I didn’t think of my life as a gift. In fact, I treated it a given, something expected. Until I almost lost it, not once but three times.
The first was when I was three years old, and I do not remember it. My mother told me that she had left me alone with my Grannie while she ran errands. When she returned home, she found me vomiting and there was blood on my lips and on my dress. Grannie told her I had fallen. Ma explained that I fell asleep, and she could not wake me. In fact, I became so cold that they could not get a temperature reading. Back then you did not go to the hospitals and doctors came to the home. It was in 1956. A doctor came and told them to keep me warm, and he would be back the next day. My mother stayed up all night rubbing my arms and legs. She prayed through the night. The next morning, I woke up. When I was 67, I found out that the edges of my retina were dead. They probably died when Grannie shook me that day. I know from working in child protective services that if this had happened a year before I turned three, I would have had permanent brain damage. In 1956, I would have probably died.
The anger that was born early in my childhood turned to hate. In a weird way I liked the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson called, “The Snow Queen.” My heart had been frozen, and I had stopped feeling. I was spiritually and emotionally dead.
Many know the story of my conversion to Christ, but only a few know me from before my conversion- so they do not compare the me I am at present to the me I once was. I know in my heart that if I had not had that dramatic conversion, I would have died years ago.
A crusade came to my college town, and my college was a Christian college. The fact I ended up at Erskine was, as I see it now, the shutting of the doors to two different universities. I had been accepted at both but for the same reason, my father said I was not going to either one. They were known as partying schools. I had wanted to be a journalist.
I went to the first night of the crusade to make fun of those who believed. After that night, my soul was revealed to me as being totally dead. I had three angels as I call them that came to me over the next three days. The first was Marie H, who would years later aid me when I was in poverty. She listened to me pour out my brokenness and she did not judge or condemn me, but said I needed to listen to what God was trying to tell me. The second one was Jerry H. who did not know it, but I had intended to end my sorry life, but he listened to me in the stairway of the Erskine Building that Saturday night not far from where the crusade was being held. Because of our talk, I decided to keep trying. The next day after lunch, I was at the library, Bobby O. talked to me about what I believed. I didn’t answer, but he gave me a crudely made card that said, “Jesus Christ is the answer.” He never knew it but that stayed on my bulletin board in my room the rest of my time at Erskine. I kept it to remind me who I was before I accepted Christ. It is the same reason I wear a cross necklace. It is not to tell others that I am a Christian but to remind me always who I was and who I am now.
By that time, I knew how dark and dead my soul was. I knew I was going to go to hell when I died. I cursed and said to myself that it didn’t matter because what was I worth anyway. But Marie showed me that I did matter. The next night because I could not bear to live in that overwhelming darkness, I couldn’t bear the weight of the chains on me any longer, I had made a plan of suicide. It did not help that the Babysitter who sexually abused me from the age of eleven to the age of fifteen stalked me. On the way to accomplish this, I met Jerry in the stairwell. Jerry opened my eyes to asking the question as to why I did I exist. On Sunday, I had no answers, and Bobby gave me an answer that I needed, but I was still not ready to accept Christ as my Savior. At the Dixie High School Football Field, I felt the call. It engulfed me. Sitting on the ground, I said my first prayer, “Lord, I am too scared to go down by myself.” I said this inside my head and not out loud. As soon as I said that, Charleen C. asked me if I would go down to the front with her. I did, and from that moment onward, I have been made into a new creation.
Over the next few decades, I was being remade not by sweet gentle directions. Those would not have worked for me. I treated my life as it was just there, and I really was not living. I accepted that I would never be loved or cherished. I was damaged goods after all. I let my health go. My inner self was being remade but my body I treated badly.
I was placed in a job that I needed. As much as those children I worked with as a foster care worker, I needed them and that job to keep me going, and it was hard work. But after different kinds of crisis, I found myself changing, and like clay on a potter’s wheel, I became softer and pliable.
I was changed into the warrior I was born to be. There is a Japanese way of repairing broken pottery called “Kintsugi.” There gold is added to the pieces of broken pottery making it beautiful and usable again. My soul and my life were being transformed by that method using God’s gold. I am that broken piece of pottery in which kintsugi was used to put the pieces back together. By the late 1990s I was transformed but I still did not see that my life was a gift.
In 2001, I was dying. I was in denial, but I knew I was dying. My heart beat loudly all the time, and I could hear it beating. I could not walk but a few steps before I had to lean against a wall. My lips were blue. My skin was pale that there wasn’t a make up to match that shade of pale. I went to an urgent care after court one day because my lips were almost colorless except for a pale tinge of lavender blue. I was told I had a sinus infection. I was given an antibiotic I told them I could not take. I had to take it for ten days. I got weaker and weaker. I was projectile vomiting several times a day.
One night I was sitting in the recliner because lying down made my heart beat louder. It was 11:30 PM. My heart stopped beating or I did not hear it beat. A few minutes later the dead started coming into the room with me. Two people who had harmed me were also there from this I realized later that if God can forgive them, I had to forgive them also. Grannie was one of those two people. In 2018, I forgave them. Jesus visited me that night, and told me that I had more to do. I had to choose to live and value my life. I struggled because across from me looking at me was my father. I missed him so much. He and my brother Jimmy, I never doubted they loved me. Jimmy was there also, and he spoke to me. The only one to speak to me. My brother Gary, who had hurt me often, was there also. I heard my mother snore at 4:30 AM. I decided to stay, and my heart started beating loudly again. Jesus and all those who had passed over in that room left. Around 5:30 AM, Ma came into the room and asked how was I doing, and I said, “The medicine is killing me. I will see another doctor.” Four days later I was in the hospital with a hemoglobin count of 2.8.
I began to see my life as a gift. In 2002, I had surgery to correct the problem that caused me to lose blood. I was overdosed on morphine, and four angels as I call them Pat H., Tara W., Aunt Lorene, and a student nurse kept waking me up because my oxygen saturation was 46 and falling. Three hours later, a respiratory therapist came into the room with oxygen because the morning x-ray had shown I had pneumonia. I learned from this lesson that I am not totally independent but depend on others.
Since then, though at times, life has been a hard struggle, there is not a day that I am not thankful for this life I am living. I am hopeful for the future. I am hopeful for my life to be richer- not in money but in life itself.
I know I have told this story before, but I felt I needed to tell myself this morning in the middle of the night because I still have much to give in this life. I have much to share and one of those things is that LIFE is a Gift.
Love ya,
MET
June 26, 2021
The first was when I was three years old, and I do not remember it. My mother told me that she had left me alone with my Grannie while she ran errands. When she returned home, she found me vomiting and there was blood on my lips and on my dress. Grannie told her I had fallen. Ma explained that I fell asleep, and she could not wake me. In fact, I became so cold that they could not get a temperature reading. Back then you did not go to the hospitals and doctors came to the home. It was in 1956. A doctor came and told them to keep me warm, and he would be back the next day. My mother stayed up all night rubbing my arms and legs. She prayed through the night. The next morning, I woke up. When I was 67, I found out that the edges of my retina were dead. They probably died when Grannie shook me that day. I know from working in child protective services that if this had happened a year before I turned three, I would have had permanent brain damage. In 1956, I would have probably died.
The anger that was born early in my childhood turned to hate. In a weird way I liked the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson called, “The Snow Queen.” My heart had been frozen, and I had stopped feeling. I was spiritually and emotionally dead.
Many know the story of my conversion to Christ, but only a few know me from before my conversion- so they do not compare the me I am at present to the me I once was. I know in my heart that if I had not had that dramatic conversion, I would have died years ago.
A crusade came to my college town, and my college was a Christian college. The fact I ended up at Erskine was, as I see it now, the shutting of the doors to two different universities. I had been accepted at both but for the same reason, my father said I was not going to either one. They were known as partying schools. I had wanted to be a journalist.
I went to the first night of the crusade to make fun of those who believed. After that night, my soul was revealed to me as being totally dead. I had three angels as I call them that came to me over the next three days. The first was Marie H, who would years later aid me when I was in poverty. She listened to me pour out my brokenness and she did not judge or condemn me, but said I needed to listen to what God was trying to tell me. The second one was Jerry H. who did not know it, but I had intended to end my sorry life, but he listened to me in the stairway of the Erskine Building that Saturday night not far from where the crusade was being held. Because of our talk, I decided to keep trying. The next day after lunch, I was at the library, Bobby O. talked to me about what I believed. I didn’t answer, but he gave me a crudely made card that said, “Jesus Christ is the answer.” He never knew it but that stayed on my bulletin board in my room the rest of my time at Erskine. I kept it to remind me who I was before I accepted Christ. It is the same reason I wear a cross necklace. It is not to tell others that I am a Christian but to remind me always who I was and who I am now.
By that time, I knew how dark and dead my soul was. I knew I was going to go to hell when I died. I cursed and said to myself that it didn’t matter because what was I worth anyway. But Marie showed me that I did matter. The next night because I could not bear to live in that overwhelming darkness, I couldn’t bear the weight of the chains on me any longer, I had made a plan of suicide. It did not help that the Babysitter who sexually abused me from the age of eleven to the age of fifteen stalked me. On the way to accomplish this, I met Jerry in the stairwell. Jerry opened my eyes to asking the question as to why I did I exist. On Sunday, I had no answers, and Bobby gave me an answer that I needed, but I was still not ready to accept Christ as my Savior. At the Dixie High School Football Field, I felt the call. It engulfed me. Sitting on the ground, I said my first prayer, “Lord, I am too scared to go down by myself.” I said this inside my head and not out loud. As soon as I said that, Charleen C. asked me if I would go down to the front with her. I did, and from that moment onward, I have been made into a new creation.
Over the next few decades, I was being remade not by sweet gentle directions. Those would not have worked for me. I treated my life as it was just there, and I really was not living. I accepted that I would never be loved or cherished. I was damaged goods after all. I let my health go. My inner self was being remade but my body I treated badly.
I was placed in a job that I needed. As much as those children I worked with as a foster care worker, I needed them and that job to keep me going, and it was hard work. But after different kinds of crisis, I found myself changing, and like clay on a potter’s wheel, I became softer and pliable.
I was changed into the warrior I was born to be. There is a Japanese way of repairing broken pottery called “Kintsugi.” There gold is added to the pieces of broken pottery making it beautiful and usable again. My soul and my life were being transformed by that method using God’s gold. I am that broken piece of pottery in which kintsugi was used to put the pieces back together. By the late 1990s I was transformed but I still did not see that my life was a gift.
In 2001, I was dying. I was in denial, but I knew I was dying. My heart beat loudly all the time, and I could hear it beating. I could not walk but a few steps before I had to lean against a wall. My lips were blue. My skin was pale that there wasn’t a make up to match that shade of pale. I went to an urgent care after court one day because my lips were almost colorless except for a pale tinge of lavender blue. I was told I had a sinus infection. I was given an antibiotic I told them I could not take. I had to take it for ten days. I got weaker and weaker. I was projectile vomiting several times a day.
One night I was sitting in the recliner because lying down made my heart beat louder. It was 11:30 PM. My heart stopped beating or I did not hear it beat. A few minutes later the dead started coming into the room with me. Two people who had harmed me were also there from this I realized later that if God can forgive them, I had to forgive them also. Grannie was one of those two people. In 2018, I forgave them. Jesus visited me that night, and told me that I had more to do. I had to choose to live and value my life. I struggled because across from me looking at me was my father. I missed him so much. He and my brother Jimmy, I never doubted they loved me. Jimmy was there also, and he spoke to me. The only one to speak to me. My brother Gary, who had hurt me often, was there also. I heard my mother snore at 4:30 AM. I decided to stay, and my heart started beating loudly again. Jesus and all those who had passed over in that room left. Around 5:30 AM, Ma came into the room and asked how was I doing, and I said, “The medicine is killing me. I will see another doctor.” Four days later I was in the hospital with a hemoglobin count of 2.8.
I began to see my life as a gift. In 2002, I had surgery to correct the problem that caused me to lose blood. I was overdosed on morphine, and four angels as I call them Pat H., Tara W., Aunt Lorene, and a student nurse kept waking me up because my oxygen saturation was 46 and falling. Three hours later, a respiratory therapist came into the room with oxygen because the morning x-ray had shown I had pneumonia. I learned from this lesson that I am not totally independent but depend on others.
Since then, though at times, life has been a hard struggle, there is not a day that I am not thankful for this life I am living. I am hopeful for the future. I am hopeful for my life to be richer- not in money but in life itself.
I know I have told this story before, but I felt I needed to tell myself this morning in the middle of the night because I still have much to give in this life. I have much to share and one of those things is that LIFE is a Gift.
Love ya,
MET
June 26, 2021