After that Valentine’s Day when I had my first encounter with Jesus, I began to feel much closer to him and the Father. I felt their love for me and my love for them grew. I had started fasting a couple of days earlier. I had felt compelled to do it. I started off day one with some bread in the morning and coffee but after that, I just drank fluids. Now, since I had my kids, I had a hard time staying on a diet so this amazed me. Once or twice it was hard to do but I would ask the Father and Jesus to help me stay strong because I was pretty sure this was their idea and then I was fine. I would get 6 or seven hours of sleep and awoke full of energy. I was offering up my fast to the Father and Jesus for several intentions, one of which was our business. My husband and I had started a business and it had gotten very slow. He worked the business and I did the payroll and books at home so I could be home with the kids so I could see how much business had fallen off. We were getting concerned and so this had become one of my main intentions. About 4 days into the fast my husband called me and said to keep doing whatever I was doing because business had picked up considerably. I had heard about the power of fasting in church and read about it in the bible, but this was firsthand knowledge and I was amazed. As I said, I had always felt close to Jesus as a child, he was like my invisible best friend and continued talking to him as a teenager, but this was a whole other level. Now not everything was peaches and cream. One of the side effects of drawing closer to God, who is all holy, is becoming very acutely aware of how I was not. It was Ash Wednesday and my past sins began flowing through my mind. It became this heavy weight on me and I wondered how God could draw near to me and call me for a special purpose when I had had a somewhat wild, free, and earthly life in my late teens and early twenties. I had confessed all of my sins in the past but now they were frequently running through my mind. I pressed on and trusted Jesus to help me figure this out.
The next day after bringing the kids to school, I began thinking about what a good life I had and wondered if I really wanted it to change. I felt torn between wanting everything to stay the same and wanting to follow this “calling”. My mind kept telling me to wait and see, not to truly believe it until it happens. All of my college training supported this, everything is merely a hypothesis until it’s proven. I found myself yearning for the peace and happiness I felt before but my heart was saying how could I turn my back on Jesus when he needs me, especially after all he gave up and sacrificed for me and for us all? I truly vacillated over this for a while. By this point, I was keeping a journal thanks to the newly ordained priest I mentioned earlier and had met with after the church door opening incident. After telling him about my close relationship with Jesus in my youth and how during Easter week I would feel this powerful connection to Jesus, even during the years when I was away from the church. All of this I had never told anyone else and then had told him about all the strange occurrences that had begun. He had told me to keep the journal for a month and then come back to see him. To his credit, he truly launched me into believing this was God. He told me that not only priests, religious, and ministers receive a calling but also everyday people. He told me that he believed I was receiving a calling from God and when I felt this close connection and yearning I should tell God as Samuel had in the Old Testament, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.”
I began saying that and two days later had been February 14th and my encounter with Jesus. Now as I questioned it all again I decided to sit down and read my journal. I was in shock. It didn’t sound real and it certainly didn’t sound like me. It sounded more like a religious zealot, a crazy person, or a saint, none of which I believed myself to be. I was torn but decided to continue on and see what happened.
