INTRODUCTION
I’ve handwritten this blog post before typing it up. If, by now, you feel you’re coming to know ‘me,’ then you can appreciate the challenge I’ve put before myself by forcing my cramped penmanship to page before, eventually, typing and reviewing this.
I’ve reflected on the need to write this for more than a year. Nudged, repeatedly and insistently, compelled really, by something beyond me, I’m choosing to first hand write everything to be absolutely clear and intentional in what I say here.
**and in my transcription of my own written word, I am trying to also stay true to what I wrote before typing everything up.**
Let’s start with personal bias. I would love to absolutely reassure that I understand the thoughts in our minds and how we experience the divine, visions, ghosts, dreams and more to be mere electrical impulses in the meaty substance that makes up our brains. I think my hesitance to write this stems from the strong need to be practical and scientifically minded. My family is, if nothing else, incredibly rational. We take our time, reflect on the evidence, seek out and listen to experts. In my family history, people of faith are easily discarded in favour of science, reason and tangible fact.
None of that, however, explains my own experiences which I’ve been blessed with that… seem to just brush the outermost edges of the Divinity of our Lord, both before (long before), during and after my conversion to Catholicism. Further, I don’t think I’m the only one who quietly keeps silent and wonders to herself… gosh, what was that intense vision? Do I dare share with anyone? We are so afraid of being deemed just a little nuts by our peers, that we don’t share among our-very-human-selves what may be the most important and very real experiences any of us have directly with God.
When I speak to others that I know, that I know!, God is actively trying to reach us, it’s because my own lived experience has proven this to me beyond any rational or sensible challenge; and only now as an independent and gainfully employed and capable woman do I feel any sort of confidence in sharing this without feeling… well, a little silly and worried about how others might perceive all that I really wish to say to them. Even if one were to pick apart my objective and demonstrable life-path, the evidence of His clear and guiding hand is throughout. Even when things were really, really hard, He was there. Looking back, I reflect and believe that in the challenges of life, there were things I needed to experience and grow from and learn from that are beyond book learning. To develop the Gifts given to each of us, we must live a life that gives meaning and purpose to those Gifts.
So, this lengthy introduction is here to try (try!) to demonstrate to you that which I’ve long doubted myself – that I have approached this topic with a great degree of skepticism – doubting even my own most intimate and real experiences.
BEGINNINGS
In a long-time timey-time ago… when I was 11ish, my closest friend died from a brain tumour. The history here is worth an entirely separate post, but what I write about is what happened after, not before, her passing.
The day of her death I woke early, insisting on needing to see her. Desperate to visit. I knew how ill she was; I was one of the few friends who’d had sleepovers with her and had admired her collection of wigs and even felt some FOMO when she could cool herself off in the summer by slipping wet paper towels under her wig and letting the cool water run over her scalp. She was (and is) a beautiful soul. Around 10am my mother finally acquiesced and said it was finally okay to call and see if she could play or visit. Her sister answered, and I will never forget the sound of someone just dropping the receiver and the phone just hanging their on its corded rope as she ran away screaming and crying. I remember looking at my mom, puzzled, and not understanding. Mom, gently took the receiver and spoke to my friend’s parents, who explained that she had quietly passed in her sleep. This was my first experience with actual death, and it took me time to understand and process.
Many months later, long after the funeral and the tributes, I woke in the night to find my friend in my bedroom, standing by my bookshelves in my room and reading the spines of my much loved books. She was as real to me as my own children, in some ways more real because this is a memory that has never faded for me – no matter how many times I take it out and examine it closely. It’s my only experience with what you might call a ghost; but I have known, always, since that day that my friend lives, she is well and she is waiting. It was in no way frightening; having her there has brought me so much comfort over the years. I would say that this firm and unshakable knowledge of an afterlife kept me from wandering too far astray in my teenage and college years, and with her help, kept the door open for me to find my way to the Christian faith as a mid-life woman.
The middle-muddle years
Let’s now press the fast-forward button on the VHS player of life… To rapidly examine in speed 10x fast the intervening years from when my friend visited me in my room until I walked into Father’s office the first time to inquire about school for my older son.
I wasn’t an easy youth; generally, socially inept with girls my own age, I struggled to find connection with friends. Eventually, towards the start of high school, so around 14 years old, I developed a group of like-minded friends who were a little older than myself and were experimenting with Wicca and with the occult. Their own life experiences with other people dovetailed with my own, and I soon found myself having overnights with young women chanting, playing with feathers and natural things… learning how to feel connected in meditative contemplation on the natural elements of the earth. As girls simply seeking the Divine without any Christian or governing oversight, Wicca is a very natural place to gravitate to. My interest lasted for about 7 years, with divergences here and there. This high-school period, however, remains an important part of my own personal openness to God and listening without comprehension to what I was hearing. I knew, without a doubt, that I was connecting but I lacked any real understanding of to what. Everything was gentle, loving and accepting. I had, by this point in my life, had very real contact with the evil-one, and none of this was… that. The Lord’s fallen angel and his attempts at intercession in my life are to be parked for another day. This post is about beauty and love and God’s incessant attempts to reach us.
- Side-note here – I’m sure my Catholic friends reading this will be shocked, even now, long after I’ve grown and matured and developed a greater understanding of God. I think it’s really important to pause and put away judgment and negativity when thinking about young girls who are seeking. Many, many people’s experiences with so-called religious adults and youths are incredibly negative, judgmental and harsh – or abusive. It’s interesting, but being abused or rejected or marginalized does not make the desire to connect with God less, it strengthens the desire to embrace and be embraced; but can also fragment and drive a person away from anything resembling God’s actual desires or structures within the Church because of the actions of others undertaken in His name. So park the judgment – I make no apologies for my own wayward pathways to where I finally found myself at home.
Continuing onwards in this rapid fast forward gloss-over – during High School my desire to escape and see the world became real (thank-you Lord), and I enjoyed the incredible blessings of visiting both China and Japan for long extended stays. In Japan, Christians were not welcome at all with the family that is now also my family; I learned to appreciate the unique juxtaposition of practising Shinto and Tao Buddhism alongside one another, their rhythms and beauty. Again, that connection with nature and something bigger than myself came back again and again, and I would escape the scrutiny and watchful eyes of the adults of my world by hiking to a local shrine on a regular basis, and climbing an ancient oak tree surrounded by a thick rich field of bamboo and watching the bluest sky above and finding peace. Or taking the time to stare in a stone bowl filled with the purest water where you see a perfect reflection of God’s beautiful sky. Or taking the time to study the way the moss cascades over rock formations, forming a green carpet; walling me in on all sides with green and peace. Something in my heart healed there from memories too dark and awful to ever want to open to the light. Again, that connection to love and to God without understanding or comprehension.
And again, fast-forward and ever onwards, I found myself in university and swimming upstream. Oddly, I was sought out by young adults who were very deep into their Occult practices and beliefs and they wanted me to be their fifth. For awhile it was fun, until I saw that the darkness constantly pervaded their hearts, sowing distrust, disunity, gossip and uneasiness. I found myself back in territory I simply couldn’t comprehend, because I’ve never really understood the machinations of my peers. The breaking point came when someone slipped roofies into my water, and I woke up hours later wandering around campus with no knowledge of where I’d been or been up to. Life moved forward rapidly for me from that point –
I share this … interlude period … with you – without a lot of detail or depth, but simply focusing on the ways and the whys a young girl and budding woman would stretch her mind in those directions and how that can both keep someone connected, but without any form of structure or understanding can very quickly open the doors to very dark places.
Without giving you details, let’s just say things went very badly, very quickly, but under the guise of everything going well for a time for me in terms of my academic and much-hoped-for future career. For a time. And then I lost it all – thanks to not being poor enough, but just enough on the upper side of poverty to lose all of my scholarships and be forced home… where I met my future ex-husband, the father of my children, and a long period of time passed in simply existing…
Baby Steps into the Light and Connection
Not too long after I was civilly married, I got it into my head that my biological father might want to know that his genetic material had successfully married and had a kid. Cool. This gave me a lovely little research project to take my mind off of things that maybe deserved more reflection. I recalled the day he attempted to reach me;
a Catholic priest had actually initiated the call and my at-the-time-step-dad-but-really-my-future-adoptive-dad…long way of saying, my Dad, answered the phone.
After speaking with the priest (I was at school), my mother took my baby brother and disappeared into her room for a few days. I came home from school wondering… “Hey, where’s Mom?” and my Dad sat me down to ask… did I want to meet him? He would like a chance to meet me.
Considering my mother’s reaction, I said… NO – absolutely Not.
So, here we are, reflecting on that day… so I started making phone calls. I found that a certain parish in the right area had a soup kitchen during that period of time. It came about that most likely my biological-father was a regular there; and, as he knew he was in the process of dying due to advanced stages of liver disease, he asked for help to connect to his only offspring.
In a really weird leap of logic, I decided to go find that parish and ask if there were any records of the visitors of soup kitchens, if anyone remembered him at all. Why on earth I would form this idea still puzzles me; but, there it is – a complete lack of real-world logic and just an assumption that someone there must know something. So, on a day that seemed particularly fine; heading home from a lovely day at the office, I just… popped in.
I remember the heavy wooden doors and the stone walls; I remember my shoes on the walkway. I remember walking into a cool and calm darkness, hallways echoing off into the distance and a lovely office window right to my left, occupied by a beautiful nun – I can’t even recall her actual physical features, she is simply a beam of light encased in a habit (my only experience with nuns to this point was the movie Sister Act, so do forgive me if I stared a bit). “Hello” I squeaked to her who very kindly was sitting and waiting to help. And then, I tried. I tried and I tried to get the words out. “Do you know my father? This is his name? He used to come here for soup…?” and then… What I can only understand now as a complete… swamping of the Holy Spirit, I nearly passed out on the poor woman. All the waterworks came on, all the doors opened in my very locked up and composed brain, and I stood there looking at her just… melting on the spot, but simultaneously shaking, quivering, sweating out of every part that could produce sweat; my brain felt like it was on fire. I have no other words to clearly explain the experience… but it was so overwhelming, I sprinted from that Holy place thinking… “what have I just done???” She called after me, but gave no chase. I imagine, in that inner city ghetto, that she merely shook her head and chalked me up to another lost soul.
Things speed up, but we’re slowing down…
During this period, my life was consumed with my children and renovating a home and helping my ex-husband build a business. But, eventually, Samantha came along (my border collie) and long, daily hikes in very remote parts of my corner of the world became the norm.
As did visions. Dreams. and more. My older son was now in preschool, and I had hours to fill my days with. I worked part time, I helped my ex-husband’s business grow, I had chickens and gardens and space and time – long hours to while away doing nothing but digging in the dirt or marching alongside long expanses of lakes and rivers.
I remember one day came along and I was out hiking on my own, and I crested a hill and the pristine lake before me with the cerulean blue sky above turned an angry dark purple and shocked I stood and watched as the skies roiled and bubbled. A few minutes later (or seconds), everything was back to normal. The intensity of the experience of seeing the world you’re in shift and change so rapidly is incredibly hard to explain. I wasn’t frightened, I was an observer of something beyond my understanding or knowledge. What was I being shown? Why? Is this a future that is going to become real? Is it like a dream, where my mind is simply warning me of something else?
Not long after that, I had my first meeting with Father. I remember sitting on the edge of a chair in his office while my ex blandly fibbed about his commitment to the faith (he was raised culturally Catholic, but he didn’t actually believe in anything in particular, certainly didn’t pray or have any indication he suddenly had a change of heart, he wanted our boy in a school that would teach traditional values, that was all). We were hoping to get my oldest into the school there, a small school that was relatively challenging to get in. You needed to be an active and practising Catholic. I made no fibs to this priest; but I was shaking in my boots and also intensely curious about this man of God. I told him honestly that I was curious, that I wanted my boy in a good school, that he (my son) didn’t quite fit in at the montessori program he was in. I committed to learning and raising my boy as best I could in my ignorance to know the faith. I also remember trying to stammer over my questions about that vision of the purple skies. I think Father thought I was probably a little cracked.
Whatever the case, we were accepted into the school. And life, for me, began to change a lot more rapidly.
I began to have dreams.
The Church
The most recurring of the dreams is of a grassy field with gentle hills, topped with a wooden church of a style I have never seen or heard of. In my dreams at the time, I was always outside the church on the fields.
As my faith grew, so did my proximity to this church. Over the years, when I am graced with dreams of this church, I’m in various places. I’ve spoken to my pastor of this several times because it’s actually a little disturbing, in full truth. I always awaken calm and refreshed, remembering every intimate detail of the church – as I though I had actually been there. Even now, those dreams are more like memories than dreams. The presence of this place is as real to me as my actual parish.
As I write this, I’ve yet to be inside the main body of the church where the pews are; certainly nowhere near the altar. Most often I’m in the vestibule, looking over low wooden barriers with a swinging gate style entrance, ornately and yet simply carved. Often there is an older man keeping me company; he stands on the inside of those swinging gates, but I’m not yet worthy to enter into the main church itself. I’ve had dreams where I’m in the sacristy cleaning, or in a loft overlooking; but again, never ready enough to enter the main area of worship. And finally, I’ve had one dream where I was cleaning the long back stairs of the church, to be visited by a tall, slender dark man; his hair close cropped to his head, wearing a close cropped beard and moustache, wearing a long brown garment – very simple…not a monk’s cassock, but a simple brown smock. In the dream he asks if I need help, and he tells me he must go now to his family.
My son
My younger son has a very interesting relationship with God; many who teach him have remarked on it. When he was around 3 years old, he attended Vacation Bible School and I was asked to help with the food prep for snacks and such (a natural place for me to be). On the final day, when all the children were having what amounted to a disco party in the gym, I was standing back and observing the fun when my little boy turned and marched straight up to me and said. “If you ask Him, He will forgive you.”
To this day, the memory brings me chills. My son immediately turned 180 and went back to the party. He doesn’t remember this at all. No one saw it happen, but yet – it most certainly did. I was shaken, and have spoken of this many times to others. It was a critical moment before I really started going actively to the parish and seeking a way to become baptized.
Baptized
As my Baptism approached, my small faith group grew more intense for me. A week or two before my baptism, I went to my godmother/sponsor and had to ask her about yet another puzzling dream. Our parish was festooned in red leather, with a giant, ornate wooden bar. Dark and old world looking. Along the edges were kinds of balconies in which people could sit. In my dream I walked in to approach the altar, but this massive central wooden bar (for lack of a better word) was filling the space. Father was rushing about making preparations (to this day, I still clearly remember him in his white Alb and belt and bright green crocs); and then, suddenly he was there, but everything was dark wood, including the altar behind which my pastor stood holding out to me a triangular shaped pastry. I looked up and there were three old men watching. One of them held out his arm and gently gestured that I was to bite into the pastry. I woke up shortly after. My Godmother believes I was visited by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit guiding me to be brave and accept the Host.
Pandemic and Pope Francis Blessing
Do you remember during the pandemic learning to attend Mass from home? There was a day in March of 2020 when Pope Francis held a world-wide Mass, prayer and blessing. Did you attend? We did, my boys and I (my ex never participated in any of this).
I remember kneeling in prayer, reflecting on our Lord Jesus and his suffering when… my reflections intensified and intensified and intensified; and suddenly I was there after He had been flogged and was being pushed along into a prison, and His captives mocked Him and clothed Him in that horrid purple cloth. And I felt the pain of the thorns piercing my forehead. It was so intense, I thought I was bleeding from my head over the floor. Another experience I’d never had before, nor certainly not since. It was a one-time extraordinary moment in this life at the moment of the Pope’s blessing. I can’t go into detail more, but I can tell you that my sympathy for our Lord and the sickness I feel in my stomach every time I reflect on the mysteries of his death became ever more real and ever more present following that one central moment.
Purple Skies
Those purple, frightening skies that visited me before I first walked into our parish have been back twice; each time while waking and not dreaming – always when I’m away from any kind of humanity. Honestly, my most profound connections with God are when other people are nowhere around.
Those purple skies usually contain a few key elements, a big one of which is the knowledge that the innocent souls of our world (and there are frighteningly few of those) will be lifted up and taken to God; and that I’m not one of them. I reached a clear understanding from the visions of the purple skies that I am to remain here, while people tear the world apart, and to be strong and to help those who are truly seeking to be children of God again, to help them somehow find Him.
How, as a lay person who is in her very infancy as a Catholic? I have no idea… and this is where His will really needs to just take over. I trust in God and I trust in all He has shown me. I am not someone who believes the world is coming to an end; I believe there is more than I can ever understand happening, and that I (like you) have some small role to play in helping God’s children find their way home to him.
Purgatory
Remember how above I discussed what happened when I went to find my biological Father? Well, some time after that point, I discovered that he had died shortly after trying to meet me. That was a bit of a hard reality for me, that I had, unknowingly at 15, denied my father his dying wish to meet me just once.
I really did struggle with this guilt for years; until 3 years ago or so I was graced with a dream of Purgatory. In my dream there is sand, nothing but sand, swallowed up by darkness on all sides. And there is a boat, an old rotten out hull of a boat, leaning on its keel in the middle of this sandy ocean; a sea long ago dried up into a wasteland. In the darkness was something unseen, awful, and terrible. On the boat was a man; he sat quietly on his chair, with a bucket of cold beers beside him. Quietly drinking and contemplating the darkness, surrounded by sand. He didn’t engage with me at all, but what has stayed with me all of these years, and what I shared with my pastor after this dream, was how at peace he was. So long as we remained on that boat, whatever was in the darkness could not touch and could not hurt. He was safe, my father.
I’ve since come to understand a few things about him that I didn’t know; that he was a veteran of the Vietnam war, and yes, he was an alcoholic but also a ship welder. He died on the streets, lonely and in pain, but even he – a man who was not a good man and who did my mother and me and my brother a lot of harm… harms that scar for life… he is being given a chance at redemption. Even he is a child of God, and he is safe so long as he stays on his boat in the middle of his sandy sea.
Mother Mary and ever onwards
As I write all of this, I’m hesitant to ever publish this post. It’s too personal, and too intense. I’m, at the moment, quite glad I’ve made an effort to not really market this blog. Really, I only started this at the insistence of my parish family who were curious about whether or not I have the gift of writing.
But, writing with me opens the faucet taps and out comes more than people really want or want to hear. As I move ever forward through these intensely personal memories, I wonder… why? Why share all of this? Who needs to know?
Do you need to know that I’ve been blessed to visit Mother Mary twice? One time, several years ago, I was standing in an intensely green field beside her toe. Yes, that’s right. In my dream our Mother was far larger than life, and my head barely reached the top of her big toe, she was white as porcelain and perfect in every way. And there, I knew I was accepted and loved and welcome in my very small, small self. The second time, was not a dream, but happened as I said my evening prayers and I walked alongside her as a young woman, newly filled with life and light gifted by the Holy Spirit, walking to see her cousin Elizabeth. The road was a sandy color, our shoes made a crunching sound as we walked along. The sides were dusty and it was hot.
Should I share the dreams I’ve had where I believe I was among the Apostles, in a stone room, with a single window that looked out to where Jesus told me he would be sentenced to die?
I’m not worthy of the thoughts in my head. I don’t understand them. I wasn’t raised in any kind of structured faith and even now, four years since my own baptism, I do not know enough to make sense of the images in my head. Delusions are usually based on something you have seen or imagined and parked away into your subconscious, but I don’t share that particular excuse. My young life was not been one of faith, in any way, and most certainly not explicit in any way; I came to find faith and trust in God and in our beautiful Catholic Church and community as an adult. I went to a few Sunday School classes as a little girl – there I learned to blow bubbles around my braces and accidentally throw an old car into gear and nearly get all of us into a nasty accident – but of faith? I remember learning the story of Samson and Delilah, and I remember the foaming at the mouth hatred the so-called-faithful had for Catholics and Mormons. That’s what I remember of churches as a child – but real, actual faith, or knowledge of Jesus’ life, or reflections of Mary? No.. There was none of this beauty and welcome; no wooden churches, no porcelain Mary’s…yet in my own mind, I know Mary’s smell, and I know the feel of her hand, I know the road she walked to see Elizabeth – but I don’t now Elizabeth. I was gone before we arrived there.
So, why write all of this? I don’t know why I feel compelled to put it out there. I’m a little afraid that by writing this… a kind of acknowledgement and appreciation for dreams and visions that I will be emptied out and left bereft. Intellectually, I know that’s unlikely, but … I think of Mother Theresa who went years and years somehow not feeling His touch on her soul; she, the most deserving of humans, spoke of the loss of His guiding hand.
The takeaway
I guess, at the end of this, what I want is to share with you that He is most definitely real. He is most definitely guiding all of us and intimately aware of us, even as we might feel a dearth of His very presence at times throughout our lives. We live in a world torn apart in suspicion, jealousy, prejudice, gossip, darkness – very much in the clutches of the evil one – and for what? To be a mirror of his (the evil one’s) own jealousy of us? God, our Father, sees all – all of us children of His. To some of us he reaches and touches our minds with dreams and visions, I think to ultimately share those with others.
What I’ve shared here is a simple recounting without interpretation of the images planted in my mind. I’ve never felt worthy of interpretation. Indeed, I take them to my pastor with open hands and ask for help, more often than not. I don’t know how to make sense of any of it.
What, ultimately, I believe is that I (like you) have a purpose and a role to play in whatever is to come.
The rest is God simply saying to me – I am here child. When you are ready. Come Home.