Post by mmecurie68 on Sept 19, 2006 23:11:49 GMT -5
God Bless You aneaglesangel! If you can do this, then so can I...
I grew up in what developed into an unstable home by the time I was about 7. My Dad was a raging, abusive alcoholic, unemployable in MA, so we moved to VA for 1 year. It was a bad year. My family fell apart, parents decided to divorce, and my Mum, sister and myself returned to MA to live with my grandmother.
I had trouble readjusting to school in MA (after finally adjusting to school in VA and developing a Southern accent) now I stuck out like a sore thumb. My mother hadn't worked in 10 years, no college degree, no child support from my now "deadbeat" dad, so financially we were pretty strapped as well.
My favorite escape was into books. I remember crawling into cabinets or under the bedcovers with a flashlight and reading, reading, reading. I read 50 books a week in the summertime, 4 or 5 during the school year. Something of a "reading prodigy", I had a college-age reading level and comprehension at the age of 9. I "borrowed" my mother and grandmother's books because "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" was a HECK of a lot more interesting than what Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were up to!
Part of me always felt left out, less than, different. These feelings grew in severity in elementary school and into middle school and became a severe problem for me. Back then, they didn't have a name for it, but today, it probably would have been diagnosed as a childhood anxiety/depression disorder and could be treated in multiple modalities.
By the time I was in high school, I had such a fear of school and other students that I was sent to Catholic school, simply because the number of students (and my potential torturers) were reduced from several thousand to several hundred. I had perfected how to pretend everything was fine on the outside when it was really cruddy on the inside.
Combine that with adolescent fat, coke-bottle glasses, and a brain and I was instantly catapulted into the lowest caste of the high school system - the Losers. My yearbook quote was a pretty succinct summary "If High School was meant to be Heaven, who needs Hell?"
Enter the great anesthetic, second half of my freshman year in H.S. - alcohol. The beast I vowed would never get me, got me but good. At 14, I began a downward death spiral that would not be stopped until I was 28. I took the drink, then the drink took me.
Somehow I managed to hang on and do well enough to get a scholarship for college, and good jobs afterwards, but always the double life.
I had always been interested in the paranormal. Read about it when I could, watched TV programs, whatever I came across. My friends and I had tried (without much success) to replicate the ESP "flashcard" experiments to try and discern if any of us had any "powers".
Weirdly enough, although I had this double-life begun at 14 with substance abuse, I also became a member of a religious group dedicated to the veneration of the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) called the Legion of Mary. I joined that group my freshman year and remained an active member all four years of school.
I wasn't a particularly devout Catholic in other aspects of my life, but I maintained this devotion to the Blessed Mother. We met to say the Rosary once a week and had to do at least an hour of service work (I cleaned the school's Chapel - 4 years).
My leanings into the occult became darker with Ouija. My friends and I wanted to make contact at 16 and 17. I had no idea of the risks that we were taking. Stupid things at first, then more interesting - making really heavy objects move, enticement, culminating in that terrifying seance in my family's apartment with myself, my 13-yr old sister and my boyfriend. That was it - we got rid of it.
The "whirlwind rush" of demonic intelligence that John Zaffis describes to Bryan McIntyre at the beginning of "Shadows of the Dark" is EXACTLY what I was trying to capture in my Ouija Board post. That convinces me more than ever that we made contact with a demonic entity and were lucky to come out of it "an experience of single oppression". I no longer believe it was just the influence of "luck" that kept us from true harm. We had positive spiritual intervention.
I didn't have any other paranormal experiences until after I got sober at 28. I don't think that is by chance either. The only other paranormal activity I had was the "watch stopping" (see my "introduce yourself post").
In order to stay in recovery, you have to embark on a journey of mental and spiritual development, to change what you arrest physically, or else you will not stay in recovery.
With my life on the line, I had no choice but to develop the tools for my new toolbox. Part of this involves daily prayer and self-examination - so back I came again to the feet of the Blessed Mother to beg for her intervention, for turning my back to God when He never turned His back on me.
An interesting thing started to happen about 6 years into recovery - sometimes my prayers would get answered.
Let me put the BIG disclaimer in right now and say I am in no way claiming a hotline to the Virgin Mary, etc., etc. What I am saying is that every once in a while, it seems like I am given a very special gift of discernment, I guess, when it's needed to help people, and usually it's related to health issues, and it's always connected to my prayers to the Blessed Mother.
The first time it happened, my sister's grandfather-in-law had been hospitalized for some time at one hospital and due to some negligence, had slipped into an irreversible coma. His family had him transferred to another very prominent hospital in Boston. They didn't want to visit him, wanting to remember him as the healthy, vital person that he was.
I was working in the area at the time and something told me to go visit him. I went to the hospital's ICU, unannounced, and there he was, clean, hair combed, neatly tucked in but very unresponsive. I held his hand and said the Rosary. After I had prayed with him, I told him why his family members had not been in to visit him and I said, if he wanted to go, it was ok for him to go.
I got this message in my head, my inner voice, but not of MY origin saying, "Tell them to come, just once, don't want to go until I see them." So when I got home, I called my sister's mother in law (his daughter), not wanting to freak out his elderly wife.
I told her that they shouldn't be afraid to visit, that the hospital staff were taking wonderful care of him, that he honestly looked like he was just sleeping. that I had prayed with him and that I thought he was hanging in because he wanted to be with his wife and daughter at least one more time before he felt like it was okay for him to let go.
After I told her this, they lost their fear of going to see him and were able to visit a couple of times - he passed within a week or so of my visit.
My second experience was regarding a friend who had gone to the doctor for what they thought was one problem and discovered that they had cancer, a potentially highly malignant form of cancer and a large primary tumor for the organ involved instead. Again, I prayed to the Blessed Mother for her intervention to help this friend through their difficult time. It was nighttime, and I was sitting outside in my backyard, enjoying the mild weather, while I was praying.
My yard lit up with a quality of moonlight I have never seen before or since. It was so ethereal - a beautiful feeling of peace came over me. Nothing "showed up", just the quality of the light was different. Again, a message came to me, that this person would have to face a difficult treatment, but would come through ok. I screwed up the courage to tell them - it was one of the hardest things I've ever done - tell someone in this day and age that I prayed to the Blessed Virgin for them and that I got an answer.
My third experience was with myself. I was hoping to get pregnant with another child (7 years after number 1) and it had taken me a year to get pregnant with number 1. I prayed on getting pregnant quite a bit once my husband and I had made the "go ahead" decision. Well, half way through month number 1, I got a message, basically "Yes you are and it's a girl".
Now I'm telling myself that I am just making this stuff up in my own head, no way I could be pregnant so fast, etc., etc., etc. - sure enough, 15 days later, the stick of pregnancy test number 1 turns blue. And yes, it was a girl. However the caveat to "Be Careful What You Pray For" is this - I spent 4 months in bed at the end of my pregnancy to deliver this little girl safely and physically am still suffering from complications follwing the pregnancy (but she was worth it : ) !
Most recently, another friend had a parent who was sick with an unexpected diagnosis of cancer. The parent had been given 4 months to live by the oncologist. I was praying for my friend's parent, lying in bed, in the dark, but with my eyes open and I had a very dark black cloud come into my vision. It startled me such that I blinked several times thinking it was some kind of "floater", but it stayed. I wasn't afraid or anything, I just knew that the black cloud meant "news not good".
I "knew" what the origin cancer was and that the time the oncologist had given to the family was much too long, the parent was going to pass much sooner than they would say.
Obviously, I did not go to this friend and blurt out a horrible prediction about their parent, they were already heartbroken. I felt like my help was to try to help prepare them that their parent was going to pass much sooner than the doctors were saying. Unfortunately, their parent did pass, only several weeks after diagnosis.
There you go. If you had asked me 10 years ago whether I believed in the power of prayer I would have laughed you out of the room. Maybe for someone holy, like Mother Theresa - NOT for me. I am about as imperfect as they come, and yet, I can say for sure that sometimes you get answers.
I grew up in what developed into an unstable home by the time I was about 7. My Dad was a raging, abusive alcoholic, unemployable in MA, so we moved to VA for 1 year. It was a bad year. My family fell apart, parents decided to divorce, and my Mum, sister and myself returned to MA to live with my grandmother.
I had trouble readjusting to school in MA (after finally adjusting to school in VA and developing a Southern accent) now I stuck out like a sore thumb. My mother hadn't worked in 10 years, no college degree, no child support from my now "deadbeat" dad, so financially we were pretty strapped as well.
My favorite escape was into books. I remember crawling into cabinets or under the bedcovers with a flashlight and reading, reading, reading. I read 50 books a week in the summertime, 4 or 5 during the school year. Something of a "reading prodigy", I had a college-age reading level and comprehension at the age of 9. I "borrowed" my mother and grandmother's books because "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" was a HECK of a lot more interesting than what Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were up to!
Part of me always felt left out, less than, different. These feelings grew in severity in elementary school and into middle school and became a severe problem for me. Back then, they didn't have a name for it, but today, it probably would have been diagnosed as a childhood anxiety/depression disorder and could be treated in multiple modalities.
By the time I was in high school, I had such a fear of school and other students that I was sent to Catholic school, simply because the number of students (and my potential torturers) were reduced from several thousand to several hundred. I had perfected how to pretend everything was fine on the outside when it was really cruddy on the inside.
Combine that with adolescent fat, coke-bottle glasses, and a brain and I was instantly catapulted into the lowest caste of the high school system - the Losers. My yearbook quote was a pretty succinct summary "If High School was meant to be Heaven, who needs Hell?"
Enter the great anesthetic, second half of my freshman year in H.S. - alcohol. The beast I vowed would never get me, got me but good. At 14, I began a downward death spiral that would not be stopped until I was 28. I took the drink, then the drink took me.
Somehow I managed to hang on and do well enough to get a scholarship for college, and good jobs afterwards, but always the double life.
I had always been interested in the paranormal. Read about it when I could, watched TV programs, whatever I came across. My friends and I had tried (without much success) to replicate the ESP "flashcard" experiments to try and discern if any of us had any "powers".
Weirdly enough, although I had this double-life begun at 14 with substance abuse, I also became a member of a religious group dedicated to the veneration of the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) called the Legion of Mary. I joined that group my freshman year and remained an active member all four years of school.
I wasn't a particularly devout Catholic in other aspects of my life, but I maintained this devotion to the Blessed Mother. We met to say the Rosary once a week and had to do at least an hour of service work (I cleaned the school's Chapel - 4 years).
My leanings into the occult became darker with Ouija. My friends and I wanted to make contact at 16 and 17. I had no idea of the risks that we were taking. Stupid things at first, then more interesting - making really heavy objects move, enticement, culminating in that terrifying seance in my family's apartment with myself, my 13-yr old sister and my boyfriend. That was it - we got rid of it.
The "whirlwind rush" of demonic intelligence that John Zaffis describes to Bryan McIntyre at the beginning of "Shadows of the Dark" is EXACTLY what I was trying to capture in my Ouija Board post. That convinces me more than ever that we made contact with a demonic entity and were lucky to come out of it "an experience of single oppression". I no longer believe it was just the influence of "luck" that kept us from true harm. We had positive spiritual intervention.
I didn't have any other paranormal experiences until after I got sober at 28. I don't think that is by chance either. The only other paranormal activity I had was the "watch stopping" (see my "introduce yourself post").
In order to stay in recovery, you have to embark on a journey of mental and spiritual development, to change what you arrest physically, or else you will not stay in recovery.
With my life on the line, I had no choice but to develop the tools for my new toolbox. Part of this involves daily prayer and self-examination - so back I came again to the feet of the Blessed Mother to beg for her intervention, for turning my back to God when He never turned His back on me.
An interesting thing started to happen about 6 years into recovery - sometimes my prayers would get answered.
Let me put the BIG disclaimer in right now and say I am in no way claiming a hotline to the Virgin Mary, etc., etc. What I am saying is that every once in a while, it seems like I am given a very special gift of discernment, I guess, when it's needed to help people, and usually it's related to health issues, and it's always connected to my prayers to the Blessed Mother.
The first time it happened, my sister's grandfather-in-law had been hospitalized for some time at one hospital and due to some negligence, had slipped into an irreversible coma. His family had him transferred to another very prominent hospital in Boston. They didn't want to visit him, wanting to remember him as the healthy, vital person that he was.
I was working in the area at the time and something told me to go visit him. I went to the hospital's ICU, unannounced, and there he was, clean, hair combed, neatly tucked in but very unresponsive. I held his hand and said the Rosary. After I had prayed with him, I told him why his family members had not been in to visit him and I said, if he wanted to go, it was ok for him to go.
I got this message in my head, my inner voice, but not of MY origin saying, "Tell them to come, just once, don't want to go until I see them." So when I got home, I called my sister's mother in law (his daughter), not wanting to freak out his elderly wife.
I told her that they shouldn't be afraid to visit, that the hospital staff were taking wonderful care of him, that he honestly looked like he was just sleeping. that I had prayed with him and that I thought he was hanging in because he wanted to be with his wife and daughter at least one more time before he felt like it was okay for him to let go.
After I told her this, they lost their fear of going to see him and were able to visit a couple of times - he passed within a week or so of my visit.
My second experience was regarding a friend who had gone to the doctor for what they thought was one problem and discovered that they had cancer, a potentially highly malignant form of cancer and a large primary tumor for the organ involved instead. Again, I prayed to the Blessed Mother for her intervention to help this friend through their difficult time. It was nighttime, and I was sitting outside in my backyard, enjoying the mild weather, while I was praying.
My yard lit up with a quality of moonlight I have never seen before or since. It was so ethereal - a beautiful feeling of peace came over me. Nothing "showed up", just the quality of the light was different. Again, a message came to me, that this person would have to face a difficult treatment, but would come through ok. I screwed up the courage to tell them - it was one of the hardest things I've ever done - tell someone in this day and age that I prayed to the Blessed Virgin for them and that I got an answer.
My third experience was with myself. I was hoping to get pregnant with another child (7 years after number 1) and it had taken me a year to get pregnant with number 1. I prayed on getting pregnant quite a bit once my husband and I had made the "go ahead" decision. Well, half way through month number 1, I got a message, basically "Yes you are and it's a girl".
Now I'm telling myself that I am just making this stuff up in my own head, no way I could be pregnant so fast, etc., etc., etc. - sure enough, 15 days later, the stick of pregnancy test number 1 turns blue. And yes, it was a girl. However the caveat to "Be Careful What You Pray For" is this - I spent 4 months in bed at the end of my pregnancy to deliver this little girl safely and physically am still suffering from complications follwing the pregnancy (but she was worth it : ) !
Most recently, another friend had a parent who was sick with an unexpected diagnosis of cancer. The parent had been given 4 months to live by the oncologist. I was praying for my friend's parent, lying in bed, in the dark, but with my eyes open and I had a very dark black cloud come into my vision. It startled me such that I blinked several times thinking it was some kind of "floater", but it stayed. I wasn't afraid or anything, I just knew that the black cloud meant "news not good".
I "knew" what the origin cancer was and that the time the oncologist had given to the family was much too long, the parent was going to pass much sooner than they would say.
Obviously, I did not go to this friend and blurt out a horrible prediction about their parent, they were already heartbroken. I felt like my help was to try to help prepare them that their parent was going to pass much sooner than the doctors were saying. Unfortunately, their parent did pass, only several weeks after diagnosis.
There you go. If you had asked me 10 years ago whether I believed in the power of prayer I would have laughed you out of the room. Maybe for someone holy, like Mother Theresa - NOT for me. I am about as imperfect as they come, and yet, I can say for sure that sometimes you get answers.
