Today is a good day. Three days ago, I was lost. I have told you about the loss of my grandmother already. She died last year before my birthday...in fact 3 days before. A piece of my heart died that day. Just like the day my Dad left when I was a baby. I lost a piece of it that day as well. I didn't know it then because I was so little, but I suppose my soul and my heart knew. And it grieved. Since the day he left, I have been searching for something to fill that hole. For awhile my step dad filled it. He was indeed a great man. My mother cheated on him and he divorced her. I spent my childhood looking for father figures. When I was 8 years old, I was on a path that was most certainly leading to death. If not physical death, certainly emotional and spiritual death. A path that would only have been paved with shards of broken glass as self destruction would chip away at my soul with each piercing step. I had been sexually molested for I don't know how long by a family member who for a while, I looked to as a father. It broke my family apart that I had then. No one believed me when I was six. Apparently I was capable of lying about this in great detail and for what motive I have no idea. So I isolated myself within the chambers of a great fortress within my heart to keep from self destructing. The psychological games played during the sexual trauma I faced at the hands of a guardian, the betrayal of trust of a child, was slowly decaying me from the inside out. I still tried to find the good. I always tried to find the good. It did get me back with my mother at the time. It was either she come get me or I go into foster care.
Back to the 8th year of my life, I had friends. But I still spent a lot of time in the company of adults or in solitude. I remember one day I was out in the courtyard of our condo we lived in, and I heard a voice..but not spoken. The intensity shook me like the earth in motion under my feet and I fell to my knees. Frightened, I heard the voice say simply this."You are not alone." It was filled with kindness and love and so many things that I can't put into words. But the power behind the voice, it frightened me. I spoke nothing of this and wondered for the next few years if I was insane and had imagined it or not. I knew I hadn't imagined it, but I was not about to share that. I was known for making up stories often and so I was sure that I would be praised only for my imagination and not believed.
When I was 11, I heard the voice again. I felt a presence the same as before, only this time the voice was softer, a whisper. A gentle hand on the brokenness of my heart. At such a young age I had already experienced more trauma and more darkness than anyone ever should have to endure in an entire lifetime. The voice once again called to me and whispered to me, embracing my broken heart like a hug, holding me dear and close. "You are not alone".
I had never been to church. I never watched TV or was invited to bible school or anything so I had no idea there was a God or that he loved me enough to personally touch my life. I had never been witnessed to. But I did remember that there was always a bible in hotel rooms. And so my journey to faith began. I got a hold of a copy of the New King James Bible. I read it from cover to cover in several weeks. I devoured it. I read about Christ's love and sacrifice. I dreamt of faith and a love from a Father that would never EVER leave or forsake me. That very day that I finished that bible, I knelt because I had seen it in movies but it felt like what I was supposed to do. I apologized to God for anything I might've done that He didn't like and I told him that if he was willing to be a loving Father and my best friend as well, that I would welcome Him with open hands, open heart, and open mind. I felt a part of me begin to heal, and trust began to grow again.
Ever since then I have had many spiritual experiences. I have seen people who have passed. I have seen demons. I have seen Angels as well. I have seen things in the other dimension that only shadow us here. I have been attacked by them physically as well. And I have seen people influenced by them and do things that man is not capable of inventing on his own.
Off and on throughout my life I was accosted. I physically was pushed down stairs more than once, only to be caught by arms unseen. It sounds crazy, but seeing things others couldn't has become normal. I am sensitive to it. And the spirits who dwell on earth but are no longer a part of the living know this.
I was forced shortly after my brother was born to go and live once again with the family member that had taken my innocence from me because at that time I had nowhere else to go. I didn't understand why I was so unlucky. Why did so many bad things happen to me? I continued to talk to God, like he was my best friend. To others I probably looked crazy. But I felt his presence. I felt his love. It was the only thing that kept me going. I would fear sleep because when I started to drift into deep sleep, I could hear the laughing of something evil. Something was always there lurking in the shadows. I felt like it was waiting for me..waiting to pounce. I've never been a good sleeper. People left you when you slept. Things could change. Bad things happened.
In Junior High, a girl in my school came up missing. She was missing for several days when we were notified and this was the days before the Amber Alert. I knew this girl. Her name was Bev Tracy. I wasn't friends with her, but I remembered always seeing her smile at me as she passed. I remembered her eyes were kind. When I heard she was missing, the first day I felt sick...I couldn't sleep once again. I worried. I knew something was terribly terribly wrong. By the end of the first week I had barely slept. I had a room in the attic and I remember lying there staring at the ceiling...willing my eyes to close but being stuck between sleeping and waking. I looked up, and there was Bev's face glowing in a beautiful blue light. She smiled at me looking down. She said I didn't have to worry anymore and that she was safe and then she faded. I knew without a doubt that she was dead. I knew that something horrible had happened to her, but I didn't know what. The next morning we discovered her body had been found floating in the Missouri River where the 291 hwy Bridge park was. Her legs had been surgically removed from her body.
Supernatural things continued to happen to me throughout my life since then. Coming back to the present, or actually about one year ago, I had just moved out of my boyfriends house with my kids into a duplex, and I was incredibly depressed. Our relationship was destroyed, and I was scared to death that I would not be able to maintain my household alone. But I pressed on. I had no choice. We experienced things in this house from the first day. My children experienced things as well, but we didnt' say anything to each other right away because none of us was for certain and we didn't want to sound crazy. But when my children all 3 independently approached me about it, into the second month, I confided in them I had experienced it too. I heard footsteps and doors opening and closing. I heard footsteps in front of my bed and knew nothing was there. I saw something sit on my bed and the bed depress but no one was there. My children experienced it as well. They saw mists form and move independently of any airflow in the house. It was as if it peeked at them, timidly staying just at the edge of our vision.
One night after I had started dating a guy from work, whom I am still with now, I was watching television in my room. No lights were on. I had just hung up the phone and looked up towards the television. I saw a man walk six steps from my bathroom door to my bedroom door. Then I realized after being startled in the first place at a man being in my room, that I had seen the TV through the man. I jumped straight up. I was not a stranger to the supernatural or the spiritual but I had never seen a full body apparition. i was shaken for a few days.Not scared because the man didn't seem harmful. He had grayed hair that probably used to be dark. He had his hands in his pockets. And in the six steps he took in front of me, He seemed terribly sad and agitated.
The next night I had a dream. I saw him in my dream. He spoke to me but not with voice. But I heard him just the same. He said his name was William but everyone called him Bill. And he deeply apologized for scaring me. After that, I told the kids not to be afraid, I didn't know the man but I knew he was harmless and we even felt like he kept watch over us in this house. I had seen my grandmother the night she died, I had experienced her moving things around as if she's still taking care of me. So I knew there was more than just this man.
This Ghost I simply called our Bill, he was here almost daily in some way. Non intrusive, but there. Seeming only to observe. For a year he has been here. I never knew who he was. But a few nights ago, which brings me to the title of my post, He stood at my bedroom door, Halloween night. and he wouldn't leave. He anxiously kept pushing at me like he wanted to come in but he stood at the threshold of my room respecting me when i said no, I was tired. I felt this push suddenly. I wondered about my dad. I thought he was still alive. I kept feeling this push, stronger and stronger. I decided to try Facebook first because everyone is on there. But there was way too many people with his name. So I searched the web, fully expecting no results that were usable. I searched with the name of the town i last had been told he resided. I found an obituary only on a USMC forum. He died. Three years ago He died on my daughter's birthday. My heart sank. And then bells went off everywhere. Our ghost was bill, my dad's name was bill. Could it be possible? I saw that there were surviving family names posted on there including a fiance' and five children, brothers and sisters and his grandchildren. I took a chance since the name of the fiance was pretty unusual. I found her sent a message and anxiously waited. I looked on the friends list also and there were Benson's on there everywhere. I sent a message to my aunt. I remembered my mother saying her name. I sent a message to my brother, and then my other siblings. Did they know about me? I had no idea. I didn't know how they would receive me. I had, after all, been the product of an affair and that couldn't do anything but leave me smudged.
It turns out they all knew about me. Dad talked about me allot they said. They had been wondering about me and just didn't know how to find me. As I realized my father had been with me this last year, I felt overwhelmed. I could never cross that bridge and find out about him and meet him, and for that I was sad. But instead of one piece filling the gaping and hemmoraghing hole in my heart I had five pieces that more than made up for that wound. Not only that, but for the first time I felt like I belonged. I know that everything is not a fairytale, and there are no real truly perfect happy endings, but I felt the wound in my heart close. I felt the pain of not having him there, melt away. It took him dying to be in my life, but better late than never. And it also gave me family. I needed my siblings more than they will never know. And I required nothing from them that they hadn't already done. They accepted me and loved me and didn't judge me. For the first time I felt like I belonged. I felt an attachment to the name I've had my whole life. I felt restored and whole as a person.
There are a lot of people who don't believe in the supernatural or afterlife. To me it's second nature. It's like having xray vision. Many people block it out because life is loud and bright and noisy and if you aren't tuned in you can't see it. I had never been so happy to have the gift of that sensitivity. It had helped me as much as plagued me my whole life. My father pushed me a few nights ago. He pushed me to find him and in finding his passing, to find my family. I don't know where this is going, but it feels so much better in my heart and soul than I have felt ever. I no longer felt like my life was a mistake, and everything in it working against me. Life is still really hard, but now i have family. It is truly a restoration of the heart. I believe that God let him come to me. I feel loved. He talked about me his whole life. I don't know what kept him from coming to me in life and once I would've been mad at that. But he came to me now. And I don't think he will leave me ever again. I found a part of myself as well that had been missing. I saw myself in all my siblings, and my heart swelled as it never had before. No matter what happens I love them all. I don't know where this sudden love came from but it's there and it's real and it's stronger than anything I've ever experienced.
I think because of this, I won't be such an emotional burden on my boyfriend because I will no longer be looking at him to fill so many roles for me. Now he can be my boyfriend and my best friend and I won't drown him in my neediness. thank you Dad.
I know that I will continue to heal from other wounds throughout my life that I had sustained. when the bible says the greatest of these is love , there is a reason for it. Love is the most powerful thing on this earth and in this life. and it transcends time and space and death. Believe me this is all the truth. I have a great imagination but even I couldn't come up with the string of events that equal my life.
I feel blessed, and with that I hope that I can start feeling peaceful and my mind can relax and I will be able to sleep again.
Goodnight my friends, and wherever you are remember, the greatest of these is love, and faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains.
