Where It All Began
In August of 2008, my husband Justin’s grandmother passed away. After her memorial service, we were sitting together in her old ranch house in Redwood Valley, California. I was in her living room, slowly looking through the books on her old bookshelf. She had shelves filled with treasures, books on history, faith, and family life collected over the years. As I took them down one by one, reading the titles, I suddenly picked up one book, and in that moment, I entered into a life changing encounter with God.
The instant my hands touched the book, they felt like they were on fire. I could feel wind whipping through my hair, swirling around me. The presence of God was so overwhelming that I sat there stunned, trying my best not to look weird in front of Justin’s non-Christian family members. It was as if the Father pulled me right into His presence and looked me straight in the eyes. I could feel His intense gaze, and then I heard His voice so clearly: “Cindy, do you love California? Will you pray from a place of knowledge and understanding?”
Without hesitation I answered, “Yes, Lord, yes.” But then for the first time, I asked Him back, “What does that mean?”He didn’t delay. He answered me: “Then it all starts with Native Americans.”
I knew He used that phrase because it was the only language I understood at the time. I didn’t know the names of the tribes. I didn’t know the different words people used — Indian, American Indian, Indigenous. All I knew was “Native Americans,” and so that was the language He used to reach me.
When I finally looked down at the book I was holding, I saw the title: The Singing Feather: Tribal Remembrances of Round Valley. It was a collection of oral histories recorded from Round Valley elders back in 1990. Page after page, I found myself immersed in their stories — stories passed down from grandparents and great-grandparents. Stories of the Nome Cult Walk, the forced march from Chico into Round Valley. Stories of the reservation school, the Indian Wars, the tragedy and the heartbreak. But also stories of beauty — the grass games, the roundhouses, the trading with coastal tribes who brought seashells to exchange for deer bones used in jewelry and tools.
I realized I was being invited into a journey, one that would forever change the way I understood the land I lived in and the people who were here long before California ever became a state. God was telling me that if I truly loved California, if I truly wanted to pray for it with knowledge and understanding, then I needed to begin where it all began — with Native Americans.
That was the day everything shifted for me and my family.
Isaiah 11:2 “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him-the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of power, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord…”
