Hi, I am new to the group. I have been looking for an open Christian forum that is not New Age and discovered SP. Its hard not to share my life because one step leads to the next. I will try to stick to highlights for sake of brevity. I would have liked to bury the past years ago but it just kept resurfacing. I lost my whole family by 20 yrs old (mom to severe mental illness and only brother to leukemia). My mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia the year I was born 1972. She was a teen mom, had my brother at 18 who was 2 years older than me. Parents divorced when I was 4 due to her erratic behavior (e.g. dragging her kids, 3 and 5, from NY to CA in 3 days straight to reunite with her lover that had moved away). I learned patience and how to hold my bladder! Her lover was violent with her and me. He threw a brick at me behind a windshield that shattered and beat her and the second man she shacked up with used her and left her. She decided she was on a crash course and needed God in her life again. She was raised a devout Catholic (parochial schools even). I was baptized RC but we never went to church after baptism. She met a Jehovahs Witness who converted her in Cali.Thus began my full immersion into what I refer to as a Christian cult. JWs are totally anti-Catholic and this was embedded in my psyche from childhood until 14 yrs. Many strange doctrines and rules. Jesus was Michael the Archangel not part of the Godhead. I fell in love with the person of Jesus though. It was a works and fear based religion. I believe the extensive Bible reading and baptism in the Catholic faith helped me to discern via the holy spirit its error. Dysfunction ran on both sides of the family though. On visits with my dads family, I experienced sexual abuse several times. I also endured it by an uncle on my moms side once. I didn't understand what happened to me as a young girl. Once I knew as a pre-teen what happened to me one violator had died. I considered talking about it but it had been so long, it didn't make sense to plus I was afraid to get anyone into trouble so I suppressed it. Mom then met a new man and got re-married when I was 12. I was very unsettled in my spirit due to the pending nuptials and moving into his house an hour away from the country to the city. My brother and I begged her to stay to finish out the school year (it was the end of September) before we moved with her and her new husband. She agreed. I stayed thru the summer. It was the best 9 mos of my life. Horses, cows, sheep, pigs and lots of 4 wheeling and snowmobiling. At the end of the summer, I knew it was ending and I was panicking. In my despair, I had my first God dream. In the dream my brother died and it was the year 1990. I insisted on warning him because it was felt so real but we eventually both ignored it. After the move, I had very tough middle school years with endless bullying from 3 girls. I shed my good country girl image and had to develop a tough exterior just to fit in. I also became a comedian and made a joke of everything. It was the only way for me to deal plus the kids liked my jokes so I finally made friends. I feel like I lost true myself at that point. I had developed an alternate persona. Teen rebellion settled in thereafter and mom became a dictator of sorts so my brother and I left the home. There was nowhere else to go so we moved in with our dad, aunt and cousin. The sexual advances hadn't happened in so long I figured I was safe plus I was old enough to defend myself. I then began acting out all the emotions I had stuffed for so long and numbed myself through drugs, alcohol and intent on finding love and identity through a boyfriend. Then one last advance occurred and I ran away. I didn't press charges. I officially became homeless at 17. I hooked up with a guy who was a complete rebel. He had already been in juvie and he dealt drugs. With us leaving, my mom began her final descent into madness with one breakdown after the next. I became her legal guardian at 18 when her husband left her. In fact the whole family abandoned her. I became pregnant shortly thereafter. For the first time, I saw a direct reflection of God in pure love for my daughter. While embracing the newfound joy of motherhood, my brother got diagnosed with leukemia and died a year later. My world came crashing down. He was my best friend. With all the stress, I began using drugs again. I lived a double life, daytime as a loving mom and late night as a broken addict. After 6 mos of using hard drugs and a warning call from an aunt at the police station, I knew I would lose my daughter if I didn't find a way out of the abyss but it took a good beating from her dad before I finally got the nerve to leave him. With nowhere to go, I had to move back to my dads. We had started talking a little again when my brother got diagnosed to pose as a unified front while he was sick. I had no financial support from her dad so he gave me a job at his shop. I got clean without going to rehab, started exercising and got fit, even got some college in. Then I got diagnosed with Lupus at 24 yrs. The stress finally caught up to me. Got it under control with meds. I spent the next 25 years in an ongoing cycle of care for others, my mom who always had a crisis going on, raising my daughter, trying to keep myself healthy and attempting to find love and my identity through a man. Being a mom just wasn't enough for me. I embarked on another 6 yr relationship with a well bred and high functioning drug and alcohol user so I was always in the presence of it which prevented me from getting totally clean. I knew something else was missing too. He was good to me but he wasn't spiritual at all. He also never tried to love my daughter. I wanted a dad for her. I finally prayed while working in my garden. I asked God if He was so real why did He allow so many troubles in my life and proceeded to list them all as if He didn't know. It was from the depths of my heart though. I didn't expect any answer but in my minds eye flashed the dream I had at 12. My brother died Jan. 9, 1990. I knew then God was real and personal. I just didn't know how I was going to find Him. I wasn't ready to embrace religion so He led me out of that relationship and to my dream husband who happened to be Catholic. I won't get into how He did it but lets put it this way. He knows our hearts, our minds and what it takes to get us on the path back to him. I wanted the guy bad enough so I conceded. He had conviction in seeking God since he went to church every Sunday I thought. It was there in the Church that I discovered who Jesus really was and I embraced Him with all my heart. I began the process of internal healing and forgiveness. The HS also convicted me to other things we both needed to work on in our relationship. We were living like Sunday Catholics and I wasn't having it. I was done living lies. My daughter was 10 when I met my husband. She started acting out, violent outbursts, trouble at school. She got a double diagnosis of bi-polar and Lupus at 12 yrs old. She was very sick emotionally and physically. It took me 2 years to get all her meds straight and she almost died twice, once by attempted suicide. She got baptized though. Once she was stable, my husband and I had a daughter but he became extremely strict with my first daughter after she was born. He was very overprotective. Nothing she did was right. I was dumbfounded. This resulted in complete rebellion and she did exactly what I did to my mom. She left home at 17 chasing after a boyfriend and moved across the country never to return. She wanted nothing to do with my new husband or his religion. She wasn't abused as a child. Her suffering was dealing with my endless quest for a love in a man but men never loving her in return. She still suffers emotionally and physically from this. My husband and I have now been together for 22 years and we had 2 beautiful kids. He was everything I ever dreamed of grounded, handsome, smart, financially stable, very active father and life should have been great. But it wasn't. He never loved her the way he loves our kids. He refuses to allow her to come home for the holidays. I had immense guilt over this. The spirit encouraged me to write it all down. I had to process everything to determine a pattern for my behavior and address it. She was the only light I had in my young adult life and she was not a part of my life at all now that things were supposedly so good. My heart breaks for her. I could have left him but I swore I would never put my kids thru divorce unless someone was in danger so I suffered silently. I thought if I continued acting in love he may have a change of heart but it never came. It was my dark night which lasted for several years. I felt abandoned by God, sat at the gravestone purging emotions. Every time the holidays rolled around and she asked if she could come home, he said no, it was as if the band-aid was ripped off everytime. On the outside everything looked perfect in my world. On the inside it was a heap of shattered glass. All of my earthly desires went away. I asked God when these challenges in my life were going to end. How could I forgive but he could not. I was bordering a descent into depression. My sense of humor could not find a punch line to any of it. I just wanted to die. Then I had my second God dream. It was Christmas eve and I awoke on my face buried in the dirt at the foot of the cross. As I began to ascend my eyes upward, I saw dirty bloody legs pressed against a wooden beam. I knew exactly where I was and slammed my face back down in my arm. I didn't want to see the rest of the image. The air was heavy with sorrow, women weeping. It was the most horrific scene. Jesus spoke to me in the spirit and said "I died for all" as I was surrounded by a divine love that permeated every fiber of my being and literally took my breath away as I abruptly awoke. It was the most horrific yet simultaneously beautiful vision I ever experienced. From that moment forward I had renewed hope. I wanted God with all of my heart from that point on. For the first time in 30 years I dusted off my Bible and just started reading Genesis to Revelation.I had read it 6 times growing up but I wanted to read it with adult eyes. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I was extremely busy during the day with my kids, house and mom. I never had time to read anything. I always fell asleep when I did but a sudden onslaught of insomnia that lasted for almost 2 years made sure I did have time so I read the Bible between 2-4 am those nights. In that time, I also had 2 more dreams to show me where I had lost things. During this time, my mom was also diagnosed with breast cancer. She refused treatment. She lived 4 more years and died this past year with a 12" open hole in her chest. She suffered tremendously as she took no pain meds and I suffered right alongside her. As she approached the end of her journey I asked God what my purpose was in this life. Was it just to take care of people and live with endless suffering. I wasn't depressed anymore but I was feeling completely purposeless. Than one day as I finished the last page of Jude, I fell into a deep sleep and awoke up vibrating within my belly. Supernatural things started happening especially when I spoke of Jesus. I was filled with such joy and love for everything and everyone. I completely lost my appetite. I fasted for 2 weeks and lost 20 lbs. I became a vegetarian, can't stomach meat or any large meals. Along with that came good and bad visions that included being attacked by some crazy reptilian monster, jumping off a tall building and waking up just before hitting the ground, Greek words, symbols, music and sounds in the spirit, an amazing scent that seemed to have emanated from within, synchronicities,sensing of peoples energies, inability to waste time on TV and senseless media. Although the whole experience has been amazing, I am only beginning to understand what is happening. I am not sure if kundalini is the same as being born of the spirit. But I do know that my job is not done here yet. My will is that I live in and for Christ, to share His message, make my entire life a prayer and live in a spirit of love to all. I no longer need to find my identity in human beings who can only love conditionally. That is why I am here at this site to have a better understanding of this process through different lenses. So much for brevity!!
Dear Agape Love. Welcome to the forum. You've had a rough life, that's for sure, and it sounds like you're trying to sort it all out with the help of God.
You're still early in your recent awakening, so keep us posted on how that goes. It sounds like some deep healing is taking place -- perhaps indeed a kundalini awakening guided by the Spirit. We have another forum on kundalini issues, so read around in that one to see what might be helpful. I'd suggest you stay close to Christ, especially in his Eucharistic presence.
I have never done any type of meditating other than lectio, prayer and Eucharist. Before the awakening, I recall many months prior randomly talking about kundalini yoga and aligning chakras. I have only done one yoga class in my life and it was after I spoke of these things. I didn't even know what chakras were consciously anyhow. After the awakening, I had clearing happening in the lower chakras. It felt like something evil left me swearing on its way out. At my husbands urging we also took 6 mos of Aikido classes, the least violent self defense I would agree to. They had singing bowls they used at the start of class. I had to quit because my lower back developed a debilitating pain. Found out I had degenerative disc disease. I had to quit riding horses too. I was laid up on muscle relaxers and pain meds so I went to an accupuncturist 3 times in the month the awakening happened. Could that have triggered it too?
