My Spiritual Experience...

I would like to say, before I get into this story, that it is very personal to me and definitely an experience I will not forget. In the past, I've been very choosy about who I shared this with making sure it was someone I trusted and understood. I realize some people do not understand these types of things and are critical and skeptical. I just want readers to know I am not one to make things up and I have to really have to believe in something if I'm going to take the time to write about it. When this happened to me I was 17 years old and I was completely sober and drug free with no kind of disorder that would cause delusions or hallucinations. Depressed I was but delusional or having hallucinations, no. I have put a lot of details about myself in here that I don't share with just anybody but I feel like I really need to share these things because it is part of the story. I'm grateful to be able to share this with others who understand but for those who don't, all I ask is that you try to read with an open mind. Thats all. :0)

All my life I've been a emotionally sensitive type and extremely full of guilt and fear and I don't know why. I didn't have the best childhood (as many of us don't) so maybe this had a part, I really don't know. My teenage years were very difficult as I was in a lot of emotional pain. I was plagued with extreme insecurity and a horrible problem with jealousy when it came to boyfriends and an underlying rage that just ate at me. I had so much self-hatred I would even do things like cut on myself and bang my head on walls while in a crying rage. My boyfriend at the time had cheated on me. The fights we would get into way exceeded screaming and yelling. My jealousy and rage drove me into physical confrontations with him where he had to hold me down and it always ended up with me completely exhausted and asking myself over and over why am I not good enough for him? I had always had very low self-esteem and a terribly distorted body image. It's a shame looking back as hind sight is 20/20 and there was nothing wrong with me but you would have never been able to convince me of that back then.

It was during the fall years ago. I was sitting on my bedroom floor talking to my boyfriend over the phone. The subject of the conversation was about him cheating on me of course and I remember just asking him why did he do it and I remember feeling sick because my insides were churning. This emotional pain was worse than any pain I've had in my life even to this day. This war with myself and this self-hatred, jealousy and rage that I had within me just kept me in a state of unbearable misery.

With tears streaming down my face as I'm on the phone with him, not knowing to this day if I actually said it or thought it but God Please Help Me came to my mind. As these words came I looked up to the left upper corner of my room where the wall meets the ceiling and I see a whitish gray mist and it comes to me, surrounds me so that is all I can see and then it goes through me. I can't even tell you the measure of time. It seemed that instantly my pain was gone having been sucked out of me- like a vacuum cleaner sucks things off the carpet. I know that sounds odd but that is the only thing that I can compare it to. Every single negative emotion that I was feeling at that moment were pulled or sucked out of me and what remained was a calmness that I had never felt in my entire life. I was still crying but instead of tears of pain it was tears of joy. I hung up with my boyfriend and quickly found my bible for I knew this had to be of God. I even tried to re-feel the anger and self-hate but I couldn't. It just wasn't there anymore.The main thing that I felt was just being at peace with myself and everything around me and this eternal love that connects each and everyone of us though many don't know. This feeling of peace and serenity stayed with me for a little while but eventually left. The miracle is that I've never had those horrible issues with myself since- at least not to the degree I had them then. The rage has never returned since that day. I'm 37 now and remember this experience as if it had happened just yesterday. I know with all my being that what happened was real.

What exactly was it? I don't know for sure but I know it was something very powerful and loving. It had something to do with God and His love not just for me but for all of us. Whatever it was it saved from the torment that I lived with day in and day out. I prefer to think it was something like the Holy Spirit that swept right through me and forced all of those destructive emotions out of me. It was a miracle for sure and it changed my life. Don't get me wrong, I've had some pretty bad times since then but nothing compared to that torture inside me at 17 years old. Sometimes now when I feel disconnected from God I think about what happened to me in my bedroom that day and I know He's there. I might not always feel him but He is there. Always has been and always will be.