Week 17: My Testimony

The thing about letting the Holy Spirit lead is…sometimes where you’re led doesn’t make sense…in terms of, my mind cannot comprehend what is about to unfold, but I trust something GOOD will come of it because GOODNESS is God’s character. Here we are, 17 weeks in, with just a few more chapters to go- which excited me because that meant the study is almost complete! When I first began, it was hard to see the finish line. And now we are SO CLOSE! Despite my excitement, I felt a deep sense to pause and instead share my testimony. God was asking me to “Selah”. (Pause, reflect)

What you’re about to read was written when I was 21 years old, I am now 40. I will be 41 in just a few months. As soon as I “was saved”, I wrote about it. I had no other way to describe what I had encountered at that time. What you’ll read is a vivid experience I had, and even though it’s been decades since it occured, it still feels just as real today…it still moves me to tears just the same. I have shared my testimony on the day I was baptised, and with a few friends, but not publically on a forum as such. I don’t know how this will impact you, and I don’t think that is up to me to decide. All I know is- this is what happened to me, and I am suppose to share it with you.

“The name of Jesus was nonsense to me. Jesus was a nobody, literally. I “grew up” Catholic, attending church on holidays and (what felt like) “forced” to go as a child, plus my uncle is a priest—and that was my religious marketing tool, my get-out-of-hell card, my reason for why I was a good person. Little did I know, I was headed straight for hell, and my so-called learned and bullet-pointed religious seat-warming butt knew nothing about the true love of Jesus.”

The words that you are about to read aren’t just words. In a sense, they are, yet these very words came to life—these words happened to me. This is a story, but an extremely real story—or narrative, I might say. Words can only explain so much, and while writing this account, I found it difficult to create words to express the real intensity behind the emotion, behind the words. I cannot explain in enough detail what happened; the words of this world do not allow me to do so. This story is simply unexplainable, more than words itself… because I was actually there, and by the grace of God, this truly happened to me.

He was face-to-face with death, but he didn’t care. His torturous death was for my own good. Warm, red blood dripped into his eyes; sweat dripped into his wounds, its saltiness burning his opened flesh, all while people harassed and horribly mocked him. He took his last breath on this Earth, and it is still difficult for me to grasp that he had a choice to live or die, and yet He chose to die—for me… and you. At his last moments, with his faint breaths, His arms were opened wide, holding the burdens of the world inside. Dying while holding our burdens and simultaneously welcoming us into His broken yet outreached arms. He felt pain, He bled, He was human and lay broken on the cross—saving you and I.

It’s quite astonishing that this man, who was nailed upon the cross, knew me hundreds of years before I even existed—and He died for me. I can’t say that it would be exactly an easy thing to do, dying for a person that will be here in a couple hundred years, or even giving up your only beautiful son or daughter—your flesh—for him or her to die for what would seem like a stranger. Ironically enough, this is what God did. Selflessly, God gave His only Son to this Earth—to us—and followed through with the mockery death Jesus had, all so everyone could be saved by Jesus’ perfect blood. I believe this, and I feel that this is truth in the rawest form. However, in 2005, my life was headed nowhere near this direction. The name of Jesus was nonsense to me. Jesus was a nobody, literally. I “grew up” Catholic, attending church on holidays and (what felt like) “forced” to go as a child, plus my uncle is a priest (edit to add: he has since passed away, RIP Uncle Mike)—and that was my religious marketing tool, my get-out-of-hell card, my reason for why I was a good person. Little did I know, I was headed straight for hell, and my so-called learned and bullet-pointed religious seat-warming butt knew nothing about the true love of Jesus.

In 2005, I was at a point where I thought I was happy. I had everything: a nice apartment with low rent, a nice car, fashionable clothes, I was almost finished with college and headed towards my dream career, and I was going to marry my fiancé in a year. Not realizing my materialistic mindset, which I based my happiness on, one day out of nowhere my fashionable clothes and nice car and nice apartment slammed into a brick wall and shattered into a million pieces before my very eyes. My fiancé of three years left me for another girl, and nothing—not even my built-up items of happiness—could keep me from the burning anger. Nothing I had could pull me back to happy. I fell apart; he had left out of nowhere, unexpectedly, and I held on to literally anything that kept me standing. My world felt over, ended. My whole life felt like it led up to that point—that point of what I wanted to be “perfectness.” I thought I was on the right path, but the entire relationship was gone, completely. All our memories were ripped out of my heart and vomited onto the floor, then flushed down the toilet of life. Feeling all this pain deep inside my heart and wondering where I went wrong, I laid in bed alone night after night, praying to something or anything that would listen to my pitiful words. I prayed that there was an easy way out. I prayed that the aching pain bursting at the seams of my heart would rupture and end my misery. I prayed that something good would happen for once and my eyes would be opened to it. Even though I had no relationship with Jesus, I knew how to pray, yet the only prayer I knew of was the kind of prayer where I always asked for something—a continuous selfish prayer. It was always about me.

I didn’t know who or what I was praying to, but I prayed, lying in my bed praying to invisibility, wondering why my prayers were not working and wondering why I still felt empty. I was numb, and the only thing that felt alive in me was my pulse.

It was a Saturday night, exactly one week after he left and moved in with his new lover. It was cold and dark in my room, for my heater would not turn on. As I lay in my bed, I watched the shadows dance on my bedroom ceiling as my neighbor pulled into her driveway. A sense of excitement bounced around in my stomach. Was it… no. It wasn’t him coming home. I was alone. The reminder burnt my veins black. I was alone, cold, and hurt. Too tired to cry, I shut my eyes to pinch off the pain. Before I knew it, I was fast asleep, and in my sleep, this is where the realness began. This is when it happened.

I entered the dream world quickly that night, and what a mysterious thing the dream world is. Some critics insist that your dreams are events that took place that very day, or a dream is based upon your thoughts before bed. The dream I was having was not something made up in my head—it was a dream that felt more real than life as I knew it. I was there, all my senses were awake, and I felt alive in this place. Call me crazy, but as I dreamt I knew I was dreaming, yet for some amazing reason I felt as if my spirit or soul, in body form, was carried away to this place where I saw it in dream form. So here I was laying in bed dreaming while my soul was in another place figuring life out for me.

And so it began. I was stuck in an extremely monstrous and very enormous room. This dark room had four walls trapping me inside. But the walls were off in the distance, too far away to even begin to think this was an ordinary room. This room was abnormally large, almost never-ending, but so very dark—darker than dark—yet I could still see the people standing all around me. After I examined the walls and how huge the room was, I then focused my attention on everyone else. Millions of people stood in this strange room with me. Millions, maybe even billions. And these people were real. I could literally feel them next to me, I could smell their sweat, I could hear their voices, I could see their faces, which were in twisted, agonizing pain. We all were panicked, scared, and alone, yet together in this insanely large room. Confusion swiped over all of us like a giant tsunami covering its prey.

As I looked deeper into the crowd, over each and every head, I noticed in the far distance was an exit. Not that I actually knew this, but somehow I did, yet no one could get out, no one could use this exit on their own, and this is why we were all standing there horrified. In the midst of my horror-stricken emotion and anxiety, it was as if my inner voice said to me that the exit door only opened at certain times, and that was exactly what we were all doing in that strange room—waiting. We were all waiting for a way out. My stomach dropped to the floor, and I felt a sense of nervousness in myself and the people around me. I felt like I was going to vomit, and I suddenly felt claustrophobic and disgusting and ashamed. And I felt this, not in a dream sense—I actually felt this in my body as if I were awake. It was the most painful feeling I had ever felt, ever.

As I tried to understand what was happening to me, my ears picked up words that were hard to make out. I looked at the person standing next to me. She was crying and mumbling words in a different language. Not knowing what she was saying, I somehow could feel her pain. Then, I looked behind me, and my eyes unfolded the millions of people all around me, and I could feel their pain as well. This was extremely overwhelming. While experiencing the emotions that were pouring into my soul, a terribly loud and low-pitched horn blew, shaking the entire room like an earthquake. I had never heard a sound like it before—it was extreme. I focused my eyes onto the exit and noticed, with the sound of the horn, the door had opened wide. People began pushing to the one and only exit, and I knew without actually knowing that everyone wanted out, and I knew without even asking what these people wanted, and I saw without even seeing—while I was awake in this very dream—that what was happening was real. I wanted out, too.

Beginning to feel the push of the mad crowd behind me, as if I was in a mosh pit, I felt the urge to also push through to the front and to the exit. Even though this room was extremely large, it felt small with all these people in it. The room was so huge I literally felt lost, like I was plucked right from my bed and thrown into this prison-like room to suffer and be tortured. I decided to fight back and to begin my journey up towards the exit, along with everyone else. I squirmed in between people who moaned and mourned, and I pushed and squeezed through the maze their hot, sweaty human bodies created. I actually felt the heat of their skin, I actually felt the sweat off their arms, I actually made out the different pitches of all their voices, I actually smelled the body odor of all these different people, and I actually stepped on their feet as I walked toward the exit.

I am telling you, this was real, and I wanted out. I was a stranger in this place, I was not supposed to be here. I didn’t belong. The longer I was in this room, a sense of eternal fear began to tease me like an evil stepsister holding your brand-new Barbie twelve inches above your head, dangling her, and laughing at me—“Ha! Ha! Ha!” I felt like something in me was about to die, about to be taken away from me. I felt as if my life was being dangled right before me, and I felt helpless and incapable of grabbing a hold of life. This room felt eternal. This room grasped me and all of us within the walls and almost forced us to stay there and live the life this room had in store for us—an unfulfilling, horrid, and painful, unending, timeless life.

While I pushed through toward the exit, I heard the very same loud horn again that shook the room like an earthquake. I picked my head up to see where it was coming from. Again, it was the exit door of the exit. It had opened once again. Hundreds of people fled inside the door, but within milliseconds the door slammed shut, slamming even more fear right in my face. I was still there, stuck. I didn’t get out, but somehow by that point I had managed to push my way up to the exit. I was right in front of the door, touching it, yet trapped. I could feel the pushing and rage from the discomfort of the millions of people behind me. I hurt because they hurt, they hurt because I hurt. We all hurt and wept and grieved, but mostly… we just wanted out. As my hands slid across the cold, cement-like door, a man beside me tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to face him, and he spoke to me without talking. He literally spoke to me, but he did not open his mouth. His eyes told me, “If you don’t have faith in the right person, you will be stuck here forever.”

My heart was beating fast. I refocused my attention at the door, knowing it was my only way out, and yet I was confused by his statement. He was serious, he was trying to help me, but I was so lost and confused. What did he mean—faith in the right person? Still staring at the door, feeling its cool surface and thinking about what faith meant, I could hear people screaming for help in English and in other foreign languages I did not recognize. I could still smell every odor in that room, and if I wanted to, I could have touched the person beside me. Let me remind you, this was real. Take your hands right now and rub your arms. Feel that? Feel your arms? That sensation is real, and it was the same sensation I had in this room. Reality.

The buzz went off again, and the door opened wide, welcoming me to enter. Afraid but in relief, I was half pushed from the crowd toward the door as I ran through the doors and fell straight down. There was no floor in the exit, and I fell as if I had just walked voluntarily off a cliff. I fell and fell and fell. My hair swirled above me, my skin was cool from the wind passing by, and my stomach danced with butterflies as I fell downward at an incredible speed. The fall seemed like hours, and yet I had no new emotion—just fear and discomfort and every terrifying emotion the room had given me. The exit made nothing better, I did not achieve anything. I was still in the same place, but now I was falling. It was hot, and I was still sweating. I fell and sweated like I have never sweated or fell before. My stomach was in knots, and my mind was racing. Where was I? And then my racing mind stumbled across a scary thought that rang true—I was in Hell.

I began to weep as I slid downward. I had never wept like this in my life back home, in my comfortable life back home. I would have done anything at that point to get back to where I was before I fell asleep. I would have given away my awesome wardrobe and car and apartment. I wanted out of this bottomless pit. I didn’t want to be in hell.

At this point, it felt as if I had been falling for hours upon hours, just falling downward toward nothing—an endless nothing of eternity. I was sick to my stomach and scared and hot. I cannot explain to you how hot it was—it was hotter than fire itself. My skin felt like it was melting, and the darkness had a temperature to it like no earthly place could ever have.

As my tears fell from my face, I reached my hands up to my head and just held my head in my hands to remember the room—the room with the weeping, horrified millions like me, still there waiting to get out. I then thought about the man who touched me and told me something about faith. And with my hands on my head and tears rolling downward as well, I finally understood what he meant—faith.

It was faith in Jesus. I understood it, somehow, and then began to talk without speaking to Jesus. In my thoughts, I told him I would trust him and asked if He would guide me out of this situation. To this day, I have no idea how these thoughts formed in my mind. I have no idea how I would have even thought this… it was so unlike my thoughts.

Out loud, while wrapped in darkness, I cried out, “Jesus, I cannot do this without you, I NEED YOU!”

I put my full trust and hope in Him at that very second, knowing He was the only way out of this mess. I really did, and I meant my ask. It’s sad to say, but so true, that the only reason why I began to trust Him was because at that point in my life I had no other option, and Jesus was finally enough. I had to be put in hell and have every happy emotion turned into pain and agony in order to trust Him. And I am telling no lie: as soon as I felt in my mind, body, and soul that I was trusting Him, and when I honestly told Him so and ASKED Him to help me… in an instant, the falling stopped. It un-violently halted—literally. The falling sensation simply stopped, just like that. And it began to feel as if I was hovering in midair. The air felt more clear, like a gentle, refreshing breeze was let in. It all happened simultaneously, along with the light that changed everything.

It was at that moment, when I realized I was no longer falling and the atmosphere had changed, that bright light came all around me. My hands were still over my face, and I was still crying uncontrollably. I had an overwhelming feeling in my chest because I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but my tears were somehow tears of joy, along with a feeling of safety, which confused my mind. But inside me, my spirit felt like it was being hugged by a warm, safe, loving embrace.

Love. I was engulfed in it. The light was bright but not blinding, and I was enveloped in it along with a love I have never felt in the 21 years I had been alive. It was intense. The light warmed my whole entire body just like I was sitting by a cozy fire, but it was not hot to where I would sweat. It drew me near, held me, and I wept because love radiated all around me and in me. I swear to you, in this moment, I felt a warm, invisible hug wrap around me. It felt like I had giant arms rubbing my entire body, hugging me, and patting me on my back. I promise you that someone was hugging me—I felt it!! I felt the warm embrace. I felt safety. And for the first time in my life, I knew the truth—that this was God’s love, and the honest love flowing inside me was given to me by Jesus… and it was never, ever going to stop. And this is how my dream ended—me, in the arms of Jesus, weeping tears because of how much I was loved by Him.

I woke up from this dream crying. Actually, no—I was bawling. I was bawling so hard that I could barely breathe. Not because I was sad, and not because of my ex-fiancé—it was because I had just been touched by grace. The hands of Jesus were laid upon me, and I felt free, as if a ton of bricks were lifted! I could still feel those arms around me even when I woke up, I kid you not.

From that very moment on—from when I woke up from my trip to hell—I became a follower of Jesus Christ, and I sat in bed thanking God, through my tears, for showing me how much better my life could be by being a believer. It is unexplainable, but it is what it is, and I felt every single bit of it. Even as I sit today and share these words with you, tears come to my eyes because I have never, ever felt any sort of love like God’s love. It was incredible. It’s unexplainable—the BEST feeling I have ever felt in my entire life. No drug could surpass it. No drink could match it. No person could one-up it. Dream or not, it was real. I felt it, and it was too good of a feeling to ever forget or brush off. That very feeling changed my outlook and life completely.

Jesus’s love is still in my heart, ever since that night. It was always there, but I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t know Him or want to know Him until I gave up and let Him take control. I am so stubborn that it came to the point where I had to feel the pain and suffering of hell… but it’s also the place where I finally gave up on what I thought I knew and let Him have me. Praise the Lord I did give my life to Him when I did, because His love cannot be mistaken. God’s love is something even deeper than what we call and feel as love here on Earth. I now know that real, true love waits in heaven—I felt it—and we can all experience it here on Earth through the Holy Spirit.

At last, my story is finished. You don’t have to take these words and put any meaning to it or even believe me, but this actually happened to me. It was more than a dream, it was more real than life itself. I was really in hell, or headed there, and on the flip side I was really saved and touched by grace right there in my bedroom. We might not be able to see God with our eyes to verify He is real, but just like the wind, which we cannot physically see, we can feel it breeze around us. We can also see the effects of it, and yet we trust that the wind, which we cannot see, is indeed there. And as I close my story, I now realize that just by looking around and taking in creation, God is indeed all around us. He is in us. He is for us. And He loves us—gosh, He loves us so much! And it is something I will never question again. He plucked me out of hell, not just to save me, but to also tell you that He is real. Jesus is real!! And that same deep love I experienced is for you too, and is calling you near.

Reflection:

What is your testimony, and who will you share it with this week?

Prayer

Lord, we live in a world where we don’t know what is AI and what isn’t. We DO know that YOU are the real deal, always. We live in a world that is chaotic and confusing. But what we do know is YOU are constant and never changing! Lord, help us put our complete trust in you, our complete focus, and our complete faith. Guide us this week to someone who needs to hear who you are and what you have done in my life. Give me strength and courage and NO fear in sharing my testimony so others can know, and experience, your goodness, too. I pray this in your might name, Jesus. Amen.