On the rare, wall-shattering occasion,

I emerge — almost sparkling — from a night like this one.

Despite the lingering phlegm-filled coughs, the searing pricks in the chest and the vomiting, I feel whole. Healthy. Healthy in an otherworldly sense. I feel freshly awakened from a coma.

Last night, I dreamt that I was on life support.

I was strapped like a mental patient to an unstable cot in a warehouse that appeared to be a makeshift clinic in a developing country. My cot was plugged in to a wall. The plug and outlet were oddly oversized — about two feet by two feet — and no one could pull it from the wall. My entire dream, I wished I could die.

I woke up late. Distressed. I was in a funk. A funk that seemed to have ballooned over several weeks and countless nightmares.

Then I received a text message that said, "I feel funky," which made me boil inside. A singular funk was one thing. But a funk that had spread and infected the people I love? We were supposed to be gobbling up our destinies. Not sinking in a self-focused, anxious haze!

So without fully believing it, but desiring it madly, I replied, "God will deliver. Really expect great things. Today, love." And then I pretended to have faith.

Call it the power of suggestion. Call it whatever you want. But a few hours after that, completely by "chance," with the help of some angels and a large pot of chili, I ended up in a time warp with my two best friends.

We were all busy. We didn't mean to meet. One even parked her car in the center of a cul-de-sac because she was simply dropping off a few quince seeds.

Our conversation began with casual banter. We'd gone to dinner and a movie together nine days ago, but we hadn't been fully present to each other in ages. We cooed over sonogram pictures. Fed each other sweet synopses of our lives.

"It feels like it's been a hundred years since we talked," we managed to say while still not really talking.

I needed to work. S needed to study. R needed to sleep. We voiced these needs out loud. Multiple times. But we remained still. At the dining room table. We remained still — paralyzed by our unconscious need to hear something beyond our selves.

We remained long enough to let our small talk take a vicious turn into that realm of thoughts we have when we are the most afraid, the most doubt-ridden. We were brave, then, to open up our conversation to a higher power. And in that lengthy conversation with Power, iron gates began to melt.

Crooked roads straightened themselves. The day's rain cracked the ground open and gold filled every pothole. Every gnawing insecurity and fear I'd accumulated in the last few months shriveled into a Tic-Tac I could swallow and shit out. While laughing.

We opened our tear-glazed eyes. Our mouths agape. And when R said, "The clouds parted," I thought, "My God, what an understatement."

We knew things we couldn't have known about each other. R said something to me that I'd heard in a dream a few days ago. She quoted to S the exact words S had heard earlier in the day. We spoke out each other's thoughts. Listened to each other's spirits.

What surprised us was this:

We didn't pray out of desperation the way we used to. We didn't "ask" for "things." Instead, we prayed out of wild gratitude.

Instead of examining our lives and requesting more of what small goodness we'd experienced, we were suddenly able to zoom in on that small amount of goodness. Then we offered that goodness back to the Loving Hand that first planted it in our lives.

The zooming in helped us realize that we didn't have to beg anymore.

The more vibrant that small goodness got, the more fully we understood: Greater goodness — immense power — IS coming. By focusing on what little we'd already received, we no longer prayed based on the probability or the possibility of the thing we were praying for. We prayed based on the character of the One who would answer. The One who possesses and provides all goodness.

Praying was no longer a matter of asking.

It was a matter of declaration.