God has a way of speaking through people and every time I am quite enough to hear him, life gets back on track. Last night in my Philosophy of Religion class we had discussion on Religious Experiences. The teacher wanted to know from us if we had specific moments in our life that we remember knowing there had to be something more. I started to think and there are too many to write. The bottom line is once my initial awakening happened the spiritual experiences I had following were able to be recognized as God and not coincidence.
A woman in my class shared about her be woken up in the middle of the night just in time to get herself and her family out of her burning house. She is a very religious person but she shared her ‘moment’ that she was able to pin point in time.
It made me think of my summer 5 years ago. I was working Part Time but for the most part I was working on my tan by the pool in the apartment complex I was living in at the time. In the summer you got to see the same neighbors out every day. My immediate next door neighbor was at the pool one day with her son and one of his friends. I smiled and went back to my word find as they were splashing around. I had a tendency of getting so tired from sitting all day that I would nod in and out all moments of the day. I tend to twitch right before I fall into a deep sleep and/or I drop whatever is in my hands. I started to nod off and when I twitched, I woke myself back up and did the typical scan of the pool to see if anyone noticed I was nodding off. Right then, my neighbor made eye contact with me and she went underwater. Her son was in the deep end laughing. “Come on Mommy…come over here” I looked up at the 15 yr old lifeguard but he was not checked in. She came back up for air and I saw her eyes were completely blood shot. I jumped in and was able to get her to the side of the pool. I am in no way a hero, that’s not why I am telling this story. The point is that I would have never noticed or heard her had I not twitched at that exact moment. I don’t think I have that courageous heroic blood but something got me out of my chair and into the water without thought.
There is no other explanation for that other then God. After we were at the side of the pool I looked up and the lifeguard still hadn’t noticed anything had happened, which is a pretty scary realization. It turned out my neighbor had just started a new medication that had been making her weak, but she thought she would be okay swimming and when she got into the deep end her body wasn’t able to keep her afloat.
I thought of this when I heard the woman in class’ fire story.
There was also the time I choked on a chicken sandwich in a diner and was given the Heimlich. That night I went out with some friends, and there was a woman I had just met who came with us. When I started choking one of my friends tried to give me the Heimlich but didn’t know how and the woman I just met jumped up from the table and was able to get me over to the bathroom and do the proper maneuver. Turned out she was a nurse. She was a nurse who had lost her daughter, who was around my age, only a couple months before that night. When we started talking she was sharing about how she wished she could have been able to help her daughter (who died of a drug overdose) and she was filled with guilt. She had just saved my life and went back to our diner like nothing had happened, she was a nurse so she was used to it. I couldn’t thank her enough and I pointed out that she helps saves lives for a living. Obviously that in no way can replace her daughter but she has saved other mother’s daughters and that God had put her in my life that night because, well I obviously don’t chew my food well enough but there are no coincidences.
My teacher also asked if there were moments in our childhood that we specifically remember having that Joy/Sense of safety that we no longer have in adulthood. I think I am very lucky. I can remember having that sense of calmness the first time when I was 14 years old and I was terrified to sleep in my new house. I was always afraid of something horrible happening to me and my family when I fell asleep. I prayed to God to help me and I felt like an invisible warm blanket come over me and I fell asleep within seconds. I say that I am lucky because I continue to have these moments now. Pretty regularly when I am in touch with God. But the innocence of youth sometimes allows us to be more open to opportunities like that, is what my teacher I think was trying to get at.
Why am I writing about all of this? Why not? God has blessed me with the knowledge of his existence and continues to demonstrate that my relationship with him is not restricted to boundaries, no limits, it can go as deep and as pure as I chose to take it. My morning meditation today was only 12 minutes but those 12 minutes give me a 24 hours of knowing that life will be okay, God has this and if I open my life I can help Him show others around me too. Just by smiling at someone on the street or letting the older woman at the bust top get on before you (which should come naturally as common courtesy but this day and age I feel like it is dwindling).
Bottom line: If I do not take the time to thank God with prayer and meditation, I will not stop thinking about myself long enough to become useful for Him. The ‘next right thing’ is not always apparent to me, but when I am tapped into that Conscious Contact I can again feel the innocence of a child who feels the breeze kiss their nose for the first time and is filled with Awe at the amazement of this life.
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