Through a series of events that had taken place in my life, at an early age I was left struggling with the fact of not knowing how I would be able to show the love and affection that had somehow become distorted in my life.
It was early 1983 when I was out in the back yard watering and running a number of things through my mind. I would converse with God on a regular basis, even before I had experienced Jesus coming into my heart. I was talking to God about my childhood and how I had struggled since then with not being able to show a great deal of love and affection. However, this was strictly in relationship to the raising of my children. Even though I had an easy time showing love an affection to Elena who was our first child, I had often wondered how it would be if God were to give me a boy.
So as I continued my conversation with the Lord, I remember saying... " Lord, please don't give me a boy because I won't know how to love him." I then heard... "you'll learn." How soft and gentle that voice was and how at peace I was with that response. I have carried that with me for 20 years just as if it were yesterday. To this day, that voice is still fresh in my mind and I am constantly making an effort to give the love and affection that my children deserve. They are all such a blessing to me!
However, as we know, sometimes the process that God is bringing us through takes more time than we would like it to. I still struggled to a degree and when my son Matthew was 15 months old, I remember laying on my bed one night at around 1:30 a.m. not being able to sleep. Stirring inside me were memories while struggling with feelings of inadequacy, wondering if I was doing a good enough job loving my children. It was at that point that I had noticed something out of the corner of my eye but didn't pay much attention to it. There it was again, only this time much stronger, and it kept getting stronger and stronger as the seconds rolled by. I finally decided to look! To my surprise, there was a soft light appearing between the two windows resembling the face of Christ as described in the book of Revelations with hair like wool. I quickly looked away thinking... "what was that?" I had not yet read the specific chapter describing this face in the book of Revelations but without knowing it, I would end up reading it shortly after having had this experience.
O boy, what was I in for now. Well, I looked over again and then looked away, rubbed my eyes, looked into the darkness and then looked back at the light that was still between the windows. It was at that point that I heard... "go in and see your son Matthew" WOW!!! So I got up off the bed and while very cautiously hugging the edge of it with my legs, I made my way out of the room and into the back hallway only to find... yes, another light! By now, I had no choice other than to obey the voice I had heard.
As I made my way out of the bedroom into the back hallway, I noticed a soft light radiating from my son, Matthew's bedroom. I then entered his bedroom very slowly thinking... "what's going on!" I continued on and then found myself in front of his crib starring at this beautiful canopy of light which remained stationary over his crib. It was so beautiful, kind of like mist dropping down upon his bed and just as I became entranced by this whole thing, Matthew jumps up in front of me, comes back down and his hands are now firmly resting on mine on the top of the crib door. At that, he lets out a sound of laughter I had never heard out of him before. I soon laid Matthew back down in his crib, gave his back a couple of strokes and he immediately fell back to sleep. I then went back and laid down on my bed and knew that I had had an experience with Lord.
At that moment, something inside me changed! I was able to see things in a different way, God had revealed something to me about myself. I saw all those years of what I had gone through as being a closed chapter in my life. But the hardest work was yet to come! I had to allow the Lord to continue His work in me so that I could now be healed and become to those around me the earthly father that He had called me to be.
"I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me." Psalm 120:1