I didn't care anymore. It turned out to be a good thing I didn't go, because as I learned later I had been the target of one of Bo's rants, in absentia.

Two of my coworkers also came down with the flu, probably because they caught it from me, and guess what? They had to come to work too! When Bo returned to the office he scheduled yet another of his meetings (this time in person), and it was strangely humorous to watch the sickest of my coworkers, swathed in a thick leather jacket with sweat streaming down his face, sit down right next to Bo (who didn't catch it, in case you're wondering).

Of course, this all started because of Sheila and Bo's strange little relationship. When I passed by a conference room and saw Sheila in a meeting, Bo was always there. They always traveled together, ate together, went to conferences together. Something fishy was going on, and I didn't like it.

And then Labor Day came, and we made the journey down to Byron for the annual labor day meetings. Forgive me if I get the details of this next part wrong, but I'll try my best to remember correctly. That year the visiting minister told a little story of a sister with whom he was acquainted whose husband was having an affair. Telling the story in a way that only he could, he related how he had suggested that they pray to God that He would send an evil spirit between her husband and his mistress. "Can I do that?" she asked. "Yes, and we will!" And they did. And, to make a long story short, an evil spirit did bring grief to the adulterers and drive the husband back to his wife. [Note: I left the minister's name out just in case someone out there is a nasty. So solly!]

My reaction was the same as the sister's. "Wow, can we do that?" Her particular situation seemed particular suited to such a prayer. And upon reflection, so did mine. I believe God is Hebrews 13:8 - why couldn't He send an evil spirit to drive Sheila and Bo apart?

And so, that was what I began to pray. And I began to see something miraculous take place.

But that, my friends, is a tale for another post.

[Note: If you have something naughty or nice to say about this or any post, please leave a comment!]