“Fame and fortune are excess baggage on a long and treacherous journey.”

I submitted my book for publishing, and began to share the message of “Life On A Shoestring” with hundreds of young people in Austin.  I began to hang out in the Port of Hyde, and fashioned myself as the captain of a ship called “The Fellowship of the Mystery”.  I was looking for a crew willing to go on a journey with me.  I frequented “The Whaler’s Cup”, “Corn Julio’s”, and “Chitti’s Sweet Life”.   I had written many new songs as well.

I met three young women in June of 2004.  Hend was from Egypt, and introduced herself as “Hend, like hand.” I often talked with them while I was editing my book.  By the end of the summer I was anxiously awaiting its release.  I did not know what would happen, being that I had spent a year with the Lord.  I believed that my book would do what He wanted it to, it would take me where He wanted me to go, but I did not know where that would be.  One day I thanked Jesus for healing me. 

“The hardest part of your transformation is yet to come.  I am going to create a new heart in you.”  He said in immediate response.

“Ok, Lord.”  I pondered, reflecting back upon the past eighteen months.  “I trust You.”  I could scarcely imagine something worse than what I had been through so far.

A week later I was writing in my journal, in fact it was the evening that my book was published.  Hend saw me and sat down next to me.  We began to talk as friends, and our conversation went from my book, to the stars, to Egypt.   I asked her if she was a practicing Muslim, and she said that she was. She came from a prominent Muslim family in the Middle East, and she seemed like a nice young lady.

Hend began to speak about Muhammad and Jesus, and the unfortunate issues between Islam and Christianity. Just as she said the name Jesus, I saw Him in my minds eye, just behind me and over my shoulder.  He opened the “Eye of the Rapture” in our midst.  My mind exploded, and I could see Hend and I in eternity together.  We were breath of breath, spirit of spirit, and soul to soul in eternity.  We are soul mates!  We were at the Rapture, and we were both dressed to the nines.

Instantly I realized that this was the woman who had been prophesied to me nearly twenty years earlier.  This was the woman who had been foretold by those Laughing Prophets!  The twelve contexts of the riddle came together like twelve diadems adorning the face of Mystery, its solution was Hend.  The reason that I could not figure it out was because its solution was literally Hend. 

I went home and my mind reeled.  I saw the sparkling green sandals her mother had given her placed spiritually in my mother’s house.  This symbolized an agreement in ancient cultures, giving a sandal to another person.  Both of Hend’s sandals were in my mother’s house, meaning that she was to be my wife.  It was as though Hend was the key to the mystery of my soul, and the chains of the narrow minded perspective of God which I had been taught in the Christian Church fell like chains that had just been unlocked.  I could see my mother in a new perspective, and the many years of frustration and anger between us fell away.  As I saw the beauty of Hend I could see my mother’s beauty in a context I had never known, and my heart rejoiced at the site of it.  I saw Hend seated in my grandmother’s house, high in eternity, all of these signs meaning that Hend was being given as my wife.  I was both amazed and overjoyed, and as I lay in bed and I had vision after vision.  I could perceive Hend in the Temple of my soul, and though I had been there many times before, there had never been a woman with me.  We were in divinity, and we were being married in the Temple. 

I saw Jesus move Sierra out of a place high in the apex of my soul, and I realized that she had been there as a placeholder in my heart ever since I had relinquished my desire for her twenty two years earlier in the desert.  Hend was twenty two; she was born at the time I repented of my desire for Sierra, and had asked for a wife like she.  Hend looked like Sierra, and had the grace and manner of Sierra.  She even had a unique quality in her voice which I had not heard since Sierra.  I saw Him then move Hend into that position, into that seat where Sierra had been all of those years.  And then I saw Jesus pour her spirit into my heart in two large jars.  The taste of her spirit was holiness. 

“Oh my God!  She is a prophetess!”  I exclaimed.  “A woman to keep me true to my calling!” 

I was amazed.  I was being given a Muslim prophetess for my soul mate!  Seven times I had left my calling for a woman.  Now He had given me a woman to keep me true to it. 

I had boasted drinking the cups of anguish and despair until it was no more than drinking instant coffee and smoking Camel cigarettes.  I had boasted that I could go from Camelot to camel toe to Camel cigarettes to passing a camel through the eye of a needle in a single sentence.  The woman was named Hend, an Egyptian name which literally means “One Hundred Camels”.  And Jesus had passed Hend, and all one hundred of her camels into my soul in the twinkling of an eye.  No wonder those prophets were laughing at me!

The name Hend is an Arabic name meaning one hundred camels, and in Arabic literature, one hundred camels is synonymous with great wealth, or extreme blessing.