Emergence....

Emergence…. Did I “call” myself thru the darkness of the night by saying I would in fact.. emerge? That is what Sally thinks…

I actually slept through the night Sunday night… first time since Valentine’s day…Hmmm… Valentine’s day…the first day I first heard that Voice…The Voice I loved... I don’t want to talk about the Voice right now.... … Maybe I’ll talk about it later but right now it feels sad…

I don’t think there is any significance between sleeping and the Voice, because the Voice has been gone for days now… Since a few hours after I heard about my pastor’s wife..

I do not know why I finally slept… but I’m thankful I did..

I had little faith Sunday that I would see, much less feel God, but I went to church anyway..

It was beautiful.. it was simple, and unpolished, as most everything in that church is…

The woman who spoke was the dead woman’s best friend. The person their 12 year old daughter was named after actually..

She had been asked to do the service last week, before her friend died… and had chosen to speak about storms….It was… lovely.

Some of you know my history, but I realized the other day that most of you do not…

When I was in my early 20’s I worked for, and traveled with, a well-known non-denominational, charismatic, evangelist in the deep south.

In one of the first posts here I told of my not -so-impressive “talents” with psychic phenomena. I think I even said a little about how they were used by the church…

There is more to tell… I have seen things… done things.. that I cannot explain. I will tell you about that soon, but what’s relevant to this story is that when I left that ministry I never darkened the door of a church for anything but a wedding or funeral again. Not in more than 20 years.

But this pastor …was different.... He was able to walk that fine line between speaking of God and speaking of Love… Does that make any sense?

There was no judgment, just enlightenment… which maybe is all the explanation needed…

He uplifted, educated, and encouraged me to be a better person without making me feel judged for who I still am.. This has not been my experience with organized religion in the past…

So…I kept going, and every Sunday continued to be surprised… and blessed.

As I left the service this past Sunday, I told him so… Told him that I’d been away from church for 20 years and he’d brought me back… He sobbed.

My heart hurts for him… It’s hurts for his daughter…And selfishly, the past few days, my heart has hurt for me.

I missed the Voice.

Selfish… wow, that’s hard to admit…I don’t want to see myself as selfish but I guess I have to admit I am. That’s what the Voice called me… Interesting….

I guess this brings me back to the Voice…You know the one I’m speaking of…The Voice I let myself love… The one I thought saw me but really seems to have only been transmitting vibrations from a distant source…

Do you remember the time before satellite radio?

I remember being a kid and driving long distances at night… Riding in the back of the car just waiting for night to come because you could get all kinds of radio stations that didn’t come in during the daytime… Broadcasting from sometimes even two states away…like magic.

Back then I lived for those radio theater-stories that you could only hear on the radio at night…. I loved letting the words create pictures in my mind.. Pictures projected against blackened windows reflecting only the insides of the darkened car…

Well, that is what the Voice did for me these past weeks… Reflected the insides of me. The things I thought no one else could see… The lovely, and the beautiful. The brave, and the special. And apparently the not so beautiful too…

There’s a saying I’ve heard my whole life “Believe only half of what you see and NONE of what you hear”..

Well, this would mean I could believe none of what the Voice said?

Or maybe this is the exception to the rule.. I could believe just half of what I heard… But then…should I throw out the negative and only listen to the positive?.. Maybe.. But didn’t we just establish some truth to the negative?.. I am selfish… But maybe just not in the exact way blamed.

The Voice taught me many things. I feel so grateful and blessed for the brief time I heard it.

It taught me;

1)   To be open to God, and His plan. That is, on the days I believe in God right?

2)   That everything happens for a reason, even chance meetings… No matter how brief..

3)   That I have gifts…One being that I am “perceptive”… “sensitive”.. Another being that at times, my words can be good like medicine… I like that thought.

4)   Also, that I give too much. And, if I am not careful, “takers” will drain me dry and cause me pain. 

This last is interesting in light of being called selfish, because my act of “selfishness” in this case felt to me like “self-preservation”.

I gave the best I could. But when I was feeling so much pain it was keeping my stomach in knots.. My heart in knots.. I had to stop, change… say “ow”…

I must confess that my words were not like medicine at that moment.. unless getting shot in the butt with a dull needle full of bile counts as medicine..

My words were interpreted as being “unhappy at not getting my way”.. not getting what I wanted…

There “might could have been” other choices….alternatives… compromises… but that would have taken reality….Not just transmissions from the “ether”..

It still feels bad to think that I hurt someone I cared about by trying to take care of myself. I do not know how I could have chosen differently.

The Voice was magic to me… And just between you and me, I choose to believe it still is... Wherever it is..

I like to believe that it is broadcasting in the darkness… doing its beautiful projection for some other passenger in a darkened car.. Maybe giving her hope that someone real will come from afar and say those things in person…

If it’s okay, for right now, I’m choosing not to hope for that for myself…Not to look for the source of the transmission…Just for now…I feel like resting… Please don’t be disappointed in me.

For right now I choose to be happy even if I have to “fake it until I make it” I’m going to choose happy…

"If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem." Richard Bach

Sally says we can release the bondage of the chains holding us if we just release judgment of them… The people, events, choices that have left marks across our hearts, our very fiber.. were necessary to make us who we are today… If we release our need to judge them… good…bad… a mistake… we will be able to see their gifts…

I am the person I am today, and have the beautiful Spirit Guides, because I spent 12 years with a prick…If I release the judgment… “he’s a prick” I can focus on the gift…

Today, I’ve been focusing on my gifts… When I hug the Spirit Guides today I don’t just press a cheek to their head.. I feel… every strand of hair… I smell… the outdoor scent of kids who have been playing.. And I pray I never have to practice these lessons after losing one of them…

Someone might call me a failure for being divorced.. Say “you did it wrong, that marriage thing”… Well… I choose to release judgment of me too…

“You're always free to change your mind
and choose a different future, or a different past.” Richard Bach

How does one change their past? What is a past? Its just the story you tell… So to change your past you tell a different story…

You “re-frame” it… I like that thought… Re-frame the story like you would a picture… Tell it differently…. Of the relationship that “failed” tell yourself it lasted the perfect amount of time… … How do you know? … Because if it had had an extended shelf life it wouldn’t have gone bad…

What gifts did you take away from it? Would you be as patient and appreciative of the good in people if you had not experienced someone treating you badly?

You get the point…

Happy is not a natural, effortless state.. It, like love, is a choice. And if you don’t consciously make it you may unknowingly push Happy away with both hands when it comes near…

This brings me back to the 12 year old girl who says God must not have a heart…

As a Hospice nurse for many years, my mom experienced many things that cannot be explained other than to say that we are more than our bodies… More times than I can count when one of her patients died, family in other locations.. sometimes different states.. would report that, while they didn’t understand it at the time, at what turned out to be the exact moment the patient died, their children got out of bed and started playing. Later saying they were playing with grandpa..

Or In one instance when the parent got home from the hospital where her mother had died, her child said “Grandma stopped by and said you’d be home later and to tell you not to worry about her”…

I’ve told my mother that if anything ever happens to me while my babies are little to just know that there was a reason.. There was something they needed that I could only give them by being in a “different” form.. Outside of this imperfect and often weary body…

That is the only thing that brings me peace…The thought that there is a plan, and while I don’t know it yet… maybe that girl’s mama did.

This morning I was tired. I didn’t want to work out, but went to the gym anyway.. I definitely didn’t want to swim.. but cousin Julie was already in the pool so I did…

After a while I realized that the only other woman in the pool with us looked familiar, but not from being there before. She was the guest speaker at church.. The best friend…

So, I went and told her how she blessed me.. I told her these things in my heart that I’ve told you.. and in the deep end of the pool, we treaded water.. ..and cried.. Life is strange.

This is the verse from her service that struck such a chord with me….

Isaiah 43:2

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.

When we got home from church Sunday we had Sally’s wonderful husband look this verse up again...I then read my previous blog post to her.. She laughed when I was done and said.. “emerged huh? That’s an awful lot like through”…. Which had been the recurring theme of the message…

I spent the rest of Sunday evening feeling a little bit happy… It lasted all of Monday too… I can’t explain it.. I’m not even gonna try.. I will just CHOOSE not to look a gift ‘happy’ in the mouth… To just enjoy however long it might last..

Today.. it’s taking conscious choice again.. But HEY 24 hours happy!!!!!!!!! That’s progress.

I wish you a gift “happy” too.. And when it comes I hope you rub it all over your body and savor every second of it…I love and appreciate you more than you can ever know...

Angels on your bodies.

Prairie Girl.