The following is how God orchestrated events In my life to bring me to Him…and shaped me to be the me that I am. We’re each original one-of-a-kind creations…so, I guess that makes me just like everyone else; a melting human snow-flake made in the image of our beloved Creator, God. This is my testimony with a few other details of my life.
[Should you want the audio version of this blog post, I have divided this into 3 segments. While it is not professionally recorded, it may be more convenient to listen:
Segment 1/3
https://soundcloud.com/veronica-ashe/segment-1-audio-testimony
Segment 2/3
https://soundcloud.com/veronica-ashe/segment-2-audio-testimony
Segment 3/3
Segment 3/3https://soundcloud.com/veronica-ashe/segment-3-audio-testimony
After a horrible car accident on my parent’s honeymoon… which is, in itself, a story of God saving my parents from an over a cliff death in CA…my mother was told she would never be able to conceive nor carry a child to term after recovering from such serious internal injuries.
It apparently happened again, that my mother and father were involved in another horrible car accident while they were still newly wed. She lost a baby of unknown gender from this accident. They apparently had driven into some trees while driving in rural Oklahoma while visiting my father’s parents.
As disturbing as it has been to know this, I know that it was my own mother who was the cause of both car ‘accidents’. The details of both I will skip for this is supposed to be my testimony. I must simply add that God saved them both from what would have been certain deaths.
Both of these accidents happened a few years before I surprised my parents and the doctors at my being conceived, and eventually born, alive and healthy.
The information in this blog that I share about my mother, I struggled with whether or not to include for the public to hear or read…and these things I’d struggled with were mostly ugly things that would equate my mother’s actions/inactions with child abuse, etc…something that many of us have endured/survived. I dearly loved my mother, as opposite as we were from one another, and I pray that she is in Heaven and we will be reunited with her there. I also pray that all of these ugly things of my past will either be forgotten or unimportant, forever. Because they shaped me to be who I am, I must be grateful for them all; both the good and the bad. God allows some things that we may not fully understand the reasons for at the time but I trust because God is Holy & Good, all will be for good and I will be given full knowledge of the reasons one day when we are with Him in Heaven.
My mother & I then also survived several accidental electrical shocks from an electrical short in the kitchen of a rather crappy rental house while I was in utero. The shocks would throw my then very pregnant mother across the room when she would accidentally touch a certain metal counter in the kitchen…
My father wanted kids but my mother did not ever want to be a mother. This was because of her own childhood and what she had to give up to help her divorced mother raise her younger brothers. She had sought a father-figure most of her adult life. God, I feel, had hoped to fill that ‘father-void’ that she had felt all of her life, but it took many years of suffering before she realized God loved her and before she saw His hope for her.
I feel that I survived my own childhood by the Grace of God. My mother had endured her own abuse (and rape) as a child but we each have a kind of a ‘free-will’. One can choose to become embittered, angry and to feel like a “victim” or not. One can choose to abuse or love unconditionally. Regarding my childhood, I never asked ‘why me’…because no human answer would make certain events I endured justified. These difficult moments that I was blessed to have survived have helped me to empathize with others who have had ‘rough’ lives. I also know deeply that forgiveness of those who hurt us is essential to a full life beyond the pain. I am a stronger person for having endured, forgiven and loved.
As the Holy Word says…this too shall pass… and, so, yes, that too did pass.
My mother would hit her tummy while I was in inside of her…whenever I moved around too much. My father caught her hitting herself/me and threatened to hit her if she did it again…so she stopped doing that…at least, around my father. As far as I know, I was protected by God from serious injury from this…the 1st ‘physical’ abuse of my life.
My mother was addicted to weight-loss pills and was bulimic/anorexic (fearing ever becoming fat), she drank like a fish and cursed like a sailor…plus she was jealous of me …which may sound strange that a mother could be jealous of her young daughter…but throughout my life she often told me that she was. She took her rage out on us verbally & physically. Despite her even verbally attacking my father, my father told us to ignore her.
That was impossible because her rage was terrifying. She made me fear for our lives…fearful that she would either poison us…or shoot us to death one day. She broke one of my arms when I was a toddler while in a rage…and burned us with cigarettes when she was angry at us until we were teenagers…and because she bought all of our clothes, she would dress us in hideous clothes, out of her jealousy of our “better”, “two-parent childhood”, etc.
Oh…and I also have another deceased older sibling besides the one who was lost in the OK car accident. I also have a deceased 1/2 brother. She’d lost this unborn baby boy to a “fall” ‘while ‘hanging curtains’…a few years before she met my father…when she’d been married the 1st time. Her first husband divorced her after the loss of his son.
My mother loved others the best that she knew how. Knowing about her childhood now, I understand her behavior and can empathize. She was too sensitive a woman in a too rough a world. I would have to share about her youth abandonment by her alcoholic fisherman father, to defend her from harsh judgements that most likely come…not that anything she did to us could be justified. I forgave her…as I have forgiven everyone else who has ever hurt me.
If I shared about her trials and difficult childhood, I’d also have to share about my father losing his mother after her giving birth to twins, so instead of making this even longer, I will just stick as closely to just sharing about my life as possible. God has been attempting to turn many in my family towards Himself for many generations. Not all of His efforts with saving them have been successful, of course.
Now, back to me, kind of. When I was about 3 months old, having been born in CA on a cliff-side hospital…actually more of a cliff-top hospital over-looking the Pacific Ocean, I survived a mysterious fever that was never explained…one so high that the docs said that my brain was ‘basically cooking in my skull’…& that if they couldn’t get the fever to break, I’d either be severely brain damaged or…dead…so…they tried as a last effort…to cause the fever to break…putting me in an incubator filled with ice & water…so they threw the nurses and my parents out of the room to do it… because at that temperature it would be almost as painful to me as… putting me into a pot of boiling water. They put me in the incubator of ice water …ignoring my screams…& waited a little until they’d decided that it hadn’t worked…they took me out, dried me off, handed me in a blanket to my parents who had been told to say goodbye to me…because the fever was still climbing. I believe my parents must have prayed at some point…but I’m not sure…and then shortly after that…my fever broke… (insert ‘Abby Normal brain’ joke here). My family nickname became “brain-fry”.Eww. I’m the only one in my family with a nick name…(sigh)
(I’d like to think I might’ve been a mega-genius had that fever never happened. I am just joking of course. Trying to not be silly and make this blog longer is difficult for me. Sorry. Continue on, please. I hate being so serious and sharing such icky things about parts of my childhood…all while NOT sharing happier times…moments created by my nerdy imagination & silly humor. This blog would be even longer, sharing what I’d like to, so I am holding myself back from adding some silly goofball effervescence. That sort of stuff plus more icks will be in another writing…more akin to an actual hybridized autobiographical fantasy fiction type book thingy.)
So you can see that God has been actively saving me since before I was born….because there were other things that happened prior to my birth …that I will have to save for the release of my hybridized autobiographical fantasy fiction type book thingy (AKA: HAFFTBT). I am blessed to remember my babyhood…and so forth…so I am very grateful for my nearly photographic memory…for that word thicket filled book-writing task ahead…which is and has been in the works for quite a while now. My memory is an oceanic memory…because names slip beneath the ocean of details I clearly recall…and after sending down a mental sub to scour the depths for a name, sometimes I recover it n the course of a conversation. Otherwise I recover what I term a “sea-monster”…which often will inspire paintings, stories, songs, etc…& I usually have no idea where those come from and the name continue to escape me, until I hear someone say it…or it will pop up on its own…floating at the surface where I can collect it for a brief time…if the conversation is still continuing. Photographic memories are, it seems, as unique as the individual. God is amazingly creative. He is so active in each of his Children’s lives. I am in awe when I see Him in action all around me!
Skipping ahead to when I was 7… I saw my 18 year old uncle at sunrise in my bedroom…when I opened my eyes one morning…& he stood for a moment & I can remember seeing what he was wearing as clearly as I see anyone…seeing his facial expressions…as he came towards me…& as he reached me in my bed…( Looking back I recall that I never actually saw him ‘walking’ towards me, yet he ‘moved’ towards me) and then he bent down to kiss my forehead…I blinked out of reflex…when I opened my eyes again…he was gone. He had vanished.
I woke my mother who was one room over…by my crying. She had said I’d just had a bad dream, because he was in another state, but just then, the phone rang…my mother answered it. It was my grandmother (my mother’s mother).(My uncle and grandmother were in OR at this time.) She told my mother that her younger brother, that young uncle, that I had just seen in my room…had just died on the operating table. His car had gone over a mountain side a few hours before. My mother dropped to her knees as she dropped the phone…while I stood nearby still crying…and she looked over at me and asked me…’why did he say goodbye to you and not to me’. I told her…’maybe because I could see him’. She refused to ever discuss that with me after that. I think allowing us to know of my uncle’s passing in that way was an attempt to wake my mother up to how we are not just our matter-suits…and to let me know this too.
Then a few years later…at the age of 9…I was playing alone outside in my backyard…which was next door to my grandparent’s house. Their back yard was open to an empty field full of tall grasses and trees. Suddenly in my grandparent’s backyard, a boy around my age said ‘hello’, pointed to their garage & said ‘let’s go play back there’…so I followed him and immediately I was grabbed and hands covered my mouth and the rest was a violent rape. The little boy was just a lure. I survived being gang raped by 2 teenagers and 2 older men.
I’d been forbidden by my mother to have any friends or any children visitors, relatives included, over to our house…she hid her alcoholism that way…so I was very socially unskilled, naïve, lonely and desperately wanting a friend my age to play with.
I had a speech impediment until 4th grade…so that kept me shy and quiet. That aloneness that I’d spent so many, many hours experiencing…did at least help me to develop a huge imagination, my deep love of animals and appreciation for nature.
My mother had refused to take me to kindergarten because she’d have to get up early…so I never got to go…until I was allowed for a few months to help a kindergarten teacher when I was in 4th grade…because I had had all As. I was so jealous of those little kindergarteners…after seeing all of the fun and the happy friends they had. I share about this because it helps to show why I was so lonely and socially backwards that I had followed the little boy…right into their trap.
After the rape…I stayed inside the house, more than I had before, hiding myself from these people whom I understood had seen me playing in my yard…so I knew they’d lived nearby…which also kept from telling anyone what they had done. Drawing, music, singing, story-writing, my imagination, reading fantasy and science books became my shelters. I had a slew of beloved pets during my childhood, I look at as gifts from a loving Heavenly Father, for me to have as companions and as others to love and care for: rabbits, parakeets, hamsters, frogs, chickens, dogs & cats.
Since I didn’t even know what to call what had happened to me, I wondered if this had happened to anyone else, ever. I had told my grandmother who’d questioned my torn clothes, busted lip and bruises…(who probably had thought that they had been given to me by my mother) that I had gotten beaten up by some big neighborhood boys. Years later…I was given Sex Ed at school…and I eventually pieced together what had happened to me on that horrible afternoon through early evening. My memory can sometimes be something I wish I could change. Memories should naturally fade. Mine tend to remain very clear, even the icky ones.
A year or so later, when I was 10, my younger sister…of which I have two younger sisters…was climbing on a bookcase when it nearly fell on her…but I grabbed her and managed to get out from beneath it with her in my arms…before it hit the floor… which I again now believe that God had saved me & my sister from injury. At that time, I knew very little about God because I had only been taken to church with my grandparents a few times, so I had just thought that this was all just normal ‘life’. Now when I look back, I know who it was who was always saving me. The why I was/I am being saved, I still don’t understand.
Then…a few years later when I was 12…my stepfather put up an above ground pool & had filled it up over night. I awoke at sunrise. I felt extremely calm and peaceful. I got out of bed and walked in my nightgown…with no slippers on…straight out of the house, out the back door & into the back yard…went straight up the pool ladder…& I looked down into the water. There looking up at me…with terror in her eyes and bubbles streaming from her mouth…was my youngest sister…who was only about 6…I calmly got into the water and pulled her up & to the side…patted her back a few times…again I felt strangely peaceful…and she coughed awhile and started crying…then I said…’next time mom says to not do something you need to do as she says’…I took her into the house and dried her off and when the rest of my family came into the kitchen…and my youngest sister…the one I’d just saved somehow…started telling them what had happened. It was THEN that it hit me how I had had no idea how or why I had done what I had done. That was, I see now, obviously God…using me to save her life.
Then a year or two later…I came home from school…and decided I would go lay out on a float for a bit and so I changed into my swimsuit. I went out…got into the pool and climbed onto a float. Then…a strong, strange feeling came over me, as if there was something very, very wrong…& it made me get off of the float & walk to the ladder…and I was about to climb out. I hesitated. I still don’t know why I didn’t just climb out…but I stood there, wondering why I was feeling uneasy, something made me look closely at the ladder…I got closer…and barely saw…my other younger sister (who was about 10)…stuck there…between the ladder & the pool wall. I pulled at the ladder…pulled it towards me & away from the wall. Then she swam out…coughing…& soon…she was asking me ‘how I knew’ that she ‘was pinned there…to the side of the pool’. She said she ‘hadn’t been able to move at all’ & ‘had been there so long’ that she thought she was ‘going to drown’. I told her how I had no idea how I knew…but I was of course very glad that I had. Obviously it was God again…this time, saving my middle sister.
I didn’t date anyone until after high school…I had been a nerdy serious student and was poorly socialized. When I was around people I would be very quiet…watching & listening. When I was comfortable, around people I knew well, I was the life of the “party”…making people laugh. I guess I had begun to enjoy the exchange students, making them laugh, because I felt I probably would never see them again. I was actually sad, for that reason, to be graduating. See. A shy geekling all the way. Teachers loved me and it was because I was such a goody-two-shoes. School was always easy and I admit I never studied. I even falsified my “practice card” for flute/piccolo. I signed my father’s name and wrote in times I’d practiced…but I never did. It always surprised me to almost always be 1st chair. I didn’t feel I deserved it, because I never practiced. I was convicted of my wrong-doing…by my own heart.
I could share a few stories where I had events happen at school that I cannot explain…of what I guess was my experiencing a kind of ‘righteous anger’ and how shy me watched myself…from above my own body…’rescuing’ a few other children from severe bullying situations and another where I watched myself rescue my own self from something a little less serious involving bullies but still I saw myself stopping them. I never got bullied more than once and neither did the ones I’d ‘rescued’. I was not especially brave or physically strong enough to have done it all by myself. That was also God stuff, for sure. I’ll save the details of those events for my weird hybridized autobiographical fantasy fiction type book thingy. Man, that book is getting so very long. My nick name from my school mates was ‘flash flood’…and I had a few others. I would either make someone laugh at lunch so that they cried or I would laugh so much that I would.
I experienced a few additional ‘supernatural’ things after graduating High School. I am calling these sorts of events ‘supernatural’…because I am just unsure what I should call them besides God events. Sounds of invisible bells ringing, strange banging sounds in walls, dreams of world natural disasters, etc…I took these auditory things to be warnings about things. I never could figure out what they were nor why I heard them otherwise. They always happened during stressful periods in my life.
The cause of these things I have come to realize are not of this realm and are spiritual in origin. Most of these events were I think good over-all but I definitely became aware of a dark and scary evil wandering about in this world too…in a way that I have never forgotten and never will. I will share about that briefly in a little bit up ahead in this testimony. Through all of the strange experiences of my life, I realized that there is another realm…one of good and evil not just here on earth. I also knew from a very early age that we continue to live on…even after these body suits of ours die. I will save the details of most of those experiences until I share the HAFFTBT (I should nickname something like James) …& yet I must imagine that that book will be so long that no one will ever read it, even if they were interested in doing so. The size of screens inhibit digital reading of anything but the briefest written works…especially in this sound byte world. Lengthy tales of someone unknown, well…I might as well never bother publishing it.
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The following is a very condensed version of the 1st evil being I knew without a doubt was evil. It happened in my early 20s when I saw a being…one that I have no name for. I was told once they are called ‘Elementals’ but who on this side of Heaven really knows. All I know is that this thing was a human-shaped, blacker than black, shadow-ish being. To explain more about this event in my life, would make this a much longer testimony, so instead, I will leave how it came to be spiritually attacking me at that. I felt intense hatred emanating from it for me and my family…and it wanted to cause us pain and death. Fortunately, intense prayer for God’s angelic protection in Jesus’ name made it vanish, never to reappear, but not before I had a bruised arm, busted light bulb and a dislike of dark rooms.
I had felt the presence of invisible ‘evil beings’ a few other times in my life…in various locations and at seemingly random times. Once when I worked at a public library, I sensed something evil nearby on a few occasions. When you feel real evil, spiritually, you never forget it. One evening, at this library, one such ‘something evil’ spoke my name in my left ear and my hair had actually moved…as if breath had moved my hair. I left for the evening immediately after that happened…& on my way home…I prayed to God and asked Him for His protection…using Jesus’ name. The evil feelings at the library quickly faded away and stayed away…and those sensations have never re-manifested in that degree around me ever again. I am glad to know how powerful Jesus is…& how He protects His own. I’m living proof that He does.
All we have to do is cry out to Him.
Speaking of evil and trying to avoid all evil…I often have had strangers who announce to me that they are ‘psychic/mediums’ come up to me out of the blue…and ask to deliver ‘messages’ to me. I never asked to hear these messages nor ever expect them. These strangers would tell me that they were being ‘led’ to show me how to ‘get in touch with’ my ‘spirit guide’…because they ‘felt’ that I am ‘spiritually gifted’ and can ‘do what they do’…because I have ‘obviously’ ‘come close to death several times’ and my ‘spirit barrier’…whatever that is…is ‘thin’ and the ‘spirit realm’ is ‘wanting to communicate with and through me’… Ewww. I’d tell them thanks but no thanks and try to get away from these people. I am and always have been uncomfortable out among crowds of strangers to begin with, but when strangers come over, introduce themselves to me and say stuff like this, it makes me avoid being around people I don’t know all the more. As I mentioned I am an introvert. I have learned to compensate for that. I can ‘fake’ being an extrovert. It was exhausting but to help others, I realized that being an introvert would make that extremely difficult if not impossible. Guess I have my solitary-ish childhood to blame for that.
I attended several universities and continued my nerdette solo existence. I dated one fellow…a former High School friend…but that ended rather quickly and horribly. I felt I would never meet someone who would understand me, value me or share in my varied interests. One evening, and I still don’t know why I prayed…but I prayed to meet a fellow someday who would be ‘the one’ for me. I focused on school and hated being so alone in the world…or so I felt I was alone at that time. I used to fantasize about getting a cabin in the woods and living on my own, sort of mountain woman-like…a recluse. People only seemed a source of pain. I tossed that fantasy when I realized I absolutely did NOT want to be alone. It is contradictory, I know. That I felt more comfortable alone, yet I didn’t want to be ‘completely’ alone. I wanted someone to share my life with, to do things with and travel with. I needed a partner in my creative dreams…someone to laugh and love with. I wanted to be of help and service to someone who would treasure me. Lots to ask for during the culture of the early 1990s.
I met my husband in 1992 over the telephone. I had only called the radio station to speak to a former classmate whom I learned had worked there. It also seemed a God thing…because it turned out that the one I’d called to catch up with…my former classmate…hadn’t shown up for his shift…so the guy I was speaking to instead of him had attended the same high school, had known many of the same people, had similar interests, similar tastes and sense of humor. Our first conversation lasted from around 9pm until 7am. He worked overnight…at this radio station and when he was about to leave he offered me his phone number and asked me to call him 15 minutes later…to continue our conversation. I did and we conversed until he fell asleep on the phone with me. Before he had fallen asleep, he’d asked if I could call him the next evening when he was working at the radio station. I did, and again, we spoke all night. I loved his speaking voice and he loved mine. Most of all I loved how we seemed to complement each other in interests, likes and personality.
This phone-only relationship continued for about an entire month…a month of all night phone conversations. By the end of that time I was noggin over toes in love and he said by then that he was in love with me too. When we finally met face to face, we became inseparable. He’d take me on car trips with him…out grocery shopping with him…to work with him…etc. I even “auditioned” to sing in his “band”. The song I sang was “I Saw the Light”…and he said he loved my singing voice and so I was eventually made his band’s singer…as terrifying as it was for me as a shy person. We spent as much time together doing anything/everything together that we could. It seemed an answer to my prayer for someone like him.
He had been a Quaker before we met, but he had just stopped attending meetings because the meetings had gotten taken over by non-Christians. I was glad to know he was a Christian. I admit that at this time, I was slowly ‘back-sliding’ from what I had begun to believe in my childhood. This was aided, I think, not only by the stuff the public schools and University professors had taught me/us….but because I was meeting many people who were into Kundalini yoga, a kind of ‘earth worship’, mediumship, Astrology, Numerology, Wicca, atheism, etc… While I never did much of the stranger stuff (?), I did explore a few of them, like Kundalini Yoga & Yoga Nidra, Insight meditation, & Buddhism.
Nothing they tried to teach me about their faiths ever felt “right” to me though…so I retracted from those things & again lingered in my very basic belief in God…having only ever attended various church denominations…on rare occasion. The supernatural stuff to me was going to always be just some strange mystery because I never connected ‘supernatural’ with Christianity. Strange that I never did, when Jesus…performed so many miracles…performed resurrections, …was resurrected…etc…& they were all ‘supernatural’ events. It just was never taught when I was a small girl in the few church services I’d attended…and no Christians I knew never spoke of it being ‘supernatural’. What I now know is that ‘He who is in us’ is ‘far greater’ than he who is in this fallen world.
My beloved’s first long-term girlfriend was a WICCAN/Bisexual…so she had made witchcraft and the “paranormal” things, among other things, seem almost acceptable to him, so when I had shared the events of my past with him he didn’t seem to bat an eye. He had also had most of his childhood and young adulthood being taught by teachers and professors against the validity of the Bible and the existence of an active God, so I think that he was back-sliding away from God too, as it turned out…for basically the same reasons I was: our culture and education.
After several years of intense closeness, my fellow proposed to me, late one night as we were sitting on a futon, in his 800 square foot run down rental duplex…while eating Chinese take-out… about to watch a rented Marx Brothers film. It turned out that he’d actually gone to my dad and had asked his permission for my hand in marriage several days before he’d proposed & I’d had had no idea.
I was so very smitten, so of course, I accepted…even without an engagement ring. We told each other that the ring and a fancy wedding were not necessary things. Our relationship was between the two of us and God…that no one else really mattered. We looked at the marriage ceremony as just a legal formality. We were meant to be with one another. He said he had loved me since before we were ever born. It felt that way. I was over the moon about marrying him. It never dawned on me that God had brought us together and that the ceremony was important. We had made the entire thing far too cheap, looking back now.
He was my everything. Yep. That’s right…I began placing him over and above God in my life…and I couldn’t imagine my life without him. God is a jealous God as patient as He is. I would find that out. My guy & I were engaged for a few years. This was because in our minds (and by then, very sexual behavior) we were already a monogamous couple…who were going to be together forever.
I was eyelashes over shoes about him and remained that way throughout the next 18 plus years we were together. I am a die-hard romantic so being crazy for my designated fellow was just how I was. While most people get over the infatuation stage of being ‘in love’ I never did. To me he could simply do no wrong. I loved him without expectations or conditions. While I knew that from time to time I wasn’t as perfect as he might have wanted me to be… it seemed to not matter that I wasn’t… meeting his every expectation as a woman and a wife.
He came to love me with expectations. I could feel that his love for me seemed to come with certain monetary expectations. He showed me that he loved me more than any other woman in the world as I showed him my love for him and I supported his every dream and decision. I strove to please him and make him happy. He knew I thought he was my ideal man. I loved just being in the same room with him. I loved everything about him. My love for him was unconditional. It was the happiest time of my entire life…being his wife. We never had a lot of money but we always had enough and we always had had each other.
In 1995, on one cold winter night shortly after marrying… when my husband and I were living in that same 800 sq ft rental duplex … we were coming inside to get ready for bed…when we were found by a stray kitten. We both love animals, already we had adopted a big boy cat who had walked into the living room and made himself at home one day, we named him Hoss, so we were concerned about such a tiny little thing all alone outside in the middle of Winter. The stray kitten let us take him indoors. Hoss was outside that evening and we couldn’t find him to bring him in for the nigh that night. So we kept this stray kitten inside since it was so cold. I went off to work in the morning…my designated fellow & the little kitten were both soundly asleep when I left.
I got off from work and drove home…& when I got to our street, the place was swarming with firemen and fire-trucks. Turned out that the other side of the duplex had caught fire while the Chinese couple who were renting there were walking to a Chinese grocery store…while my beloved had been absolutely asleep. If the cat hadn’t woken him…my designated fellow would have died of smoke inhalation. Our first cat, who also had ‘found us’, Hoss, was missing for a while and we couldn’t figure out where the hero kitten had gone off to after the firemen came. The firemen had somehow found Hoss & had saved him…as he had apparently run beneath the house to hide when the strangers/firemen came. This was also another God thing. My beloved was saved as was our cat. We never saw the stray hero kitten again.
In 1996 my husband and I were shopping for Christmas presents in my car and we were stopped at a red light…when a sports car going very fast & never braked…plowed into the back of us…totaling both of our vehicles but amazingly not causing any injuries. It was a newish car that I was still paying for…but it was also a crappy car needing repairs all of the time…so when the woman’s insurance offered me not only money enough to pay off the remaining balance of the car, but enough as well to buy a new car plus several thousand dollars more to not sue her for her carelessness…I had a big choice. Do I get a new & better car…or take a month long trip to Europe for the honeymoon that we never could afford?
Walking to work for a year or two was well worth the trip of a lifetime with the man I loved more than myself. By going, I would also be able to make good on a promise that I’d made my high school best friend who made me promise a few years prior that if she survived her Hodgkin’s Lymphoma…that I would visit her and meet her family and friends in Denmark. She is a Dane and had been an international exchange high school student back then. I was able to make good on that promise…and made many wonderful memories in the process. I felt that was a God-thing as well…that we had been financially blessed, protected and I could go see my friend. It seemed that all of this had been a blessing on my marriage too. We went to Denmark England and Wales for an entire, happy month.
Looking back now,I can’t understand how I could ever have thought that I was ever all alone. God seemed to be near me…what must have been since conception…& He has watched over me so much in my life. I must have started taking Him for granted somehow because I certainly stopped thanking Him for His help. I thought that a weird me of course also has a weird life. I guess I thought that was just how life was and began thinking ‘luck’ and ‘coincidences’ made more sense, somehow.
When I was in my late 20s, living then in our first mortgaged home, my friends, my husband & I were bored & were only looking for something interesting and cheap to do after our dinner…so we stopped at the oldest cemetery in Oklahoma City because it was on the way back to my house and near where we’d eaten. We just parked the car, got out & started walking around, admiring the very old tombstones. Then my friend reminded me that I had a recording device and said it might be fun to see if we could record anything weird. So I got my recorder out, turned it on, and we began walking around, asking questions to no one, and never imagining we’d get responses on that machine. We hammed it all up, making light of what we were doing, to entertain ourselves. We played it back at my house…and were shocked at what we had captured.
My friends, husband and I had somehow recorded up to 5 ‘voices’…with many of them replying to our joking questions, serious questions & comments on a digital recorder that I had been holding. I mean, we were laughing at each other as we walked around, never being serious except occasionally wondering about the deceased and their tombstone, so imagine our total shock when we played the machine back & heard these disembodied voices that none of us had heard at the time. We vowed never to do that again. We all felt these beings were NOT who they were pretending to be, so it made us extremely uncomfortable to even play the recordings. Since that experience in the cemetery, I never seek, hear nor attempt to record these creepy disembodied voices…because as the Bible says…seek and you will find. I’d rather not ever find these things again. I have no idea why I did what I did to begin with. I knew better than to have done that.
I tried many different jobs trying to earn more money…but the more money I earned the more often I became stress-sick with things like migraines and sinus infections. Many of the jobs required me to become someone I wasn’t naturally. I was pushing myself hard…wanting to be everything I could be to my husband. He and I came from the generation that told us that women were basically just like men…so I could earn the same as my designated fellow even though he’d been at his job for many years and I was trying to find a job that paid as much as he was paid…but at an entry level position…which meant that every job I had was more stressful and more about earning money than finding a good fit for myself. I was and still am a secret introvert. I learned to be an ‘A’ type personality because that was were the most money was. I could come across as an A type, but it was physically draining. I continued to seek jobs that appealed to that type. I am not and never have been an type ‘A’ person but that’s ok. It has been a useful skill, albeit, almost like being an actress 24/7.
I was a work-horse often doing my job plus other co-worker’s jobs. At a commercial INS company, I actually did my job plus the company boss’s job while he played golf. I was exhausted…because of the job stress and still I was never earning enough money. I tried to work full-time, do the housework and the front & back yard-work. I felt like a failure…as a woman…basically because…I supposed… I wasn’t a man. God was hardly ever thought of through all of this.
I have had so many types of work: house-aid at a senior-living facility, assistant librarian, book & music-seller, fast-food worker, executive administrative assistant, assistant manager of a health food store, etc…, etc… My last full-time, high-pressure job was working for a company as a call-center insurance representative, selling health, auto and home insurance to people from all 50 states, for a nation-wide insurance company.
The week prior to 9/11…I had felt so stressed…so anxious…because I could feel that something huge…something very bad was about to happen…and I somehow knew that no one could stop it even if I could warn people about what it was. Because of those intense feelings and vivid repeating dreams of broken buildings, people covered in blood and dust, sobbing people, etc…, I had called in all week long at my job…not being able to concentrate…not knowing where this bad thing was going to happen…nor to whom…until that exact morning…I woke about 30 minutes before it happened…turned on the tv and just waited. Don’t know how I knew that I would see it on the television that morning. I watched ‘it’…the event that I knew was just meant to happen…as it was happening on live tv. I knew 9/11 was something God had allowed, as a warning to America and it was the beginning of the end of America as I knew it. I don’t know how I knew this
I actually quit that money making job only a few days later…because I had to do something that mattered. Every job I’d had prior was just to make money…but I wanted to make a difference in someone’s life….no matter how slight. I thought maybe I could do something that helped people to achieve their dreams/goals. Out of desperation to earn some money as I tried to find out what I could do regarding that, I hung a flier up at a nearby university that week…offering to help students with their papers for a low fee. Oddly, the students who called me were not American students. They were international students wanting English as a second language and research paper help. So I began doing something that I still do…which is tutoring international students of many age-groups in various subjects and projects, etc.
At first my husband seemed comfortable about it…my trying to start my own business…trying to do something other than just make as much money as possible…because he had always complained about people who turned down chances to have their own business. Both the knowing about the impending 9/11 and then the sudden need of a career shift was something of God, I feel/felt.
Then one night in 2003…I just…suddenly and unthinkingly…spoke a sentence out-loud to my husband…without knowing what I was going to say…& I said “tomorrow people will die in an explosion and the whole world will know about it”. I was surprised that those words came from me…and my husband asked me ‘who’ was going to die…and I said…’I have no idea…nor why I said that’. The very next morning we woke to a friend on our answering machine telling us to ‘turn on the TV’…that ‘the Columbia’ had ‘just exploded and they all died’ Then he said ‘the whole world’ was ‘watching the replay’. I believe the knowing was of God…the why of my knowing and speaking of it was a mystery to me…apart from praying for those affected. I didn’t pray nearly as much as I should have for their families and friends. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was during the years between 2003 and 2008 that I began to appreciate being female, despite my always feeling physical imperfect. I was exercising a lot and tried to be what was at that time considered ideal. Culturally at that time, a woman couldn’t ever be too thin nor too perfectly formed. I was never perfect nor did I ever feel as though I were. I was always hour-glass shaped and not like the women in magazines…tall, thin, small-chested, Amazonian-like. During my 20s the popular thing was for women to be able to earn just as much as a man not just look as perfect as possible. I tried to come as close to the female ideal as I could. I was always striving for both goals and always feeling inadequate at both. I didn’t feel like I was worth much since I failed to measure up to the standards of the times and after such a rough childhood that also seemed to focus on my gender. Not being thin enough nor tall enough began to make me feel very, very inadequate. God never entered my mind during this time. I would feel a failure to Him too, if I did. I was earning pretty well and meeting with many students. They weren’t the best at paying me regularly and I charged what seemed reasonable at the time.
I was painting, exercising like crazy, singing, and I began to write in private journals, everything from poetry, song lyrics, short stories, life events, my autobiography mingled with innocent fantasy, children’s fantasy, short stories to personal sexual experiences. At first I did this just to record the stories and poetry for when I am old…but later I began imagining a career writing children’s books, fantasy novels and the like, I thought I might be successful one day as a professional novelist/author/song writer and just for being a writer of many writing styles. Writing books for adults though was more appealing to me at that time. It had more prestige and paid better.
I admit I have always had a playful, childish streak, that I felt adults usually could not appreciate, and of course I wanted my humor appreciated and so I wanted to share it whenever possible. I loved to make people happy and make them laugh. I had a rather innocent, silly & absurd sense of humor, and I had never appreciated what is known of as ‘body humor’, because I find that vulgar and offensive. My humor is so not body humor. Despite it not being the popular type of humor, I wanted to write in ways that adults would/could possibly appreciate. Since I didn’t think my more innocent side would ever be appreciated or something adults would read, I thought that perhaps my more adult side could/would be. So, over time, writing with only myself as judge of how and what I wrote, I felt I needed some objective feedback of my ‘adult themed’ writings. Since my designated fellow, was, in my mind, destined to be a great comedic writer, I was embarrassed at my writing skill level and hid much of my innocent stories and poems and because I felt that he would not be as supportive of me as a writer. I looked for feedback elsewhere for the more “mature” stories and began focusing mostly on writing my adult subjects and journals. I began focusing on writing my intimate experiencing as erotica.
I eventually found a relatively well-known person online to whom I thought I could write whatever I wished to…because chances were, they probably would never read what I sent them & they certainly wouldn’t tell anyone about what I wrote; so I would be safe to share. I hoped that I might get some feedback and maybe…if I were fortunate, and if I were read, even perhaps a very casual friendship from my sharing. That turned out to be a big mistake. What I shared was read and they’d asked me to share more. I obliged and because much of what I wrote were memories, I enjoyed writing them, reliving them as I wrote. I eventually got bored, though, writing the erotic things I shared, because the feedback was not only rare but was always rather personalized to me. That made me feel that I had no idea how to let them know to not take it that way, but I decided to let it be as whatever it seemed to them. No behavior signaled that they wanted any friendship with me, but because I am a hopeful sort, I hoped. I imagined this person was kind and might like me as a human being. I was terribly disappointed for the many hours of writing I’d sent.
I was taken aback by that lack of friendliness, but I went along with it. I didn’t write anything with that person involved in any of my stories, but they seemed to always take it as such. I had of course told my husband what I was doing, and at the mention he seemed ok with it. I was surprised at his response, but it seemed harmless enough…since I was not doing anything but retelling events…and I was not all hot & bothered by the one I was sharing them with. I never really knew them, anyway. I had originally wanted only some feedback and a boost to my confidence as a writer but I suppose now looking back, I had wanted to just feel good about my writing ability.
I had been sharing true experiences and a few fantasies…some valid for me & others mingled with my silly childish playful streak. Eventually after about a year, I backed off of sharing those sexual stories and asked that I instead be allowed to just be an online “friend”. That seemed to anger the one I’d been writing to, because I was nearly immediately blocked. No words just they were “gone”. I felt so ashamed I deleted that account and tried to rebuild a new one, seeking to befriend people with whom I had felt some kinship with interest-wise. I tried to run away from how I was feeling, by delving into getting to know as many people who would send me friend requests. Fortunately for me at the time, many seemed interested in knowing me. (Of course many drop me there now, or stop following my posts, or attack my posts, because I am a born-again Christian…but the details about that will be in Henry [Henry might be a better name than James for my variously styled, too long book]. )
I had, because of their lack of feedback, begun to think of them as an ‘online human diary’. Yes, it had been at the end of my online correspondence on the Book of Faces. That abrupt block and slam didn’t exactly make me feel valued or skilled…as a writer nor even as a human being. I swore to myself I’ll never share details about my sex-life again with anyone ever again. I tried to go on as if nothing had happened…but naïve me, I was hurt. Yes. I felt so very stupid. I had been. They were after something from me. I wanted feedback…and some kindness. They wanted free filth. I now know. See. I was stupid.
I discovered I also had issues with having PRIDE. I had discovered I had a problem with pride and had known that deep down. I was about to be redirected by God in a big, big, way. Of course God disciplines His beloved Children. I was taken to God’s woodshed. At that time, I was not feeling enough of a woman to completely satisfy my husband financially (or those traits that I imagined I failed him at…of not being built like a tall thin, leggy Amazonian woman)…to meet the criteria I felt he had for me…and since I was not meeting our culture’s ideals, I felt like a failure. After I saw the women he was by then also tutoring for added income and they were…in my opinion…being that they were all Asian…they seemed thinner, smarter, and more financially successful than myself.
I continued to push myself physically by doing the housework, yardwork, & meeting with many students.
By this time I was beginning to have moments when I would be walking across a parking lot or smooth walk-way, and I would suddenly stumble. I had never been as ungraceful as I was suddenly becoming. I didn’t understand why. My left foot seemed especially weak. I was working out 2 hours a day, striving for physical perfection.
So it was in 2008 that it happened. Over the course of just one month…I slowly lost my ability to stand or walk without assistance. I felt that I had pushed myself too hard exercising or at work…something I’d always been told that I would often do…and I thought I had pinched a nerve or a disc…but this was something else. Eventually after ruling out spinal injury from my 2 hour a day, intensive exercises….after treatments from chiropractors and acupuncture…and then…from there via basic blood tests…I ruled out low vit B12 and a few other obvious nerve related things…since I had had no insurance always being healthy…and never needed a doctor…getting to see a doctor who specialized in what seemed a neurological condition seemed impossible. My husband began to be distant and seemed unsure what to do. He knew I was needing a neurologist…so he suggested I speak to someone at his job. I was scared I had never been seriously ill as an adult and this was so unexpected.
A co-worker of my husband’s at the radio station he’d worked at for 20 plus years was married to a radiologist…who worked at a Catholic hospital… pulled some strings & got me an appointment to see a neurologist. I was examined by a state-renowned neurologist…who immediately had me admitted and then the very next morning gave me an MRI…to see if I had what he thought I had. He thought I had M.S (Relapsing/Remitting Multiple Sclerosis…to be exact)….and since he is this state’s M.S. specialist, he saw what he knew when he looked at the MRI results…& I began treatment for M.S….& was hospitalized for 1 month.
While I was there I was visited by several nurses,elderly nuns and a Catholic cleaning woman from Mexico who spent more time than was allotted to try to be with me…and talk with and pray with me because she said I glowed and seemed especially blessed by God. I wasn’t behaving like someone given such news as M.S….which everyone chalked up to me being in shock…but I had wondered if I were dying before having been given the M.S. news…because I felt strangely calm through the whole thing…so to me it must be livable so I was determined to beat it somehow. I was told by the doctors and science that M.S. is incurable and I face a lifelong decline. My husband, I think, was devastated but tried to put up a brave front for my sake. It was the first time in our relationship that we were apart, sleeping apart, and it was very hard for me, sleeping alone and being without him. I hated that most of all. I wanted so much to be held and told everything would be alright and we’d get through this. My husband was slowly falling apart and began pulling himself away.
It was also during my initial symptoms in 2008 that I recorded my 1st music as the singer lyricist, odd instrumentalist of the band Smoldering Ashes. I painted several of my best painting at this time as well…& looking back I see they all had rather vague spiritual themes to them. I recorded 3 albums total with my band…one about every year after…and during this time I was completely trusting my doctors…at least, at first…but I began taking LDN…low dose naltrexone….to halt any progression. That was something I felt my husband had 1st discovered to help me…I think God directed him to find it…because it seems to be great help for autoimmune illnesses. Taking LDN may have postponed my developing Celiacs. Meanwhile, I began using a walker…eventually for safety’s-sake…a wheelchair to reduce falls. I seemed to have begun my M.S. decline. If I fell I was dead weight and it took medically trained firemen to pick me up off of the floor and put me back into my wheelchair.
During this time I also slowly began losing my real-life/local-ish “friends”…or at least the people that my husband thought were our friends. They stopped calling and coming by. They didn’t offer to help either of us or try to see if they could spend time with me while I was learning how to live a new life with limited mobility. It was incredibly difficult. It meant I could no longer enjoy camping or traveling like I always had before. I obviously couldn’t dance as freely as I so loved to do. I still miss the Pacific ocean, the mountains, walking the deer trails, exploring the high desert of the northern SW, dancing in the sandy beaches of the West Coast, exploring caves/caverns, climbing trees, etc…Those where only some of the many things my husband and I had expected we would do together until we both died of old age. Despite these deep loses, which could be for the rest of my time in my damaged body suit, God had saved me yet again from death, although at the time I didn’t realize it.
My illness was not the only serious illness my family was dealing with and it would not be the last. To quickly summarize a bit of my mother’s illness to share about another God event in my own…I should tell you a few things about my mother. They, my mother and father, had married and divorced each other twice. He dated only once, but his heart was never into anyone else. Seems I inherited his big smooshy, die-hard romantic heart. He never stopped loving my mother, even after her affairs and threats to disappear with us into the mountains of California never to be found by him…when he had discovered her infidelity.
When my mother had been abandoned by her last relationship after developing arthritis, anxiety disorders and emphysema, after many years of smoking, and found herself alone, my father took her to live with him at his house…and spent his retirement funds on her medical care. He tried always to please her, but she was never satisfied. Still he never abandoned her in her time of need. She would have been alone, had he left her at that time. She had many touch & go moments. My mother had had a lifelong fear of death after being left alone in a room as a child with a woman who died of encephalitis. Emotionally she had a pained heart so she lashed out at everyone who loved her.
She and I were very different from one another, even though I inherited her artistic streak, AB blood type (though mine is + not -), hair color & eye color,my personality was/is much more like my father’s. It was through my father that it seems my musical abilities & fascination with science came. My father is a huge romantic with a soft heart. My mother seemed angry at God about her life and her eventual long lists of illnesses. My aunt visited with her on several occasions and tried to win her heart to Christ but she was simply too angry. When she realized her death was near, she became very frightened.
She began calling me in the evenings. I did my best to calm her mind and heart about death. We had to forgive one another to speak about God…so we did. Frequently she called and I would calm her about death. In a way looking back, it was odd for me to be a comforter for her when she had made us clean our own clothes should we have the flu and vomit on ourselves, carry our own bed wet bedsheets to wash and comfort one another, while she avoided us, so she would not get ill. I was actually grateful to be the one she spoke to when she was scared. I wish now that I had had her pray more…but I shared because hearing her sobbing in fear made my heart ache for her, so I had to help her as much as I could. We spoke of God together and I believe that she had at that time taken Jesus as her savior…& yet, despite that, she remained fearful. I would pray asking that she pass away in her sleep so that she wouldn’t be terrified.
One day after having a wonderful day, my mother collapsed in my father’s house…the house they shared after she became ill…and he called a nurse. My mother had previously signed a DNR (a do not resuscitate) so that monitoring her, was all they could do. The nurse made sure she wasn’t feeling discomfort. It became clear that she was dying and she slowly slipped away…with my father by her side in ‘their’ home. That was a gift from God. She died in her sleep never knowing she was dying. I prayed that when she awoke again…that Jesus was right there.
A year later or so, I was putting away some towels in the bathroom…in semidarkness. I looked over at the towels and saw my mother’s face in the shadows there, in silhouette, and her shadow stuck her tongue out at me in a playful way. I reached over to the light switch, flipped it on and she was gone. I felt it was a sign to me that she was experiencing joy.
A few days later, I was Skyping with my sisters, just chatting about things, being silly while they were both at my father’s house and I was at my house. I shared what I had seen…and they paused in responding. I thought they were going to come back and make fun of me. Instead…they typed to me telling me that they had both had individual dreams recently and in their dreams, they saw our mother sticking her tongue out at them, playfully. We were each shocked that all three of us saw her do the exactly same thing. We told our father what we had each seen…and this made him tear up. I pray that this ‘vision’ and their ‘dreams’ were a gift to us from God, calming our concerns about where she is.
Flash forward to 2012…when I was told by the love of my life…that he was going to divorce me. While I had been “saved”…or so I thought… prior to this…maybe since childhood…or in my early 20s…it was at this time I knew that I absolutely needed God…but didn’t know what to do to be with Him. I’d just had the carpet pulled out from beneath me…my heart torn out of my chest…and at some point, during a prayer session, I realized I had put my husband, best friend of many years, above God. I knew then why this was being allowed to happen.
Shortly after the horrible divorce was finalized, my Aunt called me up out of the blue and told me that God had told her to take me to church with her. I went. Being broken physically & emotionally, in a wheelchair, listening to the pastor preach scriptures for several Sundays, I publicly and personally surrendered to Jesus. I have never wanted nor needed God more than I do these days. God has clearly been my main provider, protector, best friend and guide since before my rebirth…and I see now…He has always been with me…all of my life. I just didn’t know it until my husband decided to divorce me. Although I don’t remember ever in my life NOT believing in God and Jesus…seeing evidence of Him in the creation all around me…and in the events he used me to act out…I hadn’t (that I recall) ever spoken out loud in tearful prayer my complete surrender to Him…to Jesus… before that service.
After hating being so physically alone after being wed…planning…and expecting…. years of sharing life with my husband…my very dearest and very best friend, I desperately wanted to run far, far away. I was so shattered emotionally…I tried to find a place to flee to initially. I had been offered by an Indian girlfriend from India to move to India live at her family’s tree-house resort…me in my wheelchair…and begin to make plans to relocate there…as an artist and singer…to teach the creative arts to those at the resort…but my friend changed her mind after an outbreak of rapes and assaults in India on women began….and she said she should no longer have me there because she couldn’t promise my safety there. God closed that path to me.
Then I thought I’d move to S. Korea and begin anew over there…since I had by then…many who wanted me to live with them, tutor them, tutor their families and friends, start a Hogwan (a private school)…and they said they’d help me begin again. Like the India idea…that nation also wasn’t wheelchair friendly. What kept me from moving there…was the realization that the climate was too hot and humid…and the Govt kept the prices for energy so high that most living there cannot simply afford the costs to run air-conditioners during the heat of the year…so…some citizens/residents die from that. I am now heat sensitive and pass out when I over-heat…despite my severe anemia. It seems that God closed that path for me as well. I felt that was my final chance to flee…so I had to trust God…to help me to survive my story here, in America…still residing in what was our first mortgaged home together…one that we had shared for many years.
While we had begun to keep renters at our house to supplement the income after I had begun helping International people with English as a second language. This meant that he moved out, which was extremely painful to watch, especially when he packed up and removed his music and his instruments. Sleeping alone was excruciating to me. I could no longer sleep. It was almost as if my heart simply missed beating in syncopation with him. Money was very tight, because he had quit his job after over 20 something years at the radio station and then, having been totally unprepared and very ill, I had to begin trying to support myself completely alone financially…while still in a wheelchair.
Fortunate he knew this and helped me. We began to depend upon renters to help keep the house rather than letting the bank take it. Again a God reliance…on Him to help bring renters to help keep me from becoming homeless It was about that time that my former husband and I noticed news stories about how tick-born-illnesses can mimic M.S. It took no time at all that he had me getting a doctor who would prescribe a blood-test. The test didn’t come back with what he and I had almost been hoping for, Lyme’s.
Instead it came back positive for something that often kills when untreated: Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (a cousin of Lyme’s). Apparently I had gotten bitten by a sick tick while gardening or mowing or something…and had had a spot-less case. God seems to have protected me from death because I have had RMSF since 2008 and it had been untreated that entire time. No wonder I seemed to be on the decline often associated with MS. I had stopped taking LDN for awhile, through the divorce out of my depression. To be honest, this illness and being in a wheelchair, was not as painful or horrible as being divorced.
The Celiac’s disease appeared as I was treating myself on a year’s course of antibiotics. This inability to absorb nutrients explained my persistent and severe Anemia that I also developed. The illness had been so taxing on my body that I developed adrenal fatigue and low thyroid on top of it all. Sadly, the antibiotics showed no improvement, after checking via a second blood test at the end of that one year course. The new type of antibiotic to try treating it for another year but antibiotics I had been prescribed (this one was a standard antibiotic) have gotten so expensive that I simply couldn’t afford the new one. I also went back to taking LDN for the Celiac’s. Although antibiotics seemed of little help, I continued taking the antibiotic originally prescribed since it was the only one I could afford. I discovered, with help from God, no doubt, a way to treat myself with something that the RMSF was not likely to escape being affected by: Vitamin C.
At first, after I found a clinic that would do this, I had had a few IVs of Vitamin C, but that also was too far out of my price range. So…out of desperation I sought an alternative to the Vit C IVs…because I knew I absolutely needed Vit C. Eventually, I felt that I was led to discover a recipe/process for home-made high doses of what they call encapsulated liposomal vitamin C. This form of Vit C is about 3-4 Xs as potent as IV Vit C. but it is so much more affordable than the IV Vitamin C treatments. I treated myself with this home-made treatment for a month, as gross as it tasted.. I recently went back to my doctor for a check-up and then I had a 3rd blood test done. The doctor’s nurse told me my results and she said that the RMSF come back as a NEGATIVE. Yay! (Whew!) It is such a relief to think that I am no longer sharing my veins with a whole bunch of disgusting Spirochetes.
The nurse warned me that RMSF can go dormant and it can also cause M.S. I pray that these are not anything I will need to be concerned about. It seems that that would not make sense since God led me to the home-made Vit C treatment. To be sure, I will take another antibiotic called a Z-pack…for 6 days and treat myself with one more month of the high dose home-made Vit. C treatment, that’s yucky tasting. I’ll push myself through it. I will also begin pushing myself harder to strengthen my atrophied legs. Who knows how long this path will take. Even if I can never walk again, I am grateful that I now know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I also know where I will be going one day, after I check out of this body-suit.
God is still at work in my life. I am so blessed to be able to witness Him at work. I will attempt to modify this testimony as things progress. I am once again making music. This will be our 4th release once it is completed. This time I am using Plinky, my Pianosaurus, much more writing songs than ever before. I hope the music reflects this in a good way. My former and my band mates will be working together on recording the new tracks. I am hopeful for this project and for many other things.
Here’s a recent act of God in my life. There are many…but about a year ago…due to my severe anemia…I began to eat ice…a form of pica…& one day I was alone in my house…seated of course in my wheelchair…eating ice not thinking much about it (but ice chewing is very bad for your teeth, so don’t do it)…I had just exhaled…when a large piece of ice suddenly slipped down my throat and ended up lodged in my windpipe. I couldn’t breathe. I had no air in my lungs at all…and being alone… there would be no rescue…so I began to pray in my mind. I asked God that if this was how I was to die…if He could make it quick…so that I could be Home with Him.
Suddenly…the ice flew across the room from my mouth & I could breathe again. I have no idea…apart from it being God…how that would have been possible. I was not able to even try to push the ice out of my windpipe, having had no air in my lungs. I thanked God for saving my life, yet again,…and as far as I know that was the last obvious (recent) life saving of me by God…apart from a glass lamp-shade’s falling…that should have landed on my legs, but it seemed almost to have broken right over my legs… because the glass broke instead around my legs…and I had had not a single cut. I’m sure He has saved me many more times, but unknown by yours truly. Who knows maybe a car could have driven through my livingroom room, or an asteroid or an airplane could have landed in kitchen …who knows. Maybe I’ve been saved from something that simply never happened for me to notice being protected from. Maybe you have too!)
SO…that’s the condensed version of much of how God has been in my life. He has orchestrated so much of my family’s lives and my life that I am in awe and will always be. I will be adding much of the strange events that God must have orchestrated for their sakes to my hybridized autobiographical fantasy fiction thing (Frank?). These are just a few events of God in my life where His actions are the most obvious to me. I feel Blessed to be able to see Him at work in my life…because He is so very active in everyone’s life. Not just in my life but in every life! Until our purposes are done…or we are Raptured away…we are here…living among the spiritual zombies…the walking spiritually dead. I pray that this testimony…as verbose as it is…will inspire anyone who listens or reads this to see God at work in their lives. [By the way, there is no such thing as an accident, as coincidence nor luck. That is all just God orchestrating lives.]
God is not finished with me, yet. I am a work in progress. I still battle the flesh and often I lose. Sin suits are riddled with sinful ick, especially now that we humans are many, many generations from sinless-flesh and now that we are in the nearness of the final 7 years of human history. Thank God for His forgiveness because after I’m forgiven there’ a clean slate. I get a new chance. I already know that I’m going to have a happy ending! Yay! I’ve read how it all ends and what I have to look forward to. I look forward to a huge reunion with so many people. I hope I can make Jesus laugh, or at least chuckle every now and then. Maybe I will meet you there too, very soon! Thank you so much for reading/listening. I hope it was not dull. May God Bless You. Maybe I’ll see you soon, either here or there but maybe, above all…in the air.
Veronica Ashe's Word-Thickets 