Facing the Fear

I could hardly breathe last night trying to bring myself to a place of calm where I could drift away into sleep – the place where I don’t have to think through the revelations that are washing over me as a tidal wave now.

On his way home, Leefe sent me a clip of a song he was downloading from CD’s he’d received from his favorite band Hybrid. And as I listened the intro I received a vision from a time past, walking through the Batman Escape exhibit from Astroworld as the entrance and line to the last roller coaster built before they tore the park down.

This was the second connection to a theme park I heard last night. The first came as a man I was working with told me of his days as an employee of Disney world. “It was very common for people to die there,” he said. “Because the rides malfunctioned,” I asked? He shook his head no, “Suicide. People would climb the rides and jump from the top of the roller coasters. The strangest occurrence was when one night we all heard a woman scream. We knew by the way the sound carried that she had jumped from the top of a roller coaster near by. But we never did find her body.” His testimony immediately sent me into the scripts of the book Remember Skyla as she climbed to her final destination at the top of the Texas Cyclone Roller Coaster where she was prepared to take her last flight and step off the ledge from the very place where her greatest and most terrible day had occurred. Astroworld was the best memory she held onto from her childhood – keeping the keychain with a peephole picture inside of her and her dad on the bamboo shoot boat together. That was also the day he dropped her off on the foot of the driveway of her mother’s house, handed her the suitcase of her clothing and articles she’d spent 2 weeks planning an packing for their weekend together. Then he told goodbye – for good. He never returned. She spent the next 6 years writing letters and poems as her way of praying for the future they would spend together when he would one day come back. But that day never came and at the age of 12, she burnt the letters, along with the only picture she had of them together.

As I listened to the orchestral piece of the second clip Leefe sent to me, I was forced into another memory of my father – the night before he took me to that wondrous trip to Astroworld. He played instrumental pieces and movie scores to help me sleep and said to me, “This type of music is the language of the angels. When you listen to it, they surround you to protect you. Never forget this ok? I hung on every word his kind lips spoke as I closed my eyes and pictured legions of angels dressed in white with beautiful fiery wings swarming around me.

“I think you remind of my dad,” I responded by text to Leefe, before elaborating on the man who once held my entire heart in his hand. I talked about how much he loved music, how kind and gentle he was and how he always made me laugh and did his best to show me a fun time when I visited him. “He was my calm,” I concluded in the short biography of the little bit of memory I retain today. “Nevermind that sounds dumb. I haven’t seen him since I was like 5.” Several minutes passed before Leefe responded again. “I read it and it’s not dumb.”

The remainder of my night I spent shaking as if something deeply buried in me was pounding against the surface of my heart, demanding to be let loose. I’ve known for years that my dad’s departure was my deepest wound. It was the milestone in my life that shifted my perception of the world, of people and of love. If I were an angel, I’d call that the day the angel broke her wings and fell into a dark pit. I loved again throughout my life to the. best of my ability. But to say to myself that I truly believe in a love that never fails, never leaves and never forsakes would be to speak a lie of my own heart.

“OK I see it! But what am I supposed to do with it? This is too heavy, I don’t know how to heal my own heart!” I screamed into a dark room – answered only by the breeze outside of my window, reminding me that I’m alone in the silence.

Just two days ago on my trip from Nashville to Boise Idaho I made a decision to write Leefe a goodbye letter. This isn’t something new. I’ve been writing this man goodbye letters since we first met in the Summer of 2019. It’s as if I’ve always known he’s a temporary placement in my life and I’ve been fighting a battle within myself to keep me from the fall I perceive ahead. The irony of my desperation lies within the mystery of my madness to achieve such a thing in the first place. If I’m truly cold to love and the broken pieces of my heart that were stolen from me at age 5, watching my father’s red truck disappear into the trees are truly hidden away to never surface again, then why are they here now, demanding that I look at them? Could it be true that the innocent little girl who once believed in miracles and a safe place to rest my heart could still exist even after all of the pain I’ve endure in the wake of abandonment? After my first father left, my step-dad Roger who raised me to age 17 fell in line – claiming that his new girlfriend had delivered an ultimatum, forcing him to never speak to me again. Then my mother moved off to Wisconsin taking with her my 3 year old little sister. And finally, after 19 years of marriage, my husband left too. Clearly I’m not meant to be loved in this life. I would be a fool to believe it any other way.

But the desire is there. I’ve tried everything to kill it. I’ve tried to drown it in distractions, addictions, self-help books, religious sermons and at last using the power of the pen that has always been my faithful friend in letting go. When I write, I make sense of things and face my emotions with courage. When I write, I destroy the demons that tempt me to keep believing in the strings of betrayal that hold me hostage to fables and fantasies of happily ever afters. In writing, my heart finds rest an peace in the surrender of letting go. But where is my power now?

A hundred letters sent and saved – some of which I even buried in the backyard of a rental home in Houston, telling myself that if my words can be a seed for the divine to water, then the day will soon come when this man can’t hurt me anymore. When I no longer care if he doesn’t’ love me, doesn’t need me, doesn’t seek a future with me by his side or even if he’s entertaining the company of other women. Yes, I’ve prayed a thousand prayers into the heavens begging God to please “release my heart from this man.” I can’t afford love because I can’t afford to be hurt again. Such a thing could kill me dead if loss came for me again and I have children on the earth who can’t bare the idea of their mother jumping off of a cliff in the aftermath of giving up on them.

How can the blueprint of my father’s essence be imprinted into a man who I’ve known most of my adult life but never even considered as a prospect for love? How did he know to enter my life just days after my ex-husband served me divorce papers? How did he know that I was about to have a heart attack or a nervous breakdown as I watched my family crumble and my son move out of my home – sending an invitation to take me away on a weekend escape to Vegas? Why was the song that I heard playing in my thoughts everytime I thought about the dream I had of him and I together written and performed by the band The Weeknd? Why did the world stop spinning as if I blacked out for 9 hours the first time we made love? Why did he say to me, “Please don’t ever disappear on me again?” when he dropped me off at the airport? Why am I now realizing that he’s triggered the loss of my father? Why does he reject me? Tell me that he never wants a relationship or to get married? Why does he share his dreams of a career move to a far away place and never once mention me in his future? Why has he never told me even once that he loves me? Did my dad ever say he loves me? I don’t remember.

Why would God send someone into my life to bring all of these things to the surface, knowing that I already have seen this movie and know how to ends? Does God want me the little bit of hope left inside of me to be utterly destroyed? Doesn’t God know this man has already promised to love me and leave me by his theory that “everything has an expiration date”? Why won’t God heal my heart? Will this be the death of me? Is this where I find my roller coaster to climb?

When I held my grandmother’s hands as her body prepared to pass over on February 23, 2017, I could see what she sees and feel what she felt. Like a little child walking into Disney Land for the very first time, she crossed over into the Heavenly realms of beauty, peace, splendor and love. She found her promised land and in a way I got to experience that with her in that beautiful moment of saying goodbye to the only woman who’d ever shown me unconditional love.

On the 3rd anniversary of her passing into her heavenly home I stood at the rocks of Point Magu in Malibu staring up at the star alignments with Leefe. It was the first time I’d ever visited the magical place of beauty and wonder with powerful waves crashing into the shores below the rocks. We watched lights from cars appear between the twin mountain peeks that hugged the Highway 1 and for a moment I felt like I was in a dream. That was also the night Leefe told me that he was not in love with me, emotionally unavailable and he would “never be the man who would say to me, Baby I love you I’ll see you in 12 days.” My heart ripped out of my chest that night and yet the hurt came with a strange sense of mystery on the next morning as I boarded my flight and received a notification from Facebook revealing that we had stood under the stars in Malibu at that sacred place at the exact moment my Granny passed over into Heaven exactly 3 years before.

What does that mean? Was this my sneak peak into a type of Disney Land my heart had always dreamed might exist here on earth? A new chapter and a new love, with him? I believed in this seed of hope from the next week when Covid shut the country down until my very last flight to California as a flight attendant based in Florida. That was the weekend the hills of Malibu were set to flames by the fires. Leefe stayed with me and then left the next morning to drive home in the chaos as the inferno burnt on. Then he blocked me without warning. He never gave me an explanation as to why he didn’t want to see me or talk to me anymore. He just disappeared. Just like my dad disappeared.

Here I am 4 months later, living in California with a script writer I met on a plane and I have plans to stay with him in Casabas tomorrow night. Why am I doing this to myself? Why am I still writing goodbye letters? Why am I meeting with him as if he’s still the man who could turn out to be the love of my life after all these years passed of renewed heartbreak and disappointments from him? When does this roller coaster end and give me peace and clarity?

I hope for change. I need it bad. I need to know why all of this has happened, what I’m not seeing and I need to know if this man is the man my soul loves and is meant to spend the rest of my life with or if she’s just another walk-away Joe in a red pickup truck about to disappear into the trees to never return again.

I need God to give me something real to hold onto – not the signs and strange encounters but something I can truly believe in for the sake of love – holding by a thin string of hope.

May 28, 2025.

/0 Comments/by

Back to 43

Today was a good day. I wrote the letter on my first flight and cried it out. Then I received an epiphany of what Jesus meant when he said “sin no more.” To see this mystery I needed to first simply what it was he did for her. He rescued her from a situation in which not a single person in her life had her back, defended her or cared if she died. Then, I was reminded of a scripture that discusses WHY women commit adultery. In Mathew 5:32 it says every man who puts his wife away is the causes her to commit adultery. Interesting concept isn’t it? Who translated this stuff? She’s the whore and the “adulteress” after the man cheats on her and then puts her away in divorce? That doesn’t sound like justice and yet that’s the kind of ideology these people were subscribing to when they wanted to put all of their sins on one woman’s shoulders.

I’m getting a second chance at the rescue I was gifted 3 years ago and the same exact attacks are coming at me now in different form – trying to pull me back in the dirt with the mob surrounding me screaming “stone her” and Jesus was telling that woman, just as he is telling me today, “Don’t go back to that trap.” He wants the one who is set free by his hand to not look back. Just like Lot’s wife turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at Sodom and Gomorah Jesus is telling his daughters to flee these situations that almost killed them and to never turn back to that prison again.

When I walked into my room at the 43 I saw the clock on 37 and remembered the promise. I don’t know how this promise will come to me or what awaits me in my near future but I believe it’s coming. I believe God has something so beautiful in store for me and I hope I have the faith to keep writing here everyday the events unfolding and allow his story to unfold with a love for the journey as well as the destination.

Goodnight Boise Idaho.

/0 Comments/by

Running with God

I need a miracle. Perhaps that’s the reason I felt compelled to buy the domain “Malibu Miracle” last week as I woke up in my new room I’m renting from a script writer in Woodland Hills California. The Malibu tie-in comes from a moment of inner awakening back on February 23, 2020 when I stepped foot onto the rocks of Point Magu for the first time and felt the knees beneath me buckle. I later learned that I was standing in that magical space at the very moment my granny passed over into Heaven exactly 3 years before. It was also the night I had a strange dream of a tsunami that would threaten the live of me, my mother, her husband and my son. God parted the waters around us in that dream just as the scriptures say he did for Moses and Israelites. But do I believe in such stories? Are they spiritual only in nature today or is this a series of events that speak to the real journey I live and walk inside of today?

Last night on the plane I met a man who sells coffee to raise money for addicts to go into treatment and be saved. He said, “I don’t want to see another 23 year old die.” I felt my inner world shake as I thought about the fact that my son is 23 years old today and also in a dark place where I live each day terrified of a phone call that could shift the already dark space I seem to occupy into a world where I’m not sure I can wake up anymore to face a day without my son on this planet. I pray nonstop and sew in tears for so many years now I feel like I’ve lost count of the weeks and months passing. The only thing I have to hold onto is a vision I received months back while living in Dania Beach Florida. I saw my son grown up with a wife and a child in a backyard that I didn’t recognize. It was a beautiful place and love abounded there. But that dreamlike vision seems planetary alignment apart from the reality I live in today.

There’s another darkness lurking within me that I try outrun without victory; my view of men. I’ve never had a father stay in my life but God gifted me a husband to walk alongside of me through 24 years from the day we met as I was a troubled 15-year old seeking something that I could believe in. We had a rocky beginning but eventually all things worked out as we set out to take on this world as two children trying to raise two children alone. We became a team and even though we made many mistakes and our love for eachoter wasn’t exactly pure and polite at all times we did manage to overcome many obstacles and bring our kids up the best we knew how to.

He had an accident on his 39th birthday that pulled the rug out from under us all. Everything we’d built together came tumbling down and I ask today, all these years later, Why God? What was the purpose of all that I cared for deeply shattering into a heap of broken glass before my eyes? What did I do to deserve such a horrific outcome? When will the winds of change grace me and my children, once and for all opening a door to the “hope and a future” as cited in the scripture Jeremiah 29:11 that my son has tattooed on his arm?

You see, we believed in miracles, purpose in the pain and trouble that turns into triumph. But on the 3 year anniversary of his accident I was served divorce papers and the love that I watched crafted within the walls of a tragedy turned into something beautiful in the making closed in with a vengeance my mind can’t comprehend. My kids lost their family and eventually we all saw our faith dwindle to nothing. I hang onto words I once spoke from an ICU room over my ex-husband’s sick body and speak them today in hopes that God’s word is living and breathing in my circumstances. I tell myself he still has a plan and I just have to hold on and keep waiting for that moment to arrive when he shakes the heavens and the earth and makes all things sad untrue.

In the meantime it’s a daily battle to fight against my own flesh that wants to fall apart and give up. I try to exercise and run. I try to keep myself healthy with good food choices and even train my mind to focus on the good things that make me laugh or offer me a moment of distraction. I try to find love again in the arms of a man but the only one who seems to have any interest in me reminds me weekly that I “hate men.” What does he see in me that I’m not willing to see in myself? Has my past pain jaded me and the heart within my chest that cries to be love, see love, experience love and believe in the miracle of love that wins even in the most unlikely circumstances?

I’m tired of fighting myself. I”m tired of trying to figure it out. I’m tired of exhausting my thoughts with ideas to help my son and pretending that my mind doesn’t haunt me at night. I’m tired of the upset stomach that never leaves me alone and sleepless nights tossing and turning as the acid in my esophagus rises up as a poison revealing the unsettled emotions that twist and turn inside of my being day and night without rest. I’m tired of wearing a fake smile and encouraging others with my stories as if I have it all together and I’m some sort of bright light in a dark world with answers for the woe’s of problems I see in the world when I can’t even figure out how to get through a day of my own struggles without breaking down into tears.

I need a miracle. I need it fast. I need help in the spaces of the unseen wounds that I carry within. I need a new heart that wakes up with childlike wonder trusting love and trusting God’s plan – that he’s still working in my story and has something good for me to look forward to here and now.

I feel like David screaming out at his own soul, “Why are you so downcast?!?! Believe in God!” I feel like the woman at the well fetching water everyday for survival waiting on the Mesiah to come and tell her all things. I feel like the woman in the sand carrying the blame and guilt of generations before her and all that she’s walked through in her pursuit to feel like her life has purpose brought to an end with an angry mob surrounding her chanting, “Stone her.” But where is the Jesus who comes to her rescue? Where is the author who writes in the sand and rights all of our wrongs? Where is forgiveness, renewal and resurrection of a life that wants to see a page turned and a new chapter revealed?

As I write this from a hotel room in Nashville Tennesee, preparing to go for a run outside with focus on the fitness of my physical body I ask for healing of the parts me unseen to the outside world….. my soul. I don’t want to run alone anymore. So I seek to run with God – begging for a transformation of faith, hope and above all love. I ask for forgiveness to be granted to me and to everyone who’s ever harmed me and for hearts to be convicted into a new season of renewal. I ask for my son to live and to find an open doorway that only God can present in the circumstances he faces now. I ask for laughter, dancing and testimonies of God’s miraculous pen upon my life to be the joy of my lips as I write a new story here and now. His story. I ask for Jesus to be the author and finisher of my faith and to cause the world around me to shift into his divine design of beauty painted from the ashes.

POST SCRIPT:

Running the busy streets downtown Nashville, surrounded by the sounds of country music radiating from bars and restaurants, I heard the phrase, “Sin no more,” spoken from a small voice within me. And I immediately thought back to the image that came across my screen when I resurrected this website last week from an old blog that was created in 2017 to capture the prophetic dreams I’d encountered. It was called “Squad Jesus” back then. Later it became “Good News J” and now it’s transferred to the domain name “Malibu Miracle.” The image I speak of pictured a sandbox I created where I stored my prayers and letters to God. And the imagery etched into the wood features a hand writing in the sand, as that of Jesus when he stood over the woman who was caught in adultery preparing to meet her death as the mob around her screamed “Stone her.” When Jesus placed his hand in the sand he stood up and announced, “To he who has no sin cast the first stone at her.” And then he bent down a second time to touch the sand, as if he was rewriting her story in the earth. And as he did that, the people were all convicted in their own hearts and turned away from her, leaving one-by-one as they saw their own sin and had nothing more to charge against the woman in the sand.

It was in 2018 while living in a rental home and carrying the second mortgage of our family home with a TBI recovery who’d just broken his hip – sending me back into the chains of full-body 24/7 caregiver mode when I woke up one day to the voice commanding me to “build a sandbox.” It made no sense but as I obeyed what I presumed to be direct instruction from God and built a box to host sand the messages increased with understanding. I could see that God was showing me that the author of our faith and our stories doesn’t write in notebooks or on pages but he he writes his script in the sand – and WE are formed from the dust. I saw myself as the woman in the sand carrying the burdens of the world on my little feeble shoulders and having no idea how I’d make it through each day or continue to uphold a family of 4 and two dogs with two mortgages and no light at the end of the dark tunnel directing my steps towards a better day.

Over the years I’ve thought back to the sandboxes I made and even gifted to others and to the bible story too of the woman in the sand – watching my own life turn into deeper weighted judgements and harsh treatment by others who put blame, shame and expectations on me too heavy for me to carry. And I’ve always felt perplexed when I reached the end of this story where he tells that woman, “Now go and sin no more.” Was he telling her to go back to her husband she’d cheated on? Was he telling her to leave the scene completely and find a new path in a new land where no one even knew her name? Or was this meaning a bit deeper hitting her in her core where no one but God and her inner most spirit could understand the command from Christ placed upon her future going forward?

Before I ever made a sandbox I had learned the skill of carpentry in the garage where I spent my free time after first returning from the hospital. I learned about the importance of the foundation in any woodwork and the corner pieces that formed the strength of that foundation. I related this to the “cornerstone” in the bible where the masterbuilders build their houses upon. Later that skill came in handy as I made these sandboxes out of wood but today on my run a new understanding tied these two seasons together where I learned to be a builder of things. I could see that the foundation of my furs marriage was built on lust. It was even confirmed to me by the very lips of my ex-husband the night before he moved out as he told me, “No man could ever love you. The only thing ever good about you was your looks and now you’ve let yourself go.” He wasn’t speaking for others because he doesn’t have the power but he was indeed speaking the truth of his own heart. After 24 years together he confessed that he only loved me with his eyes and his body. He never loved me beyond the foundation of lust at first sight. And that realization that hit me in this run also led me to the man who’s loving me now and has been the only one in my life since my divorce. He too loves me with his eyes and his body. The very thing Jesus rescued me from I’ve fallen into again.

So what do I with this? Well, I think it’s time for me to write a sandbox letter as I plan to do tonight.

/0 Comments/by