MY ENCOUNTER

As I mentioned yesterday, I had begun to explore the venue of prayer as a means of communicating with God, Whom I now believe existed. The first area in which I saw an answer was in my effort to quit smoking.

For years I had tried to quit to no avail. I had even smoked during my three pregnancies, although I did cut back. I can still remember the wonderful taste of coffee (which had tasted awful during the nine months) and a cigarette after giving birth. And yes, I smoked even though I breast fed all three of my babies. I hated myself for being so controlled by a drug, but I couldn’t seem to break the power it had over me. So I was very willing to pray about this with my pastor.

I quit cold turkey, suffered physical withdrawals for about a week, all the time praying that this time I would be successful. And the good news is that I was able to kick the habit, although I must say that I miss it to this day. Cigarettes were my good friend and now they were gone out of my life.

When I saw an actual answer to prayer, my tiny little mustard seed of faith began to grow, and prayer in bed at night became a ritual before I fell asleep. I had begun to “feel” something when I prayed -- an elation, a peace, I’m not sure what to call it – actually, a warm fuzzy feeling is pretty accurate. So each night I fell asleep praying for family members, friends, etc.

On November 18, 1970, I was following my routine of prayer, when an amazing incident occurred. When I describe the next few seconds (minutes?), I will relate it one thing at a time, but everything occurred simultaneously. I was as usual experiencing the warm fuzzies, but suddenly that feeling intensified and spread over my entire body. I immediately became aware of the fact that there was a “Presence” at the foot of the bed and I had the impression of “white.” (White robe? White light? I don’t know.) And the last impression was that the word JESUS was stamped (seared) into my mind across my forehead. As I said, this all happened at the same time.

My initial reaction was FEAR – a lot of it. What in the world had just happened? But as I mulled it over, my fear was replaced by a strange peace and amazingly, I drifted off to sleep. But my life had been changed forever; I would never be the same again.

To be continued.