With HOPE, Everything Changes

THE BEGINNING

Soul Memory….

I am inside the womb of my mother’s belly.  She always said to me that I made the shape of a football. My fetus is roughly at 6 or7 months gestation. It is dark and watery.

The world outside is tumultuous.  My soul can sense it. It can feel it, and it can see all that is happening all around her.   Wherever my mother is, so too am I.  Whatever she is feeling, so too am I.  Whatever my father and siblings are feeling, so too am I. 

There is no feeling of safety.  There are only conflict, anger, resentment, pain, and sadness.  My Soul and fetal body absorb everything.  Inside the womb, I am swirling wildly, symbolically no umbilical cord to keep me attached and grounded in what should be a feeling of love and connection.  There should be a feeling of being grounded and calm as I begin this new life, but there is not.

We are inside the house my father built on what was once my Great Grandfather’s land overlooking the Puget Sound. Mount Tahoma/Rainier can be seen in the distance across the water.  It is beautiful, calm and serene.  But inside the home, this scene changes into one of chaos, conflict and unrest. 

The three of us are in the living room, my father, my mother with me inside the womb.  I can feel the tension all around.  Through the unseen and opaque veil, I see the daily newspapers and the laundry unkept in the living room. I can see the greying clouds outside the large picture window looking out across the backyard towards the water.  My father expects my mother to keep house “perfectly” just as his father expected of my grandmother; and to remain at home to raise the children.  However, my mother had more aspirations than this.  She was more independent in nature.  We are living in the mid-1960’s.  The world is no longer the same as when my parents met who were married in 1954. My soul, my fetal body absorb the emotions of the day…. every day.

Early days in the lives of my parents….

Old pain rises in each of my parents from their own early years, and from dreams laid aside for what life had in store for them instead.  Choices made.  Some choices made for them.  Old unresolved pain and sorrow embedded in my parent’s marriage from early on, losing three children after their first-born son who too had a rough beginning, living in an incubator for his first 5 weeks of life. My grandparents couldn't even see him until he was brought home. Things were different in the 1950's.  The other two babies lay in graves next to my father’s parents in the Mid-West. The third, lost to miscarriage while still forming inside the womb.  No grave for it. Not even inked footprints stamped on paper nor cards of condolence left behind like for the other two, only loss and sadness. All of this in their first 5 years of marriage.  A lot to bear. And then, another child is born two years later. 

With a 7 and a one-year-old, my parents made the decision to move across the country from the Mid-West to Washington State to live on what was left of my Great Grandfather’s land.  This, after the death of my father’s father.  Many hardships and struggles were to come as they tried to gain traction in a new life and home in the woods, starting with basically nothing.  Two more children are born, including myself, the final one.  My mom was pregnant seven times.  I, the only girl.

By the time I made my entry into the world, my father was well entrenched in his alcoholism, in his pain of many layers. My mother is struggling to raise 4 children with a husband who also becomes violent, striking my her at various times. Times were different.  The authorities, the few times they were called, only made their reports, nothing more.  She couldn’t “just leave.”  Not yet.  She had to be prepared, especially with the children in tow. But she is not without her own marks into the marriage. It takes two. Neither were living whole from within.

Teetering with life

At 4 months and again at 15 months, I was stricken with viral pneumonia and “regular” pneumonia, respectively.  From the beginning, my body was already having difficulty.  I was not thriving.  I had a difficult time gaining weight. I could not tolerate the infant formulas available.  I was not attaching properly when being breastfed.  At 4 months old with viral pneumonia, my temperature shot up to the dangerous level of 106 degrees.  In the hospital, I had to be fed through the veins for my nourishment, and I was given shots of gamma globin to improve my immune system. 

At 15 months old, my family traveled on the train that Christmas Holiday season to be with family in the Mid-West.  I became ill with pneumonia again.  While I did recover from both of these illnesses, I highlight these two events as they are instrumental to my Spiritual Journey to come.

While I can’t say that I “remember” each of these events like I recall in detail other childhood memories, what I can say is that as a very young child, barely in school, I was very aware of the fact that I could have died during both of these illnesses described.  I was very aware of the scars left on my right arm from where the needles penetrated my baby skin to be fed through the veins.  I was very aware that I had had not one, but two brushes with potential death, yet here I was, still alive.

What I know to be true and was aware of as that small child, is that while I was sick as an infant, my soul was having second thoughts on whether it was going to remain on this earth and in this body, it entered into.  My soul was having trouble with the shaken environment it was born into.  My soul was having trouble knowing that many hardships and challenges still lay ahead. My soul didn’t know if it could or wanted to continue.  Thus, my body responded first by not thriving, then becoming sick with pneumonia…twice before the age of 2 years old. 

Choosing Life

The memory and the awareness carried forward from infant to young child and has remained with me ever since.  Now I would say, my experience may be similar to what some people share as a Near Death Experience (NDE).  While so ill, while I lay in my hospital bed, tubes attached, the Divine Presence (God) and Its Angels came to me.  They came to remind me of my soul purpose, to remind me of its importance and the necessity of living through all of the troubled experiences that awaited me.  That this life lived would not be in vain, that I was not to be forsaken.  It was important that I live and live out my destiny. My soul chose to remain and continue to live out this life.

HOPE

However, in order to do so, in order to keep me grounded in my Soul Purpose and its intended Path, the aspect of HOPE was given and deeply instilled in me, my Mind, Body and Soul.  Instilled as life-giving blood and oxygen running through my veins. If not for this, surely my life would have perished long ago, whether physically or in a life unfulfilled and destitute with no direction, no path and purpose to follow and live for.  I would have gained no understanding of why things had to be as it was written in the stars.  I was SAVED through HOPE and the horizon view into my life given.

HOPE guided and propelled me forward each day of my childhood; and it has continued to do the same all through my life.  In a life with so much chaos and destruction, HOPE has been a steady arm to lean on and the only thing I have truly been able to rely on.  HOPE has NEVER forsaken me.  It ensures that all I have experienced has not been in vain. 

In addition to HOPE, a small slit was made through the veil of consciousness.  This opening allowed for the continuation of connection and awareness with the Divine Presence (God) and my Guardian Angels.  There was placed a RAY OF LIGHT, a Light Beam in which to follow like the North Star to keep me on my destined PATH.  All of this has been my life saver, truly. 

I was not to walk the earth without the LIGHT shining down and through me.  The Divine Presence (God) is the foundation for my soul to grow and expand while living in the body, in this life.   For the body presence my soul chose to live through, the Divine Presence has been its survival always as it has climbed numerous and difficult mountains. 

I AM NOT FORSAKEN.  HOPE GUARANTEES THIS.