A New and Radiant Heart
You and your friend were related in a past life in Egypt,” the masculine voice announced at my private “reading.” The voice droned on, filling in details that explained centuries of my soul’s existence. Finally, at the end of the reading, the female pastor of this small country church emerged from her trance to bid me good-bye in her normal voice.
When I told the results to my housemate, she exclaimed, “I knew we had a connection that couldn’t be explained by the fact that we work for the same employer!”
I didn’t share her enthusiasm. Something didn’t feel right about this new revelation. I’d recently walked away from my marriage and my three-year-old daughter. I felt I had failed at traditional values, so I liked the security offered by familiar old hymns and Bible passages when I visited my housemate’s place of worship. But deep down I knew the Bible did not support the past-lives theory the pastor and others in this church held.
Meanwhile, two hundred miles away, my mother cried her heart out to God. She could not understand why her only child, an intelligent college graduate, had left her marriage, her child, and the belief system in which she’d been raised. Whether locked in her semi-dark bedroom, or out in the sunshine among her flower gardens, my mother faithfully prayed for me day after day.
Empowered by God’s wisdom, she and my father never distanced themselves from my husband or took sides. They stayed in touch with their only grandchild, no matter how much pain it brought. They also reached out to me, trying to accept me right where I was, even when they couldn’t understand the reasons for my choices.
I couldn’t explain how the growing hurts, disappointments, and misunderstandings had culminated in an outbreak of violence that finally destroyed my marriage. So I severed communication with my mom and dad. In their place I tried to build a new family of free thinkers.
I relied on these new friends for my direction, my peace, and my security. Together we drank late into the night, worked at the same company during the day, and took off for extended hikes and adventures on the weekends. At first I felt empowered—no longer encumbered by marriage, parenthood, or trying to please my parents.
Advanced yoga sessions ended with group meditations. As humming sounds filled our exercise space, I sensed a shift in the unseen world around me. I felt the prickly edge of fear warning me that this “peace” was really an illusion.
“Altered states of consciousness” read the community college class description. It sounded invigorating. Why not?
I persuaded another roommate, a former Wiccan, to attend the sessions with me. We warmed to the ideas of Transcendental Meditation and Hare Krishna. Communal living seemed like a happy solution to the loneliness I felt.
Eventually my searching led to another job. That led to the excitement of newly formed illicit relationships. One was with a shaman who held a highly respected position at the company where I worked. He introduced me to concepts like astral projection. Although scintillating at first, the myriad ideas and experiences did not bring the peace and security I longed for, but rather a deep mistrust in surface appearances.
Drugs and alcohol numbed my pain. But one night fear devoured a part of my fragile stability. It rode in on the form of a dog, a stray Great Dane that had wandered into our lives and into our country house. One night the dog’s image shifted shapes in my dreams. Or was I having a drug-induced hallucination? He grew into a terrifying monster waiting to attack me.
The dream left an indescribable terror in my heart.
More fear came several years later when I faced my own mortality through a debilitating blood disease. Reaching the end of the world’s resources and myself, I struggled for freedom from the bonds of fear and darkness. I moved out of a communal living situation and began pouring my heart out to the God I’d known since early childhood.
“I’ve made a mess of this whole thing,” I sobbed as I jogged around the local school track in darkness and then returned to the townhouse where I now lived alone.
“God, it’s okay if you take my life. I’m sorry for what I’ve done.” Tears began their cleansing process as I surrendered again and again.
Finally the doctors removed my spleen. As my body recuperated, God began rebuilding my inner and outer life on a firmer foundation based on His truth. I began attending a church that accurately preached from the Bible. I hungered for His Word and began studying in earnest, both alone and in a Bible study.
At church I eventually met a man who also desired to live God’s Word in a practical, everyday way. We married a few months later.
Many years after that, the church offered a series on healing prayer. As a massage therapist, I gravitated toward anything that might help my hurting clients. But first I needed to experience deeper inner healing myself. I studied the Bible, prayed fervently with other believers, admitted my past involvement with occult practices, and asked the Lord to remove any traces of influence those encounters might have left in my own mind and belief system.
Then I participated in a spiritual retreat.
Toward the end of the sessions, I sat quietly in a church pew, planning to meditate on God’s Word, when Christ suddenly stood before me. As His eyes of love penetrated my soul, He reached into my chest and withdrew my heart.
Blackened, hardened, it was not beating as He cupped it in His hands. Then He gently breathed new life into it. Radiating with iridescence, it began beating. He returned it to my chest and announced, “I have given you a new name.”
When the vision ended, I looked up to see if anyone else had witnessed this very intimate moment. No one appeared to have noticed. But all the way home I shouted, “God is my Father! He loves me just as I am. He delights over me with singing. He has given me a new name!” Words could not contain the joy I felt.
Deep within, I know that I could not have left my former life of deception, bondage, and fear if it hadn’t been for God’s power unleashed by my mother’s faithful prayers, day after day, year after year.
After thirty-two years of marriage, the birth of a son, a restored relationship with my daughter, and the birth of three grandchildren, I look forward to the day when I enter heaven and can thank Mom for her faithfulness in battling for me in the unseen realms.
Determined prayer warriors united with God can see miracles happen!
I know; I am proof.