Born Again: A Journey from Daughter of the Kingdom to Sacred Feminine Goddess, Part 5

Read Part 4 here.

What unfolded that Sunday morning was nothing short of Divine Intercession. Intervention. Whichever. It had to be. Anything less would have failed to get my attention. Anything less would have left me stuck fighting an unwinable battle.

The morning began quite normally. We scrambled around the house getting ready as we had done so many times before. My resolve was firm. No one would run me away from my faith heritage, the church of my childhood.

No HUMAN, that is.

We arrived in the parking lot and bailed out like ten clowns from a Volkswagen Beetle who had just arrived at the circus. The girls piled out and headed into Bible class. My hubby and I got out, grabbed the food for “potluck”, and locked the doors. As we made our way into the building, my sweet man carried the dish of food into the fellowship hall area to warm until after services.

I began greeting people with a smile. It had been a few weeks since we were last at church due to the rigorous playing schedule of my daughter’s traveling volleyball team.

Then it began.

Mr. “Smith” gave me a big hug. There was nothing unusual about him giving me a hug. Yet this time, something happened in that hug, because before I could pull away and move on, I was overcome with emotion. It was the kind of emotion that results very quickly in the heaving, sobbing flood of tears and gasping for air.

I made my way to the restroom less visited in the back of the building. Struggling to regain my composure so I could go to class, I did the usual stuff: blew my nose, got a drink, took deep breaths, …..and then cried some more. What was wrong with me? I couldn’t stop the tears. They came in wave after wave. I knew I was a fairly emotional person, but I usually kept it in check. How could a simple hug have had such an effect on me?

After spending the entire class period in the restroom with Kleenex as my best friend, I  managed to calm my nervous system enough to allow me to make my way in to the auditorium. We had a job to do. While pianos and guitars were completely unacceptable in a worship service, Power Point had become a preacher’s new best friend. It was my job to advance the slides from the second row, front and center. Thankfully, only the person leading the service could see my face and swollen eyes. All others were relegated to a view of the back of my head.

The service started smoothly. I hit the advance button on the slides. My emotions were still running rampant. The songs hit me like a brick and sealed up my airways so that no sound would come out of my throat. Next came communion. I had carefully selected the best images to turn our thoughts toward the cross. Illuminated cloud configurations, sunsets behind crosses, mountain images with an inspirational quote, and more splashed across the big screen at the front of the auditorium.

It was about that time that I started to notice my vision behaving in a weird, but all too familiar way. I had experienced migraines occasionally since the time I was pregnant with my oldest. They almost always started in one of two ways: Numbness in my fingers that progressed up my arms, or loss of straight on vision. As I looked up at the slides I was advancing, I realized I could not see them.

My direct, straight-on vision was gone.

All I could think about was how I only had a limited amount of time to get home before I would become a babbling lunatic. The migraine symptoms I had always experienced included inability to make a coherent sentence, the stroke-like numbness, and many other unpredictable, but somewhat scary effects. A migraine meant 24 hours in bed, and another 24 to 48 hours of post migraine hangover. That’s how it ALWAYS went down.

I whispered to my man that I was “goin’ down”. We made it through the service with me switching slides mostly with my eyes closed. The weirdness of screwy vision was more than my stomach could handle. As we got ready to leave, I clung to his arm while he led me out the doors of the building to the car. The girls stayed for lunch with friends and grandparents, but I was headed home to nurse the nightmare with sleep and drugs.

The trip was short. Only three blocks from door to door. My eyes remained closed the entire way. As soon as I felt the car roll to a stop in the driveway, I felt for my purse and Bible, gathered them up, and attempted to find my way to the door of the house.

Then I opened my eyes.

Like the blind beggar who had just washed the muddy spit goo off of his eyes, I could see.

I COULD SEE!

Never in all my migraine experiences had something started with these same symptoms and then so randomly and quickly stopped. It didn’t happen. Every single time found me relegated to a fitful, painful sleep and even major drugs on occasion.

Not this time. This time, the only thing that was needed was for me to leave…

…walk away and never look back.

Part 6