On a cheerier note…well, I did not mean to go ahead and publish that previous post! I was working on it… My dyslexic ADD wishes the words Post and Publish didn’t both start with P. But here we are. Let me tell you another experience I had several years later, shortly before my father passed away. I had to travel over an hour to visit him. He was living with my brother by this time, and while my brother worked during the day, my sisters and I were taking turns checking in on him and making sure he had meals and was doing alright.
But he wasn’t doing alright, and neither was I. I was going through one of the worst times of my life. I was grieving heavily. I was going through a divorce, and I was losing my Dad. I felt like everything had been ripped away. I was having a nervous breakdown.
Driving was difficult while crying. I kept having to pull off on the shoulder of the road to compose myself. And then a simple silly thought came to me – how I often pray for others, but why couldn’t I also pray for myself? I guess it had never occurred to me. I guess I thought it was selfish. But this day I went right into it. And as I was turning onto the long dirt road that lead to their ugly rundown house in the middle of nowhere, I asked for something I never had: “If you are listening, God, if this is real – then show me a ray of hope.”
Dad and I visited over lunch. I washed the dishes and put away a few groceries. We watched some inane cooking show on afternoon tv…and when he was ready for a nap that would take him through to evening, I tucked him in and left. When I got to the highway where I would turn off the dirt road I waited for traffic to clear. And pulled out behind a huge black SUV. As I came up behind this vehicle I noticed it had a vanity plate. No numbers, all letters. I couldn’t read it until we were stopped at a traffic light.
It was after midnight in the ICU when the alarms went off. My father’s nurse rang the alert for the crash cart, jumped up to straddle my Dad and began CPR. They managed to revive him a fifth time since his surgery a few days prior. It would only be a couple of hours, however, before a different nurse knew he was in trouble. The chest compressions had broken a rib and punctured his spleen; he was bleeding internally. Again, alarms and a 3am call to the surgeon as they prepped him for an emergency splenectomy. As the eldest of his five children I received the phone call to verbally authorize surgery. I wouldn’t make the hospital in time to see him before he went in.
We were in the second? third? week of this crisis. My siblings and I were exhausted. But I knew what had to be done. I wasn’t ready to lose my Dad. We had been estranged most of my adult life, and only recently reconnected. My father was a sociopath, the kind you hear about on those investigative shows where the neighbors swear that he was such a remarkable man. He was that, too, but that is a story for a different time. Meanwhile, I wasn’t about to let the S.O.B. go without a fight. I wasn’t done with him yet.
I knew where to find him in the spiritual realm, and I knew the angels couldn’t help with that. So I prepared myself to descend into hell and negotiate for his salvation. Don’t ask how I know this practice; I cannot answer. Some would explain it as past life work I guess. But I do know it, and I don’t have any need to understand how. I don’t care how. I put myself into a deep altered state and made the transition. It began with the heat. I suddenly had the thought that perhaps this is what the phenomenon of spontaneous combustion is! I concentrated on pulling my breath in and shallow so as not to jar my body out of the experience, hence failing at the goal.
I was walking down a slope, out of a creepy dark wood, and I began to sense and then see beings approaching my path on either side. I knew not to make eye contact. I had “called ahead” and was expected. This was the welcoming party. These creatures made the movie Alien look like a Disney princess…and they were huge, much larger than I would have expected. They were being restrained by an army of lesser demons I can only describe as resembling Orcs. I knew I had been granted passage and that as long as I kept moving along I would make it through. A grotto seemed to emerge from the smoldering desert floor and I entered, to be greeted again by two dark masses of energy. The stench turned my stomach and I had to concentrate not to wrench. If I had a strong physical reaction I risked waking my body from meditation and losing the opportunity.
These two dark beings escorted me through a tight opening to a waiting area barely large enough to stand. Something was breathing behind a wall? a curtain of heat? A deep gutturall breath. It seemed to be laughing at me. Was I a fool to try this?
I was not allowed to view this authority, nor did I want to. I communicated telepathically: “You know what I’m here for. What are your terms?” A scene appeared ahead of a weird cafe-like setting where many people waited to be served. They were waiting for something to quench their thirst, and I was to be their server today apparently. I had the disgusting sense that they had all come as I had, to petition for their own request, and that somehow who and what I was serving was like a lottery to determine who would be given audience. Not all of them would return home today. I had absolutely no fear. I understood the task and went about my business. And woke in my sweet little guest room, feet soaking in a pan of ice cold water. I will not share here all the details of my experience, but I knew it had worked.
There would be no more resuscitations necessary. My father would go from the hospital to assisted living while receiving outpatient rehab. He would live another seven years, and a great deal of healing would occur, for him, and for us adult children, There would be more astonishing spiritual experiences that would shake my understanding of how the world exists. I will share some of those (much more heartening!) events in the near future – but suffice it to say that I know – as in, KNOW – that the life experience you and I are having is a tiny tip of the iceberg of what is going on here. And we are truly blessed and highly favored.
Today is a dear friend’s birthday. I sure am glad she was born. She has been a constant inspiration to me for decades…how lucky am I? What if the gift of her in my life is just a simple metaphor for God? What if EVERYTHING is conspiring to help me?
Years ago I was driving north with my sister in the car; I don’t remember why. It was just getting dark and we were still about an hour south of home. Suddenly a police cruiser was behind us and put on his flashers. While I slowed and prepared to pull onto the shoulder my sister went off with her own emergency signal. It went something like: “oh what the hell?! You weren’t speeding! Why is he pulling us over?! What did you do wrong?!” I calmly turned to her and said, “Why would you assume something is wrong? How about we wait and see what this is about?” As it turned out, I had a tail light out. I explained to the officer that we had just picked up the vehicle from the dealer the previous day, as my husband had hit a deer last week (unfortunately a common problem here.) He said, “oh! I know exactly what the problem is. Pop the trunk and I’ll fix it.” Soon we were on our way, safer for the help. My sister, btw, made some comment about how lucky I am and how I never seem to panic (don’t believe it) because I always assume I’m in the right place at the right time. I’ve had far too many experiences of divine intervention to possibly believe in coincidence. Sadly, my sister would write in her memoir years later that she feels abandoned by God, that she “even knows a tarot card reader he blesses more than he blesses me.” I’m that tarot card reader, evil as she thinks that is. She can’t begin to comprehend how I seem to skirt the extreme hardships of the rest of the family. I could tell her, but she would never believe me: I HAVE MORE FAITH.
I don’t care who you pray to, or spell with, or your name for the divine within or without. Faith means that you know that you were “made this way,” for just “such a time as this.” (Esther 4:14) – that somewhere along the way, likely early in childhood, you decided that God doesn’t make mistakes. You decided that everything – EVERY SINGLE THING serves a purpose here on this planet we call home. And that you are not given the entire plan on purpose. You don’t need to understand. It’s NOT YOUR JOB to police the human experience, and NEWSFLASH! – you are not the gatekeeper of Heaven. Isn’t that a relief?!
Let’s spend a week asking “what if?” and be one percent more curious than fearful. Let’s be one percenters. And let’s celebrate those wonderful souls whose lives bless ours. Happy Birthday!
To say that I’ve been in a funk lately would be quite an understatement. My beloved family is really struggling, facing homelessness again. I’m heartbroken, and I can’t help. My friends are having a hard time, juggling hardship and trauma far more elegantly than they realize. My cat has been ill and I wasn’t sure he was going to make it a couple of nights ago (he has improved now.) My bank account just seems to be empty all the time no matter how hard I try to get ahead of the deficits. Unforeseen expenses come out of nowhere. I haven’t felt well, having another flare-up of chronic Lyme and wondering if I will ever feel alright again. I have had no energy.
About 2am last night something shifted, through no direct effort of my own. I have been meditating and praying more consistently (I haven’t been able to do much else) and doing my little magical feng shui “cures”…getting rid of yet more clutter and cleaning in small spurts as I learn to pace myself and accept that perhaps this may be the way it is now.
The cat woke me at 2. He let out a big sneeze and then crawled right up and stood on my chest staring at me. I reached over and turned the light on. Immediately I knew something was different; he was talking to me. He was letting me know to pay attention. He was better. I was better. The damp, mouldy old fog of fear and desperation had lifted. It was that experience you have when you feel so much better that you suddenly realize how far off you’d been.
What if…what if we just allow things to be easier? What if we re-member ourselves? What if we take the easy way out because EASY IS RIGHT…and right is easy? Have I been unconsciously making things harder than they needed to be? The circumstances haven’t changed, not yet at least, and they are still difficult. But FEAR makes everything harder – in fact, it makes things impossible. From fear I can’t see creative solutions to anything. From fear there is no hope of improvement, everything will go downhill from here. Sorrow has overwhelmed every cell of my being.
And how many times have I said you don’t need to figure it all out? You don’t need to understand what this is for. You just need to have ONE PERCENT more curiosity than fear…you just have to accept the POSSIBILITY that there is LIFE at the end of this tunnel.
A Painterly Home 