MKR Prodigal Daughter Christian Perspectives from a Prodigal

  • Jesus is Our Savior and Like a Big Brother

    Photo by Janko Ferlic on Pexels.com

    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.

  • He Has Risen!

    Easter has to be my favorite holiday. It’s the fulfillment of many prophesies in the bible. Jesus fulfilled them by coming to earth and being God in the flesh for us. He taught us what God the Father is like. He also taught us about the Holy Spirit, also known as the Comforter. He showed us the way to have a relationship with God the Father.

    The fact that Jesus was willing to be sacrificed and have His blood shed for us was what it took to satisfy God. God’s law in the Old Testament said there was no forgiveness without blood being shed. All of humanity’s sin was placed on Jesus; past, present, and future. God punished Jesus for all people’s sins of all time and when that happened the Father withdrew His presence from Jesus temporarily. Jesus did this willingly, and He knew what was going to happen to him before it happened.

    This post is after Easter, but the message is the same. Jesus loves you enough to die for you because God the Father wants to have a relationship with you. He wants you to be in heaven with you. What an awesome love!

  • The Truth About Martin Luther

    Photo by Florian Chefai on Pexels.com

    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.”

  • God Healed Me of An Eating Disorder

    Photo by Elli on Pexels.com

    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.

    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. I didn’t even know I had been healed 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.

  • The Way, The Truth, and the Life

    Photo by Clara Ho on Pexels.com

    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.

  • The Everlasting Love of God

    God let me know how much he loves me one night when I was nineteen or twenty. I was sleeping and a had strange dream and when I woke up in the middle of the night, I didn’t want to open my eyes, because I thought I was dead. I felt so loved and so peaceful. It was almost like God was giving me hug and making me feel the love he had for me. There is nothing like that love! That is the presence of God. God’s very being is love.

    I was hearing the still, small voice of God’s Holy Spirit speaking to me saying “open your eyes.” I didn’t want to but when finally did, I was in my bedroom and alive and well. The voice wasn’t audible, it was more of an inner knowing voice that I was hearing in my spirit. It wasn’t my conscious because it seemed like the voice was male. It’s hard to describe the voice, but once you hear it you know it.

    I didn’t want to move because I didn’t want the feeling of unconditional love to go away. It is hard to describe God’s love for us. In fact, I can’t because it’s indescribable. You need to experience it for yourself to be able to understand it. One thing I can say is no one loves you that much in this world. Not your mom, dad, brother, sister, friends, boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, or child. No One. If you would take the love of a mother for her child and multiply it by a million, it still wouldn’t compare.

    God loves us so much. There is nothing he wouldn’t do to let us know. Jesus loves us so much that he died for us! In the beginning when God created man and woman and they were tempted by satan and gave into that temptation and committed the first sin. That separated them from the close relationship they had with God. To get that relationship back with God, God sent Jesus to earth to show people how much He loves them. Jesus showed them the way to get close to Him again so they wouldn’t be separated anymore.

    Jesus died a brutal death and shed his blood, for no reason other than the fact that He loves us. He sacrificed himself willingly. He did nothing to deserve death. He only helped people while on earth by healing and doing miracles and taught the way to God the Father. After Jesus died and was dead for three days, He came back to life like He had foretold, and many people saw Him and ate with Him. After he died, he spent forty days on earth then He ascended into the sky and He’s in heaven today and will return some day in the same way and at the same place He left.

    You can know Jesus as a close friend, someone closer than brother. You can experience His love and peace. All you have to do is ask him to come into your life and forgive you for all the wrongs you have done throughout your life and tell him you are sorry for them. No matter what you have done, God won’t reject you.

    I want to be a better vessel for God, so when He wants someone to experience that love and peace it would transfer from me to the person standing next to me by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is possible to do and it reminds me the verses 5 in Psalm 23: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil, and my cup overflows. Which means to me being anointed with the Holy Spirit and His peace is overflowing and sharing God’s Holy Spirit peace flowing through you to people you meet.

    It’s not an easy road to be living a life of sin. Jesus promised us that his way is the better way. That road might be difficult at times, but Jesus said, come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

    http://www.needhim.org

  • Tragedy Strikes

    Photo by Guilherme on Pexels.com

    When I was 21 years old my brother committed suicide, because the girl he had asked to marry him turned him down. There wasn’t much warning when he did it. There was about a week he was really suicidal; my parents didn’t tell me what was going on until the day before it happened. I wish they would have told me sooner maybe I could have talked to him. We were not getting along well though, so I didn’t say anything. But one thing I did do was pray.

    I had a feeling he was going to do something stupid so the day before he died I prayed and prayed and prayed. I prayed every prayer I could find in my grandma’s New Marian Missal. The New Marian Missal is an old Catholic daily mass book from the 1950s. I prayed all day and all night until about 11 o clock p.m. then I went to bed. I wasn’t praying that he wouldn’t take his life, I prayed for his soul.

    That night in the middle of the night I awoke to Jesus speaking to me. He said to me, “I prayed your brother would be filled with the Holy Spirit.” After hearing that I knew my brother was dead and he was in heaven.

    The next morning when the police came to the door, I already knew why he was there. My parents were so upset, but I didn’t cry. I knew my brother was in heaven because when Jesus prays, He prays God’s will.

    I don’t know what brothers last words to God were, but I think he asked to be forgiven and that is all it takes. If you don’t ask God to forgive you. you will end up in hell . God is very merciful, and He forgives when you ask. Ask Him. He can change your life if you reach out to Him. Jesus loves you so much He willingly sacrificed himself. He didn’t run away from what he knew was going to happen to him. He died for you and me so we can be right with God so we can have a relationship with Him. Talk to Jesus. He is waiting to hear from you.

    To learn more about Jesus:

    http://www.needhim.org

    http://www.doorcreekchurch.org