When I looked into your eyes, I saw a part of me
and when I’ve felt you hold me you made me feel complete
Why you love me I’ll never understand
I am a sinful woman, but you made me strong so I could stand
You shield me from the enemy and cause me no harm.
You suffered, were beaten and whipped beyond description.
You know what it’s like to be betrayed and despised
You understand what we are going through
that is why I treasure you, like a prize.
MKR
Angels watching over you
and angels watching me
God sent an angel to Daniel
and sent an angel to Mary
Jesus has an army
of angels to guide and save us
from the enemy
They keep us safe
and sometimes they appear to us
It’s such of mystery
of God’s great grace and mercy
Once God sent me a dream
of angel choirs singing
I didn’t know the words
I didn’t know the meaning
They are a gift from the Father above
He has sent them
to save me from death
time and time again.
MKR
He calls you beloved
He calls you mine
He calls you daughter
He calls you wife
When the creator of the universe
looks at you
He sees something precious
Someone made brand new
He loves your eyes
He loves how you care
He loves your uniqueness
He calls you beautiful and fair
Believe me when I say
What you mean to him
You are the apple of His eye
You mean the world to Him.
MKR
Photo by Kathy Denison
Thornless roses
Streets of gold
Gates of pearls
And walls of precious stones
No more sorrow
No more shame
No more crying
No more pain
That’s a place called heaven
And Christ waits at the door
Where you feel more peace
Then you ever have before
Where love
And harmony reign
Where God will
Never be far away
He will be within reach
He will be within sight
Shining down on us
His everlasting light.
MKR
I get anxiety attacks driving because I hit a steel power pole head on in December of 2010 while driving home after work one night. It was 10:30 pm when the roads were icy and the road hadn’t been salted yet and it was freezing rain. It was scary losing control of my car. As soon as I saw I was headed for the power pole I said to God, “I guess I am ready.” I was sure I was going to die, but God wasn’t through with yet. But from then on, I didn’t think I was a very good driver because of the accident.
My car was totaled, and I was bleeding on my cheek a little bit, but other than being shook up I was fine. I took a taxi home, and I saw cars in the ditch on the highway. My car was a total loss since the air bags had deployed, and I am sure the front end of the car was in bad shape too.
Then I couldn’t drive for six months much because I sprained my right ankle when falling down the stairs in October of 2021 I ended up with a terrible case of sciatica on the left side of my lower back, hip, and leg. I had to walk on my sprained ankle because i couldn’t put weight on my other leg. I felt like I needed to practice driving after I started driving again, so went out with a friend a couple of times.
My car was totaled, and I was bleeding on my cheek a little bit, but other than being shook up I was fine. I took a taxi home, and I saw cars in the ditch on the highway. My car was a total loss since the air bags had deployed, and I am sure the front end of the car was in bad shape too.
Ever since I had anxiety as a teen, the car accident, the pandemic, and falling down the stairs and hurting myself I have hated driving because of the anxiety I feel. I have asked God to take my anxiety away again like He did in 1987, but it hasn’t happened yet. I still pray for it though.
God healed me of anxiety when I was 22 years old. I didn’t drive before that because of anxiety attacks. Then one morning in December of 1987, when I was getting ready for work something happened. I was standing at the foot of the stairs after taking a shower, and I looked up and all I saw was white light. I looked down and then looked up again and then I could see the stairs again. It happened in a split second. After that happened, I started feeling God’s peace that would start at the top of my head and wash over my body until it went down to my toes. Like God was pouring out His Holy Spirit over me.
My seasonal job had ended, and I could not collect unemployment because the man I talked to on the phone denied my claim. When I explained to him, I didn’t drive and had to depend on rides because there wasn’t any public transportation where I lived. He told me to get my driver’s license. I was really scared and didn’t know what I was going to do so I prayed. God answered that prayer in a big way, I got my driver’s license 3 months later.
While watching a pastor talk about fear and being afraid, he said something that really comforted me. He said Jesus is our big brother and we are all his little sisters and brothers, and when we are afraid, we should ask him to help us. What the pastor said has got to be one of the best things I have heard about getting over anxiety and being afraid. Jesus said we are his brothers and sisters, but I never thought of him as a big brother. I lost my only big brother to suicide when I was 21 years old and I have wondered what he would be like if he was still alive. I have Jesus as a big brother now, and I have the best big brother a sister could ever ask for.
I found out today Martin Luther ended up hating the Jews and I never knew before. At first, he thought they were God’s chosen people, but after they didn’t do what he wanted them to he became hateful towards them. Martin Luther wrote a book about his hatred. The title of the book is, On the Jews and Their Lies. In the book Martin Luther wrote that synagogues should be burned down, homes of the Jew should be destroyed, and they should be forced into manual labor. Hitler loved that book. The Lutheran Church apologized for Martin Luther’s belief later on.
Antisemitism is at an all-time high around the world and I don’t understand it. Why? What did Jewish people do that is so bad? When it comes to the conflict in the middle east between Israel and Hamas, who started it?? Hamas started it, they attacked first. Israel never starts the conflict; they are just trying to defend themselves. The same applies to Hezbollah, they are the ones who sent the bombs first.
All these young people in America chanting “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” don’t know what they are saying. That chant calls for the destruction of the Jews, just like Hitler did. But those young people go along with the crowd to try to fit in and so they chant it.
I wish they would wake up! They are blind, and they don’t know what God told Abraham. He said to Abraham that through his offspring with Sarah that, “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”
When I was fifteen years old, I was a rebel. I hung out with the kids who liked to party a lot, and the other kids called us freaks. I was smoking cigarettes, drinking, and doing drugs. I hated school because none of the teachers were nice to me except one, my English teacher. She was the only one who cared about me. This teacher inspired me to write after she introduced the class to poetry. I loved her class, but all my classmate’s made fun of her behind her back. I didn’t like that at all.
I had been overweight as a child, and I was very self-conscious about it. All my family was thin and had dark hair, and then there was me: blonde and overweight. My brother used to tease me and say your adopted because you are fat and blonde. I would run to my mom and ask if I was adopted, and the answer was always no. I am sure my brother got into trouble for saying it.
Fast forward to the summer when I was fifteen, and I decided to go on a diet. I watched how much I ate and rode my bike and exercised. I lost weight, grew my hair longer and got contact lenses. My eye doctor had been wanting me to get hard contact lenses since I was in 8th grade because I had stigmatism and he said it would help my eyes not to get any worse than they already were.
When I went back to school in the fall people weren’t sure who I was. Some guessed, and some didn’t know me. I looked different, but I didn’t feel different. I still felt overweight. It was hard to be on a diet all the time, so one day I became bulimic. The reason why is because of an article I had read in a magazine about food. There was an interview with a restaurant critic, and they asked how he could review so many restaurants each day. His answer was if I eat too much I just simply purge. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s when you make yourself throw up after eating, and it is an eating disorder.
At first, I thought being bulimic was great. I thought I could eat whatever I wanted to and wouldn’t gain weight. But it wasn’t the case. That was because I would skip breakfast and lunch. I would starve myself all day at school then eat when I got home.
Being bulimic was like an addiction. I would eat then throw up meals at home. I never did it when I was away from home. It was a vicious cycle, and I couldn’t stop. At first, I didn’t even try to stop but later on in my eating disorder I really wished it would end. After I started praying to God at age seventeen, I asked Him to heal me of bulimia I begged and pleaded, and I didn’t stop praying. I felt so guilty because there were people starving to death in other countries and I was wasting food by eating and making myself throw up afterwards. I didn’t even know I had been healed December 8th in 1984 when I saw a vision.
During the time of my vision, I had been going to a technical college for cooking. The reason I chose cooking is because I love to cook. Another reason I chose it was because I thought I would always have a job because everyone needs to eat.
My vision happened as I was walking through a shopping mall. I glanced at a guy who worked at a photo shop who was behind the counter looking out the window and my eyes met his. All of the sudden I couldn’t see him anymore. All I could see was blue and a pair of eyes. I kept walking and didn’t really think about it at the time. The vision reminded me of a dream I had
When I was eighteen, I had a dream about being at a what reminded me of a high school or grade school office with yellow walls. There was a man there who I thought was a famous rock musician but couldn’t see his face. Suddenly in the dream he said to me, “you don’t like my music!” Then he shot me in the head, and everything turned black, then I everything turned gold, and I saw a pair of eyes. In my dream I died, and I saw what I believe were God’s eyes while I was dreaming. The eyes I saw in my vision looked just like my dream, but the color was blue.
It took me a while to realize I didn’t have bulimia anymore. One day about a week later I realized I wasn’t making myself throw up after I ate. I was also eating three meals a day and not snacking, and I stayed the same weight for years. Once I was older in my late fifties, I did put on some weight. I have had no desire to become bulimic again and never have since I was healed.
At the time I had been healed I had been working at a shopping mall at a frozen yogurt shop while going to cooking school and had noticed the man at the photo shop. I had noticed him before because I thought he was really handsome. I found out his name was Matthew. The name Matthew means gift of God. God had given me a gift because He healed me of bulimia.
When I was a little kid, my family went to the catholic church every Saturday night. We always sat in the front of the church three rows back on the left side. That was our spot. I didn’t like sitting up front because I was very shy. I must have been about four years old when the priest got mad in church. I never forgot it either, still to this day I can see the look of rage on his face. Some kid was making noise in church, and the priest came down and was standing in front of us, and suddenly yelled, “Children are to be seen and not heard!” It scared to me to death, and I was afraid of him after that happened. Thank God my parents didn’t make a big deal about my first communion.
Maybe the reason why I ignored God throughout my younger years had something to do with that priest. I had no concept of God, and I am not sure why. I never prayed or talked to God. My mom told me when I was in first or second grade, I was asked to say grace before a meal I started out with “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America” then everyone laughed.
Learning to pray has been a process for me. I remember being in catechism with the nuns during church summer school for a week we had to memorize the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary and the Glory Be prayers. I didn’t know what I was saying, I was just repeating the words without any meaning behind them. They never explained why we had to pray or what they meant. we just had to memorize the prayers. I really wish someone would have explained what the prayers meant.
One good thing about summer school with the nuns was I learned about heaven. I think that is the only thing I learned. One of my classmates asked one of the nicer nuns if she could see Elvis in heaven and the nun said, yes and you can see anyone in heaven. I thought heaven sounded nice. As a teenager I started reading books about near-death experiences. In high school I remember reading Raymond Moody’s Life After Life book, and I found it fascinating. One book called My Glimpse of Eternity written by Betty Maltz who was clinically dead for 30 minutes was a good one. In the book she described heaven like the book of Revelation describes heaven.
There is life after death, and we all make the choice if we are going to heaven or hell. If you accept Jesus as your savior, ask to be forgiven and repent, you are on your way to heaven. Like God told Moses and the Israelites, “I put before you a choice between life and death, between a blessing and a curse, chose life.” And Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
MKR Prodigal Daughter-Christian Perspectives from a Prodigal 