thursday, january 11, 2001
expressions: into my past

we are all the sum of our experiences in that our experiences and our reactions to them help determine who we are. choosing one experience that most your net friends do not know about, share it and share how it contributed to who you are today. what made this experience pivotal in your life? how do you think you would be different without this experience? help us to get to know you with this experience.


it is so hard to choose just one event that has made an impact on my life. i can think of several. in a way i have been both blessed and cursed with a life full of incredible experiences. and the ones that affected me the most can't be pinpointed to a single experience but a time period of similar experiences. what i have chosen to talk about here not even my husband knows in its entirety. it was one of the most distressing things i have ever gone through. when i have talked about it in the past, i have gotten so emotional that eventually i could not talk at all, shaking so bad that all i could do was curl up in a little ball. to this day i have contact with only one person who was involved, and she and i never speak of it when we do communicate. it is too painful for us.

in high school, like most high schoolers, i experimented around with a few things. unlike most high schoolers it wasn't sex and drugs. i messed around with the occult. it all started out innocently enough, attempting mind reading and silliness like that. prior to all this i had never been very sensitive so to speak, but ever since i have had a strong empathy and no control over it. whether it was the playing around that triggered it or accepting my gifts from christ after i became a christian, i will probably never know. but now days i wish i could just shut it off sometimes.

at some point this innocent messing around became very serious and we started trying to contact spirits. i am not even sure how this started, why we decided to do this or even when we started. all i know for sure is the end result: my boyfriend became possessed and the worst nightmare i ever experienced had begun. only, this wasn't a dream. it was very very real.

i know some people won't believe it, they don't believe in spirits or possession or any of that super natural "junk". and they don't have to. but i do. i have experienced it. i watched a sweet, considerate young man "become" somebody else. his voice changed, his eyes, his attitude. there is no doubt in my mind that something else had him, something that wouldn't let him go ever again if it could help it. oh, he wasn't like this all the time after it happened. but i always knew when that thing had taken over, even if we were no where near each other. i would feel cold all over. i could hear the difference on the phone when we talked. i watched this man beaten up by friends who thought he was faking, not feeling a thing . . . until the spirit let him have the control him again and he doubled over in agony.

and then there were the threats, the threats of suicide, the threats to kill me. more than once he went to a closet in his home to get a gun or the machete hidden there. more than once he met me at his door with a weapon. i even remember one time him going to get a carving knife out of the kitchen. i had felt that chill while at a friend's, called and had it confirmed he was in trouble. we all ran down to his place, but he would only talk to me. i went in, like a fool, and he went and tried to get a carving knife. i screamed, and our friends came in and promptly beat the crap out of him. to this day i can't stand guns or knives. while i realize the need for steak and carving knives, i won't let any kind of hunting knife, sword or gun in my house if i can help it.

it finally ended for me when i went to a place called calvary chapel and accepted christ. i honestly think it was this experience that finally put me in god's arms, and gave me faith strong enough to get me through the rest of school without any major incidents. i now knew the spiritual was very real. and i knew my only salvation was a god who loved me so much to die for me. i accepted him wholeheartedly. and while i may never know whether it was giving myself over to god or playing with the occult that opened my empathy i now struggle with, i do know it is that spiritual aspect of my life that actually triggered a gift i probably already had just never realized and never experienced before this. this experience brought me to my loving god through his son. and that has changed in me in so many ways, making me who i am today, that even though i was in hell when it happened, it is not one i would rather have lived without. without it i would be someone entirely different.

i also know that this experience changed other lives forever. i have a friend who does not speak of it and is so profoundly affected she can't even read certain books. but most of all, there's the boyfriend i had at the time. we split shortly before i became a christian. and whenever i saw him after accepting christ, he never could look me in the eyes. the light of my salvation was too bright for the darkness that filled him. in many ways i blame myself for his state. but we all did this. it was our choice. any of us could have said no. any of us could have stopped before we got in too deep. we chose to play with fire and we got burned. where ever he is, i only hope that he will be freed from his prison before he has to meet the creator. i want to see him again, as my brother in christ.