The Here and Now

This is me. A wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a Christian. I am a worship leader at a church ...which might seem a bit hypocritical seeing that I lead a less than perfect life. I try my best to do the things I know which are right, but still manage to let anger, jealousy, and my propensity for explicit language to take hold of my day to day life. I sometimes have bouts of road rage ( I am sure my husband is laughing somewhere at that statement), but i believe them only to be occasional. I do my best to give my kids the best life they could have, but at the end of the day feel like I have fallen so short of the mark. I resent that my body didn't magically spring back to way it was pre-pregnancy the way everyone I see on television AND at story time seems to have. I spend my time planning and wishing for the next moment instead of taking joy in the moment that I am living right now. I guess I am like everyone else.

Then there was a shift.

I cannot tell you what provoked the shift. It probably was a myriad of things all lining up to lead me to this place. Preparing me to be open to the experience that was to be revealed to me. But as my dear friend once told me. The dark times that we go through are a sign that something truly amazing is about to happen. And it did.

We all have stories of our troubled pasts. We've all had our own journeys. My journey often led me to psychiatrists offices and anti-anxiety medications. Sure, I am a Christian and I pray often and put my trust in God to help me through my troubles. But fear is a powerful thing and can often drown out everything that we need to hear or remember. My biggest fear has always been on my mortality. I mean, who doesn't have this fear in some degree. It's the one thing that we can never change. The one thing we recognize that we have no control over. I have worked through this fear many times over the years, and it hasn't bothered me in quite some time. But last month.. it came back with a vengeance.

As all good Christians are supposed to do, I picked up my Bible with every anxiety attack, and searched its pages for comfort. And I realized that there is very little written in the Bible about death.. the experience itself. And that's what I needed to know about. That's what I needed to hear. And with every page I turned. I began to get discouraged. I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. I ceased to enjoy my life. And what I wanted so desperately was for all of this to stop. So the bible couldn't provide me with the things I needed to hear. Nor could the dead because... well... its very hard to have a conversation with someone who isn't here. So i thought to myself..what was the next best thing? People who have had near death experiences.

I began reading on the Internet, and checking out books in the library about near death experiences. And although every experience differed in some way.. there were two things that were extremely evident. There is absolutely 100% an afterlife, and dying is nothing to be afraid of. It is actually one of the most amazing experiences you could ever have. Learning this, provided so much comfort to me, that i began experiencing joy in my life again. I woke up with a smile and was able to quickly quell any remnants of the fear in my mind. I felt guilty at first, like i had betrayed God in someway but finding the answers I needed outside of the Bible. But at the same time, I felt that God led me to the answers i needed. It was strange.

Now what came after, also made me feel guilty, but i began looking at life differently. There is definitely an afterlife, so isn't possible that I have been here before? Isn't it possible that I have lived many experiences before? If the soul is indeed eternal, and life continues after this one, do i really believe that I was just created 30 years ago? I don't feel that new. Even as a child, there was a maturity to myself. I had wisdom. I recognized it. So isn't it possible that I came from somewhere else before I came here?

To contemplate such things amongst the Christian community is bound to give you looks. I guess a good Christian believes we should not question anything. But why not? Don't you think God wants to constantly reveal things to us? How can he do so if we do not allow him the opportunity?

What came to follow was a shift in perception for me which I am still discovering each and everyday. A belief that we are in fact all from the same source. A belief that we are hear to experience who we truly are. A challenge of sorts that in the midst of all this chaos, we can remember and discern the soul from all the rest. How I came to THIS belief is a story for later time.