THE LORD HEALED ME - Part III GETTING SAVED and MEETING JESUS FOR THE SECOND TIME
Getting saved and meeting Jesus for the second time.
After PART III, I’ll write briefly about each ailment and its cure. But for now, let’s continue with the background of this story:
In 1975 two girlfriends from my waitressing job at the Yankee Clipper Restaurant, in Freeport New York, drove my stuff up to Syracuse in their big Cherokee Chief SUV. I followed in my 1970 Mustang. YES, my first car was a genuine Ford, Mustang. (Some years later I needed $ and sold it for just $600.. { :>/ )
It was a beautiful September morning on campus as I was registering for classes, and the loudspeakers were playing a song that had just been recorded by Orleans.. Dance With Me! (I love the first comment on the video..
“It was more fun being 20 in the 70’s than it is being 70 in the 20’s” (Haha!)
It was so thrilling to be in such a large beautiful place starting an exciting new life. And it was a great time to be in the Art program at SU., I had professors like Jerome Witkin for painting.. (look him up! He’s an incredible artist) Tom Allen for illustration,.. and guest professors like graphic illustrator - Milton Glasier!
Friends were easy to make,.. in no time at all I was part of a small clique of students, James S., Richard H. and myself, that imagined ourselves as the best art students in the school.. (It’s easy to have stuff go to your head when you’re 18.). We’d meet with Jerome Witkin, our painting professor after hours and paint pictures in the Studio of Crouse College..
But - like a Stanislavski movie script, with somber music playing softly, and shadows flickering off camera, the dark syndromes Bulimia and prader willi - like Mary’s little lamb, had followed me to school, and dogged my efforts to excel.
What are these syndromes anyway?
Well, to explain it by example: At SU, I was placed in a brand new dormitory, Brewster Boland, in a suite. I had my own bedroom, shared a kitchen with 2 other girls, and had space for a large drafting table. I’d sit at that table.. looking at my art assignment, but seeing the inside of the refridgerator.. was there anything I’d left behind?
I wasn’t fun to live with, because I ate everything available when my own stash ran out. If I sat down to eat 2 eggs, then it became 6, then a dozen; followed by 12 Entenmann’s chocolate donuts and a gallon of icecream.. That was the Prader willi syndrome.. once I’d start eating I couldn’t stop. The Bulimia part was.. after a session of gorging, I’d puke it all up. (I did this for 15 years - it rotted my teeth.)..
My illustration professor, Mr. Allen, became aware of my issues. Trying to be helpful, he invited me to take a course called EST - Erhardt’s Seminar Training. It was an interesting experience, I caught the chalk - but nothing changed.
But God.. The Wonderful thing about our Lord God, is He is looking for us.. even before we are looking for Him.
The LORD's eyes scan the whole world
to find those whose hearts are committed to him
and to strengthen them.’ II Chronicles 16:9
I WAS a God hungry kid. I DID read my mom’s Bible - (got as far as the ‘begats’ and gave up).. but had always wanted badly to know God. Well, God brought me up to Syracuse, and the next thing He did, was lead me to Natures Pantry, health food store.
Bob Piron owned 2 health food stores. One was right on campus - on Westcott Street. I wandered in one day, and started to investigate how to fix the damage I was doing to my body. It was affecting my skin, hair, nails, teeth, and energy levels. My lips were split much of the time for a lack of B vitamins, and my teeth were loose in my mouth. That was for bathing them in stomach acids for so many years, but also for having ground them to powder as a child… when I used to have nightmares.
In childhood I had 4 re-ocurring dreams..
In Massapequa, we had 3 girls in the family, (the youngest was not yet born). The 3 bedroom house accommodated my parents in one room, 2 boys in another, and us 3 girls in the 3rd. The girl’s bedroom had a dormer window. I woke up one night, to see bats flying inside the room in the domer space. A black cat was walking through the air alongside, and the decapitated head of an elephant was coming out of a wall, waving his trunk around. I wasn’t dreaming. My oldest sister’s bed was next to mine, I reached over and shook her awake, and said ‘Look’. “M’ saw it and flew back under her covers.. (In later years, she claimed she doesn’t remember this, but I can’t forget.)
In the constantly repeating nightmare I was afraid to talk- afraid to even open my mouth… if I uttered a sound the world would start to spin around me like a violent whirlwind. For years I clenched my jaws and ground my rear teeth to the level of my gums. (Later, in the 80’s I had to have a bridge installed where teeth had fallen out. My dentists called my mouth a war zone..)
But 3 of the reocurring dreams were not unpleasant.
In one, there was a house - I was a house mother of sorts.. living with a bunch of young men who needed to be fed, and governed. There was an antique car in the driveway, and a forest to the left side of the house..
In the other I also saw a house.. It was very large.. set on a series of rolling hills.. In the house, there were many halls, and many doors, and behind every door was someone living, the rooms and people went on endlessly,.
In my 3rd reocurring dream, I was flying in the air. Not in a plane. I would just point my hands like a swimmer, and take off into the clouds.. looking down sometimes, and noticing that I was over the heads of everyone.. just floating in air.. 1
Bob Piron got so used to seeing me in the store.. buying vitamins, buying books to study on health, buying health food.. that one day he offered me a job. I took it. That was 1976.
I worked at the store after school, and stayed through 1997 even after dropping out of SU. (I dropped out because the syndromes were interfering with my ability to do any work. And because my mother died 2 days after I’d had a spat with her on the phone. That left me reeling for a while.)
In Nature’s Pantry’s 2 locations, Bob had 5 salesclerks ALL of whom were born again Christians. Elizabeth, Eileen, Dorothy, Sarah, and Gloria. More often than not, I was in the Shoppingtown Mall store location working with Gloria Powers. Gloria seemed to know a LOT about God, and a LOT about health. She would teach me about vitamins, herbs, and preventative medicine, peppering her discussions with verses of Scripture. It was electrifying!
Being cast as Gloria’s helper, was a divine appintment, and I took full advantage - picking her brains every chance I got. One day at the store, we were on our knees stacking the Tom’s Toothpaste on the lowest shelf together, when she told me about speaking in tongues. I had never heard of it. I asked her what it sounded like, so she spoke quietly in tongues right there by the tooth paste boxes.
One day Gloria told me, ‘You know, there’s a class you can take..’. It was a 36 hour Bible class that she and the other employees were all graduates of.
Inside of me something happened. For the first of a hundred thousand times, I KNEW something without knowing HOW I knew it. .. I knew I was supposed to take that class.
The devil had other ideas. He talked me out of registering time and time again. He knew something too. He knew that I would learn the Scriptures, and how to study them, and I’d get born again, and get Baptized in the Holy Spirit - and learn how to walk in power,.. he knew that the class spelled deliverance for me. He’d seen it before.
So for 2 YEARS he talked me out of registering for the class.
It’s amazing how, until we learn how to recognize his influence.. we attribute his suggestions to our own thoughts. We let him steer us like a boat.
Long story short, I finally registered for the ‘FREEDOM Class’ that started July 4th, 1978.. And my boss.. Bob, who everyone had been witnessing to for years, took it too.
Here’s where the story picks up speed.. The class was (and is) amazing. (I conduct it to this day.) The 36 hour class took 3 weeks to get through. I fell asleep pretty routinely as the minister was teaching (that’s a spirit of slumber) so they positioned people behind me to rub my shoulders and wake me up.
All told, I heard enough of the class, read enough of the Scriptures, to meet Jesus on the pages of the Book. In the class, I recognized the man I had met in my backyard 15 years earlier. I just didn’t know.. I was about to meet him again..
On August 4th, 1978, 12 of us students graduated with GREAT joy! I can’t say exactly when I was born again, but that day we all received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, and everyone spoke in tongues. It was wonderful!
By early evening, I was back home in my rental house in Syracuse, in the kitchen, doing something.. puttering around.. when suddenly my stomach hurt…..
I had to think about it, then it struck me,.. it was ‘hunger pains’.! I was hungry! That was shocking because I had’t felt hunger pain since I was a kid. (I hadn’t gone long enough between meals to ever get ‘hungry’.) Then the thoughts came fast and furious, hitting the walls of my head like popcorn..
OMG.. I FORGOT TO EAT
OMG I’M NOT THINKING ABOUT FOOD.
OMG.. WHAT’S GOING ON HERE..??
Then Jesus broke through the chatter in my brain and quietly said 2 words:
“It’s gone.”
When Jesus speaks to you, he can tell you something, and at the same time show you what he means.. I understood he meant FIFTEEN YEARS of compulsions - GONE. FIFTEEN years of non stop torment - GONE. FIFTEEN YEARS of self destruction -GONE.
I got it. I replied:
‘But what if it comes back’..?
He said:
“It will never come back.”
Then I freaked out. I cried to him..
“But what am I supposed to do? I DONT KNOW HOW TO BE WELL..! I’ve never been NORMAL my whole adult life - WHAT SHOULD I DO?”
He said:
“Join the Army”
The conversation ended.
WHAT HAPPENED?:
The first THREE cures.
No more bulimia; no more prader willi, no more demonic possession. (Bulimia, and prader willi, and anorexia, and epilepsy, and alcoholism etc, that were in my family - are demons).
WHAT DID IT?
For me- the new birth and the BAPTISM IN THE HOLY SPIRIT.
When the spirit comes in for the first time, the demons must go. For me it was a 15 year journey in which I never gave up; never stopped pursuing him; and followed his lead -ultimately - to that Bible class.
The WORD of GOD can set a man free. Because JESUS IS the Word. In that word his power is always present to heal. The MORE of that Word of God that is in you, the more power is present in your life.
After that encounter, I was at a recruiter in Liverpool NY the very next day.
I was at Army Basic Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, October of 1978. Basic was 60 days. We got up at 4:30 am daily. We ran, pushed, marched, and worked our arses off for 4 hours before breakfast.. Finally at 8:30 am, we’d be sent FAMISHED into the dining hall - at which time the Drill Sergeant would yell at us - ‘TRAINEE - YOU GOT FIVE MINUTES TO EAT - AND GET BACK OUT IN FORMATION”.
The Army was 2 months of training in how to eat and stop.
It was discipline training, specialty training, and much more. Jesus knew exactly what I needed to revolutionize my life.
He knows what ALL of us need. And he is able to do it. Just don’t stop pursuing him. That’s how the 2 blind men received their sight. They ‘found him in the house’.. (Matthew 9:27) He won’t chase you. You chase him. Then take a hold of that garment hem and don’t let go until he blesses you.. Like Jacob and the angel..
EPILOGUE:
1978 I graduated Army Basic TOP female in physical fitness;
1979 I graduated MOS training ‘Combat Medicine’ at Fort Sam Houston, the HONOR grad;
1993 I graduated from the RUSSIAN LANGUAGE TURBO course at DLI, FIRST in my class - beating out even the Navy officers who’d had 4 years of college Russian. Lol.
1994 - The Army sent me to Washington DC.
Life STARTED for me on August 4th 1978, when I got baptized in the holy spirit. When I learned to walk in deliverance and power. When I learned how to walk with Him whose blood had ransomed me. It has been amazing! And eternity hasn’t even begun..
PART IV - LEARNING HOW TO TRUST HIM FOR EVERYTHING.
The first TWO of these dreams- about the houses- have come to pass. Not the 3rd yet.
So with all skills you have what happened up to know. Is this in next chapter?
Thank you for sharing these details. So encouraging