To those who have come this far, and desire to hear this story, recently revealed to me, by my Lord and savior, I pray it blesses your life. It is truly a gift to be able to share this with you, and to those who played a role in this story, thank you.
I love all who love Me. Those who search will surely find Me. Proverbs 8:17
This might be my story, but it is for Him that I share it. Why do I say this? Because my story truly has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with Him. My prayer is that you hear me when I tell you, the only thing I did, and you can do, is to seek Him.
It is the Glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of Kings is to search out a matter. Proverbs 25:2
I am no king. I am just a girl from a small town who wants everyone to escape their wilderness experience and to feel His love and peace from the other side. His hand is still out stretched. Please grab it!
I realize that what I am about to tell you sounds fantastical, impossible even. But hear me when I say nothing is impossible for God. ------------------------------------------- It was a beautiful sunny summer day. My father recently surprised my mother with their dream home, or so they thought. No one could have imagined the tragic events that would unfold. We were celebrating the new home with a pool party for the neighbors when my sister from another mother, Kim, walked in, and at three, we were already getting into trouble. The challenge: who could go deeper into the pool without their swimmies. The next thing I knew, I was underwater and unable to come up for air. I’m not sure how much time passed, but I remember how calm I was. I didn’t flail or even try to save myself. In fact, the opposite occurred; I was at total peace. I had faith, child-like faith, that someone would save me, and someone did. Kim’s mom dove in, still in her stewardess uniform, stretched out her hand, pulled me from the water, and began to perform CPR, and here I am to tell you about it today.
Three years later, we welcomed home my baby brother. During his short life, he changed all of our lives forever; I was six when he changed my life. At this point, I had no clue what death was, and I don’t think I had ever seen my mom cry before. Therefore, it was terrifying to see her come out of the room one morning, holding a limp, purple baby, screaming. “What did I do?”
I ran and hid under my bed. I must have been hiding under that bed for hours as it was getting dark when the fire department broke through my bedroom door, pulled me from under the bed by my feet, and tried to coax me out.
I dug my heels in; I couldn’t go back down there. Seeing the fear in my eyes, a kind man promised me I didn’t have to. He took me out of the window of the second floor ranch, down a ladder, and my last memory of that day was hearing my mom crying face down into the couch, “If there is a God, why would He take away my only son?” That is her story of how she came to know the Lord. After that experience, my mother found hope that she would see my brother again through the hope she placed in Jesus Christ.
Nine years later, He gave my parents another child, a daughter this time, and He told my mom to name her Bethany. Bethany was around three, when a car seat strap almost choked her to death. If it weren’t for my mom’s fingers protecting her airways and me being able to run to a neighbor to cut her out. I could have lost both siblings, but God had other plans.
I grew up knowing that God had a plan for my sister. After all, He named her. He saved her. She grew up loving Him.
I was just your average kid who, as a preschooler, was already labeled the social butterfly with no attention span. I could barely keep my schoolwork straight, forget learning Bible verses! As I embarked on my teenage years, all my mom could do was pray that the Lord would hold me accountable to Him. Boy, am I thankful for those prayers!
I was around 14 when I went on a winter retreat with my youth group and gave my life to Jesus Christ at an altar call. He was my first love.
Unfortunately, soon after that public declaration, I began to feel the enemy attacking. Under this attack, I struggled, and as a child who trusted authority, I didn’t think twice when my pediatrician put me on an antidepressant at 16. This, however, began a vicious cycle of being on medications along with compounding health issues, resulting in His voice getting quieter. Please understand that I'm not implying medications are inherently detrimental. However, for me, they marked the commencement of a prolonged reliance on a blend of pharmaceuticals that persisted for over a decade, ushering in a tumultuous period of profound suffering and despair.
Throughout my college years, occasionally I popped into church if there was a Sunday evening service somewhere; I didn’t do mornings in college because I was out too late every night with my friends having a good time, and thus, His voice got quieter.
With every high and low that most young adults face, I drifted. I found myself in all the wrong places. I was in Times Square on Y2K, I was near the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and in one short year, I went from not having a care in the world, to seeing a nation brought to its knees. American Flags went up on every skyscraper and bridge, “God Bless America” was number one on Billboard charts, and shortly after that, “I Can Only Imagine,” by MercyMe topped the charts. I remembered, in all the terror and crisis, while debris was still washing up on my doorstep, I saw His hand was still outstretched, and I grabbed it.
I got out of the city, found a church, got married to a man who ticked all the boxes for a good husband and father, I was on a roll, and so was my little church. It went from a group of 10 to thousands meeting all over New Jersey. I taught Sunday school on weekends, Kindergarten in my hometown, and lived in my dream home. Life was good!
There are 31 verses about deception in 21 books of the Bible. If only I took the time to learn that for myself back then. However, instead of getting to know God through His word. I got to know Him through what I was “told” His word said. After all, I was busy living it out… or so I thought.
As my marriage began to crumble, after learning my husband and I couldn’t have children together, instead of turning to God, I turned to human wisdom. Then, after receiving a midnight email, I was certain this was not God’s plan for my life, so when my boss offered to drive my dog and I to the train station to go stay with my sister in NYC, I took her up on it, and I never went back. His voice got quieter.
Little did I know that I was taking a train into the wilderness where I would be for the next 10 years. Sure, it started out great, but that’s how the enemy works. That is how deception works, and if you are reading this, and don’t believe in a supernatural enemy as Jesus plainly warns of in John 8:44, keep reading.
I just finished my second master’s degree from Columbia, had landed my dream job, had a beautiful duplex apartment in one of the best neighborhoods in Manhattan, and I was even part of a new family. I was living the life.
It was almost Christmas, and the man I was dating, a pilot, was out of town for work, so I walked across the street by myself to go get a Christmas tree to decorate. Unable to carry it home by myself, I had it delivered.
So many events should have warned me to turn back, to go home, to seek God. If you ever get that feeling in your spirit that something just isn’t right, you should learn from me, and listen.
Sometimes it is easier said than done though. This man was not a good person. In fact, I remember in one of my last confrontations with this man, saying to him, if you were not such a nobody I would think you were the anti-Christ himself. The next thing I knew, I was testifying before a grand jury, in an attempted murder case; the man was convicted (this being his third felony). However, somehow he managed to sneak out of the courtroom and disappear into the city, and his mother, the widow of the recently deceased mob boss for the Puerto Rican Mafia, now blamed me for the indictment. Did I seek God? Nope! I trusted the legal system, and I got myself a restraining order, one for my dog, and I kept on trucking. Thus, His voice got quieter.
My mental sanity began to crumble as I would get updates from the DA that there was still no sign of this man. The threats on my life increased, but as my physical health began to spiral, I still really didn’t think much of it… other than how much pain I was constantly in. Within a year, pretty much all that was good, was gone. I broke both of my feet, my tailbone, I had a miscarriage out of wedlock, developed a rash that covered my body from head to toe, and as I went from NY’s top doctor to doctor seeking answers, His voice got quieter, still.
Unable to work, walk, or even function, I decided to start a second life — a virtual life. I created a new me, in a virtual world that I learned about from the bad man. It didn’t take long for me to rise to the top of the virtual fashion world, find a virtual boyfriend (who would astral project himself to my apartment from India), and His voice got quieter.
The physical pain was intense, though, and the rash, wow did it itch. So I was more than happy to take the meds the specialist said I needed to function. The failed surgeries increased as did the number of medications I needed to manage the flopped results. My local Best Buy knew me as the cyborg because I had so much tech implanted in my body that I set off their alarms. I kept on surviving, and His voice got quieter.
How does one escape such a downward spiral? The smart answer, and the correct answer, is that I should have sought God. Sadly, however, I didn’t. But because of His mercy and grace, the Lord sent me someone right when I needed her, my sister. I didn’t see it this way back then, however. In fact, it was quite an imposition that she was moving back in with me because it meant she would see what an unhealthy life I was living.
However, because she was there, she stopped me from taking my life, one dark night, after being diagnosed with an incurable neurological disease that was causing my body to shut down. Unfortunately, things were going to get worse before they got better. The enemy had his foot hold, and wasn’t planning to give up easily.
In 2016, things were dark. My sister started falling on the steps, getting mystery bruises, and my autonomic and central nervous systems were no longer working as God designed them to work. I actually needed a therapy dog to provide cues so I wouldn’t hurt myself, burn myself, or go to the bathroom on myself, and as I listened to everyone but God, His voice got quieter.
So what did we do? We all know what we should have done, but we did not do that. We knew something was wrong; all of these occurrences weren’t normal; we weren’t alone, and we both knew it. We did not seek God, though. Nooooo. Off we went to get a Ouija board.
Of course, that was a big mistake. That night, August 30, 2016, in front of two witnesses, and a video recorder, my sister and I contacted the enemy. He already had us, (so he thought) and no longer needed to be polite. In fact, he was VERY clear. His name was Baal, he was from hell, and he was there to do Satan’s work. I have now come to learn, this event coincided with a temple being installed near Times Square, a short walk from our apartment. Coincidence? I don’t believe in those anymore. I did feel so far from God at that moment, though. I couldn’t hear His voice, and I could hear a much different voice now.
My sister and I spent several days trying to get rid of this demonic presence, using various worldly measures. We even had access to the ghost hunting tools used by the famous Paranormal TV celebrities thanks to my ex, and we used them. In that moment, when things truly couldn’t have been darker, when I saw my little sister cry in fear for the first time in my life, I found my dad’s old Bible, and cried out, “Jesus, if you can still hear me, please save me!” And, He did!
His name, the name of Jesus Christ, freed me that very moment. Did my rash disappear? No. Could I walk again? No. Did I have a lot of pain still ahead of me? I sure did. But in that moment, when I cried out to Him, He saved me. Instantly, and gradually.
I called my mom the next morning from the park to tell her I was saved. I was outside, taking my dog out for her first run, and I asked my mom if she could come to show me how I could study God’s word. She was on the next train, and we binged on the Bible all weekend. Slowly but surely, I began to hear His voice again, and it started to become clearer and clearer.
Throughout the hardships that I faced during these difficult times, He was present, and I was studying His word, and I learned to recognize the enemy attacks while His plan for my life gradually came into focus. It’s truly been one step in front of the other, trusting Him before I take the next step while praying against those attacks along the way.
I can now say that Jesus set me free from the enemy, and He can do it for anyone. No matter how far gone you think you might be. No matter how hopeless it seems. My life story is a testimony to that fact.
He will make a way, if you want Him to. He truly did all the work. At one point in my life, doctors told me my heart would stop if I stopped taking my nine medications. However, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR GOD. I have officially been cleared by my primary care doctor as healthy, and I am off all nine medications; I can walk again, and most importantly, His voice is loud and clear again as He continues to write my story, which now has a certain future of hope and goodness written on every page.
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Matthew 6:33
