This is going to be long and at times unbelievable but it's also a story of how I came to Christ:
Most of my experience with spiritual world happens when I'm in a state of dreaming or about to wake up/fall asleep. It started back in the summer of 2007. I was 21 and pretty directionless, didn't know what I was going to do. I had given up on God. Actually I had told him I didn't want him in my life anymore very hatefully I just cut God out of my life. I felt so much anger towards him for how much disappointment and pain I had gone through at an early age.
I had a dream where a voice said "California here I come, right back where I started from" I lived in Minnesota at the time.
I brushed it off as a weird dream at the time but two months later I met a man online from SF bay area. He was about 21 years older than me but we "fell in love" I'm not being cynical about our relationship. It's just that my definition of love has changed so much over the years. Looking back at who we were then and what we evolved in to breaks my heart.
We were both so emotional and overly sentimental and made terrible choices together. I was having problems with friends and family and life in general so I ran away to be with him. In between all of this I'm having these dreams about aliens.
Mostly Greys and Reptilians. Negative dreams where I'm being hurt, isolated and punished. But I have other dreams where I'm being told important life lessons or being shown worlds I have never seen before. For example right before I got together with my ex the aliens told me that my ex and I were meant to balance each other out. He needed my warmth and I needed his coolness.
We approached people and relationships so differently. I accepted everyone and everything but had no self esteem. My ex who I will refer to as X from here on out (he would have loved this) ran roughshod over me. He really couldn't accept who I was or my brand of love. His work was reforming me.
I sacrificed a lot for him over the years. Friends, family, all of my income went to him as he could not work. I paid his child support. I received very little in the way of affection from him. We shared a mutual hatred of his ex and decided to cast a curse on her. He justified it saying she was a destructive parasite. I couldn't stand the parts of me that I saw in her so I just went a long with it all. I wanted to make him happy but deep down I thought it was wrong. I was still very estranged from God at this point.
He was far from perfect but so was I. It may seem like I'm painting myself as a victim but I had my own issues. A really horrible inability to see outside my own tunnel vision which I am now working on and also I was physically violent towards him at times when provoked which I have definitely reformed. (Abusers can change!)
So after I set this curse with him I had the worst nightmares of my life. They were terrifying at first. Dreams where I died over and over again in really horrific ways, dreams that mocked me, dreams where I was being cast in to darkness. I gave birth to my first child at age 23. We were renting out a small dusty room in an old ladies house. Struggling to put together what we could for our first born son's arrival. I was so stressed out and working full time and worried...constantly frightened.
I began to accept all the pain life was throwing at me: the darkness, homelessness, poverty, stress and frustration in my relationship and eventually I had to do one of the hardest things I've ever done which was give up my children for adoption. Yes that's right, I went and had two children with this man.
Once I accepted the pain my nightmares became more instructional in nature. Harsh still at times, but not so destructive. I learned about how beautiful life can be when we focus on the little things. It's not those high peak moments life consists of but those tiny moments like when my son was practicing a song I just taught him in his favorite closet. Even though I was unhappy with my marriage over all we still had unique bonding moments. We shared many common interests, bonded together over hard ship. I became very close to him emotionally. He became very important to me. I saw him less as a symbol of the status I had wanted (being a grown up) and more as a human being.
And I began to have dreams that there was a way out of this pain. Hope. That life could begin again. This dream started it all:
[Looking through a hole in a door I saw an eye that looked demonic and brutal. It stared right back at me and I felt a terror I had never felt before. I began to fall again for the millionth time into the abyss. But I was holding on to the edge of the cliff and a hand reached out offering help. I wanted to grab it but it seemed like the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. I finally managed to grab it and found myself on the back of a lion with wings who flew me across the darkness]
I woke up with so much hope. I was living in a van in the middle of winter at the time. But I never forgot that dream. Nor the other dreams of me dying and being reborn and living positively. Dreams of meeting someone who loved me for me and having fun and exciting times with this person. Dreams of X dying and me in tears saying I wouldn't know what to do without him. He had become a bit of a mother to me. I relied on him for all emotional support. Financially he couldn't really do much but he was a really great listener and sometimes offered a unique perspective on things that I hadn't considered.
X was very anti christianity and religion although he did seem to agree with eastern ways of thinking so I explored with buddhism and the occult but it mostly made me feel frustrated because there was sooo much work and background knowledge that would take years to figure out on top of the psychological aspect.
Those dreams of him dying started to get to me. I started to become frightened he would actually die. He got the worst nose bleeds and headaches and cancer ran in his family. When I saw him in pain I would sob and pray. Pray to God for a way out of this nightmare. I saw him suffer a lot of rejection from random strangers. I believe he was a kind person at heart. He began to warm up towards others at the end of our relationship. I began to have a little more self-respect. I didn't throw myself at everyone's feet that I met. The alien prediction seemed to be coming true.
But there was no love between us. A great deal of respect. That's what he told me at the end. He had never loved me but respected me because I never let pain keep me down. I would get back up with a smile on my face and try again.
I demanded he leave at the end. The financial burden, his past cruelty, his inability to show any affection towards me. It was just too much. It hurt more than anything I had ever done. This was the pain I did not bounce back so easily from.
In a weird way it got me thinking about Jesus. How he sacrificed his life for us. X went out into the world homeless with only 800$ to get away from my hurt and anger. But what he was doing was also giving me a shot at life. A life with less burden and pain. It was a huge sacrifice.
I saw the whole thing as really symbolic and it drew me closer to Christ. The pain and suffering he endured was beyond what I could imagine and yet he never ever let that change who he was. It helped me understand Christ in a way I couldn't have as a 21 year old who had never really experienced anything but frustration at not getting her way. It made me fall in love with Him. Cautiously I made my way back to church. Things seemed a lot more clear there than the world I had been accustomed to living in. I would walk out feeling healed. My life has gotten much better now. I'm working at a place I love with people I like. That was not the case before. I have all the affection I can handle with my current bf and he goes above and beyond to make sure we can afford to live in our apartment, eat well, etc...
I still get frightened, still have nightmares. But when I pray they go away. Because of my experiences I KNOW God is real and have a better understanding of the nature of Christ. I have a better understanding of why forgiveness is so important for healing.
It was the hardest time of my life but that understanding is the most precious thing I possess and I would not trade it for anything.
If you read this far then I want to say thank you and wow.