Just some things...

[Kol]

So did anyone that's here now read my last little story about the occult and Sara & Kaitlin and the spirit guide and all?

I'm going to start school in August (if I can only straighten out my loan info) and from there it all becomes real. (If that makes sense.) I am going to go into the ministry, most likely as a missionary evangelist. That's an awful lot on my shoulders, at least to me it is. Those guys really have it tough. I have a lot of different feelings about it, but it's something I've felt sure about since I was 15. I just didn't know when it would be the right time. Well, that time is now.

But a lot of borderline stuff has happened to me. My first memory of life is an out-of-body experience. It goes from there. After having escaped from everything dark and nasty, I mostly just want to stay away. But another part of me knows that I have the potential to help a lot of people who've fallen into the same trap I once did. I know this because I come across them every week in different areas of this very site.

I've been in contact with a Christian demonologist in Minnesota, and I've read a few things about some other people as well. I'm not so sure spiritual warfare is the main focus of what the Lord would have me do, but it is certainly a part of it.

I enjoyed telling that last story, and I know it was a big cheer for at least one guy. So I hope you guys will listen when I post, and keep your mind open, even if you don't see things the same way I did.

Peace, guys!

Edit: Kol: 10578

 

[plum]

I hope school works out for you and that God shows you the path He has for you even more clearly

 

[PeculiarTreasure]

Good luck with school Kol. I'm heading back in August too. I know God is gonna bless whatever it is you do!

 

[Kol]

Well, everyone get out the popcorn and soda, because I'm gonna pick up where my last story left off.

Here's the link to my last little caper: http://www.christianforums.com/t5103005

Please remember not to post in it!

I'll post when I can...

 

[Kol]

...and so I told the story of how I had once been a student of the occult, flirting with wicca, reading the tarot, and looking for hope in New Age. I left home the oldest child of an alcoholic mother, raised mostly by my grandparents, and while my brother started a family and my cousins moved out on their own, I was not at ease. The things inside still bothered me. I always felt like an outcast, too quiet and too much a loner, and the things that came so easily for others always seemed to be beyond me. I had been into spiritism since I was 13, searching for something outside of the world to believe in..but none of it ever gave me the "great final answer", it only strung me along. I left home to set out on my own, but things did not go the way I wanted them to, and my plans backfired on me. Finally, give out and miserable, I began to listen to a friend of mine who visited me to preach the Word of God. And so I became a Christian, sought out the Lord with all I had to give, and started everything over the best I could, leaving Satan's "so-called deep secrets" behind.

After a year out of my old ways, I thought my life had become normal, and that I'd left the crystals, the runes, and the spirit guides all behind.

The year after I was baptized, I took a trip to visit my church in Arkansas. On my way there, I had a daydream where I saw some sort of "alien" spirit. The next night my grasp of reality was broken into pieces; I remember leaving my body and traveling to meet with angels in some kind of heavenly city. The experience was so real, it made me believe in this reality less. For a while I couldn't eat, sleep, or even think, feeling so strongly that the world was an illusion.

As I became acclimated to this life again, I prayed for these things to go away with all my heart and patience.

The next three years passed quickly, and I became more and more grounded in both the Word of God and in the love of Christ Jesus. I grew as a Christian more than I'd ever thought possible. I changed my clothes, my music, and the things I believed in, all to suit the new nature and the Spirit of Christ now within me.

But I had nightmares on a constant basis.

As time went on, my life became more normal, and I fell in love with a girl named Sara. Even though I cared so much about her, she left for college and I was pushed to the side. Hurt beyond words, I found myself trying to alleviate this pain with another girl, a girl named Kaitlin.

My relationship with Kaitlin never spawned. We talked, but only about the more earthly things. I found myself moving out of my Christian dreams and into a choice of immorality with this girl.

At which point I once again had daydreams and angels.

Out of all these new things, the one I held on to most was the certainty that I was being fought against by an evil spirit. Kaitlin was being used as a trap, a trick to catch me and cause me to sin against my new nature and what I'd become. I used every trick I'd ever learned to fight myself. Despite this, the battle was too much for me and I found I could not win. Finally, having nothing left to struggle with, I begged God to help me, crying on the floor for Him to get me out of the problems I'd created for myself.

He answered, and I found a way to dig myself out.

I told this story not so long ago...

..but of course, things didn't end there.

 

[Kol]

Having resisted Kaitlin and fought off my devils, my life seemed for a moment relatively calm. It was however, just the eye of the storm.

To a certain extent I felt remarkable, and my faith in the Lord was high. But it was a contrast with how the rest of me was doing. Spiritually speaking, I had fought off my attackers, but emotionally and psychologically, I was beaten and bruised. To escape what had been planned for me, I'd had to deal with everything that had ever gone wrong in my life, and all at once: my mother's alcoholism, my own dabbling in the occult, my dependence on others for support, Sara and my childhood dream of seeing her again, my sister Amanda and my hopes for her to grow up happy and safe, my outlook on life, and the core fact that I felt so different from everyone around me. All these things were like wounds within my soul, and the spirit I'd fought against had managed to bring them all up to face me at once. Now that they were opened, they were healing-I knew to draw on the lord Jesus for them, and not anything else in this world. But to completely heal, they would take time.

And so, pushed past my endurance and healing from so much drama at once, I was somewhat stiff and numb.

I still worked at Sony, but my time there was drawing to a close. I was happy to think about it. I owed $1600 more on furniture I'd bought, but after paying this I knew I could start to save money for school, which I wanted to start in January.

I worked nights as a security guard at the north entrance to the Sony plant, and spent most of that time either reading fantasy or studying my Bible. I hadn't been supervisor in at least half a year, and none of the new workers knew me. I felt retired. There were four other guards, all my own age, that I mostly talked with: Lucas, who was a good Christian man and ministered to kids in the projects; Tim, who was studying business and was also a Christian; Lydia, who worked the shift after me and let it be known she was a lesbian; and a new girl named Stephanie, who had just moved to Georgia from Ohio.

Nothing at work was ever as dramatic as it had once been, and for that I was happy.

My mom seemed to be doing alright, having come out of rehab not so long before. She bought new, emerald curtains for the house, took up a renewed interest in Kaku and Stephen Hawking, and started telling me once again about her bizarre idea to invent a time machine. ("Really David, it would work, I dreamed it!") She switched the living room furniture for new ones made out of glass and seemed to take a lot of pride in all the new candles she bought.

My sister Amanda was 15 now and still having problems. I was horrified to find a pentagram in her room, more so than I was to find the condoms or the blunts. She was being dragged through the mud, and I felt it was for my sake. The fact that she felt a call to the occult made me certain of this. But there was nothing I could do, other than what I had already done. I bought her a Bible but I doubt if she read it. Beyond that I could only pray, and so I did.

My sister Ashley was doing fairly well. She seemed to me to be tottering, and so I did everything I could to help her out. I brought her over to my apartment to watch movies and just hang out. I read out of her Bible, though usually at our mom's house, and taught her to talk nonsense and pretend it made sense. She seemed to take everything I said and hold it for what it was worth. I prayed about her an awful lot.

My HS friends were doing okay, although at times things got a little strange. Once we all loaded into the car to go to the mall in Douglasville. Jason drove, but it wasn't his car-it was his mom's. She had bought the thing while on the bad habit of smoking crack cocaine, and nothing worked right. Before we left, we had to check the coolant, the gas, the oil, the brake fluid (???), the transmission fluid, the power steering fluid, and whether or not the tag was still on-Jason's brother liked to steal. We got to the mall, and split up. Andy wanted to eat (he's a bit overweight), and the other two wanted to make fun of him (why? They're also overweight). So I told Andy I'd go with him to the food court while the others looked at CDs.

Andy was seeing a new girl (the old one being his best friend's wife), and as she was a bit overweight herself, the other two called her "chub."

"Andy, looks are a pretty small part of it once you get to know someone," I told him as we sat to eat. I had a mocha; Andy had 3 soft-shell tacos, a burrito, and some nachos. "Don't pay any attention to what Jason or Bill say. They don't know what they're talking about anyway." In truth, Jason seemed to only like underage girls, and I'd never seen Bill with a girl before in my life.

At first my buddy listened, but as I continued, he seemed to become guilty.

"Well," he said, "she *is* 250 pounds."

I looked at him and realized he wasn't attracted to the girl whatsoever, he was just taking what he could get. I had no doubt the girl was doing just the same.

Ah, lord, the pagans...

But beyond this, things were pretty tame for a while. My mom bought a new used car and realized afterwards there was a problem with the steering. Amanda was at home very little..I would have no idea of the problems she was getting into until much later. Ashley was okay, but was in a desperate bind to find good friends-the current ones were bad company. My buddies did okay for themselves, mostly, though Andy got into a few problems with Amelia, who the others called chub. I saw Kaitlin and Melissa very little, gave up on calling Sara, and spent most of my time either at work with my work-friends, or at home playing games and being a free man.

...

 

[Marycita]

Seriously..this is like a book you can't put down. It's so powerful in many ways..thank you for sharing all of it. God Bless you, Kol.

 

[connectadot18]

I'm Reading your post again

Keep writing when you get a chance!

 

[micbmac]

Hmmm. And I thought I had probs. i pray that school will work out for you. i think you have a lot to offer and share w/others. Good luck and God bless ya.

 

[Kol]

Thank you. My testimony's a *bit* bizarre, but we all have our parts.

...

The church I went to on Sundays was Concord Baptist, and although I lived in Carrollton, the church was in Villa Rica. My step-dad had started going to the church a while ago, and although he seldom went anymore, I took his place alone towards the back right side of the pews. This was in the days when gas was being rationed (no one would sell more than a few gallons' worth), and so to make use of what I spent driving to Villa Rica, I would stop by my mother's after church every Sunday.

Most times Amanda was out, and Ashley was at her friends' house. My mother and I would usually just talk about life in general, but a good part of the time we spent watching movies.

One of the last movies I remember watching with her was Exorcist: The Beginning.

The movie centers around the priest from the original exorcist movie. He travels to a desert where the story unfolds in a sort of mystery: something is wrong, but nobody knows exactly what. It eventually becomes clear that a demon named Pazuzu is responsible for everything going on, but the priest has problems finding who the demon is possessing.

Towards the middle of the movie, the lady doctor is caught sliding a set of tarot cards out of the priest's view. From that scene onward, I felt confident as to who the demon would be.

In the last scene, the demon takes complete control of the woman's body, running into a cave, covering the walls with blood, and screaming obseneties at the priest trying to banish her.

I...had crossed paths with literal demons before, both in a physical body and in a spiritual one. The latter I would not at the time allow myself to remember. It involved things that were too much for me. The former had happened in my occult days, and I remembered all too well..I tried desperately not to think about it. But even so, I was certain of one thing, and that was this: I didn't want anything to do with them. I was happy to never hear, see, or think of the things again. Because the movie was so different from my personal experience, it didn't bother me. The movies only glamorize possession, but that is only one way in which a demon can assault a human being.

Laying peacefully on my momma's couch, I didn't know it, but the matter would soon be taken out of my hands.

At work, I told my friend Lucas about all my HS buddies and how insane their lives were. The night before, myself and Jason had stayed up until dawn, playing through an old NES game (Castlevania III-try the sunken city with Syfa on hard mode). About midnight, we'd wanted to get something from Taco Bell, the only thing open. The problem was, the dangercart-Jason's mom's car-wasn't back yet. Andy had taken it, and although he was supposed to have been back from work, he wasn't. We waited another half hour, and finally Jason called Andy on his cell phone.

There was no answer.

My buddy Jason lives in a trailer, but despite the fact that he has no money, he's a tech wizard as much as anyone I've ever seen. His room is a vault of electronics. He hung up the phone, took the headset off, and paused the game. Thinking Andy might be at his girlfriend Amelia's house, he scrounged around for her number. It wasn't saved on his cell phone, but since she'd called the house looking for Andy a few days before (Andy was living with Jason at the time), her number was still in the caller ID. He turned on the speaker phone and dialed Amelia's number. Sipping on my Dr Pepper, I listened attentively as the phone rang.

A guy answered, sounding as if he were our age. Jason asked if Andy or Amelia were there.

"Yeah, they're right here, hold on." I heard a bit of shuffling and the house phone was handed over. Amelia answered. "Hello,...?!" she sounded extremely irritated.

Jason tried to meet her irritation with patience and politeness. "Is uh, Andy there?"

"Yeah, he *is*." As if to say, what does it matter?

Jason looked at me and rolled his eyes. My buddy wanted his car back. We were both very hungry. I played around with the top to my soda bottle and looked to the game, then down at the floor. "Well," Jason said, "I need to talk to him."

"Well, he's *kinda* inside me right now," she said.

Horror and disgust crossed Jason's face and I tried not to vomit. Jason answered back, mad: "Well, I *kinda* need my car back.." What kind of answer was this? Who said something like that over the phone?!

Andy took the phone: "I'll be back in a minute. Give me some ** time!"

We heard a click as the phone on the other line was hung up.

"Who was that guy that answered?" I asked after a few minutes, laughing. Andy has a thing for other people's girls, and I was wondering if this was what had happened with Amelia. Did her old bf just not care if Andy stole her from him?

Jason looked extremely disturbed. "Amelia's brother," he said distractedly.

I thought for a minute. "What did he say?! 'They're right here'?"

We both laughed because it was *weird*, imagining chub's brother watching tv while his sister and andy spent quality time together beside him.

I told the story to all my friends at work, but I made sure to tell Lucas first. The best thing about talking to this guy was watching him laugh. Some people are just fun to watch laugh, to see them crack up, and Lucas was definitely one of them. He slapped his knee and threatened to fall to the floor. He reminded me of an old man I once knew who always did the same.

So, although things were not normal in the classic sense, they had certainly seemed to settle down.

The new girl at work, Stephanie, worked the same post as I, and so our supervisor had me train her. She was, as I've said, from Ohio. She'd just recently found an apartment-she had been living in motels. Her husband and her were going through a separation, and the kids-Aedon, Eowin, and Caitlin-were staying at his mother's house. It was relaxing for me to talk to a married woman, even if she was getting a divorce. There was no way I would be interested in her (3 kids?), so I let myself relax a little and we had some pretty good conversations because of it. I picked on her because she always got hit on by the workers coming out to go home. I told her she could give one kid to each guy, but she told me she'd never do anything to hurt her kids or let anyone take them from her. Hearing that cheered me up a bit.

Lucas and Tim also worked my shift, and since things were relatively quiet, they'd both sneak down to hang out once or twice a night. Sometimes Melissa joined us (Kaitlin's friend) and we'd talk about everything from the temp workers to the different sacifices in the OT. Melissa said she was trying to find passages about the Holy Spirit in the OT. Tim meanwhile borrowed my copy of The Book of Jasher, an non-canonical extended version of the Torah..somewhat. Lucas told me about his ministry to the youths in Carrollton.

Once, Lucas told me how and why he became a Christian.

He'd never had a mom or a dad, and since his brothers and sister didn't either, he took care of them. This was all very tough-he was only a kid himself-and so he turned to selling drugs to make money to feed the family. One day while he was making a sell, another guy came up, sat beside him, and put a handgun next to his right temple. He told Lucas to give him all he had, both the pot and the money.

Lucas told me he realized in that moment that the life he was in wasn't the one he wanted to die in. He told the other guy this and it seemed to make him come to his senses. Lucas watched the guy get up and walk away, and from that day on changed what he believed in.

...

And so this is how things were in the last few days before I left Carrollton.

 

[Kol]

When my sister Amanda was just a little toddler, she was my little doll. I absolutely adored her and spent all my time trying to take care of her, even though I was only 13 or 14 at the time. Together, we watched Lambchop's Playalong, the early Barney shows, and Sesame Street. I read books on parenting, and followed my mom to the pediatrician when Mandy was sick. I've always loved her, more than anyone.

My "enemies", it seemed, had been quick to capitalize on this. When I first moved back to Georgia from the military, my mom had started drinking and both my sisters had come to live with me for a while. Back then Amanda had been worried about finding a good college (she wanted Alabama, because it was her daddy's favorite football team), making good grades, and getting better at the clarinet. Since the night I threw away my last tarot deck-if you want to draw conspiracies, feel free to do so-she had given up on school, started drinking and doing drugs, started sleeping around, and perfected the art of lying to both her parents and me.

Nothing I did seemed to get through to her. All I *could* do was to make her understand that I would always listen without fussing-this was important to her.

One night she called me at 3 in the morning.

She told me that aliens were outside her bedroom window.

"They're what?" I asked. I told her to describe them to me, what they looked like, what they made her think of, what she thought they were doing.

She told me she only knew about one of them. It was really tall, and gray, and skinny, and it was floating outside her bedroom window. It had big eyes and...here she got confused...it had been beside her bed but now it was outside. She didn't remember when it had moved.

Amanda slept with a knife under her pillow. It was one I'd given her as a teenager. I told her to take it out of the sheath if it made her feel better, to sit up and turn the tv on, and to pray to Jesus. Get something to drink, I told her, but don't put any music on. The reason for this was that I wanted her to get her mind back in the physical world. Loud noises and something in your stomach tends to do that, while music does not.

You may have a hard time believing in aliens. Amanda didn't believe in them either. Neither did my mom, or Jason, or Andy. There is definitely something not quite *real* about them, and though I don't believe in aliens, I do believe something was outside my sister's bedroom that night.

I would come across this something myself, later.

For now, Amanda said 'ok', and hung up the phone after saying she loved me.

 

[Kol]

The girl I worked with named Lydia-the one who admitted she was a lesbian-began to spend an awful lot of time with Tim.

Most times I'd see them talking at work, but I'd also catch Lydia calling him at home. From small pieces of conversation, I knew they talked about everything from war and politics to education and just hanging out.

Lydia's "roommate" didn't like this one bit.

One night, she parked her car in the parking lot and waited as Tim brought his friend lunch. When he pulled up, she rammed her car into his and screamed at him to leave her "friend" alone.

Drama, drama, drama.

Stephanie and I got to trust each other a bit more, and so she told me she was an alcoholic and having problems living without her husband. I told her about the AA meetings my mom went to, and suggested she go to one to see if it was for her. Her mother-in-law wouldn't let her see the kids for no reason other than to spite her, she said. I listened and started to feel a little sorry for the girl.

Jason took a trip and flew out to California. I didn't hear from him for weeks. He eventually called me back at 2 in the morning to tell me he was extremely tired because he'd just had sex with his 17 year old girlfriend for an entire day. Looking back, I know he called so that I could "congratulate" him, but all I remember is asking what time it was-he'd woken me up. I turned back over and went back to sleep.

I slept on my couch now, because I kept having bad dreams when I slept in my bed. I had a bad feeling about something, but I didn't know what.

Everything seemed to be going okay. My mom was good, Amanda was at least calling me, and Ashley came to visit me every once in a while. Andy was happy with Amelia (though he could have used his own car), Jason was happy with his girlfriend, and Bill found the Ultimate Warrior's new website, where the old wrestler seemed to have gone insane. ("You must show no mercy, warriors! Arghhhh!!!")

So things were okay for the time being.

 

[Kol]

And then one night, I had a dream.

There was a house I didn't know. It was tiny, and had wood flooring with no carpet. The kitchen and the living room were not separated, and they were both on the left side. On the right side was a small hallway leading to the bedrooms. In the center, just in front of the door, was a set of stairs leading down to a motel desk.

My mom and my two sisters lived in this house.

I visited, and while there, Amanda explained that our mom had started drinking again. My stepdad then appeared outside the front door. He watched everything that happened, but never set foot inside the house. Once in a while, Ashley or I would go to the doorway, call him on our cell phones, and tell him what was happening as we stood in front of him at the door.

Ashley decides then to rummage through the house and pour out whatever it is our mom's drinking. Our mom only drinks one thing-vodka-but instead, Ashley finds an enormous bottle of Listerine. My sisters' dad, my stepdad, used to hide his own vodka in a Listerine bottle back when he drank. This, we discover, is what our mother had really been drinking..mouthwash, not alcohol.

At this point Ashley runs off crying, and Amanda runs to our mom to try to talk her into sobering up.

I hear a noise from the basement.

I walk down the steps to the motel desk, and there is a werewolf hiding in the dark. I yell for someone, anyone, to give me a knife to kill the thing with. No one can. Finally, my mom hands me a meat cleaver, and I take a swing at the monster's neck. Before the blade goes through him though, the werewolf turns into a man, and asks why I attacked him. At this point in the dream, I'm shocked and begin to doubt if I really saw what I think I saw. The man runs off, out of sight.

Then I see two men, floating inside the walls of the house, in the kitchen. These two men are friends with the werewolf man. The werewolf had a lean build, and was muscular. One of these two men was chubby, with dark hair. The other one though, I can't remember.

On seeing what I did to the werewolf, they also run; but they run to get help.

As everyone goes about their business in the house, my mom sobers up and my sisters seem to be doing okay.

I pass by the front door and look out a window to the back yard.

A pack of giants are roaming together outside the house, about 20 to 30 feet away. A mix of fear, revulsion, and horror seems to pour down from the top of my head, down my spine through my entire body. They are about 8 to 9 feet tall. They are slightly bigger at the shoulders than an average doorway. They are muscular beyond belief. Their skin is a dark leathery color, and "bumpy", and grotesque, and they are wearing something like loincloths over themselves. They are all carrying enormous clubs made out of wood. As they walk towards the house, they look as if they have a "pack" mentality, as if they were stray dogs huddled together, each with his own place in the pack. They knock over garbage cans, scare off all the animals, and snarl at each other at random.

And they are heading right towards the house.

The first thought that runs through my mind is that I was a fairly weak man. I was moderately surprised that I'd done so well against the werewolf. Thinking back, I had to pray to God for strength before I attacked him. There was no way I could fight a giant, let alone the 6 or 7 I now saw. There was no way.

The second thought was that I had about 15 seconds before they reached the house. If they caught me, I would not be able to run away quickly enough. I would not be able to get away. I wanted to warn the others, my momma and my sisters. But it would be difficult to do so. If they would accept my blind command and run with me...even then we would not have a chance.

I had but one choice, and that was to run. And I would have to run alone. My mother, the woman who gave me birth, my sister Amanda, who I loved more than anyone in the world, and my sister Ashley, the baby and the only one who listened, who was trying so hard to do right...I was going to have to let them all be beaten to death and massacred by these giants. If I hesistated, for even a moment, I would succeed only in getting myself killed as well.

I told myself that someone had to live to tell the story.

And I ran, leaving my family behind.

Even before I woke up, I knew the "werewolf" was the evil angel from Arkansas, against who I'd just fought over Sara and Kaitlin with.

Unlike the dream though, in real life I'd been given a fair warning. I knew I had to convince my family to listen to me. Unfortunately, this meant convincing them that I'd seen angels and demons. Even with Amanda believing she'd seen an alien in her room, I knew it would be next to impossible.

 

[invisiblebabe]

So I read the whole thing Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

My brother, sadly, got involved in tarot cards and other occult stuff, awhile ago... and like you said, the influence seems to linger on, even years after. Please pray for him

-Kayli

PS - If you're ever on IM it'd be fun to talk sometime... my s/n is VerityKJW.

 

[Kol]

February 17th of 2006, 3 days after Valentine's Day.

My mom sat patiently while I explained the full story to her, from the fact that Sara my girlfriend was the Sara we knew to the dream I'd had just the night before.

I told her I was afraid for her and that the only solution I could think of, the only protection I could imagine, was to make herself Jesus's best friend as quickly as she could. She needed to go to church, read her Bible, and throw out her new age books and past-life regression cds.

At that point in my life, I'd told my mother every strange and bizarre spiritual story I'd ever remembered. She knew I believed in a pre-existence..the first memory I have as a baby seems to be as some kind of angel. She knew I believed the "end of the world" was near..I kept dreaming people turned into aliens and I had to fight them. She knew I read too much fantasy, didn't believe in coincidences, and that my favorite tv show had always been the X-Files.

"Son, I just.." she was uncomfortable, trying to be nice but at the same time shake me out of my bizarre take on things.

"I think you're just putting too much into your dreams," she said finally. "Monsters chasing after me and the girls could mean anything. That's what dreams are, they're symbols. You shouldn't take them so literally."

I told her I could tell from the feel of the things in the dream that they were literal giants. Demons. I knew the werewolf was the evil angel, because I'd experienced his presence in an out-of-body experience beforehand.

She looked at me as if to say, 'come on'.

But I said nothing.

"You're obviously upset about this thing with this girl Kaitlin, and I just..." she sounded worried. "I wonder if it isn't affecting you. God doesn't want you to be alone. Life should be happy! It's full of choices. Sleeping with someone isn't always the worst choice you can make...now, it may not always be the best choice, but...I think your conscience bothered you, made you dream that God and angels were warning you to do what you thought was right, and so you did-and that's to be commended, because it had to have been a tough choice to make-but..it's just symbolism."

I wasn't convinced and it showed, so she tried again.

"Do you really think that God, in all his power, in all his ways and might and wisdom," here she waved her hands to illustrate "is really going to send you angels to tell you not to sleep with somebody? Kaitlin sounds like a nice girl, David. A lot of people never meet someone they really like. You could have gotten to know her without just fooling around with her. Why didn't you do that?" she asked. "If she really likes you, it sounds like you might still have a shot. Why don't you just do that for now?"

"Because the blond-haired man told me not to," I said.

She looked at me with absolute sympathy. I love my mom and respect her for so much-out of all the chances offered to her to lay down and quit, she's never honored a one-but I alone knew the truth of what was going on.

And I was unable to convince my mother of this.

"Well I don't know what else I can do," she said. My mother *did* read her Bible; she was re-reading Joshua at the time, because it was her favorite book. She couldn't go to church, because she always had community service (as part of her sentence for the last DUI.) To top it off, she'd expressed doubts about her regression cds to me long before my dream.

But I knew it would not be enough.

My talk with Amanda was even less successful. I didn't tell her the story as I had my mom, but focused instead on letting her know I had a bad feeling about something. Everything I said to her though, she took as an attack. Just me entering her room made her uneasy-no doubt she had alcohol or maybe even marijuana in the room at the time. No matter what I said, she replied to me defensively. It tortured me, but I knew things would not get better for her if my dream came true. I was afraid she would give up on college and maybe even wind up pregnant. I knew as well that this was exactly what my spiritual attackers wanted-for me to be in pain over my beloved sister's life.

My talk with 12-year old Ashley went a bit better. The week before, she had been with some friends and the group had run into a man who then and there decided to preach to them. The kids listened, and our conversation started off with Ashley saying she respected the guy for the choices he'd made. Ashley read her Bible and said a prayer each night before going to bed. The hardest part of her spiritual life was the word "think", which was printed on the cover of her Bible. Ashley was born on Thanksgiving and we always teased her that she was a turkey. So, she said, the word 'think' was too much for someone with a turkey-brain. But beyond that, she seemed to be on the right path. My one worry was her friends, one of which was our sister Amanda. I told Ashley she needed to stay away from bad company, but on this we disagreed. She didn't believe you should abandon friends or family, especially if you were to even pray for your enemies.

I asked Amanda about the aliens too, but she didn't have too much more to say. It scared her, and my mother later asked me not to mention things like that again, because Amanda has always had problems sleeping.

And there was nothing else I could do.

It bothered me, but in prayer, the book of Ezekiel came to mind. It wasn't that I heard God speaking to me, but more as if the Holy Ghost were prodding me to remember the book. I thought back to chapter 33:

The Word of the Lord came to me: "Son of man, speak to your countrymen and say to them, 'When I bring the sword against a land, and the people of the land choose one of their men and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not take warning and the sword comes and takes his life, his blood will be on his own head."

I had done all that I could. I had done my part, I had sounded the trumpet, so to speak. I had warned my family, but I could not force them to run.

As you can imagine though, the dream still bothered me a lot, and though in time it became less scary to think about, I still agonized over it.

 

[Kol]

Pictures of my mom and my sisters:

Ashley, eating her favorite food, french fries from McDonalds. Her room is a mess.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/9.jpg

My mom, fussing at Ashley for late homework:
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00313.jpg

My sister Amanda, around this time. We were on vacation in the mountains at the time.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00507.jpg

Ashley, stuck because she can't figure out how to open the door:
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00827.jpg

Me and Mindy together:
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00074.jpg

My mom and sister Ashley, lounging around the house:
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC01596.jpg

My mom and sisters, on vacation to see indian history:
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/DSC00605.jpg


...

And this is the closest thing I could find on the internet to what I saw in the dream. It's from an old episode of "Dr Who", a British show from the 70's. I was afraid they were coming for my family.
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/face_of_boe.jpg

..........

 

[Kol]

I spent the next few weeks playing Dragon Quest 5 on my computer:

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image39.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image100.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image326.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image339.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image526.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image554.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image557.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image559.jpg
http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n233/TinyMage/image611.jpg

I fought the evil Ice Queen and rescued the fairy flute so the elves could have Spring again.

I started reading a book called "The Essentials of Prayer". It was an old book, but very good and it really opened me up to a more respectful side of prayer. I also found a book called "Of Pandas and People". It was actually anti-evolution teaching material, and as I would later find out, it was on a banned book list in the US. I let Lydia borrow it at work, but I would never get it back.

My stepdad decided to take the family out for steak dinners. My sisters went with their boyfriends, and my brother with his live-in girlfriend. Ashley tripped over her chair coming back from the salad bar, which made Mindy spit soda out on her plate. Her boyfriend Derek laughed at her as much as I did. Derek was a good kid, though he was a bit slow at times.

The old man who'd written me up for going home early-back when I'd skipped work to go home to see Sara-started hanging out at my post, along with another guard named Jon. The old man (his last name was Gillam) had been in Army Intelligence during the Cold War, and had a ton of stories he liked to dance around but never quite tell. Jon and I would wonder afterwards if Gillam had ever killed someone before. We decided we just didn't know.

Jon was only 17. He was actually my barber's son. He'd smoke a lot of marijuana, and one of the funnest things to do was to get him involved in a long story, and then break in with one or two unrelated comments. He would completely forget the main story and have to walk off to remember it.

One night I overheard that Jon had been drunk one weekend and that he'd been hitting on Kaitlin and talking dirty to her. I shrugged it off as best I could.

Jason came back from California, and the four of us spent a lot of time eating at an all-you-can-eat pizza place at the First Tuesday Mall in Carrollton. For me, 'all you can eat' was four slices, while the other three didn't even notice I'd eaten anything. Jason's mindset had obviously become a bit more carnal, but his occasional filthy jests aside, we were still pretty good friends.

Two Jehovah's Witnesses showed up at my door one day but I shooed them away.

And as February passed into March, I paid off the last of my Rooms-to-Go loan and started to save money for school.

 

[Kol]

When my stepdad had taken the family out for dinner, I was the only one by myself, and every once in a while I must admit, I did feel a bit lonely. At the time I just kind of shrugged it all off and kept plodding along. But I do remember that I started to feel tugs at my heart to find somebody to be with.

When Nacho Libre came out, I went with my friends to see it at a new theater in Carrollton. I thought back to the time I'd asked Kaitlin to go to the movies with me. That conversation had ended unfortunately with us discussing oral sex. I wondered if my only choices in life were going to be cheap sex or no relationships at all. Eventually I might just get fat like all my friends and start collecting comic books.

A few weeks later I went with them to see X-Men.



The movie was actually pretty good..but later that week, I found myself looking at the things in my apartment and wondering at the direction my life was going. Anime posters adorned my walls: Setsuna Mudo, a rebellious angel imprisoned in a flesh body (http://evanesam.bloxode.com/images/113664910378.jpg); Belldandy, a goddess who comes to grant a college boy's wish when he calls her number, trying instead to order a pizza (http://www.northarc.com/images/amg/amg_25_1024.jpg); and I wondered if I would ever grow up. I felt at peace with God-for the first time in my life, I really, truly felt that God loved me-and although I hadn't set out to find this, it was the most valuable thing I could ever have. All the same, everyone else was married and I wasn't. I was alone, and I started to feel more and more lonely.

At work Lucas told me his friends weren't any better than mine. He'd once gone to Atlanta with his buddy Adrian. To end the night, they'd stopped at a bar, but since Lucas didn't normally drink, he'd become sleepy after having just a few beers. He went to sleep it off in the car. When he woke up, his friend Adrian had come out to the car and asked how to get home. Lucas told him, 'just take the interstate, and GO. Just keep going.' Lucas woke up several hours later in South Carolina; instead of going west, Adrian had gone east, and had maintained that direction for four hours.

Gillam started talking to one of the female sergeants at work, and everyone winced at the idea of them together. But he still came to tell us old war stories every night so nobody really cared.

A few weeks into March, Lucas and his wife had their first kid, a little baby girl.

One night, Amanda sat me in a chair in her room and broke down in tears, saying she was sorry she'd ever smoked marijuana and begging me to forgive her. Of course I did right away. She really seemed to be changing how she acted, and for the better.

At work, I found out that Stephanie hadn't really been staying in motels when she first came from Ohio; she'd been living at the homeless shelter, but had been too embarrassed to admit it to me. Again, I felt sorry for the poor girl, though she seemed to be holding together okay, at least for the time being.

And Tim and Lydia continued to talk.

 

[Kol]

In the meantime, my mother had moved into a new house in Villa Rica, on the same street as my brother and across from the high school. It had wood flooring (which I hated), and the bedrooms were tiny, but since Amanda wanted it, my mom began to rent it. From the back patio you had a wonderful view of the football field, and my sister Amanda would often sit with her bf Derek and watch the kids practice after school. Her little dog Yoshi would run around, and Ashley would toss things into the grass for the dog to bring back, but Yoshi wasn't a hunter, and she never found a single one. (Tho Lord knows, she tried. I've never seen a dog so frustrated.) Sometimes after practice, Manda and Derek would go running around the track, or else our mom would drive them to the gym in Carrollton, where they would work out together.

Once we found an old picture book with Amanda's baby pics and me and Derek both argued over which picture was the cutest.

On St. Patrick's Day, my mom decorated her new house in cheesy green decorations and invited everyone over to celebrate. My brother Michael seemed uncomfortable for a while..after dinner, he told us that him and his girlfriend (they're really common-law) were having a baby.

There was a rush at that time among the 20 grandchildren to have a baby boy, and I began to pray my brother's would be the first.

My cousin Jennifer called me once, and I went over to her house to watch old family movies her mom had found. They were Christmas tapes of 1992-1997. I watched them with her and her boyfriend while their newborn slept nearby, and we tried not to laugh. It was hard for me not to break out laughing-in the videos I had long hair and looked like a girl.

Jennifer mentioned to me that she thought our grandmother, a widow living in Arizona with her dad, was a bit lonely, so I began to give her a call every once in a while to see how she was.

And March rolled around, out of view.

 

[Kol]

The woman working the shift before me called in one day, and Melissa took her place. She showed up the obligatory 15 minutes early and took my chair quickly, sipping her coffee and inviting conversation.

Kaitlin asked me why I was mean to her-it was boring and she wanted to get some coffee or walk around for a bit but I wouldn't let her.

I smiled at her coffee comment. "You know Kae, how you like your coffee tells how you like sex."

I couldn't tell if Melissa was drinking her coffee full-strength and black, or if she'd added some milk to smooth it out a bit.

"So," I said cheerfully, "how do you like your coffee?"

I guess I'd already explained the joke to her but didn't remember it. She looked at me with a mix of caution and openness and told me, "Any way I can get it."

I hadn't meant to proposition her, so I found something else to talk about. I was embarassed, but she wasn't.

A bit later she explained that her roommate was having a guy move in, and that she was excited because that meant they could both have sex with him. Evidently Melissa had wanted this guy for a while. She was happy, but the thought made the Spirit within recoil and I guess a bit of that showed on my face, because Melissa clearly took offense to my reaction.

A few nights later, we got in a fight while everyone else was standing around. I don't remember how it started.

I followed her from the office to the lobby, where the other guards-Tim, Lydia, Jon and Lucas, and the Sgt, Gillam-were all standing. Melissa turned around to me and smiled as if she'd figured it all out.

"Oh, I know why you're acting this way to me," she said.

I knew what was coming but couldn't stop it. Everyone else tried to look like they weren't paying attention, but there weren't any other conversations going on between them.

"You just need to get laid," she explained.

I told her that wasn't going to solve any of my problems.

"I didn't say it was going to. You're just too tense. You need to relax."

I was always uncomfortable at work, but it was only because I didn't like the company. How can a free-born Israelites act so comfortable with Egyptians?

"Well if I do," I said, "it's certainly not going to be with anyone here."

She exploded. "I didn't say it should be!"

Jon, Kaitlin's friend, looked at me a bit oddly. I have no idea what she ever said to him about the two of us. I can only wonder.

Melissa saw the look. She turned to me and her expression said it all: yes, I'm going to drag *this* up in front of everybody, too.

"Besides, I thought you were supposed to **** Kaitlin, whatever happened to that?" She laughed. "You weren't up to it?"

"I have my own reasons," I said, and left it at that.

And she made me look like a very big fool, but there was nothing I could do. I could only stand and take it.

....