The Puddle

This is a short story, it is also a true story.

It was Indian summer that first year we arrived in Washington and the spectacle of trees awaited us.  The multicolored leaves mixed together so well that they looked like plaid.   Against the clear blue sky the vista was intoxicating. 

As for me, I was practically a gypsy.  Dad was in the military and my family moved a lot.  So as I entered my 6th grade class I was once again the new kid on the block.  I had been excited to move but now I missed my old friends.  The painful process of trying to fit in had begun.

I felt lonely and awkward as I got to know the kids in school.   They would look at me but wouldn’t say hello.  On one foggy morning as I was walking to school I started praying for a good friend.  Loneliness is emptiness.  As I approached the old brick school I felt a sense of dread as I anticipated another day.  But once I had settled into class one of the most popular girls in the school, Marlene, came up and introduced herself to me. 

I was both astonished and delighted.  And as the days turned into weeks Marlene and I kept in touch.  We talked about many things.  We went to the library together and visited each others’ homes.   I believed my prayer had been answered.  Marlene lived a few blocks from me but in a very nice neighborhood.  She was very particular about things, everything needed to be “clean and pressed” and dust was almost unforgivable.  Marlene herself was always well dressed and she had such fine clothes.

One day she asked about my father, she said she had heard he was a Colonel.  I don’t know where she’d heard that, but I explained that my Dad was a sergeant. It was a quick conversation and I didn’t give it any further thought.  I loved my dad, he had done pretty well for someone who quit school in the seventh grade to help support his family. 

I saw Marlene in school a couple of times after that but she was with other friends and they looked to be having private discussions so I decided not to intrude.  But at the time I had an uncomfortable feeling that somehow a distance had come between us.  I just didn’t know why or how.

The next week, the entire class was sent to the public park for gym class.  We were to run laps around the baseball diamond.  But it had rained the night before and you could smell the dank in the air.  As the class gathered I noticed a black crow had landed on a chain link fence.  He was watching us.

Marlene got off to a quick start but I spotted her and ran up next to her.  The ground was still wet from the rain and we had to avoid stepping into the mud as we ran.  As I came abreast of Marlene and said ‘Hello’ she turned up her nose and looked away.  My suspicion had been correct.  My heart sank, and then as I was about to ask her what was wrong, we ran up on a huge mud puddle.  I was expecting Marlene to move to the right so I could avoid the puddle, but instead she moved left.  There was no way to avoid it.  I stepped right into the middle of the mud puddle!

But then a funny thing happened.  As my foot hit the puddle, all of the mud, every last drop of it, spewed out to the right of my foot, all over Marlene.  Not a single drop of the mud touched me.  Marlene stopped and just stood there, covered with mud.  I just kept running.

It rained for several days after that, sheets of rain that went on forever.  I was depressed. My friend didn’t like me anymore.  I didn’t know what I had done and I was confused.  The rain was comforting, it covered my darkness.  I brooded about all of this for a while and I couldn’t help but wonder if I had done something wrong.  From then on I kept my distance from Marlene.  Finally the rain stopped. 

It was many, many years after this when I noticed a rainbow had appeared on my way to church.  Inside, the sermon was Proverbs 18:24 “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” As I listened I thought back to this incident and it dawned on me what the Lord had done.  He had answered my prayer for a friend.  It was He, Jesus Christ, He was my friend!  There was no shame on me.  There wasn’t any mud either!  It was then that I was overcome with a feeling of profound peace that He would always be with me.  Jesus Christ, my true friend! 

Occultism, A Poem

Fascination held me fast

Astonished at what had past

The humdrum beat was not all there was

A world beyond yet within my grasp

Entering in

I was adept at the craft

It was plainly true

I could tell

the future and all its travails

Deeper and deeper I journeyed in

Awareness of a greater mind

awed by the power

no sense of shame crossed my mind

But out of nowhere

the darkness came

leering demons

At Me!

like a shot

The battlefield arose, surrounding me
colossal
and
gargantuan

the power marshaled against me

Delphi at my side

whispering lies

But the Ancient One

He walked the sky

Peace eternal and profound

gentle as rain

I was found

Shame laid bare

My choice was clear

the eternal ONE

saved me

from the lies

To You and Thru You

I went for a walk in the park the other day.  It was spring like for the middle of February.  As I was returning I passed a baseball diamond full of little boys.  I heard the crack of a bat and then a coach calling to one of his players, “to you and thru you”!  He was obviously chiding the child a bit about not grabbing the ball.  But somehow I knew those words were important to me; but at the time I didn’t know why.

Later I was watching an episode of Joyce Meyer.  For those of you who don’t know her she is a wonderful preacher that you can find on television or the internet.  Joyce began speaking about people who are “spiritually fat” because they are full of the Word of Christ but they haven’t given it away.  Then she admonished that the Lord’s Word should go “to you and thru you”.  “To you and thru you” she kept repeating.  Obviously the Lord was trying to tell me something. 

So I started thinking about my behavior.  And although I have volunteered for pretty much everything under the sun, maybe the Lord wants me to bring all of this much closer to home.  Instead of traveling to a mission in Mexico or some other exotic adventure, maybe he just wants me to concentrate on spreading His Love to the people already around me.

A few days later I was at my new job and I was helping a co-worker who needed almost constant attention throughout the day.  And although it was inconvenient, it came to my mind that as Christians the strong are called upon to help the weak.  It was a small sacrifice, but in the past it was one I would have resented.  So I am blessed to have heard and understood and given a little away.  And to know that these are the types of things I should be on the lookout for, little things throughout the day, to give away some of the great love the Lord has shown to me. 

Divine Healings

When I converted to Catholicism, I wasn’t a Christian.  I didn’t convert from one flavor of Christianity to another, nor was I raised Christian.  Secular is the best description of how I was raised.  I eventually became very involved in the “New Age Movement”.  But my conversion was dramatic and as I told the priest at my first confession, “…if someone had wanted to burn down the Catholic Church I would have thrown the first match”.  As a matter of fact I had written an article condemning the Catholic Church years earlier.  The details of my conversion will come out as I continue writing in this blog.

But for now I want to share a couple of healings that occurred after I entered the Church.  When I converted to Christianity I quit a very prestigious and high paying job.  And let me assure you there are still people out there that think I’m crazy.   But anyway, shortly after my First Communion I received “the Cross”.  For those of you as “green” as I was, the Cross is considered some hardship you need to bear in patience, as our Lord Jesus Christ did when he carried his Cross.  My “Cross” at the time was that my unemployment lasted for 15 months.   And I didn’t have enough money to pay for health insurance; I didn’t have money for a lot of things. 

However I did sign up for an “indigent” health care plan.  Then one day their staff called me, out of the blue, and said “by the way, we are currently running a program to offer those under our plan a free colonoscopy”.  Not an entirely pleasant proposition, but I said yes.  As a result I was diagnosed with “Celiac” disease.  After reading about the symptoms I realized I had had Celiac disease for at least 10 years.  Now comes a very important point, if I had health insurance I could not have had this procedure and I would not have been diagnosed.  The physician wouldn’t have had any reason to prescribe it because the symptoms are so vague and varied that the chances of even suspecting it would have been very slim.  And of course the insurance would never have paid for it.  So; as a result of being unemployed and not having any health insurance the Lord worked in a mysterious way and I was cured of many health problems that I had had for over a decade.  A change in diet was all it took. 

That was the first healing.  The next healing cured problems I had for at least 30 years.  Eventually I got a job that came with health insurance.  I went to the doctor who sent me to get some labs as a result of a heart murmur.  While there I started talking with the woman administering the lab.  She and I had the same symptoms over the course of many years.  We both just kept saying “me too” while we were comparing notes.  Well this wonderful woman had found the cure and told me what it was.  So I bought some “Sea Kelp” and within one hour the heart murmur that I had for some 30 years was gone, never to return.  It’s an iodine thing associated with the thyroid, which was removed when I was in high school.  And then it continued to cure a lot of other symptoms, serious symptoms.

Actually I was a little irritated and went to the doctor and asked why they hadn’t picked up on the “low” iodine level as a result of the testing they had been doing for decades.  They kept testing my thyroid over and over again and everything came back fine.  My doctor said that they don’t test for low iodine in the United States because it’s so rare.  But I do thank God for the woman in the lab and I gave her a kiss before I left.  Christ was working thru her that day.

I think these stories show how the Lord blesses those who trust in Him; which is why I wanted to share them.  Quitting my job was scary.  Going without health insurance was scary.  But I had come to know that God was real and I knew that I was going to spend the rest of my life serving Him.  If it meant losing everything, so be it.  I was given many Crosses, and am still carrying some, but look how he has blessed me!  He has restored my health, and what a very great blessing that is.  Praise and Glory to the Divine Physician; Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Predicting my mother's death

Well it's that time of year when all of the astrological forecasting will be coming out.  So I want to post this now so that I might catch some of the people interested in the "New Age" and hopefully warn them away from this dangerous practice.

******************

This is a disturbing story but it does illustrate an important point that I pray wakes up those dabbling in the occult.  I myself was “into” the occult and after studying astrology for 20 years I had become quite adept at analyzing astrological charts and was able to accurately predict future events.  Then one day I was analyzing my mother’s chart and discovered that her time was near, very near.  It startled me and my reaction was to deny it, I didn’t want to believe it, and maybe I hadn’t read the chart right anyway.

Not long afterwards my mother fell ill with what we thought was the stomach flu.  Concerned, I took her to the hospital where her doctor told me she had only 24 hours left to live.  She didn’t have the stomach flu; she had a tumor the size of a grapefruit.  So in the end I was right, she did die, and I was devastated.  Years later, after realizing I was dealing in the demonic and looking back on this time, an eerie and disquieting sense surrounded me.  I just can’t help but think that if I hadn’t been into the occult; or even better in communion with the Lord, that I might have saved my mother.  Maybe that’s just guilt talking but still that’s nowhere anyone wants to be.

Let me tell you how I got into the occult and the bad decisions I made along the way, because I think a lot of people make the same mistakes.  And maybe by sharing I can help guide those involved in the occult out of it.  When I was growing up I was one of those people that denied that the “spirit world” existed at all.  Whether divine or demonic, I only acknowledged what could be seen and felt.   So then, when the reality of the “other side” became apparent to me I was completely awed by it.  One day I purchased an astrology book, you know one of those that tell you whether you and your boyfriend are compatible or not.  It seemed so innocuous.  But it was shortly after that that I started experiencing the paranormal in a big way.

Suddenly I knew things I had no business knowing, very strong premonitions of future events and I had no way to explain how I knew them.  I was uncomfortable with this ability and it became more frequent, and bizarre.  I hadn’t connected the paranormal activity to my new interest in astrology, but years later the timing became apparent.  I had opened the door to the occult and the devil came dancing in.  I had a friend ask me if just reading horoscopes was enough to open the door to Satan, obviously my answer to that question is Yes!  Absolutely!

I think there are a lot of people, like I used to be, who only believe in concrete reality.  That’s a mistake.  The “spirit world” is definitely a reality.  Flowing from that mistake was the failure to discern that the “spirit world” contains both the divine and the demonic.  I had assumed it was all coming from the same place; wrong again.  A good education in Christianity would have taught me that much.

Then a major mistake, I didn’t acknowledge the devil.  The adage that; “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” is very, very true.  And our generation has bought that hook, line and sinker.  But consider this for a moment; if the devil doesn’t exist there is no need to distinguish between good and evil, is there?  This is where everybody gets tripped up.  Our generation’s party line “that it’s all good” or “we just keep reincarnating until we get it right” is a delusion created by Satan.  In addition to being a lie, it fosters laziness in the pursuit of virtue.

Even if it’s done innocently, once you open the door to the demonic, no matter how slight, the devil will slither in.  And may God help you if you don’t believe in the devil.  You can’t fight something that you don’t even acknowledge.  You will be subject to a power you can’t possibly fathom whose only objective is your destruction.  The devil may be good to you for awhile, but he’s like a drug.  He will get you addicted to “something”, perhaps a lifestyle that you can’t let go of, and then; bam!  He will take you down.

If you have allowed the “evil one” into your life and you are lucky enough to realize that, what do you do?  You of your own strength cannot win against the forces of evil.  Funny, but when that reality sinks in the Bible and religion become very attractive.  Perhaps an inner knowing that the truth is hidden there?  I want you to do what the gospel says to do and repent!  Repent and pray.  Draw close to the Holy Spirit, the divine of the spirit world.  Let Jesus Christ save you!  Learn to discern between the divine and the demonic. And here are a few clues.  If it’s in accord with the Ten Commandments you’re in good shape.  If it’s patient and loving and charitable towards your neighbor you are probably OK.  If you are in a state of anxiety, then you do not have the peace of the Lord.  This is when you should consider that the demonic might be involved. 

After my own conversion to Christianity I came to realize how sad my actions were.  I could have been in a state of grace, praying to our Lord to save my mother.  But instead I was far from the Lord.  Even though I “felt” like I was doing good because I was a “spiritual” person I was really travelling down a road that not only put my own soul in danger, but also those I loved.  But the grace of God saved me. 

The bottom line is this, there is a reason God says over and over and over again NOT to get involved in the occult.  Any form of divination is considered an offense against the First Commandment.  God blesses us, but he also curses those who rebel against His Word.  If you are involved in the occult, get out of it and make sure you repent.  Shaking the devil off after you’ve let him in may well take some time and effort.  I pray you persevere in your repentance and come into communion with our Lord, Jesus Christ.   Remember, his name is Mercy!