Saved By An Angel with Black and White Spots

I had a memory the other day of the lowest point in my life, a time when I truly wanted to kill myself. And of the angel that saved me.

My husband and I were in the midst of a very painful divorce (we were remarried about two years later, but at this moment, things were really bad), I was struggling with a lot of emotional traumas, I was in constant pain from a chronic condition, and I was mixing pain killers with alcohol in an attempt to make both last longer. But nothing I did numbed my emotional and spiritual pain. My kids were with their dad on this particular night, so I was alone in my crappy little rental house, the only thing I could afford.

I made the most of this time alone by laying on the bedroom floor, quietly sobbing and drinking. I remember ultimately coming to the decision that if I was no longer around, everyone’s lives would be so much better. In my pain-twisted thoughts, I was a useless human being who added nothing positive to the world. I was so very tired. Of everything.

As I was just laying there formulating a suicide plan (and since I was a nurse, I was calculating how much alcohol and drugs I needed to take in order to accomplish this), my beautiful dog, a dalmatian named Sammy, got up slowly from his bed in the living room and found me. It was in the wee hours of the morning, and he was an old dog who had already been asleep for hours. But he must have heard me crying, so he nudged the bedroom door open, walked over to me where I was laying on the floor, laid down beside me, and quietly put his head on my chest.

My sweet Sammy. Those eyes! 💕

He was large for a dalmatian, about 80 pounds. He laid his big head directly over my heart, and he looked at me with those gorgeous eyes filled with adoration, and I realized that I wasn’t completely useless. It struck me that if this dog could love me, I must have some worth. Even in the depths of despair where no divine or human love could reach me, his love did.

He stayed exactly in that spot all night long; if I moved, he just burrowed closer. I couldn't get up if I wanted to. If he could have wrapped his legs around me in a hug, he would have. It was the one and only time he ever did that. 

By morning, instead of figuring out how to die, I was figuring out how to get help. And I was alive. An angel named Sammy saved my life. With his utter devotion to me, he reminded me that we all have worth, because we are created by a God who loves us humans so much, He put beautiful dalmatians in our world.

It's been 22 years since that night, and we lost that sweet boy only a year or two later. But I will never forget him, and I am forever grateful for him and to him. It took me a few more years to beat the demon of substance abuse, but I never again contemplated suicide. That night was a turning point.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, I pray that an angel will visit you and remind you of your innate value and importance. But no matter what, please, please, please reach out for help.

The national suicide prevention lifeline number is 1-800-273-8255.

For LGBTQ+ youth, call the Trevor Project hotline 1-866-488-7386.

For help with drug and alcohol addiction, call 1-844-289-0879.

We are all created in the image and likeness of God, and in that is our true worth. Even when tarnished and broken, that image is perfect in His eyes. Sometimes it takes the loving eyes of a furry angel to remind us of this truth.

I Lost Myself

I got lost.

In January of 2019, I decided to write stories about my healing journey, and then I decided to share those stories with others, so I started a blog. This blog. Right out of the blocks, I wrote and recorded four very personal posts that were an introduction to me and my story, as well as the paths I have traveled and continue to travel in order to find healing. I was off and running. Or so I thought.

Someone I love very much made an offhand remark that derailed me. He suggested that perhaps I might want to write more “positive” things, that people would grow tired of all my “negative” stories. While he appreciated my personal accounts, others wouldn't want to read them if they were “so negative” all the time.

And that's all it took. I quit. I withdrew. I stopped sharing. I made myself as small as possible. Again. For the millionth time in my life.

This is clearly an area that needs more personal growth and healing.

My entire life, I have been shut down and made to feel stupid or small for asking questions at all, or heaven forbid, reading about or coming up with answers on my own. All it took for me to shrink was to make a statement about anything at all, and for the person I was talking to to say, “are you sure?', “really?”, “I don't think so”, “now that's just stupid”, etc. It started with my dad, my brother, the young men who lived in our house(s) when I was growing up, every boyfriend, my husband, priests. Pretty much every man of import in my life. And I learned early that if I just shut up, I'd be OK. I wouldn't get hurt. But that didn't really ever work. I was always hurt. Because my voice couldn't stay quiet, and my body armor is very thin.

The funny thing is, my “word of the year” for 2019 is “Courage”. And one of the things I set out to do to grow more courageous was share my story, my pain, my growth, my healing with others. Which is why I started a blog rather than just journal about it all. So it's kind of ironic that one innocent comment, made by someone who loves me and just wants me to be OK, stopped me in my tracks.

An old pain, an old habit. And that's on me. Because it's not up to other people to validate my worth or my personal growth. Or to change with me. That's my job.

So I am reclaiming my Courage.

I'll end this post with a short story of courage in someone else's life that has humbled me and reminded me that we can be courageous even if we're scared.

Also in January of 2019, my (at the time) 13 year old son came out to his dad and me. The youngest of seven children, no one else in the family that he knew of as gay, pretty strict parents, steeped in the church, surrounded by religiousness; but thank God he felt loved enough and safe enough to tell his parents he was gay. Not that I didn't already know. A mother knows these things. I had my intuitive feelings about it since he was three years old. And because I talked about it non-stop with my husband in recent years, and researched, and read books, and listened to the stories of others, and mostly because I have a deep and unending love for my child, we were able to give him what he needed most. Complete and total acceptance for who he is. What he is is bright and loving and funny and talented and very much “extra”, in his own words. His light is, so far, undimmable.

He is perfect in every way. God made him as he is. I love him more than my own life. And I will fight for him and protect him with every breath in my body.

Aren't we just the cutest?

If he can be brave, so can I.

I don't know how much I'll be writing from this point forward. I have a lot to say! But when it comes to writing, I fight fear. But I'm learning to have courage.

Rachel Held Evans of blessed memory used to say, “Be Honest, Be Yourself, Be Kind.” So I will continue to take up that challenge. And to that I will add, “Be Brave”.

The Heavens Declare The Glory

Let's be honest. In a different place and time, in a different world, in my heart of hearts, I would be me, but someone else. I would be a medicine woman in an ancient tribal society. Or I would be a healer, a fortune teller, living with a traveling band of nomads, wearing big flowy skirts in bright crazy colors. 

Living under the open sky

But I was born in the 20^th century into a Southern Baptist family in the Deep South in America. So it's not surprising that I have spent much of my life feeling “out of place”.

I identify as a Christian. I was an evangelical Christian for the first half of my life, and I’ve been an Orthodox Christian for the second half. My earliest memories are of praying, reading the Bible with my mother, going to church and listening to my father preach, singing hymns with all of my heart, sitting in Sunday school and vacation Bible school; you name it.

God was very real to me, not just a “Being” in the pages of a book. I was a true believer. Still am. I was so steeped in my religious upbringing that once when I couldn’t find anyone in our house when I was five years old, I assumed that “The Rapture” had come and I had been left behind, and I was terrified and devastated. My mother came home from the neighbor’s house to find me keening and wailing in grief. (I think I need to spend some time writing about why in the heck I believed I was such a sinner at the age of five that Jesus would take everyone else to Heaven but leave me behind...)

Anyway, today I’m writing about something else. I need to just get it out and put it on paper and release myself from the weight of this statement:

“Being a Christian” wasn’t enough. The Bible didn’t answer all of my questions.

There. I said it.

You see, I believed that if I prayed enough, and obeyed my parents enough, and trusted Christ enough, and read the Bible enough, and listened to the religious leaders enough, I would know where I belonged, I would find my place in His world, and I would understand my gifts that He gave me.

Instead I spent my entire life believing something was inherently wrong with me because I had a personality, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and visceral knowings that didn’t jive with my upbringing.

I can’t even tell you how many times I was told by a parent or religious authority figure to just trust God. And pray more. And work harder at doing the right thing. And just hang in there.

None of those admonitions are bad or wrong. They aren’t. But they also just aren’t enough. As answers, they fall short.

I didn’t understand me, and how I relate to the world around me, until I learned about... 

My horoscope.

Me, hiding from the fallout

I can hear it now. Shocked gasps of terror coming from all the good people worried about my eternal salvation.

But it’s true. It just is.

I’m not an actual student of astrology, but I’ve had a few appointments with people who are experts in their fields, and are greatly respected by many in and out of the astrology and mystical communities. The first time I trusted God and myself and another person enough to have a conversation about me and the interpretation of the placement and movement of planets and stars in the heavens when I was born, I finally made sense to me. I made sense. To me. And my intuitive thoughts, feelings and behaviors that I had spent a lifetime begging God to do something about, to take away, to just change damn it, all of a sudden made sense. And I cried tears of relief. I wasn’t crazy. And I wasn’t evil.

Because you see, that’s what I had been taught. If you even read the horoscope in the morning paper, you are “opening your heart to the devil.” That’s a quote from my dad. Yeah. I was terrified of the devil.

I was so afraid of him that when I had a true “out of body experience” when I was almost 13 years old that had the devil attacking me, and me calling on the name of Jesus, and the devil disappearing at the power of Christ’s name, instead of rejoicing in the protection of Christ and the knowledge that I could call on Him myself, I lived in terror that the devil wanted my soul so much that he came straight into my subconscious to get me. And since I was so weak and helpless I better hide myself from any place he might be.

I didn’t recognize until many years later that what God was actually telling me in that experience was that He is in and with me and I am safe in Him, and that I can call on Him for protection. Little Old Me could call on All Powerful And Mighty Him. No, I was sure I was going to hell, even though I had the power to scare the devil away with Jesus. I missed the point. (But I digress...and will probably write more about this story later, too.)

All of that to say, it took a lot for me to look in another direction for some answers. I “believe” in astrology. I don't worship the stars, nor do I believe the stars control my life. But I do know that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), and that there is truth to the idea that they can and do influence our attitudes and behaviors. I see astrology as another tool to study and understand personality traits and behavioral science, not as a religion.

Believing that God can work through His creation to help humans understand the world in and around themselves shouldn’t be a bad thing. But it took me more than 50 years to gain the courage to seek those answers.

I’m glad I did. I’m still learning. Mostly I’m learning to trust myself, and trust the Holy Spirit in me. I wrap myself in the arms of Christ and His light, and I seek truth. If in my quest for the truth I keep my eyes on God, I now believe that I can rest in what I find. I can discern the difference between truth and lies.

This is a comfort to me. And makes me feel like the strong woman God wants me to be. And gives me the courage and the protection to seek Truth no matter where I may find it.

Why Do We Hit Our Children?

My hope as I write this blog is that I will learn from the past so I don’t have to live there. I want to grow and change and expand joy in my life. But I don’t think I can do that without walking through the past, acknowledging trauma and sorrow, and moving through and out and into forgiveness. So...

This is everything...

With that in mind, I have recently been asking myself these questions:

Why do we hit our children? Why does Christian tradition teach us that corporal punishment is important and good?

My husband and I both I grew up in homes that practiced corporal punishment. All of our parents did as well. So when we got married and started our own family, it was expected and just assumed that we would also practice corporal punishment. And we did.

We have seven children spread over 25 years, currently 13-38 years old. Our oldest five are biological; our youngest two we adopted as infants. When our oldest child was born, it was “decided” that we would use my husband’s dad’s system, known as “the swat system”. Basically a child would receive one swat for being naughty, two swats for blatant disobedience, and a maximum of three swats for “talking back to mother”.

The instrument used was a paddle that my husband had been gifted by one of his student’s dad when he taught junior high school in Mississippi in 1979. (Think about that for a minute and try not to shudder. Gifted by a dad so the teacher could whale on his kid.)

So, almost as soon as we brought home our precious little seven pound firstborn child in November of 1980, we were planning how we were going to...hit her.

I was glad to have this “swat system”. Since I had been raised to believe that physical punishment was “good” for our children, and my husband believed the same thing, I was relieved to have guidelines for meting out punishment. My dad had used his hands, sometimes a switch, and frequently his belt, and you never knew when or where or why the punishment might rain down. That was truly horrible. So a simple paddle and a “system” seemed almost kind in my opinion.

When my oldest child was 4 years old, she figured out that I was afraid of the paddle and was timid when I swung it, so she decided to fight back by wiggling and refusing to lie still for her swats. And I remember losing my cool, and for the briefest of seconds I had a vision of taking the paddle, swinging it like a bat, and nailing her across the head. Just writing these words brings back the same feeling of panic, the same nausea, the same shaking, revulsion and fear that I felt 34 years ago. It was a defining moment. I realized in those seconds how easily I could slip right over the line from disciplining my child to abusing her. I put the paddle down and flew from the room.

You might think that I would reevaluate my acceptance of corporal punishment based on that experience. And I did. I was so distraught that I called my mom to ask for her advice. She suggested that I talk to my husband and “ask him if it was OK” for me to temporarily use a switch instead of the paddle. That way even if she wouldn’t be still there was no danger of seriously injuring my child.

Ask my husband. If it was OK. To hit our child. With a skin-stinging switch. Instead of a potentially bone-breaking paddle.

What. In. The. Actual. F**k.

But I did it. Because I wanted to be a good mother and raise children who knew how to obey.

I’m so sorry about that.

Clearly it is past time that I begin to question things I was taught growing up. For example, what does "spare the rod, spoil the child" really mean?

Proverbs 13:24 (NKJV), "He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly."

This verse has haunted me for as long as I can remember. It was the basis of my father's use of the belt on me before I was even five years old.

I’ve hated this Bible verse all of my life.

Recently I've been thinking, what if we're wrong? What if we've been lied to by the legalistic patriarchal generations that came before us?

Because the Good Shepherd also uses a rod, but it is to comfort his sheep and to lead them to safety. Not hit them.

Psalm 23:4 (NKJV),  "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

What if "spare the rod, spoil the child" actually means that if we don't lead and comfort our children, they will be lost? What if we actually show hatred for our children by hitting them and bullying them rather than gently guiding and leading them, as well as comforting them with the “rod”of a loving and kind shepherd? What if we've been wrong all along?!

This is staggering.

All I know is that the only thing I learned from being beaten with a leather belt as a child was how to disappear when I'd broken the rules, embarrassed my dad, or done some other wrong thing, and how to lie to cover my transgressions. I didn't learn self discipline, I learned to hide and withdraw. And to this day, more than 50 years later, I am filled with terror at the whipping sound a belt makes when it is quickly removed from a pair of pants (which has had its own negative repercussions in my marriage over the years.)

I also learned to not tell my parents when something bad happened to me because I never knew if I would be the one punished for “causing” that bad thing to happen. After all, before I was sent to kindergarten at the sweet little age of five, my dad warned me that if I was ever spanked at school, I would be spanked again when I got home. So I was verbally assaulted and beaten by my second grade teacher, and I never told on her. Because I feared my dad’s wrath more than I trusted his love. When I told him about it over 40 years later, he raged at that teacher and he cried for me. But it didn’t change his opinion about physical punishment. That makes me sad.

I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize to my children for using corporal punishment so much, and supporting that practice with a perversion of a Bible verse. I did the best I could with the information I had at the time. But that doesn't make me less wrong. So I am truly and deeply sorry. As I move forward in my life, I will attempt to be more like a loving shepherd and less like an avenging god.

Maybe sometimes we do "deserve" punishment. But what we are always entitled to as children of God is mercy. And grace. And absolute love.

Let's Start a Conversation About Intuition

I should probably get a disclaimer or two out of the way.

This blog is my blog, these stories are my stories. While memories that include my family will obviously be written on this page because, hello; I am who and what I am because of who and what I come from; these words are about my experiences. Just mine. 

That look on my face...why, tho?

That said, I am the daughter and the daughter-in-law of ministers. My dad pastored in many different churches and communities over his years of service: he was a Southern Baptist preacher, a giant of a leader in an international campus ministry, a pioneer of the Jesus People movement, a well known House Church starter, and a convert to Orthodox Christianity in which he was ordained and served as an archpriest for almost 30 years by the time he passed away 3 1/2 years ago. My father-in-law has a very similar story, except he wasn’t a Baptist minister; he was first ordained in the Covenant church. He is the only remaining grandparent to my children, and we are so glad he is still with us.

I am sure that my parents and my husband’s parents did the very best they could, and I know they loved their families very much. I’m not telling their stories, I’m telling mine. In telling my stories, if I’m going to be honest, I have to write about them.

When I was three years old, my dad was in a terrible plane crash. I grew up hearing the story of how my mother begged him not to go on that particular trip, and in fact she was pleading and crying so hard about it, even hanging onto him physically and trying to stop him from walking out the door, that he reprimanded her and chastised her for being a hysterical woman. About an hour later, the private plane he was a passenger in crashed on takeoff, and my dad was severely injured, almost killed. I actually do remember my mother praying and pleading with God to protect him after he walked out the door. And He did. My dad should have died on impact. For the rest of his life when he retold this story, my dad would laugh and say that after that event, he never doubted “women’s intuition” again. (Not true, by the way. He continued to doubt.)

A number of years later when I was a teenager, my dad was working in the yard when he suddenly dropped his tools and jumped in the car and took off. I wasn’t home when this happened, but I later heard the story many times. He drove to the house of a woman we knew, and he found her in time to save her life. She had attempted suicide, but due to my dad’s timely intervention, she lived. He said later, when he frequently retold this story, that he felt a strong urging from the Holy Spirit to GO to this woman’s house NOW. Because he obeyed the voice of God, her life was spared.

Isn’t it interesting that when my mom had a premonition of danger, he called it “women’s intuition “, but when my dad had a similar premonition, he said it was the “Holy Spirit speaking” to him? Hmmm... That makes me wonder about intuition and the Holy Spirit, and about a woman’s experience that is discredited, and a man’s experience that is elevated. The words used to describe almost identical events changed the story about them. Because, after all, intuition is not holy, but listening to God’s voice is. Right?

Wrong.

I don’t like that distinction at all.

So let’s talk about intuition.

I remember attending teachings and meetings as a child and later as a young adult where I was actually taught by my father, and also by the man who later became my father-in-law, that I could not listen to nor trust the voice inside of me. I was told that Jiminy Cricket was a liar, and that if you let your conscience be your guide, it would lead you to unholy, ungodly, sinful and evil places.

Really?

The conscience, the inner voice, the intuition that God built into us is inherently evil?

I bought into this “truth” as a kid, and for way too many years after I grew up. I don’t buy into it any more. I know I was taught those things in good faith (at least I hope so), but I now see that narrative as being just another way of keeping me and my unruly spirit controlled. I actually spent way too many years believing that there were a few “godly men” who could hear God’s “true voice”. I couldn’t and didn’t trust myself.

That makes me sad now. And not just a little mad.

The truth is that I’ve got buckets of intuition and spiritual insight. I am filled to the brim with it! My bullshit meter is finely tuned. I can actually read the energy of and hear and feel the emotions of people around me. I “know” things that I “shouldn’t know”. During the many years that I worked in the world of modern medicine, I often knew immediately what a patient needed before a doctor even walked onto the floor. I just thought I was a really good educated guesser.

I told myself that I was a good guesser because to even begin to look at the possibility that I might just “know things” because my intuition (or the Holy Spirit?) was telling me these things meant I had to admit that my head and my heart were open to the spirit world, and that meant I was perilously close to falling into the occult...can you see how ridiculous this line of thinking is? Just writing it now embarrasses me a little. But I was so convinced that I couldn’t trust what was in me, because if I did I was “opening my heart to the devil”, that I grasped onto the “really good educated guesser” excuse like a lifeline.

Things are different now. I don’t believe any of that BS. But it took me more than 5 decades to come to realize that I am a talented and gifted child of God. My gifts are FROM God. My spirit is pure. And as long as I wrap myself in the arms and protective Light of Christ, I am in a good place. Always.

And there is great relief, and joy, to know this is the truth. The. Truth.

Opening myself up to my intuition and the gifts and talents that come with it has been life affirming. I’m so grateful for the healing of this part of my soul.

Some years ago I was introduced to a beautiful Orthodox prayer service known as the “Akathist of Thanksgiving”. It is so lovely, and it gives me so much comfort. Part of one of the verses in it goes like this:

“My God , Who knows the fall of the proud angel, save me through the power of Your grace, do not let me fall away from You, do not allow me to doubt You. Sharpen my hearing so that every minute of my life I can hear Your mysterious voice and call to You Who are everywhere present:
Glory to You for Providential coincidences,
Glory to You for the gift of premonitions,
Glory to You for the guidance of a secret inner voice,
Glory to You for revelations in dreams and when awake...”

I’m OK. I’m better than OK.

I am blessed.

The Time Has Come, The Time Is Now

Every day a thousand thoughts flit through my brain, and a thousand feelings flow through my body. This has been true for me for as long as I can remember. It makes for a chaotic inner world. And since many of these thoughts and feelings don’t always make sense in the world I grew up in or have been a part of as an adult, it’s hard to listen to them all and make sense of the chaos. 

In the past, I spent years ignoring these thoughts and feelings and pretending a serenity that completely eluded me. I spent hours a day trying to “pray them away”. I also spent years trying to numb them or drown them into non-existence with a combination of legal substances mixed and consumed in a not-quite-legal fashion. When I figured out that shit was killing me, I found the 12 steps and changed the course of my personal life and actions, but the thousands of thoughts and feelings per day just keep coming. 

In more recent years, I’ve spent much time on a therapist’s couch or in my sponsor’s living room or sitting in my pastor’s office visitor’s chair trying to corral and control my inner world, or at least make some sense out of it all. I have often been told or had it gently suggested to me that I need to write down these thoughts and feelings, that putting pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard would help me find a way to channel all that energy in a healthy way. Unfortunately, I’m also a bit of a rebel, so I tended to ignore those instructions and suggestions. 

It’s interesting to me how many times in my life that I refused to do what I was told, and it was something that was really good for me...and how many times I was obedient, and it was a really, really bad thing for me. Hmmm...

I originally decided to write a blog about my journey to health and wellness. But what keeps showing up on these pages are stories of spiritual healing. So for now, I’m going to go with that. 

The past few years have been difficult. But they’ve also been good. I can honestly say that for the first time in my life, I actually like who I am. I actually love me. Melissa.

I love Melissa. 

It only took 60 years.

In 2015 my dad passed away, and in 2017, I lost my mom. Grieving the loss of them, and also the loss of who they weren’t, has been eye opening. Mostly they were wonderful people who loved God with all of their hearts. They raised me with their values and beliefs, and their values and beliefs became my values and beliefs

But an interesting thing happened when I became an adult orphan: I began to question everything I knew to be “true”. At the ripe young age of 60, I’m asking myself these questions: What do I believe? Who do I believe? Why do I believe it? 

This has been a really interesting exercise. And it has made me realize that about 90% of what I’ve said I believe for years and years comes from my parents or my husband. Wow. I think it’s time to think for myself. So if you read some things in the future that I write that are surprising to you, well, that’s just me finally growing up. 

This blog is about my journey, my healing journey. And it’s not over yet. I may be late to the blogging party, but I hope to have many more years of traveling these roads and taking some of the rabbit trails that pop up along the way, and then writing about them. 

So I’ll leave this first entry with a short introduction: I am a child of God. I am an Orthodox Christian (but please don’t dictate to me what I can think, feel, believe, and do based on that rule book. My God is bigger than that.) I am a strong woman, a nurturing woman. I am a wife, mother, grandmother, sister, retired RN and NP, a seeker of truth and asker of questions, an empathic medical intuitive. I am a healer. I am a reader. I am a swimmer.

Anyway, welcome to my world. It’s sometimes chaotic, sometimes sad, sometimes filled with joy, often serious and occasionally fun (I’m actively trying to flip that ratio). But it’s mostly good, and it might be interesting. So stick around! I think you’ll be glad you did.