English: Grave stone, Low Alwinton 781028

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It took me 45 years to find the Crystal Room.  These years were filled with struggle, pain, conflict, but most of all, preparation and practice for my real life which I now lead.  I was born the second daughter.    My brother, who was born after me, had a congenital heart defect and mental retardation.  My family and I spent my childhood waiting for him to die as the doctors kept predicting.  He lived 27 years past their original deadline and proved that God is the only one with the power over life and death.  He taught me more of God’s love than any other human being.  He was my heart.  My baby brother and I are all that is now left of my family.  Death or mental illness has claimed the rest.  We used to stretch across two long church pews.  Now we are four.  The path of heartache is worn bare.

Although I had been given an indomitable spirit, my life was smothered with dark depression.  Abuse suffered in  my early years had bred in me a perseverance despite all obstacles out of fear of retribution.  God does only give good gifts because I would either be dead today or confined permanently to a wheelchair without this quality.  A car accident in my early 20’s left me with much undiagnosed and untreated skeletal, muscular and nerve damage that never healed correctly.  A fall eight years ago finished the job, leaving me bedridden.  Chronic, overwhelming pain became my intimate partner.  It robbed myself, my children, my family and friends of not only my life, but my person.  Pain changes who you are.  Pain that never goes away.  Pain that you are told will never get better.  And then there are the medications.  They are to bear the pain.  Then there are side effects to the medication.  And there is more medication to deal with the side efffects.  At one point I was taking 27 different prescriptions written by twelve different specialists.   I reached a listless point where I became too sick and too depressed to even watch TV.  My children fixed their own meals because I seldom left my bedroom.  The wondrous people from my church kept us together, housed, fed and loved.  Covered with their prayers, the children and I survived.  But my marriage did not.

A person in a wheelchair icon

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Various pills

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A life of unceasing pain.  No job.  Hardly any socialization.  Depression.  Failed marriage.  Failed motherhood.  Failed life.  A failed gastric bypass and weight that loomed at the highest point around 380 pounds.  I was caged inside my body as effectively as any prison made by man. I had lost my  ability or interest in anything that really made my life worthwhile.  Except my children.  I loved them fiercely and knew they needed me.  After seven frustrating years of waiting for western medical science to help me I had almost given up.  But I couldn’t just quit on my beautiful daughters.  They deserved better, so much better.  I looked at my life and something inside me rose up, rebelled.  “This is not going to be my life, ”  I thought.  My decision was a catalyst for an adventure which was to regenerate every aspect of my existence.  I began to look east.  I began to search back in time through history.  I began a study of metaphysics, alternative medicine, and world religions.  My fear of burning in hell was outweighed by three things:  my love for my children, my refusal to accept my present reality, and a voracious hunger for truth.  I also had developed through the fire of my pain a total committment to the belief that I rested in the palm of God’s hand, not because I stayed there, but because the Lord’s love for me would never, ever let me go.  Trusting Him to keep me safe and never lose me, I prayed for God to take me home to heaven before I would ever do anything that might separate me from Him, and I stepped through the door of the unknown.

English: Djana leads Tibetam Nadabrahma Meditation

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This will be a continuing post.  Thank you for reading.  Next  excerpt coming soon.
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