A Battle Won

So, it was the summer of 1977. I was in my first home in Florida .
I had been praying and asking the LORD to speak to me as how I could serve HIM.  I was the Mother of two young boys which was a full time job and yet I wanted to do more, If I could.

I had been helping a young mother and her 3 children rehabilitate their lives and finally there was relief after a year, so I felt I was ready for what was next to come.

While speaking that day with Hilary, (the woman I was helping with her children) she shared, she had a sister that was pregnant from a one night stand a few months earlier with a co-worker, and was heading off to an abortion clinic the next day to terminate the baby. Hilary knew I didn't believe in abortions. 

When I heard of this I asked her to please let me speak to her sister before she went for the abortion! She said her sister was the sort of girl who was very head strong and she didn't think she would welcome me or my thoughts. I said OK, but just let me try, Please!

She called her sister, Jennifer, and said she had someone who had been helping her and her kids for the last year, and wondered if she would allow her friend "Teri" to talk to her. Jennifer said,

"no way, I don't need anybody or their pressures on me now at this time"!

She told Hilary she wanted to end the pregnancy and get on with her life. She said this was just a momentary set back, embarrassing and unwanted, it was just unfortunate and she was going to ask the "one night stand guy at work, Brian", to help with the money for the abortion. 

Hilary asked her to "just come and pick me up at Teri's" the next day so she could go with her to get the abortion. Hilary was still staying in my home at that time with her 3 children, so she gave Jennifer my address and said she would see her in the morning.
I was babysitting Hilary's girls for her as they went to the clinic together.

The next day when Jennifer arrived to pick up Hilary, Hilary waited for Jennifer to come to the door. I had asked her to do this so I could meet Jennifer and possibly speak with her.
I was committed to helping her change her mind about the abortion!

The plan worked, and Jennifer made her way to the front door.

I asked her in and told her Hilary was getting ready.

As I spoke to Jennifer alone, I felt the LORD say to me audibly and very clearly, "help her change her mind". With that I knew now what I needed to do. I spoke to Jennifer and told her that I was willing to pay for all hospital and doctor bills for the birth of this baby and also allow her to move into my home so I could help her save money to begin her new life once the baby was born, no strings attached, she could move on with her life, and keep all her money! I also told her I would fully support her, food, clothes and all as well as find a home for her baby if she did not want it.

Jennifer thanked me and said she didn't think so. I could see her tears, but she was determined to abort. She said she didn't want to be a mother! She had spoken to "Brian" and he was going to give her the money for the abortion. He agreed he didn't want anyone to know about the baby at work and he was willing to help her "deal with it".  He was meeting them at the clinic later to pay for the surgery.

With that, Jennifer and Hilary walked out the door and headed to the clinic.

I fell on my face before the LORD as soon as I closed the front door, and cried out to GOD! I said "LORD, hear me now! I did all I could for that child, everything humanly possible to save it, but I ask again to change her mind, just miraculously change her mind"! It was no small prayer"! I was shocked that as I cried out I felt this was a baby boy I was fighting for! Being the Mother of two young boys I could not bear the thought of murdering a baby boy!

I knew Jennifer was desperate, I understood her pain, but still I wanted to change her thinking. I was not judging her, I only wanted to save the life of this child!
 

That night, Jennifer and Hilary ended up back at my home. Jennifer had not had the abortion! She said my offer caused her to rethink the whole thing! She said someone at the clinic showed her what abortion looked like in a pamphlet, and it scared her!  So, she moved into my back bedroom in my small home and we were on! She had some Insurance from work we found she could utilize for a pregnancy. This was a huge blessing for me! I thought I was going to have to put a second mortgage on my home!  She remained with me for three months. Brian, "the one night stand" from work, began changing his mind about Jennifer the longer she was pregnant with his child and they actually started dating! That was a shock! Jennifer and I began praying together every day. He asked her to move into his apartment with him, and she gladly accepted this!

WOW, now she was 6 months pregnant, and there was talk of marriage! I was so blessed I could only shout "Thank GOD" over and over again. This was the MIRACLE I had hoped for!

The rest of the story is so beautiful, three months later Jennifer and Brian welcomed a new baby BOY, they named Bradley, into their lives. I still cry when I think of what might have happened to him!

I am so grateful, I went out on a limb for Bradley and GOD showed me PRAYER works!

There is so many more miraculous things that happened in this story but this is all I will share here.

Truth is stranger than fiction, and believe me,

Prayer does really work! 



The Flood

 

So, it was a very rainy summer here in Florida in 2015. I spent most of the 23 days of straight rain praying for it to stop. Wondering why it hadn't all along the way? After so many people had flooding and loss of finances through horrible conditions due to all the rain, my heart just broke.

Where were the answers? What was going on here?

The steady rain turned everyday people into victims!

 

The news was so hard to watch as picture after picture on the television showed what devastation came with rivers over flowing and sewer systems backing up due to the wet conditions.

Peoples cars no longer could get them to safety. The waters were much to deep. Roads were coming apart, pot holes were everywhere and driving was now unsafe! Kids couldn't get to school. Power was out in thousands of homes. Animals were having a hard time in the fields staying free from drowning. Fish were swimming on my front street. That was very strange indeed!

 It was starting to hit my neighborhood now just as it had the ones I had watched on T.V.  The over flowing rivers were causing such damage. With one more day of rain, I thought, we won't be getting out of this neighborhood at all without a boat and the house will flood for sure.

 Like so many others we will be prisoners of the rain!

I now understood very clearly how Mother nature had control of the state. After all, Florida is already a peninsular. I wondered if it was going to rearrange itself right here and now?

 

Day by day I watched the lake we live on (Park Lake) creep closer and closer to the back door. First the deck on the lake was covered with water, then the chairs were under water, then the table was under water, then the entire lawn disappeared from sight. The Fire pit in the back yard was under water. Fish were swimming feet from my back door, the turtles were laying in what small yard I had left. When was it going to end?

I threw myself on the floor and started to pray, Please GOD, help us NOW!

 

Then the reprieve came. The rain finally stopped!

23 total days here in Pasco county. It had taken it's toll. Why did this have to happen?

I wondered, Why had so many had to loose all they had to the deep waters of 23 days of straight rain?

 

The meteorologists said it was a freak thing. They hadn't seen this coming. It lasted far too long.

Why is it that when the weather acts this way we never really are prepared for it?

Pasco county found out way to late after the fact that nothing was handled well in the situation. We were ill prepared for this type of weather and NOW we would make many new changes for how to rethink how things should be handled, should we ever have to deal with this again in the future.

Our state was declared a state of emergency!

 

I wondered about the spiritual aspect of it all.

Is there a connection with the weather and the Powers that be?

Were we all being warned? Was it a wake up call? What were we to see spiritually from all this? 

I happen to believe all things are connected in this life!

 

Then I was reminded that we have been in an 8 year time of retrogrades and many negative things, teaching us lessons and coming to an end. It all started in 2008. And here we are now gearing up to the end of 2015, making way for the releases and the new hope of 2016! The year of completion.

Perhaps this was actually an ushering out of all the past? A flood of change was on the way. A beginning to a new day. A turn of celestial events!

Then It all made sense.

The universe truly does connect with us spiritually.   

What is to come is clearly now set to move forward. Old things have been cleansed from us, ways of thinking and living and being. (That is if we are awake to it.  Yes, it will happen anyway to all of us as we are all moving in the same direction here on the earth, but we do not all see clearly what is happening to us).  New understandings and spiritual growth are on the way to us.  2015 was beginning to be cleansed from us and 2016 was starting it's way to us. Like we were starting to shed 2015 like an old skin and prepare for the new skin that will take us into 2016.

It's a new day coming, a long awaited for, new day!

 

Now the rains made sense, it was as if we were seeing what was happening to us all in the spiritual realm. The flood had come and now the new would take shape.

The forecasted influences of the spiritual world we live in but cannot see with our naked eye were making itself known to us. But we had to understand this. This is what is always happening right under our noses and yet if we are not in tune, we do not see.

GOD never leaves us clueless, HE just asks us to pay attention. To ask, seek and knock.

To be in touch with our inner reality.

 

So as I contemplate all this before me in this life, the life I have been chosen to live, I now see why we go through things we cant control. It's just not all about us individually. It's about all of us as humans and what we walk through while we are here in the land of the living!

 

Floods will always bring fresh new ground. It's their nature.

Change is always hard, but I do welcome it.

 Goodbye 2015.

Hello 2016, the year of completions.

What might lie ahead?

 

 

 

The White Light

It was 1973. I had just given birth to my first son. I was just 21 years old. I was having a bit of difficulty after his birth. I kept feeling faint. A few days after I brought my son home I felt very dizzy. I called the doctors office and asked them if they could see me. They said , "yes" come right in. I went to the hospital as this is where the doctors office was located at that time, and I went in and sat down waiting my turn.

 

It was all I could do to stay sitting up. My body wanted to lay down. I was very weak. I felt myself swaying, as if I were going to faint again. I remember the lightheadedness coming and going and I said to the receptionist, "I think I need to lay down". She took one look at me and went to get a wheelchair.

The next thing I remember I was in a hospital bed. I thought this would be an easy in and out kind of thing at the doctors office, I could not have been more wrong. I was being admitted for tests, I was as white as a sheet and very frail.  I couldn't imagine what was going on with me.  As the test came back, the doctor said there was nothing clear going on, some of my levels were questionable, he could not be sure what was happening to me, so I would have to stay for observation. I explained I had just given birth to a baby boy and I needed to get home to him. The Doctor told me if we couldn't find out what was going on with the fainting, I may be delayed a few days until we could pin point the problem. He said he felt this was very serious.

Truth was I was so weak I could hardly hold my son for any length of time. My stomach was in knots and I felt so horrible and always like fainting. I agreed to stay. My Mother encouraged me to stay as well and get the much needed rest my body needed.

 

I was tortured with a colonoscopy, IV drip, blood work, X-rays a catheter  and you name it.

All the while, the drip I was getting in my arm was actually getting very sore and aggravating after two days.

I transitioned from a happy patient looking for answers to a "let me out of here patient"! The Doctor and staff however were hearing none of that.

I was in their care and I could not leave until we got to the bottom of this. With every test came a  reply from the Doctor,

"I just can't figure out what is causing this"! You are having all these problems clearly, but I just don't know why!

 

I must say, I did enjoy sleeping and being cared for, I was so weak I could barely do anything on my own.  It was almost all I could do to stay awake.

My stomach stopped hurting after I slept a bit, That was a plus.

 

That night I lay in bed wondering if I was ever going to get out of that hospital. There was still no diagnoses and I was missing my son terribly! The nurse came in to take my blood pressure and draw blood, get my temperature and so on. She turned to leave the room and she gathered her things, shut off the lights and shut the door. I called out to her and asked her to please leave the door open to let a little light in. She told me to just get to sleep! She left the door just slightly ajar. I could not get up to open it more. I was attached to a line going in my arm and I was afraid I might get dizzy and fall if I got up.

 

Immediately I started feeling very strange, almost afraid as I lay there in the dimly lit, large private room.

 

And then, all of a sudden a huge white floating light came right through the door and was making it's way towards me. I tried to reach for the call button in my fear but I couldn't find it!

The light was silent, no sound at all coming from it as it got closer and closer to me. It lit the room up a bit, but not totally. It was controlled somehow coming slowly towards me. It looked like it was a wheel in a wheel with a bright white light on the outside about two inches thick and a lesser light in the center, It was just radiating softly as it approached me!  I didn't say a word as I stared at it. I felt under it's control somehow. It came and literally hovered right over my bed! It was so warm and the love I felt, the peace I felt were radiating from it somehow. I felt as if it were communicating something to me.  I wasn't sure what I was hearing or seeing, I had never seen anything like this before! It was beautiful, but I was shocked! I was in a panic of sorts. It was right over my abdomen right where the pains were, for about one minute it hovered there. I watched it intently but could see nothing known to me from this world in that light! Then it simply disappeared right before my very eyes! Gone!

 

The room went back to dark, I scurried around my blanket to find the call button. I must have hit it 5 times. A very angry nurse came in and asked me "What do you want, you need to get to sleep"!

She was so cruel! She turned to leave.

I asked her to please open the door a bit more! She denied my request again, but left the door a tad more open then the first time. Just seeing and talking with someone in that very large room comforted me for a moment. Even if she was cruel. It was comforting! It was like I felt a bit safer seeing someone even if it was only for a minute.  I simply could not allow myself to tell her what had just taken place. I feared they would shoot me up with something for hallucinations!

This was no hallucination!

How I got to sleep that night I will never know!

 

Through the night the nurse came in and took blood work and did my blood pressure and temperature. The doctor came in to see me the next morning and had ordered another round of tests. He asked me how I felt? I said much better actually.

He said you look much better Teri.

I actually felt very normal!

I took that as a compliment as I had looked so pale and sullen for a week. I asked him when I could go home? He said he was keeping me for a few more tests and we would discuss it when they came back. I agreed. That afternoon the doctor came into my room again holding my chart and said, How would you like to go home? I almost started crying! He said I don't know what happened here over night but all your levels are excellent and your doing very well all of a sudden.

 

I never shared with any of the nursing staff what had happened. I never discussed it with the doctor either.

Something was odd for two weeks after my first son was born.

Perhaps it was related to his birth? He was after all a child named by GOD himself. I will never understand this experience on this side of the veil. But I will be asking many questions when I'm finally on that other side!

Some things we just down understand here, but I know everything happens for a reason. All the reasons are for lessons. I learned to trust that I am cared for in ways I will not understand in the here and now. I am so very grateful for my care, I know I am loved!

 

Named By GOD

So, It was early 1975 and  I had just laid down to go to bed. I was 5 months pregnant at that time and very worn out from a full day of running after my two year old son Jason. I went to bed that night and fell into a very deep sleep. Some time in the middle of the night I heard a male voice call my name. I woke up immediately and saw standing in front of me a bright light that encircled an Angel and I heard the voice from the light say to me, "you will have a son, name him Joshua". I was amazed at what I beheld. That was all he said to me.  I didn't bother talking back to the angel in the light. I stared at him and somehow knew I was not to respond.  The voice was sure and steady, strong and kind. It wasn't asking me for my input. The decree spoken to me was not up for discussion. The voice was convincing. It was beyond wonderful seeing this amazing sight before me. I was thinking to myself, "O.K. he will be named Joshua". And that was the end of the conversation.

With that the Angel simply disappeared right before my eyes.

I felt wonderfully comforted, loved and safe.

I laid back down and somehow fell fast asleep again.

 

I woke up the next day and proclaimed to my husband, we're having a boy, his name will be Joshua! My husband gave me a strange look and said, really. I wanted to call him Benjamin and I said well, he already has a name, his name is Joshua. My husband just shook his head and said "why can't we name Allen after my middle name and I said alright, he will be Joshua Allen". 

You see, my husband wasn't going to argue much with me as this was the second time this voice and shimmering Angel had come to me this way. 

Just two years earlier at exactly the same time in my first pregnancy, the same Angel with the same voice made this proclamation to me.

The only difference was that the first time the Angel spoke to me, he said to me "you will have a son, name him Jason" Which is exactly what I did after arm wrestling my husband about naming him Jason. It was hard to convince my husband to do this, but ultimately Jason was accepted.

 

Funny thing is after the fact and many years later actually, it occurred to me that I never had to choose the names for my son's. The names were predestined and chosen for me and them. 

 

In the 70's there were no sonograms that I knew of. You got pregnant and you waited nine months to find out what you were going to have. There was no way to know the sex of your baby. All women were encouraged to be "knocked out" for the arrival or have a C-section for delivery ease and planning.  The moment the Angels decree was spoken to me I had decided I would have a natural child birth so I could watch this miracle child be born. I wanted to be the first to see if the Angel spoke the truth or not. So I travelled to hospitals that would allow this type of delivery. I had told the Doctors with each child I was having a son and his name Jason or his name was Joshua. I really spooked the Doctors with my story, but after all. It was true.

 

The picture above is Joshua. Today is his Birthday. He was born just as the Angel said he would be, as was his brother Jason. You know, we never know what GOD will do. But this is for sure. I love my son's with all my heart and I am so grateful for their

preordained names and announcements to this day.

They are my gift from GOD!

 

~Happy Birthday Joshua~