Chapter 2

Learning that He Had Always Been with Me

I find it impossible to describe the overwhelming panic, fear and confusion that I was experiencing.

 But if I had to name it, I think I would call it emotional or spiritual trauma. 

Now if I had been in a car accident and had an injury to my head, that would be trauma, and I would be urgently taken to the hospital, probably by way of an ambulance.

 This was the kind of urgent feeling I was having about my state of mind.  

I knew I needed help but didn’t know what kind…. or where a person even goes for help when they don’t know where to go? Wow…that sounds as nutty as I was feeling.

I am grateful for my daughter Peggy who suggested she could call her friend Stephanie, who is a Christian Counselor and Life Coach.

I think I said, “Yes!” immediately.

Thankfully Stephanie was willing to accommodate my feelings of urgency. She agreed to see me within a few days.

I had several sessions with Stephanie over the next few months.

These sessions were all spiritual and emotionally healing for me.

All our sessions began with prayer and sometimes more than one.

Next, Stephanie would have me close my eyes as we talked about the emotions that were troubling me.

These discussions always led me back to past experiences, mostly they were childhood experiences.

When your eyes are shut, and the focus is on looking at your emotional pain, memories will often surface bringing you to where and what in your past needs to be examined.

Most of the time you’ll be looking for a false belief system or misunderstanding about life and or relationships.

This was the intent of these sessions with Stephanie; to find the source/memory of the pain. Then using the scriptures, she would help me separate my pain or illusions about life from the truth.

One unique thing that Stephanie used in these memory sessions was to ask me to ‘look for God’ in each memory. Her belief is that He is always with us, we are never alone.

During one of these sessions I went back to a memory when I was four years old.

Mom is in the house taking a nap with my baby brother.

Although she would most times make me nap with them, this time she told me I could play in the back yard. I was told to stay in the back away from the front yard and the street.

But here I’m playing near some rose bushes in the front yard, on the sidewalk right near the street.

Looking around me I suddenly noticed a man walking toward me from a couple of blocks away.

His manner of walking and his dress were disturbing to me.

Seems like he might have been limping and maybe he was homeless?

Right away I felt like he was coming to get me, and I was totally struck with fear.

Quickly I ran to the back yard and scrambled up the steps to our back door. Turning the door knob, I began to panic when the door would not open.  

I frantically knocked as hard as I could, but mom didn’t come.

By now my fearful little heart was beating a mile a minute as I considered trying to get in through the front door.

Without a moment to waste I quickly ran around the side of the house, up the driveway and back to the sidewalk by the rose bushes.

Yes, I went back to check on the man, who still is coming to get me, and he is getting very close now.

Panting and out of breath I scurried up the steps to the front of the house and tried the door.

It’s locked as well. Why did my mother lock me out?

She’s never done this before, why does she not care about me?

Why does she not here me desperately pounding with my four-year-old fist…let me in!

Once more I run back around the side of the house and up the driveway thinking I should try the front door again.

But this time I am met by the man who is now walking up the drive way right toward me.

Frozen in my tracks I can do nothing now but stand there awaiting my doom.

As the man reaches me he simply asks if I know where a certain street is.

I remember just pointing back toward the street in hopes he would leave.

And to my relief, He promptly did.

This little memory brought with it a lot of painful emotions and illusions about life for me.

But what shocked and amazed me about this session, happened when Stephanie asked, “Where is God?”

I answered her that I didn’t know where he was.  I thought he just wasn’t there.

In fact, I thought that if he had been there, then this scary experience probably wouldn’t have happened to me.

In fact, no one was with me.

I couldn’t even make my mother hear my frantic knocking for help.

“Look again”, she insisted.

So, to appease her, I looked again…first up in the sky, then around the yard, and finally up the driveway…But there was no God.

Then, just as I was about to say, “I can’t find him”, I had the sensation that someone was behind me.

As I focused on that sensation… the Savior came into focus for me.

I saw him now in my memory.

He was standing directly behind me with both his hands placed on my shoulders.  

I can’t describe the feeling of intense love that totally filled me as I realized He was there with me on that day.

My perception and understanding of the scriptures that tell us he is always with us changed that day.

My eyes filled with tears as I tried to explain to Stephanie what I was now seeing.

As I said before, these sessions were ‘spiritual experiences’ and so the lessons I learned there were spiritual.  

They nevertheless were very real.

Not everything you learn in this life should be based on physical laws and man’s scientific theory.

Some of the most beautiful things to experience are taught from spirit to spirit.

For it is with our spirit we learn the things of God.

His Spirit to Be with You

By President Henry B. Eyring

Second Counselor in the First Presidency

“More precious than a memory of events is the memory of the Holy Ghost touching our hearts and His continuing affirmation of truth. More precious than seeing with our eyes or remembering words spoken and read is recalling the feelings that accompanied the quiet voice of the Spirit. Rarely I have felt it exactly as the travelers on the road to Emmaus did—as a soft but unmistakable burning in the heart. More often it is a feeling of light and quiet assurance.”

To Be Continued…

Playing Hide and Seek with Emotional Pain