What Happened When I Met God One Evening in September 2013

Which, you have to admit, is a pretty nutty title for a piece of writing that I've just put in an online blog. I mean, what will the neighbours think?

 Hmm. Healings, eh?

And Christian ones too.

   I don't know if there's any standard response by a reader to those 2 words appearing together.

    It may be a "yeahright...another bit of happyclappy hysteria based on stage-managed nonsense", "well, I'd like to believe in it, but it all looks a bit dodgy to me", "well, I'm supposed to believe in it but deepdown I'm sad and angry because the evidence of hurt and death in my life says otherwise".

      It may even generate rage, if considered as just another piece of medieval patriarchal nonsense typifying a dead religion that is itself a stumbling-block to enlightened 21st century reason.

  It all depends on the reader really, as to whether anything that gets written, actually gets read...let alone believed.

    If I said I'd written the following account for a "Christian audience", I'd be telling the truth but not the whole truth.

  If I said I'd written it to in some way "evangelise" a non-Christian reader, I'd be totally lying.

 If you were to ask me why I've written it, my answer would be and is, because it happened. And it's just that a happening as extraordinary as this, happened to me, that my natural response was to tell in writing, as clearly, fully and as truthfully as I could.

   It is my account of a single event that happened one evening a few months ago. I was in a church, surrounded by people: not a vast and joyfully-sighing and mob-hysterical multitude, maybe 40, 50 tops. It was not a stonebuilt parish church; it was not a modern, slick corporate church with lots of glossy pictures of abnormally clean and well-adjusted people with white and smiley teeth; it was a smallish prefabbed building on an industrial estate that was being used as a church.

   I was "saved" in the early 90s: this admission identifies me to the reader as a "Christian"; it meant for me that after having had a life of both disbelieving in, and snarling at, the God of the Christians, a Jesus I'd never believed in met me and changed me at the source of myself.

   And here, I'm fully aware that the reader thinks they either know where I'm at, or (s)he doesn't. Either way, because of the nature of who we are, the reader now has certain expectations of not only the content of the following narrative, but of the truth or otherwise within it.

   I can say at this point, I have no intent of wishing to be part of that process for you...not  because I don't care, but because I care enough to allow you total freedom in how you engage(or choose not to) in what you now read!

          It's a "Christian healing" then, inasmuch as it is(if you believe me...or is it that you believe I merely believe this?) an account of a person(me) who has already met the Christ of the gospel, yet still appears to need "healing".

           

  The objective reader may decide this account is only for a "Christian" audience. And yet I can let you into the fact that,  actually, I know as many Christians who have been unfazed, even dismissive, of my account, even though they know it is verifiable by the people we both know who witnessed it...as I know those whom have been deeply touched and encouraged by it.

    It may interest the "Christian" reader, then, that of the non-Christians who have heard this account, there are many who have testified a stirring of their heart far in excess of some church leaderships to whose attention I have brought this.

   My following account begins with me sitting in the church I've just described, listening to a teaching which followed some musical worship, of which I was not too aware at the time as I was "distracted with many cares" as the saying goes...and I pick up the story from then:................

 ........................................................

   I have no recollection of the content of the sermon/teaching on that evening, save that I remember feeling immediately and  totally transfixed by the mention of Jesus and His Bride, the Body, the Church. I have since remembered that I sat bolt upright throughout the teacher’s words. My friends who had invited and driven me to the evening, have since confirmed that I was, as they put it, quite literally on the edge of my seat. However, upon mention of Jesus restoring His Bride, I was absolutely arrested.       

        

       (As background here, I had had a dream back in 2005, which was by far the most powerful dream I have ever had. In that dream, I felt Jesus wished me to look through His eyes and feel the things He felt, as He led a skeletal, suffering, blinded and disfigured woman through a city, at the end of which He turned to her and saw the woman was now a bride dressed in piercing white.          Whilst I was in the dream I felt emotions I could not identify with in real life, as my consciousness seemed to know His, as well as being aware within the dream I was still me also. I wrote the dream down immediately, and  I could remember it in the clearest detail. God has since worked with/prodded me to refine its “heart”, its “meanings”...which has been difficult only inasmuch as the reality within the dream has always been above and beyond words.       

     This dream, or rather its heart, has “gathered pace” increasingly ever since, and I have just known it to be a reflection of Jesus’ heart and undying love for His Bride. This urgency and growth within me to do something with this dream, has actually increased more greatly the last few years, but with no discomfort or illness of ease within myself, yet the words urgent and now  summarise some of the sense I have in Him about it.

       I wrote down the dream minutes after I had it in March 2005; though God has since shown me His meanings in it, its content has remained clear and unchanged since.

   Since the time of the events in the following account, I believe He has told me that now is the time I must "get it out there". If you would like a copy of this, I can gladly send it.)

           If I remember anything physically other than the actual sermon of that evening until that point, it was me asking my companions, “what’s the form?”of going to the front for prayer.

          In the previous weeks I’d said to God, “OK, I’m going to go; You’ll either do something or You won’t”. I was not remotely interested in sensation, falling over, cackling or whatever other flaky stuff might happen through group hysteria. I had also had occasion to really try to humble myself to Him the previous weeks...in short form here: “things”, me, life, pain, depression, fear, had seemed to worsen and get completely out of control. In the days before the evening, despite no “triggers” by my actions or others...just everything had become so dark, unpleasant, with all manner of things just going wrong.

        By the time of the meeting(...and it was indeed a sheer miracle that I got a lift that evening: my phone had packed in, I was late for my lift...my lift was late for me..I was in no fit state to go emotionally) I felt like a dumb animal almost dead from inner pain, unable to engage in others around me. I was beaten and really under the lash, so it felt...and I didn’t know if it was just stubborness, obedience or “the last throw” that I knew it had to be tonight that I went... it was just like God saying to do as I was told.

 

The Healing Experience Itself   

   

        It is from that exactly that moment after the sermon whilst standing at the front,  that I remember exactly everything that happened next for me. (It is a little odd hearing from my friends exactly how it looked to them... one even feared I was having a stroke, until her husband who’s trained in first aid, said it was not the case. Let God get on with it, was the consensus, they've since told me)

    Around about the time just before I went to the front, I had an odd "picture" in my mind:

As I'd been riveted by the mention of Jesus restoring His Bride, I now suddenly felt I really had to have all that God wanted me to have...not only that, but that right now would somehow be what the whole of my life was to be about, and that from this point onwards I would now know exactly what my purpose, calling, ministry was to be. I saw in this "picture", myself reaching towards God, pulling with all my might...yet with a big padlock and chain around the rest of my body anchoring me. I kept stretching, reaching...until my body just pulled apart like a piece of raw meat being pulled in two. Thing was, I was so desperately pulling at and for God, that I wasn't bothered about the pain.

     That picture ended, and I was now at the front. I said to myself, "OK God, please make me well; just do it..and if You don't then fair enough....but what on earth is going on, that I feel like my whole life's purpose is all about this actual evening?"

   

     I stood there both asking God to do something, yet now increasingly registering really unpleasant emotions:I had a sense of terror, pain, darkness...that were so buried, so old in my memory that it felt like the very template and origin for fear in me.

     I opened my eyes in the shock of this...and my gut just said run!  I thought, "No! This can't be of God because God is love," and I looked around to see if anyone was getting hands put on them, falling over or doing anything "demonic". I was sort of surprised that I oddly felt somehow(though distantly) safe...I was conscious of myself testing this experience in the extreme. I was saying to myself, "right, the minute I get any sense of no truth  in this experience, I'm out the door and I'll wait for my friends outside." I exerted all my "truthsense" in expectation of something "dodgy"...but remarkably could find in my spirit, no sense of it being anything other than very OK.

      This was totally at odds with how my body and emotions felt: my stomach was in a painful knot, and these "old", dark terrors...that were so strong and vile that I could not remember having them before, kept trying to lurch from my stomach. I thus kept saying, "No! This can't be from You God."

      In fact, the terror worsened, as I remembered the only time before  in my life feeling like this, was on the night I got saved and met Jesus, 6.30 pm one Monday night waaay back in January 1990: I had been delivered in quite a painful and dramatic way from what God showed me after was actual spiritual bondage(inappropriate for me to describe here).

    Though my feelings thus registered extreme pain, abandonment and terror...as I stood at the front, there was still some part of me in my spirit that still thought "it would be OK"....

   I then remember a lady and perhaps a couple of guys praying for me; I dimly thought, "well, that's a relief..they're not putting hands on me, pushing my forehead, shouting...or even asking daft questions like what do I want prayer for". [I've experienced all that stuff in the past, thinking heck, I've no idea, I just know I'll have prayer please as it's free and good for me, and if you don't believe it, God can still do His work].

   In fact, as I was prayed for, I was registering an extreme desire NOT to be touched: Even though I was in a church being prayed for...and generally have no issues at all with touch within church apart from when feeling anxious or threatened within myself, for some reason I felt like it used to feel when I was bullied and knocked about when I was little.

  I couldn't hear what was prayed...and I thought, yep, am cool with that, as God can take the prayers and move if He's not got His hands tied up by someone "praying to control" what He's doing.

      However, as I was being prayed over, I again felt that awful lurch of dark, evil terror. Miles worse this time,  it felt like I now had it stuck somewhere in between my stomach and chest like a massive furball of terrifying tears, terror and utter darkness that I could neither allow any further or push back down/away.

  I tensed, stiffened and thought..."No! That's it now: this is definitely NOT from God, as I can't bear it and He wouldn't do this to me"; I looked out of my eyes, just in fear like a trapped animal, to again check if there was anyone about to touch me, or if anyone was being pushed over, falling down or whatnot.

      I remember at that point I said to the lady praying, something like, "No! What's going on? I really don't like this".

     She said something like, "It's OK, God is working in you" and "don't be frightened". The pastor/preacher came over and I think asked her "all right?" as a question.

     She replied to him something like, "He's frightened but God's healing him"...and oddly enough even in the terror I again registered truth in this...and I assure you my threat-o-meter was set at maximum, with defence systems on full alert.

    The preacher calmly wandered to me, again didn't ask me anything but just put his hand near or even gently on my head with no pressure and prayed. I didn't hear what he said. Again, I was relieved and registered safety somewhere within myself. He calmly wandered away again and I was really relieved there was no drama or emotional stuff from him.

    I just stood there. The lady praying had wandered off and I think some chap had also come by just to pray briefly in the same way. Again, this lurching of fear and terror sort of just came up from my chest this time. I felt myself cry out, aloud this time, as this sob of utter desolation and terror just then emerged and went woomph from me.

  As this happened I cried out something that just sounded terrifying yet incomprehensible: "No, please, don't; No, go away!"...and the word or thought of bullies hurting me just flooded from somewhere deep in me, to now play in my mind like a quick-frame film show of slides or pictures or memories.

 I'd definitely had enough at this point!  I had my eyes shut, feeling myself shaking and sweating in terror, finding it difficult to breathe. However, there was part of me that was sort of just looking at this, with the oddest sense that , OK, I was indeed feeling this but that it was also an outplaying of something I had already experienced, and from such a long way back in my life that I only had a half-memory of it.

 

    Now it was as though there were several things all going on at once, as if there was like some "multi-tasking" thing all playing at the same time, with me "aware" on many different levels: I knew I was standing up at the front of this church; I knew I was terrified..and that it was of being bullied just like when a child; I knew God was somehow doing something; I knew I was fighting it as it was just awful; I knew that God somehow knew it and had control over the whole scenario.

     I was also conscious in that strange detached part of me that, well, was I not already aware and had been since childhood that I'd been bullied? And that this had made my life unbearable and frightening from around 5 to 11 years of age? Like: I've been consciously aware of this for years, and sure that God had already dealt with this, as I'd not kept it hidden from Him.

    And of course I was quite conscious that at several times in my Christian life since I was saved in 1990, yes, I'd chosen to forgive and to bless and release those who had hurt me, despite the nature of it being vicious, vindictive and continuous: I'd confessed it out to others in the Body, had prayed about it with them, had given it to God, to Jesus, to heal. ....Therefore even in the maelstrom of standing there at the front at this time, that part of me was just also puzzled as to why on earth this had come up again, if it was indeed "done and dusted" in Him already!

 

   The other, more prosaic thing that was registering to my conscious mind as I stood there, was that something was happening to my  body. I mean, as well as shaking and crying as these unbidden emotions just kept coming out in waves of sobs through my mouth, there was something else....

     And I then thought, Oh dear, no, Shaun..let's just get a grip here, I told myself. OK, God's doing something, and OK it's a bit mad...but I'm not going to get all flappy, catch group hysteria, start falling over and make a fool of myself here: that sort of behaviour is for people who flock to see some dodgy "name-it, claim-it, blab it, grab it" pseudo-revivalists who are loveless and not operating in Jesus, I was saying to myself.

       So, just to make sure, I steeled myself to just somehow allow God to do what He was doing and keep a tight rein on my emotions. I remember also locking my knees as I was standing, so that no-one got the wrong idea and started to push me over! I will stay in control of my emotional behaviour, was my command to myself.

   Then the lady who had prayed for me came back, and I again asked something like, "please, I'm not normally like this...what on earth is happening?"

   She said, "God is doing some deep healing in you; it's OK, just allow Him to."

The odd thing about this was that it felt like God was also Himself saying those words to me. I remember again asking her the same question a little later on; this time I think she said, "God is doing some deep major surgery in you, it's going to be OK,"..and again it felt to me like God was actually saying those words to me too either at the same time or just after.

  I'm aware all the above sounds like it was lasting a long time but it felt at the time like about 20 minutes or so, it's just that there was so much happening in what felt like a short time.

  Around that time, as I was still standing, with legs locked against the possibility of overt emotional display(!) and with eyes shut in both prayer but concentration that "I really do not want to do anything that is even subconsciously attention-seeking," I felt God saying to me but in a really gentle, patient and kind way, "Shaun, I am doing a work in you right now of deep major surgery, and I know you're frightened, but please allow me to as I need your permission to let Me do it [such a freeing, loving thing]." There was like an unspoken voice in this, also communicating, "I will never leave, abandon or forsake you".

   So I said to Him in my heart and mind, "I do really want You to, but I'm sorry, as I don't know what to do as I'm stuck." It sounded much more forceful when I said this in my heart, than it appears now in writing.

      And right then and there, 2 things happened, consecutively but so very close together in time..and I confess that though I continue to have the clearest and vivid recollection of exactly what now happened, it is testing the limits of my written and descriptive power to actually convey in human words. In fact, it's taking me about 2 pages to cover these 2 things, even though they seemed to happen really quickly.

   

             Firstly, though I of course knew I was standing at the front of a church in a Welsh industrial estate...I was also at a precise place and time in my childhood, when I was 6 years old. That is, it was not a memory...though in my conscious adult memory I had a vague recollection that this was one of several shadowy bullying incidents I'd experienced. But now: it was like God was saying, "I want to show you this, as this is what happened/is happening to you. I am here". I knew I have certainly not ever had up-front awareness and clear memory of it though.

         The thing was...I just knew and was quite aware that God had taken me to this place and time of when I was 6, whilst being also with me now as I was standing in the church. Like, seeing and realising God is eternal, because He's just taken me to a place in Him that is outside time and place...it was like(it was, in fact!) : I am 6, this IS happening now...I can see it clearly now and have no need to remember it falsely, forget with hindsight, as I can fully describe the here and now of it, because I am here and now.

      I also was seeing this incident from outside my 6 –year old body..but at a place that was safe, protected yet so close up to the event. So, I had several "awarenesses" that were all one awareness: I was 6 and in the "present-then" whilst the event was happening, in total abandonment, terror and fear; I was 6-in-the present at some place part of it but outside time and place with God at my side; I was also in the present in the church where I was standing; I was also next to God at that eternal moment as 6, yet also caught up somewhere next to God and seeing my whole life, past present and future..next to a realisation of all the connectedness of His Word...just understanding.

(I'm aware I put the word "firstly" at the start of the paragraph above: I'm not even at the end of that first bit yet!). I'm still struggling with the words here:

   As "Shaun-who-IS-6", and as "Shaun who is 6, yet who is at a place outside time with God" who is/was/will be with me even as I stand in the front of that Welsh church, and as Shaun-at-6-and-adult-now who is/was next to God looking at the 6 year old  Shaun....God allowed me to see the following. He also allowed me to experience this, as it happened in real time. This was not a replay, a memory, but a revealing in His present of the now of this. (Phew...I told you words are beyond me really at this point!)

   As God showed me the event, I suddenly had, as I stood at the front of the church with eyes shut, a perfectly clear...but perfectly safe... (re-) experience of something my mind had quite totally walled off from me ever since:

          

      When I was 6, one of the bullying incidents was even more terrifying than the rest of the years of day-at-a-time abuse: Where we used to play was an old redsand quarry, and one day a few of us were visited by much older boys, who were in their late teens. To me they were giants, and terrifyingly threatening ones, as I remember we all fell silent..even the other bullies who never once left me alone for over 5 years. Me in terror begging him to go away, the really big, fat, muscular one pushed me on my stomach, got one arm under my legs, the other under my throat/neck. He laughed, bending my back so far that my legs touched my head. My back gave and popped in awful pain, yet his arm was against my throat. I was strangled and suffocated in this manner until I passed out. I was in total dark, abandoned, eternal, thick terror upon terror, and no-one saved me.

     Actually this was itself only one hideous moment in the years between me being 5 and 11, which I remember as being the almost ritualised utter annnihilation of who I was. I was by 11 years of age twisted, cruel and in constant terror.

   As God showed me this, I felt safe...even though it was God showing me the here-and-now unfolding of it as He is there as eternal  God at every point and place in what we call time and space.

   He then spoke to me within and across all these above "awarenesses" I've tried to describe:

   He said, "Shaun, I'm showing you this as I wish you to be free of this, because you could not remember or  free yourself from that which you had no later knowledge of. I want you to forgive that boy who did this and all those who did this to you. I never wanted this to happen to you. I made you to be free, happy, laughing and running round with other kids; they came and did these things to you and hurt you.

     They hurt you so much, then this is what you then did:"

   And then, right next to me looking at 6-year-old-Shaun being suffocated, He showed me the boy-Shaun, standing. I had, as the boy who was standing, a massive structure, metres across(yards in old money), totally encasing my head. It was obscene: a huge painful wreck of a contraption made of metal scaffold-poles jammed together at chaotic angles; it was tied with bits of rope and thick plastic like bubble-wrap which held it all together. It was like a hideously broken parody of an insane child's version of a nightmare house, with bubble-wrap as both cushioning and windows. It was just suffocating the young me, totally sealing off reality.

  And God spoke to both the 6-Shaun and adult me again: "Because they hurt and terrified you, you made this place as it was the only place you could hide. But because it was made of fear it was made of death. You made this thing as a child and lived in it because you thought it was safe, and you could shut out from your mind the awful terror of what happened to you. You hid in there but have not known until now, that you did this; you hid in there and were not able to come out, as  you have not know you were even there; you did this when you were 6...but though you did not know this, you thus stopped being able to live, relate, grow, give, receive or love. You falsely believed you were always unlovable".

    As God said this I then chose to forgive and bless the bully who had hurt my back and suffocated me . As I did so, God then showed me the awful mental construct made of scaffolding and bubble-wrap...but now with me standing next to it, and it was not on my head.

      As my 6-year-old Shaun, now standing next to that thing, I knew then as Shaun-who-is-6 standing next to God, that I'd made it out of terror, aloneness, abandonment, pain and that it was made of the substance of death. And I said to myself and to God, "No, I will not go in there".

    So then, at once both Shaun(6) and me as an adult in the present, I asked God to forgive me for making this horrific thing from fear, for making it my hiding-place, for living in it all my life regardless of my ignorance...as I knew then that I had fashioned it and had made the decision as a 6-year-old boy to live in it. I had made it my reality with such finality that I no longer knew I had remained inside it all my life until now. And it needed a sovereign act of a loving God Who is at all places and times eternal, to take me there in His Spirit and effect a work of forgiveness.

  

    [As a comment on this 10 days or so after standing in that church: I believe that whereas Jesus did indeed save me once and for all on a Monday evening in January 1990, another way of describing it is this... That He "bought the house and grounds" of me outright in 1990 when He saved me and has had the whole of me in His safety since; however, it has pleased Him in the Father to do a sovereign work in "unlocking" me from a room in which I had no idea I had walled myself up in. By a miracle of Grace He last week took me in Him to that place in Him where the Shaun(6) chooses to forgive and asks forgiveness in His eternal present]

Hopefully the reader of this will remember that I said there were two things that happened in close succession as I stood with eyes shut at the front of the church...and so....

   Secondly, in what felt like a split-second in "realtime" after He took me to when I was 6, I was aware of now another chap on the church's prayer team who had come alongside me to pray....

  

      Please bear in mind at this point I was still experiencing the bullying incident when I was 6 as God took me to it...and also note that my body still as yet was only just registering that God wished me to allow Him to effect His deep-healing work.

    

    So far in the evening of the healing I'd been relieved that no-one had prayed for me with the "gift of shouting" and a ministry of pushing against my forehead!..I had been and still was feeling very vulnerable(which I now see was God dealing with what He had to deal with and what had been separating me from fully abiding in Him). Also, because God was healing areas in my life that most definitely concerned intimacy, touch and so on, I felt that God knew this and was being careful to be very gentle and patient with me.

   I noticed out the corner of my eye that the man on the prayer team approaching me was a big chap...and of course was registering in my Spirit being "taken" to that place in early childhood that it was big, scary giant of an older boy or man who had strangled me and damaged my back.

       However, because I now knew God had been there alongside me all my life, it was with an odd absence of fear that I was aware that the big guy on the team was "in my space"...and I knew that God was still dealing with these "furballs" of emotion and whatever else lie behind them.

  The guy actually put his arm round me as he prayed. I was thinking, "Whoa...!" but again and to my great surprise I registered no unease: heck, this big, scary guy with his arm round me...and while I was in the Spirit as the child I was at that damaging time in the past.

   And now God really showed Himself to me in a way I had always been told about but had never known as reality:

      The terrifying, deathly construct I referred to above, the broken place I created out of fear to crawl into at that horrific time, had had the effect[as I now write in hindsight and with His Spirit showing me some 2 weeks after the healing] of walling me in so completely, that it either filtered out, twisted or cut me off from pretty much any formation of a "healthy relationship", from that young age:

       God had already just showed me the reality of Him having been there, and I with Him, all those years ago at that bullying time, unchanging in His present and eternal love and ever full of me in His Mind.

     And now, just as the big guy at Cwmbran put his arm round me and prayed,  I knew God was keeping me safe and also wanted my permission to totally drop my guard. So I let Him.

  I felt these massive sobs come out of me and those "furballs" in my chest come out with them as this guy held me.

 But now..!.my goodness: As  I shut my eyes and "let God", I was again no longer an adult. Er, OK..I was, as I registered I was in this church and people were there as per normal...yet in my Mind I felt just transported to somewhere else:

    I mean, yes, this guy was holding me as I sobbed and he prayed...BUT I was somehow on my back resting in the crook of the arm and hand of a massive and massively safe DAD! I looked down my body in this vision...and whoa...!...my toes look soo tiny! And, hey, why is my body so very small, like only a foot long or so?!

        Please bear with my "emotional" punctuation here: Though my earthly father was and is a calm and gentle soul, and indeed was always present in my family throughout my childhood and teens...I'd felt I was never really able to effectively bond somehow. I certainly never have had any recollection whatever, at any point in my life, of the reality of what was happening right now as I was being held by this chap.

    As I looked down "in my little body" and saw those reallly baby toes, I thought, this is GREAT! I'm really safe, and MY DAD is SO BIG and warm and safe! Hey, I like this! And there was this rocking sensation, like being on a gentle swing, until I realised that I was being carried as MY DAD walked forward through the night.

   I was also in my adult awareness sobbing freely now..but sobbing that this was the first time I KNEW MY DAD...and He was massive, safe, warm, held me in His Hands and in the crook of His Arm, and He had me so safe as He carried me as He walked along.

  It was like, well yes, this big guy was holding me...but it was also that God as Father was also doing this: the guy was doing here in the real world in church, just what God the Father was doing "in the real", in the Spirit. Or, another way of putting it: the big guy was doing a small earthly "analogue" of what Father  God was actually doing in both my present and my past simultaneously.

      And then was the actual, real revelation of absolute certainty, that this was God the Father...and He loved me...and that though I'd known of Him before, since I was saved in 1990(and I'd met Jesus then at that ime...but that is another story...), He was now real and there/here...and miles more real than even my earthly father, and actually holding me, in a place more real than "my reality" itself. It was at that moment then, that God showed me His realness as Father, and in just about the closest, face-to-face way, more than ever in my imagination....and how could I imagine something I'd never been able within myself to experience?

     It was with almost an afterthought that I was then aware my back was hurting...so I asked the big guy: "Hey buddy, my back's giving me some jip; can you pray for it please?"  He put his hand on my back, prayed silently...and to be honest I gave this bit no more thought.

     I remember being sort of surprised that I could be fully aware as an adult standing in a church..yet also as "real Shaun" as this infant self. I felt this then...and now believe this totally, now I've reappraised the whole experience with God and some others in the Body.

    I was then aware the big guy was moving away. I stood with eyes closed, sobbing away but just not scared any more...and just kind of utterly awestruck and floored within my whole being that God Who made everything everywhere, had personally showed Himself to me in a a real way that was even deeper than the first.

    I stood there, praying and thanking God, just knowing Him.

You'll remember I had already commanded my body not to "get emotional" at church, willing my legs to lock so I wouldn't make a fool of myself and fall over!

 

 However, what with this even more powerful revelation of God as  real Father, I was then aware of yet another jawdropper, as His reality dawned in me: For sure He was saying, "Shaun, I'm still healing you really deep down, at times in your life even before when I was there with you with the bullies....I'm healing you now in that same eternal way, at a time when you were so little you were hardly aware. I am there now with you, making you whole. Trust me even more and allow me to carry you."

    And by this stage in the proceedings, I was saying, "Oh yes Father God!"

Well, I stood there with eyes shut, allowing God total access to all areas as I prayed and thanked Him, with the tears just coming in buckets. And just at that moment, as I allowed Him full control, I thought, "awwwno...me muscles are just going all floppy!"

    The adult part of me thought: "Awheck, this is reallly embarrassing! Me  legs are going to go in a minute, and everyone'll think I'm just doing it for attention!"

  Right: I gritted my teeth, thinking...ah, I know, I'll just pretend to kneel: it'll look right, it will not draw attention to myself...and I can just about keep myself from falling over!

    Ohdear....it wasn't that simple!...

   I was now aware that as I was allowing God total permission to go as deep as He wished to restore me(and it was easy now with this GREAT BIG DAD), my muscles were just, er, not working!

  That is, I had no cramp, no discomfort; I was by no means paralysed...I could certainly feel everything and was certainly very aware of both the "baby Shaun" being carried and me as an adult in the room...er...but my muscles were just not working as He with my permission just carried on His work in me. I was fully sensorily alert...but hey..my muscles were not working!

  I was registering no fear whatsoever...but I was registering a degree of plain embarrassment!

 I felt my muscles sort of twitching...but it was like I was relaxing sooo much in Him, that my muscles were just discharging their tension or something(a bit like when one's dropping off to sleep and the muscles fire off as they relax).....

...Aw heck, here we go, I thought. I was kneeling, thinking, ohmygoodness, if this carries on I'm just going to make a nit of myself and flop like a boned jellyfish.

     I remember a couple more people(I think one was the original lady who had prayed too) wandering over and praying for me, so I tried to just say, "oh by the way, my muscles are packing in: don't worry, I'm OK."

   But..embarrassed or what(!)...as I tried to form the words, I was aware all my muscles were relaxing to jelly-state..including the ones with which I was trying to form words!

  Awww...nooo!...I'm slurring and slathering and talking rubbish...what if they think I'm drunk or something!? Ironic, the adult part of me was thinking...19 years sober, and now they'll think I'm drunk!

    But the more I "let God", the more floppy and twitchy and slurred I became...and I knew that in seconds the inevitable would come, and I'd just flop from kneeling to laying down, slopping over like amoeba-man!

  

   

      Next, even though I now totally knew how safe I was and had always been in Him my father God, Who had been there with me and for me amongst the bullies, and Who had just revealed Himself as Real GREAT BIG DAD...I felt another "furball" of fear emerge up from somewhere really, really deep and old within me, as the 3rd "healing phase" of the evening began:

    Just before my muscles went as I was kneeling, I was aware of Sarah(Phil's wife: my friends who'd driven me to Cwmbran) who had approached from behind me. She was weeping and I remember her saying how beautiful it was to witness God's work at this time. She knelt behind me and held me in her arms just as absolutely every last vestige of muscular control left me, so that I was held and propped against her.

    I was still totally conscious, totally feeling, totally aware, of all that was happening and all that God was doing(it seemed one timeless succession of many "events", yet also as if time was hardly passing at all). I had not lost any sensation, but was at this point completely "powerless in Him".

    I had no fear... indeed, I was praising Him and saying "thank you Father" over and over, even though my speech was totally mushy and slurred, for His being present, for holding me to Himself in the past and present. I "let go and  let God" so completely, as I knew He was still needing my permission to allow Him to complete His work in me.

     However, despite the sense of complete safety and of course being held by Sarah, this new "furball of fear" now moved upwards through my being. This is extremely difficult to put into words: I was not frightened of the fear..but I was feeling something that had frightened me at a time so far back in my life, that I was only registering it as a texture...or a sense of desolate absence of something, yet this texture was so complete...and very, very not nice!

  God then showed me what it was...but again "in the Spirit" and in a very deep(hidden? buried?) way, as I lay there in Sarah's arms:

      As I shut my eyes, I registered total dependence within my being: it had no adult equivalent; I existed in a world of textures, as me ....but at such an early time in my life. And then, within this feeling as if I existed in textures...a texture of terror, loss and desolation, that was paralysing and total.

  Of course, I was also aware I was an adult who was now quite unable to move if I wished God to carry on with His work in me, supported on the floor by Sarah, and with the worship music still going and people around about.

     But as I lay back against Sarah with her arms round me, and me feeling this  "ahh please don't leave me all alone!"- texture of fear just well up from me, God said to me "this is from even before the last time; [meaning when He had just taken me to "very small Shaun" held by Him as Father  God my GREAT BIG DAD] I am here holding you, and I will never leave or forsake you."

      And He showed me right then that I was now with Him at that time when I was alive in this world but even younger than the "baby  Shaun" that I've already described; I existed... but in a world of textures and need. My "adult me" recognised in Him that this was so but my present vocabulary and mind cannot say with truth whether this was in the first weeks, days of my life outside the womb, or even before.

   I was registering as this "very early Shaun" the texture of  what would later become known to me as fear...but this texture was all around me, like a suffocation and a totality. [That's the best my words can do I'm afraid!]. Somewhere at that time, I understood or perceived something like rejection or abandonment within me; it was very real, like a total belief, a total world.

       Now, I have no idea as an adult what this was...and indeed as I was lying there propped against Sarah, I was aware that I didn't have to "know" with my mind.

       The whole experience was similar to the "Shaun at 6" and the "baby Shaun" one, in that though I was fully conscious of where I was in the room as an adult, I was at the same time and in the Spirit at that place quite present as this very earlier Shaun.

       As this wave of "pre-fear"[my adult words!] came up, as I experienced this "help, please don't leave me"- texture wash up through me, God showed me even more of Himself right as His words "I am here holding you" comforted me: Though it was still Sarah who supported me in her arms, it was at the same time time God as even more to me than He'd shown me already: He then said to me words in my Spirit that were not just comforting but like comfort itself: the closest  I can get to this is words like, "I am the fullness of mother, and a mother's love is from the fullness of Me; all nurture/tenderness is from Me; I made everything that defines a mother's love, I am the creator, source and template for all a mother can be; a mother's love is from the fullness of My love. I am Father God and I made/created mother and all that a mother's love can be, and never will I leave or forsake you, because I made you in Me before this"[ie, before my earthly mother...and He was/is there even before my earthly mother was].

    I remember that at this time I was saying, "please don't leave me!", out loud; I remember that at times I continued to say it, even when Sarah had to shift her position because her legs had gone to sleep and when she had to let me gently flop as I was completely prone. I remember too that the lady who had originally prayed for me came over to me again, and I also said this to her. This sounds a bit odd as I write it, because it all seemed to last a mere instant but simultaneously for a long time.

          At the same time as He "took" me to that place I just described and said the words above to me, I was still completely conscious and aware of Sarah holding me...but then another strange thought impacted quite clearly:

   As Sarah held me, I was conscious that my totally powerless body was still completely without muscle strength, and that my head would have just lolled had Sarah not been supporting me, my arms splayed out.

    I had the odd thought just then that this must look like the Michelangelo sculpture, Pietá, which depicts Mary holding Jesus' body after He's taken down from the cross. My adult mind just thought, "how strange I should think of this," but God was still saying the bits above about His love, that Father God  created all the love a mother could have, as He "designed" mothers and that their nurture is  the love that He fashioned/sourced from Himself. Our earthly experience of a father's and mother's love are because He first loved us.

    As the sculpture image came to me, He showed me just for an instant that He both knew and felt all that Mary(Jesus' mother) felt, and far more besides(much more than the human heart can bear), in the time that Jesus' body was taken down from the cross. It was like a love I cannot describe, but was all the love I've tried to put into words above, as well as types of love I do not know, that seemed to me(as adult) to be the unique types of love that only a woman can know.

   Sarah around this time said, "ah Shaun, my legs have gone to sleep, I'm going to have to let you down."

  Now, of course I was still in that knowing of God, so was perfectly happy with this, even as I was still registering as "very early Shaun" feeling the fear-texture. I heard myself say, "please don't leave me", partly as I was still "early Shaun", and partly because I was still not able to move. My words were still very mushy and slurred; I was comforted that Sarah(and the lady who had prayed for me, when she returned) assured me that they would not leave me.

  So there I remained on the floor, quite comfortable but unable to move. I was slurring away, "thank You Father God, bless You, praise You". 

   

      Though the experiences you have just read, did  happen as consecutive events throughout that evening, the reality in the present as I was laid there still persisted: I was still with God as Father, Parent, fullness of love; I registered in the Spirit, as somehow still in real "eternal" time, that I was at once at all those place-times I described that were present for Him. I was fully adult, conscious yet immobile on the floor...yet also still conscious of God With Me at these "childhood Shaun" experiences.

   The difference now was, that I knew God the Father as I was with Him and He was just really there actually and physically. In the days that immediately followed this evening, God showed me this same truth in the last chapters of Job, when Job says that he "knew of Him before by  hearing, but now sees Him with his own eyes".

    If there were any additional images that followed as I was on the floor, they were the solidifying of the things I've already described. The ones of  Father God carrying me when I could see my tiny little toes as an infant, and the vision of me standing in revelation and repentance outside the terrible "construct" of my mind as a freed 6 year old, were the strongest...and at this time of writing they still are.

  "Time" for me whilst on the floor, was (and still is!) a little challenging to piece together in an "objective" way: it was like living a lifetime, yet being outside time. Some parts registered to the adult-me as both being very long, almost like seasons...yet some parts impossibly busy and speedy and only taking a few moments.

   The part where I was on my knees being held by Sarah, for instance, still seems as it did then to last about 20 minutes, yet I've since been told it was an hour or so.

  Similarly, the time I was lying down seemed sometimes like 15 minutes or so, but at other moments as if I'd been laid there several hours.

  In fact, as I was immobile and laid there, I was conscious of now starting to feel vaguely embarrassed: I remember trying to roll my eyes  to try and act normal, trying to say, "I do apologise; I promise I'm not doing it deliberately or attention-seeking", or, "I'm not drunk you know"!

  But even as I tried to move, I managed a vague flap of my arm and a few twitches, slurred away...and thought, "er...nahh! It's not going to happen Shauny," so I praised God and thanked Him instead. I remember even trying to sing at one point as the worship group played ...and oddly was able to do so...yet still was slurring afterwards!

 

 Time moved on. I remember I again was concerned, as I "moved" between the present and the other experiences, that my friends might just leave...yet I knew they would not, and I was just safely "replaying" some of the things that had happened(and to me still happening at those past/present places in Him).

   I was now starting to feel very tired, yet still comfortable. I began to be aware that a few people were starting to leave, yet there I was still sparko. Hmm...embarrassing, but nope, sorry, can't move guys!

   One by one, a few more people left; then it registered to me that the worship group had now finished playing.

  By the time the worship group had packed away and were moving out, I was thinking that maybe I should start getting concerned, as I was still incapable of moving.

  Awwwno...now the ministry team were packing in, the house lights going on, doors being pulled to...and still yours truly was still on the floor quite unable to move.

         Er...I was starting to get resigned to the possibility that I might not get up, when Sarah and Phil her husband came over. I'd been saying(or rather, slurring) to people when they'd bent down to me, "er, I'm OK, I'm alright...but I just can't move...me muscles don't work...".

   Sarah said, "Shaun, do you think you can get up?" And  as I put out my arm, I found that then I could stand and was able to move slowly.

  But my goodness..it was most odd! I was desperately tired, still like Jellyfish Man: quite conscious, fully aware and adult but still simultaneously registering the experiences with Father God at the points in my childhood. In fact, I was now aware of the "Shaun at 6 years" being restored, happy, free of predations of bullies, free of that vile construct that had ben around my head and into which I'd crawled...even bizarrely but in truth glad and smiling and obedient.

     It was as though, because God had tonight met with and restored Shaun-at-6(who was himself restored by Father God having met with him and restoring him at those times previous to being 6), I had miraculously actually been free ever since then, able to live, laugh and run about like other kids, free!

      Thus, as I was led out of the church building, though I was a functioning(if very tired) adult..I was also a quite happy and comfortable child of 6, happy to do whatever I was asked as I was not afraid.

   I was aware through my tiredness that I knew God as Father, as I'd quite truthfully now seen Him with my eyes...and I guess I was thus in "child mode" as I allowed myself to be steered back to the car. It was an odd thing that I was now aware of the joy, laughter and "ahhh!"s of my friends, along with the sense of arrested puzzlement of others there who knew me, and I thought, "oo-er...they're going ahhh at me", and they know too what God has just done.

    I remember getting into their car, and being so happy surrounded by the 3 of them and very relieved that I'd not driven, as I was incapable of it now; I remember being very touched and warm at the times they again cooed and laughed joyously around me.

  It struck me, as they  dropped me outside my door, that they hung on to make sure I got in safely. I was still wobbling like jelly as my muscles were still weak, and it took a few goes to get the key in the door. Some adult awareness in me thought, er, oh no, the neighbours might think I'm drunk. I managed to open the door, tried to turn and smile in acknowledgement, but I think it just came out as a floppy 6-year-old's grin..and I heard their joyous cackles and a cheer as I made it.