Random Thoughts

Ideally, I like my posts to be spiritually uplifting. Sometimes (perhaps many times) that does not happen. Today is not going to be one of those spiritual posts. I simply feel like writing. Perhaps my fingers are itching for NaNoWriMo and want to get in there and write. :)

I had a dream when my oldest was about a year old. Her father and I were at a baseball game. It was actually across (west) from where the baseball/T-ball diamonds really were in waking life. (This was in a rural area, by the way. The baseball diamond is outside of the town.) Suddenly, there was an earthquake and the earth split. There was chaos and destruction. My spouse had been holding our daughter, and they were on the other side of the split. I could not find them, and I was panic-stricken over not being able to find my daughter.

Well, I think I've been reading too many threads on internet forums about the alleged George Albert Smith prophecy (which actually, quite well, fits prophesies in the scriptures, near death experiences, and so forth). When that daughter graduated from a college in another state recently, the dream kept coming back to mind. I was concerned that something drastic would happen in our society to prevent me from seeing her again. I certainly didn't want her to go with her father (he has been dead for three years).

She was going to return home, but changed her mind. I tried to convince her to come, at least for a visit, during those prophesied times (major holidays). But I had to let it drop. It is her life, after all. And I figured I was probably "loony tunes" for thinking that the prophecy might be fulfilled this soon. Well, not too long ago, she changed her mind again and is planning to return to us after all. I expect she will not want to live with us long, but as long as we have her during those holidays, that will suffice for me.

Most likely, nothing really bad will happen here in the west, and I have just been on forums too much lately.

Still trying to acquire the faith to survive the prophesied bad times. Food storage only works if you haven't used it by then. Or - maybe - we are already in the bad times, the times of needing to live on food storage with people losing their jobs and so forth, and we don't know it. Perhaps we have been looking forward to something "big" - something that is so bad we have to defend our food from the "zombies" and the "zombie apocalypse." Perhaps by that time, no one will have a storage left and we will have to rely on God or take up our sword to kill and eat our fellow-beings.

I think our perception is quite skewed in many areas. I would just like to know exactly where I, personally, am skewed so I can stop believing lies and begin to believe only truth.

Dreams, Miracles, and Choices

Restored post

Monday, September 26, 2011

Life can be really rough sometimes. I was lying here, thinking of my problems, wondering why God doesn't at least talk to me. (It isn't as if He never talks to me. If that were the case, I wouldn't be feeling deserted and abandoned.) Then I remembered the dream I had a few years ago. I said, “But I don't remember enough of what happened.” Then I began thinking about it.

I want to write the experience here. This is a copy of what I wrote about it on Tuesday, January 6, 2009, after I realized the dream was connected with an experience I'd had the day after Christmas, 2008. I wrote it as an email, which I shared with a few people. Any comments I have to make now will be in brackets [ ] . (It's a "copy and paste job" from the email "sent" folder, otherwise.)

Begin email -

I had a couple of interesting experiences. I didn't connect the two together until a few days after the second experience. I thought about sharing them with you but kept procrastinating. The thought kept persisting, so here it is. I'm sure some who receive this email will think I'm just weird. That's okay.

Several months ago, I woke up absolutely convinced that I had been to the afterlife/spirit world. I couldn't remember anything visually, but I was convinced that I had spoken with someone (women [women relatives/ancestors]) and they had told me I had the choice to stay there or come back to mortality. Then they showed me what would happen to my three children if I came back [stayed in mortality, instead of dying]. There was such a huge difference for good, that I decided I would come back. There was such a huge difference for good that I decided I would come back. As I lay on my bed thinking about this, I wasn't sure whether or not to believe how I was feeling and I mused, "I didn't even know I was in danger of dying." After all, I felt just fine.

The day after Christmas [the Christmas that had just passed, i.e. December 26, 2008], my ex-husband called (via Rachel - she relayed the message) from southern Arizona. He was there with the two younger children. He was expecting a package to be delivered to his door here in Cane Beds and didn't want it to freeze (it was bitterly cold here), so he asked if I would go to his house and put it inside. I didn't really want to but I thought I would "be nice" and do it.

Sometimes the UPS driver doesn't get to this area until after 5 p.m. so I waited until 10-15 minutes before 6 to leave. I told my husband (probably more than once) where I was going. (He forgot, though, which is very common for him). I thought about putting on boots but figured I'd only be going from car to house and back. I was wearing a summer cap-sleeve shirt, light weight pants, and sandals. I did put on a coat that has a hood.

As I got close to the driveway, I didn't want to get stuck (it is sand and clay) so decided to take the north driveway and park on the carpet. Well, the snow covered the area pretty well and I couldn't tell which dirt was safe. I got stuck before I could reach the carpet. The next door neighbors were not home.

It was so cold that I didn't want to walk up to the door to look for a shovel. I got out (with my coat on) and tried to kick the snow away (it was a few inches deep). That didn't work so I started digging the snow away from the wheels with my hands. Then I got back in the car and tried to move. By doing this a few times, I was able to move almost out of the bad area.

I was frustrated and angry. I cried and cursed (and God heard me anyway - weird). I thought about who to go to. The next people down didn't "feel" right but the ones [farther down] - B' - did. [This was maybe a quarter of a mile walk, not really very far. The area is in the country. Some of the houses are relatively close and many are not.] I figured Tom B would know how to get the car unstuck. But before I did that, I decided to try one more time. It was nearly completely dark and I wanted to see if the package was there before it got too dark to see it. I also wanted to check for a shovel.

It didn't feel as cold, so I walked up to the porch, the package was not there but shovel was. I brought the shovel back and tried digging out but still no luck. By then, it felt very nice out - like a summer day (for those of you who know what this means, yes, this should have warned me of danger but my mind was a bit altered as well). I put the shovel in the back seat of the car because I didn't want to carry it all the way back to the porch. I figured I could put it back when I came back with Tom to get the car out.

As I began walking in the snow, with my open coat, I thought, "It is so nice out here that I could just walk home." I wanted to take my coat of[f] and put it over my arm. I was not cold and I was not hot. I was comfortable. I lived close to a mile away. Tom lived about 1/4 or less of a mile away.

For some reason that I don't know (it's just what you do when the weather looks cold?), I tried to zip up my coat. The zipper is a bit stubborn anyway and it was even more stubborn this time. I finally gave up. But the coat had snaps so I snapped it up, put on the hood, snapped the bottom around my neck, put my hands into fists and drew them up into the sleeves of the coat. All of this seemed totally unnecessary to me yet I did it. I was still tempted to just walk home.

When Tom opened the door, I began to cry as I explained my predicament. I thought and felt like a total fool for crying over something as simple as getting stuck in the snow. After Tom opened the door, his wife (E) came to the door. She looked down at my feet and immediately became alarmed. She seemed to think I was in serious trouble. I couldn't understand why and I took off my sandals and took the snow out of them. My feet were fine. They didn't hurt. In fact they were as comfortable as the rest of my body.

She asked Tom to put a chair in front of the fire (they have a wood stove). There wasn't much space between the stove and the back of the couch but there was room for a chair with about two feet or so from me to the stove. I sat down. I couldn't feel the heat from the stove but didn't think about that. They told me to take off my coat. I wondered why. After all, the temperature inside of the house was the same as outside - comfortable.

E brought over a pan of water. It was probably, in reality, cool water. As she put it down in front of me she said, "Let me know if this is too warm." As I put my feet into it, they felt like I had put them into a fire. Immediately I pulled them out and put my hand in the water to make sure she hadn't given me boiling water. It felt a bit warmer than lukewarm but was nothing I shouldn't be able to handle. I tried again. Again, I couldn't do it. I ended up warming my feet with my hands until I could put them into the water.

Tom put another log on the fire after I had been there a several minutes. When he opened the door to the wood box, the heat made me move back (so that was a good sign that I was thawing out).

After a while, I told her I was ready for warmer water (she had told me to let her know when I was). Even later still, I took my feet out of the water and she had socks and slippers for me.

Tom said he'd see about getting the car out the next day when it was light enough to see what they (he and M [the spouse I had at that time] ) were doing. After I'd been there about 45 minutes or an hour I'd guess [emphasis on guess], I asked to call M. The phone didn't reach where I was so Tom called him. M had no idea where I had gone (like I said, this is normal for him so it didn't hurt my feelings).

After a while, they took me in the car after Tom had heated the car for quite a while. The car felt slightly warm to me and I commented on it being warmer than outside.

During the time I had been at the B' we had visited quite a bit and E had stressed the danger I'd been in and that if I had tried to walk home I would have been in the hospital having my feet cut off.

After my brain functioned better, I began to realize that had I not been protected by something or Someone, I would have taken off my coat and started to walk home - casually - enjoying the beautiful stars (it was a clear night). I would have never made it home at all. I would have gotten tired and sat down. [I would have sat down to look at the stars. Since I wasn't cold, there would have been no need to hurry. Then, I would have gotten sleepy, lay down, and slept.]

It took a couple of days to connect this experience with the intense feeling I'd had several months ago when I woke up knowing I had been invited to go to the spirit world/afterlife.

So, take it however you see it. I know what I believe and I have shared it because the feeling to share it would not go away.

Love to all,

Toni B

End of email.

The interesting thing is, my kids' dad died very suddenly and unexpectedly on October 14, 2009, a little over a year after I had the dream. (I had the dream a good three to six months before the experience that verified it the day after Christmas.) If I had died, then Clay had, I wonder what would have happened to my kids? Obviously, I was shown in the dream, but I still don't remember what I saw.

Perhaps, today, God is trying to tell me that He really is watching over me – and my children; that my feeling of being deserted is an illusion.