I have decided to set down an accounting of a recent experience. It was a momentous one for me. I hope in setting it down in writing to perhaps recognize, even further, the significance.
We left Wichita for a family vacation Saturday night, August 8, to drive to Denver. I had worked very late in the office the previous three nights and had not gotten much sleep. So it was not surprising that Saturday, by noon, I was coming down with a migraine headache. I have been plagued by migraines, sometimes daily, for the last twenty-five years. So I am somewhat used to them.
I took a nap in the early afternoon, and that helped some, but my headache persisted as we packed and started driving. I was able to drive for about two hours, until the pain forced me to stop. Cindy had to drive us the rest of the way to her brother’s house in Castle Rock. We arrived at about 10 a.m. I went to bed.
I lay in bed awake for hours. I had taken my medications, but they had not helped, and I knew from experience there was no point in taking more. I had never had a migraine, however, that had lasted that long. It had been over twenty-four hours, at that point. I had begun to feel rather desperate, and I prayed for a healing, for relief from the pain. What then occurred is the reason I am now writing this account.
Anyone familiar with my writing knows I believe I commune with angels. It is actually beyond believing for me. It has been my experience for thirty years. I have been through the process, repeatedly, of questioning why I believe they are actually beings apart from me, and not just manifestations of a higher part of myself. It has been the nature of their companionship that has most convinced me, the way they comfort and convey, and their sense of humor.
All of that having been said about my angels (I call them “mine” because they are my constant companions), I never envision them with human form, though I believe they have been human. I just don’t envision them with form. But on this occasion, they came to me in a way I had not experienced before.
My eyes were closed, but I saw them. They came and stood around me. This was remarkable to me in several respects. In part, because I do not normally experience them with human form; in part, because those who stood immediately around me had the appearances of men. I could sense a multitude surrounding me, but those who stood immediately around me (ten or so) all looked like men. I wondered at this, because I had always felt and understood that my angels were mostly, if not all, feminine.
They laid their hands upon me, though I did not feel this on my physical body, and blessed me with a healing that was, in part, a teaching. I was encompassed and infused with a light I cannot describe as white or golden, but somehow both. I was encompassed and infused with a love that was the essence of the healing and the teaching I received.
One spoke to me, not with words I heard with my physical ears, but heard quite clearly, just as I saw quite clearly, in the spirit. I knew where I was throughout the experience. There was such an intensity of light that it seemed as if the room would have been brilliant with it, if someone had entered. For some reason, I can recall few of the words that were spoken, but I remember the essence of what was said. I have decided to set this experience down in writing in the hope that in so doing I will be able to further recall and clarify the teaching.
What was said had to do with my feelings of responsibility, and my feelings of being alone in that responsibility. I have been more than willing to accept the responsibility that is mine by virtue of the gifts I have been given. I have a desire to be of service that goes to the very core of what I am. I have been willing to endure almost anything for the sake of that service. I have been willing to accept an immense responsibility, without an inkling of how I was to go about fulfilling that responsibility. I have just had to have faith that the means would either be provided or made clear in time.
Beyond that, I have done what I could see to do, taken each next step I could see to take. Only in the past two years, with the writing of what I am now call Passageways, had it begun to seem that, perhaps, I did have a message that could, somehow, serve to meet the need, to provide the service, and to fulfill the responsibility.
This seeming process of fulfillment had served to further intensify my feelings of solitary responsibility and the inevitable questioning of my worthiness and adequacy. As unworthy as I have felt, and as inadequate, I have had faith and have not ever asked to be relieved of the responsibility, which I have always regarded as a privilege and a blessing. I have sometimes wondered, however, if my persistent migraines might be a manifestation of feeling overwhelmed.
I have recognized, in recent years, a difficulty I have with accepting expressions of appreciation from others. I have been able to accept almost any kind of abuse, but not praise and appreciation. I have always wanted to answer with a “Yes, but ...” or some kind of self-deprecating remark. I know I have done this, in part, out of a fear of pride, but I have recognized that in so doing, in not accepting expressions of appreciation from others gracefully, I deny others a kind of satisfaction I understand very well—the satisfaction of offering such expressions.
All of this was somehow spoken to. I was somehow given to understand I am not alone and the work to be done is not to be done single-handed. I cannot say if I was given to understand I had been cutting myself off from my support or simply had not recognized its extent. Either way, the healing and the teaching I received was an experience of love and support and appreciation that was unlike anything I had ever known before.
My headache was gone, and I was left in an emotional state such that I could not think or speak of what I had just experienced without weeping. Cindy came in to check on me, and I recounted to her all of what I have just described, and discussed with her some of the surrounding issues I have made reference to.
Everything now seems to have to do with appreciation. The more I appreciate, the more I discover there is to appreciate, and it goes on and on. This experience may serve to underscore a dimension of appreciation that has to do with accepting or receiving I am just beginning to understand.
While we have been camping here in the Silverthorne area, one of the things my angels have said to me that has given me most pause, as I have endeavored to sort out the meanings of this experience, is this. They have said that the nature of my service is not to be so much one of doing, as one of being and becoming. I'm not sure what that means, but it has given me much to think about. I know loving is not something one does. It is a way one becomes. Perhaps my angels are saying that no exercise of powers is required, that many good things are brought to pass by the power of love, alone.
(8/14/1998)
I have been given to understand more of what I experienced with my healing. This understanding has clarified some things for me that have puzzled me about the experience. In so doing, however, I have come to regard it as even more remarkable. The male figures who came to me and surrounded me were not my angels. That is why they seemed so unlike my angels. Who they were and what they were, I am still sorting out. Suffice it to say I now regard them as divine personages—and the experience, as a visitation.
(8/16/1998)