01/4/14

We Live in a Linear Frequency

Actually, I’m not sure about the statement that my title makes, but I had something interesting happen the other night.

In my dream, a guy was standing on my front porch shouting, “We live in a linear frequency” over and over. I woke up. I had no idea what that meant so I Googled it.

It turns out it’s an esoteric (to me, anyway) physics term. I still don’t know exactly what it means, other than that it has to do with sound, measurement and the math of music.

One of the things that came up when I was researching this term was Chladni figures.

chladni drawings

These are patterns that are made with sand on square metal plates when the plates are exposed to certain frequencies. They were discovered in 1787 by “the father of acoustics” Ernst Chladni. As the frequencies change, so do the patterns. Below is a cool example of how this works.

I have no idea how connected “linear frequency” and Chladni figures are, but I just love the implications of them. It makes this make sense:

In the beginning was the word.

It makes me think that God is a frequency — the frequency of love. And perhaps this is sort of how it worked when He spoke the universe into existence. Pretty cool, huh?

07/17/13

Mind. Blown.

purple glass heart

Dreams have been a big deal in our house lately. A couple of days ago, my son woke up from a dream in which he had lived for a hundred years, gotten married, had a child and seen the world destroyed. In my son’s dream, he was living in an entirely different world. He was able to tell me what was in the history books of that world and spoke words in that world’s language, which was ancient-sounding and beautiful. It took him two hours to tell me things, and there was always more. It was literally like talking to a really old person who would tell you all the details about the good old days and World War 2, for example.

I just woke up from the most amazing dream myself. Often, when I go to sleep at night, I am asking God to show me the truth. I don’t think ALL of the truth is to be found in church or even the Bible — at least not how it is often interpreted. And sometimes the truth is distorted or twisted. I want the real thing. Last night, I believe I got some answers.

This dream began with me going to visit my son at the treatment center he’s been at three times in the past year. My son would have a pass from the hospital and be out on the street rescuing people from the most horrendous situations. He would ask a helper to escort him back to the hospital when he got tired. There was so much darkness in the world where he was helping that even the maggots from the dead were black. I began to help as well. We had to avoid the maggots and the dead people, because they would contaminate you if you spent much time in contact with them. It was very dangerous to help, because very evil individuals would try to attack you if they so much as saw you helping to rescue other people from their world of child rape, lethal drugs and murder. Perhaps spending too much time with people who are spiritually dead will rub off on you and you will begin to lose your sight. Perhaps my son is helping people (or has demonstrated that potential) and he gets worn out, and yes, attacked.

I spent time out on the street giving balm (coconut butter) to people. You’d rub it in and your skin would look clean and new and be protected. Some people would leave dirt in the balm when they scooped it out, but that was okay. If you have something that can help people, you should give it away freely, no matter what.

The people/spirits who were rescuers had super-powers. We literally flew through the air to rescue some people. We were so joyful, and the reason we flew was to show people who we were. Oprah was one of them, and when I woke up, I realized that she raises people up in life by showing them love and support.

All the destruction and killing meant that pets had been neglected by selfish and blind people or were trapped in hotel rooms. In most cases, they had been living without water and had to be put down. I cried and cried as I rescued these sweet bony animals that had either been woefully neglected or had failed to find a source of water (even though sometimes it was right in front of them in the form of a bathtub having been left full of water, for example.) I felt so heartbroken when I had to give them to the loving people to be euthanized. When I found an animal that had found a source of life, they were in good enough shape for them to be eligible for the shelter to find them a new home. Some people have the source of living water right in front of them, but don’t see it. Others are not provided with it — they are neglected as others carry on their hedonistic, selfish lives. It breaks God’s heart, I think, when he finds people in this state. God rescues them from their hell one way or another, but it makes him so sad.

I got to meet the emperor of this world. The emperor was very concerned about his worldly standing. His son was among the many people that were injured in the general destruction and badness, and the dignitary informing of this gave him a hint that he knew his son was a gay IV drug user. (He had been found with pink peppermint in his veins, lol!) The dignitary gave him plenty of opportunities to admit the injured man was indeed his son, but the emperor continued to deny him, preferring to let his son die rather than to risk losing people’s respect for his standing as emperor. He denied THE SON. This also makes me think of preachers who get on the anti-gay bandwagon because it increases their standing with their base of support. The emperor did not choose love or truth. He chose fear.

After this encounter, I was walking down a staircase admiring a beautiful glass sculpture that had belonged to the emperor. He no longer wanted it. It was very expensive, but I was able to use all my money to buy a small piece that the seller broke off. He took care to break me off the very best piece. It came off in the shape of a light purple heart. When I turned it over in my hand, it made a beautiful musical sound. It was the sound of diamonds being thrown and musically hitting the ground. When I held it in front of me, I got so much power that all I had to do was stretch out my hand and doors were open and walls came down. I didn’t even have to move under my own power. A golden light lit the way as I went far away from the emperor and his men. This was a good thing, because the emperor had realized what he had given up, and was chasing after me for it. Love will break down all barriers.

As we were surveying the absolute destruction, the promenade we were on collapsed, and we began to fall the long distance to our death. A bunch of ugly art was falling alongside me. I was afraid at first — I was falling so fast, and I was thinking about what it might feel like when I hit bottom. Then I took a deep breath and said, “I love you, Lord.” Then the Lord’s peace came over me and I woke up.

I helped a lot of people and animals before I left that place.

The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is our helper. That He is the Spirit of Truth. I’ve asked God to help me to understand things better, and this dream is what I got. I’m not going to worry about whether or not other people agree with me or not. I’m not going to read other people’s interpretations of scripture and worry about fitting them into my worldview. I am going to trust in God.

07/4/13

What God Said About the 4th of July

American flag and cross

The American flag should not overshadow the cross.

Two years ago, my younger son was having regular conversations with God. He was visiting with God in a way in which he could literally see and hear him. One day, he and God were talking about holidays. He shared the conversation with me.

It turns out that God isn’t at all pleased with our holidays. My son told me how God finds Halloween to be an incredible abomination and Christmas to be the worship of things, not his son.

At this point, I considered the fact that my kiddo could have gotten these ideas from me. I am not a fan of Halloween, and I definitely complain about the commercialization of Christmas. My 12-year-old certainly could have adopted my ideas and projected them onto “God.”

Things got weird, though, when he started talking about God’s opinion on Valentine’s Day, a day during which much sexual sin is committed.(!) Then he talked about the 4th of July. He told me that God said that the 4th of July was idol worship. I asked him why. He said it was because people were honoring the country over God.

Note that all holidays are not awful. God likes Thanksgiving, according to my son.

At any rate, prior to that time, I had not given any thought to the 4th of July and any underlying meaning it might have. I was frankly stunned to hear those words coming out of my child’s mouth. Since that day, though, I have become more and more convinced that my kid did indeed hear God’s voice that day. That American Christians don’t question what they value. That we follow culture before Jesus. Stuff like that.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if he really heard the voice of God. I’m pretty wary of saying things like, “Thus sayeth the Lord.” Nevertheless, it’s food for thought, right?

As a Jesus-follower, I consider myself a citizen of God’s Kingdom. The rest is small change.

07/2/13

More Dreams

city on fire
I keep having vivid dreams. Sometimes they’re God dreams and sometimes they’re not. I thought I’d share them because a couple of people were blessed by one of them, so who knows? I bolded the parts of the second dream that really stood out to me because it is so long (and this is the abbreviated form!)

Dream 1

My family was sleeping, and a big wall of fire came toward us, sweeping through one side of our bedroom but not touching us. It destroyed everything in it’s path. God said, start walking Northeast. Take only one blanket. He told us to take a couple of other things, but I forget what they were.

Meanwhile, another couple in the same city was having a similar experience. They were getting pummeled with a hugely destructive storm. The entire city was being destroyed in multiple ways. Instead of going in the direction that God told them to, however, the husband told the rest of the family to walk in another direction while he went to get the car. The result was that family ran right into the area of the city that was on fire. They escaped, but not after experiencing a lot of distress.

I remember that we got to take some of the animals with us. In the dream we had a lot of animals — more than the four we have right now. Greg and I were talking and decided to leave behind the animals that didn’t love us to fend for themselves. We didn’t want to do it, but it was already going to be difficult (and somewhat comedic) to walk a long distance with three cats in a carrier.

I started thinking how God lets the people who don’t love him do their own thing. Sometimes things turn out okay and sometimes they don’t. Of course, the whole dream seemed to be about obedience, and how God will bless and keep those who do His will. Not keep them entirely out of bad situations, but show them a way through.

In my dream someone criticized how I talk about Jesus all the time. I said, “He’s all I can talk about,” and basically shrugged. I guess I’m past the point of worrying whether or not people think I’m a fanatic, crazy or whatever.

Dream 2

Greg and I were crossing the border into Mexico. At first, I was by myself when I crossed. Wile E. had jumped out of the car, though and followed me. The border guards said “No way,” and I had to literally drag him back across. He did not want to go and tried to attack the border guard, who drew his gun. Perhaps Wile E. felt I needed protection.

Later, after securing Wile E. in the car, I went on ahead with a friend who was an unbeliever. There was nothing but bars, and witchcraft was everywhere, even in the air itself. I could feel my mind being affected by the atmosphere. Nasty bugs crawled everywhere on the ground and were in the buildings. A witch was angry when I wouldn’t participate, and I screamed (literally F) “F you!” and jumped off the balcony of the building to escape, and landed safely. Halloween was being celebrated at the time, and I took a big cone of sugar and began spinning it in the middle of a poster board. Fine granules of sugar flew off and landed on the paper, forming amazing patterns, and eventually, the word of God. I called to my friend who was an unbeliever — “Hey look at this!” She came over, but not fast enough, and the word of God changed to the word of the law and then disappeared altogether.

We went back across the border, returning to the United States, and a projected image of the Virgin Mary began to show up in the sky, then a dove rising, then an huge scene of something representing God’s kingdom. I was praising the Lord so much and my friend became a believer right then. We continued on into El Paso, and saw a large five-story church/Christian school that we thought had been projecting the image. We went in, and at this point had our children with us. The children at the school were very mean to our kids, and they had a group shower where the boys and girls showered together. The pastor who was in a dark, medieval looking office, and preached about the evil of the world and conspiracy theories and tried to make us afraid. We left. This pastor tried to warn us against going to visit a relative who was also a pastor, saying he was apostate, but we ignored him.

We went to find my relative. This man was humble, and we walked up a pier to meet him in the river he was in. We asked him what he was doing, and he said something like, “I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me.” Then he swam underneath our pier, which was falling apart a bit and starting to sink, and shored it up with his own body. Later, he and his wife preached love at their modest church, and warned us not to fall prey to the devil’s darts.

At this point, God showed me what those darts look like in the form of a 1980’s video game. Everyone was a red or green dot, moving along a highway. The red dots were people who were nonbelievers or who were sinking under the attack of the evil one. There were more red dots than green. My transformed friend was ahead of me, and her light was green. Bombs were falling out of the air randomly and would hit people. When they hit, they would turn a green person red if prayer was not protecting the person. I kept praying for my newly green friend as bombs fell all around her. I thought to myself, “I am on the verge of turning red myself, because I am under serious attack,” but realized that did not absolve me of my responsibility.

And there was more, but this is enough. 🙂

07/2/13

The Kingdom of God Is Here!

kingdom of heaven

I have good news!

The Kingdom of God is here!

It’s not just later, after your body dies. It’s right now!

This is what it looks like:

People love each other for real

People turn the other cheek

People pray for their enemies

People are not judgmental about the blindness of others

People are delighted to serve other people

Meek and gentle people, people who are sad about the way things are, people who are seekers, people who show mercy and make peace, people who are maligned for doing the right thing — the type of people who don’t “fit” into the world — these people are blessed in God’s kingdom!

If you could find a place like this, wouldn’t you leave everything you have to live there?

The good news is that if you look for it, you will find it!

Hint: Jesus points the way.

(This message brought to you by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.) 😉

06/7/13

The Kingdom of Heaven

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field that a man found and hid. In his joy he went and sold everything he had and bought that field.”

This is true on a level that I never understood until now.

First of all, the Kingdom is hidden. You will likely not find it sitting in church, no matter how good the pastor is.

Second, you have to look for it and find it. Don’t worry, Jesus says, “Seek and you will find.”

Finally, when you do find it, everything else will completely pale in importance. You will want to help other people to open their eyes, to know

Who.

They.

Are.

05/26/13

Do Not Oppose Evil: A Counter-intuitive Idea That Works

tomato oppose evilA few days ago, I made the mistake of reading an article about the corporate cartels that run the country and which are destroying the world. I felt a huge anger well up inside me. I snapped at the people close to me and when I went grocery shopping I felt like running over the people in my way with my cart.

I thought, “Surely this is a righteous anger. After all, innocent people are losing freedom and being killed because of these practices.” The fruit, though, was not righteous. My husband had to listen to me rant when he wanted to relax after work. I didn’t smile or have any nice conversations at the grocery store because I’m sure I had a visible black cloud over my head.

I decided that the anger wasn’t good. After all, I had deliberately set it aside a few years ago in favor of better mental health.

Yet I’m not a fan of inaction. I don’t want evil to win.

Fortunately, I came across the Tao Te Ching yesterday. I started reading it, and found this:

Give evil nothing to oppose
and it will disappear by itself.

I thought about it and thought about it. I read some more of Loa-Tzu’s writing. I started getting really excited, because I realized that God had revealed The Way of Jesus to the Chinese before Jesus made His earthly appearance. I remembered that Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek. To give someone who takes your coat your cloak as well. To go the extra mile after being compelled to go the first one.

He is teaching us to not oppose evil.

It took me a minute to wrap my head around this. After all, in our culture, Christians tend to be first in line to oppose perceived evil, often standing up for the death penalty, protesting abortion and lobbying for marriage laws to stay unchanged.

But.

What would Evil do if we gave the person on death row a big hug? What if we held a woman as she cried after having an abortion? What if we applauded love and simply lived our lives according to The Way so that if someone was doing something wrong, Evil would skulk out of his life, ashamed of itself?

I know that Lao-Tzu’s statement was God-inspired, at least as much as I, a mere human, can know anything at all about this sort of thing.

About a year ago, I had a dream. In the dream, God said, “You are going to be martyred.”

A door opened, and I found myself in a prison cell with two malevolent witches. They had every intention of killing me. I wasn’t too happy about the situation, but I felt resigned, since God had already told me what was going to happen.

I looked at the witch across from me. A feeling of great compassion came over me, and I reached out my hand and gently caressed her face. The anger completely left her, and she was transformed. I woke up before the other witch could kill me.

I think this dream was God’s way of showing me that softness transforms hardness, that love conquers evil — at least some of the time. Sometimes, evil is pretty resistant to love, I think. But you become what you focus on, which is why people who subscribe to running magazines, buy running shorts and run every day often become marathon runners. This tells me that focusing on evil is not the right thing to do.

So I will not rage against the machine. Instead of protesting Monsanto, I’ll take joy in growing my own tomatoes. If I have an opportunity to give some to my neighbor, I will.

03/15/13

Where Are the Healers? A Lament

heart balloon art

It is possible that moving to the country from the city was one of the worst decisions my family ever made. We moved from a place where my younger son was invited to so many birthday parties that I had to keep a closet stocked with last-minute gifts to a place where he managed to go through most of elementary school without being invited to a single one.

Of course, the fact that he has two sets of grandparents, three uncles, three aunts and three cousins here in our little town made up for it. Being surrounded by loving family can help to make up for the rejection of peers and even their parents.

Alas, this was my fantasy and not reality. No family member has taken much of an interest in my son — to the point where it simply wouldn’t matter where we live when it comes to his interactions with them.

Once the S disease showed its face, I noticed that it helped my son to be around people who distracted him from what was happening in his mind. Desperate, I became bold.

“Will you take Younger Son fishing with you the next time you go?” I asked one family member. “Why not include Younger Son the next time you decide to spend a day in (neighboring city). He would love that!” I suggested to another.

Nothing changed.

Next, I tried guilt.

“Why don’t you ever spend time with your grandson?” I asked my parents.

They didn’t fall for it. Nothing has changed.

More desperate still, I asked people at the house church I was attending. I said something like, “Younger Son really needs connections with other people, role models. Will someone consider taking him under their wing a bit?”

I wish I’d never asked that question. Coping with my grief over the lack of response has been difficult.

I have a friend who has a son who is emotionally disturbed. They don’t ask for help. I used to think this was perhaps prideful, but now realize it is probably realistic on their part.

Here’s the thing. There are any number of Christians who are happy to lay hands on my son and pray for him. I appreciate this. Prayer is powerful.

But.

When you pray for bonds to be broken and healing to take place, God often answers prayers. He is a miraculous God, and sometimes He does things in mysterious ways.

Often, though, He is quite practical. He uses the people in His church as his hands and feet to accomplish His goals. He uses their love.

He sent me and my son a friend who hugs my son. She includes him in some of her plans. She even buys him little gifts. There is now a third person in his life who demonstrably loves him.

I am thankful for this. Oh boy, am I thankful. I wonder though, what if even more people loved my son in a visible way? I know that love heals.

I’ve been reading the diary of George Fox, the man who inadvertently founded the Quakers — some of the few Christians in the United States who actively resisted the institution of slavery. Fox frequently went into the churches in England and asked “Where is your fruit?”

I relate to Fox, because that is just how I feel.

The fruit of Christians should be healing love and not rejection. What if every Christian in our communities welcomed someone who is hurting into his or her life? Can you imagine the difference this would make?

In my town of 30,000, there are probably 10,000 people who attend church. These folks diligently give to food banks, the homeless ministry and other worthy causes. There are so many volunteers at our homeless shelter that it is ridiculous — they hardly have any slots to squeeze new ones in. Yet when I drive past the homeless shelter, the homeless people are always sitting outside the building alone.

No one should ever be alone in the midst of Christians.

Oh what a difference we could make if we gave ourselves over to action to complement our belief.

The lovely print is available for sale on Etsy — click on photo.

02/21/13

Vision of God or Schizophrenic Hallucination?

rainbow around the throne of God

This will never look the same.

I will never ever forget what my younger son told me when he was twelve. He said that he had visited heaven and had a talk with God. God had even given him a tour.

He went into a lot of detail. He described how God’s face cannot be seen because it is such bright white light. He said he saw Jesus, and that there were marks on his wrists. He told me how there are colors that can’t be seen in this world, and that there is a feeling of such indescribable peace that there are no worries or fear whatsoever. He talked to my Uncle Bob, whom he has never met. He saw hell because God wanted him to know it was real. God let him know that Love saves people from hell.

At the time, I was understandably thrown for a loop. Sage grew up fairly obsessed with Pokemon cards and being read the stories of Brer Rabbit, not the Bible — a fact I am not proud of. I had no idea where all this was coming from. It seemed odd content for a hallucination that would arise out of prior knowledge or interests.

I told his doctor about it, and he told me about the book If Heaven Is for Real. I told my mom about it, and she mentioned the same book. I bought it.

It is about a 4-year-old boy who sees heaven during a life-threatening surgery. I’ve always been pretty skeptical about these things, and it wasn’t on my reading list.

The book was a quick read, and after I finished it, I remember lying on the bed feeling almost paralyzed. I called Sage into the room. Having read about how the boy saw a rainbow around the throne of God, I asked, “Did God sit down?”

My son said, yes, he was sitting on a throne. “What did it look like?” I asked. He told me about how a rainbow went around it.

At that point, I my mind did a flip and I started to feel really afraid. My son said, “There is a dark presence in this room. God wanted me to tell you that we are going to be in a very large spiritual battle.”

Note that I don’t recall discussing things like spiritual battles with my son at that point. I remember I had just started attending church, after the dream he had where he was quoting the Book of Revelation to me.

So there it is.

I’m convinced this was a true spiritual vision — God forgive me if I’m wrong. I really think that if all this was only neurologically based, then the vision would have been of something else entirely. Like Pokemon characters. But no, his visions have never had that sort of content. It is always God, Jesus, angels, demons, and things like exploding nuclear bombs and parched earth.

We don’t watch the news and never have. We don’t have television since I discovered that watching it was causing him to stutter several years ago. So I can’t attribute this to something he had watched a few days prior.

I am so thankful for this. This vision caused me to completely desire to follow Jesus, to give my life to God. I count myself as very fortunate, as my intellectualism had set up many arguments against much in the Bible being literally true. Being a part of this experience has forced me to put my feeble human arguments aside and simply praise God that he permitted me to see.

And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. Revelation 4:3

02/9/13

A Tiny Touch of Grace

drawing

My husband.

There’s nothing quite like a yelling match with the person you love the most to make you feel like a piece of slime that needs to be cleaned out of the refrigerator’s bottom drawer.

The morning started out with my younger son telling me that no, he could not go to the “bamboo forest” on the local trail with his best friend because he felt too anxious. I’ve wrestled with agoraphobia for years, and this was not welcome news. No one wants their child to live in a box of their own mind’s making.

My mood dark, my husband and I got into a disagreement within seconds of his having got out of bed. It was the kind of disagreement where after about five minutes, one person goes outside and angrily smokes a cigarette while the other person cries and slams doors for sheer physical release.

After I finished slamming doors — yes, that was me, I don’t smoke — I got into the shower. I said a prayer. I was still crying and I didn’t say much. I did ask God to help me not to give in to hopelessness.

Then I went into the back room to draw with markers. I am like a child that way. Darkness recedes when I am using the creative part of my brain, as opposed to the mean tormented part of my brain, say.

I tried to draw a tree. It didn’t go very well. I turned the tree into a face. It turned out to be my husband’s face, and I made it into a card for him.

I think this is how miracles work — most of the time, anyway. It’s like God touched me with a bit of His grace, saying something like “It’s okay — now here’s some love you can give your husband.”

Because believe me, I was not feeling very loving when I was making scribbly marks on the paper.

The hand of God works in little ways that end up being quite big, really.