GRACE ALWAYS WINS

                                          GRACE ALWAYS WINS
                                                                      T. Wieland Allen

   Do you remember the old saying, "If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?"  My answer to that many years ago when I was a child was yes, God hears.  That tidbit of information came from one of my grandmothers, one who was quick to remind us sisters that God is always present watching to catch us in a sin.  She was my grandmother on my mother's side, and she is the one who always gave my sister and me a look of disapproval when we went to the movie on Sunday afternoons after Sunday School and morning church and before we went to Training Union, choir practice, night church and fellowship after that.  That grandmother was the member of a fundamentalist church who takes the Bible word for word, without any spiritual interpretation.  Her looks of disapproval were usually saved for when she visited us for the weekends from her home 60 miles away when we could hardly wait to go to the movie after morning church and lunch on Sundays.  She never scolded us or chided us for doing something that was so obviously sinful to her as spending an hour and a half at the movie theater even though we had already been to church for two to three hours in the morning with the anticipation of going back to church in the evening and being in some kind of service for another five hours.  That was our usual Sunday routine, so she only gave to us a disapproving look, not any lectures with words that stung. I was grateful for that.  However, she made her feelings known.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
   We had another grandmother who was raised in a liturgical church which is more liberal, one who believes in God's forgiveness, so they just have fun in life without any emphasis on guilt for sins.  They just go tell the priest that they have sinned, he tells them that they are forgiven and that's that.  That grandmother was the fun one.  She lived in a state on the west coast, which is thought of as being more liberal, which to some people unfortunately means sinful.  That grandma would visit occasionally and she would play poker with her adult sons, and then at 11:00 p.m. they would all get up from the poker table and go to mass and get forgiven, going on their merry way with no guilt and no lingering condemnation.  There was always laughter when she was around, lots of talking, laughing and even some beer shared with her sons.  They were a happy group for sure.  
   One of the many times my sister and I went to the movie theater after attending morning church and then having a large Sunday lunch, when we left the movie theater, lo and behold, there was a priest from the same denomination as my fun loving grandmother coming out of the movie theater.  I'm sure he had officiated at his church on that very Sunday morning.  I wondered how he could go to a movie on Sunday, which was sinful to the other grandmother with the disapproving look.  You think I wasn't conflicted in my young mind, wondering who was right, the disapproving grandmother or the fun grandmother?   I struggled with that conundrum for years.  
   On one occasion that the fun grandmother was visiting in our home, my sister and I were playing outside before going to a Sunday movie.  I had my dime for the movie in the pocket of my church dress since the movie was only nine cents.  I had been doing cartwheels and I suddenly remembered the dime in the pocket of my dress.  You guessed it, when I felt inside of the pocket the dime was gone.  I looked all around the place where I was doing cart wheels and there was no dime to be found anywhere.  My fun grandmother saw me looking under blades of grass and she asked me what I was so seriously seeking.  I told her I had lost my dime, that I needed the dime to go to the movie.  She told me to pray to Saint Anthony, who is the saint of lost things.
    WHOA, wait a minute!  That grandmother was telling her little fundamentalist granddaughter to pray to somebody other than Jesus?  That didn't compute in my narrow denominational mind which had been listening to preachers and teachers for at least three or four hours on every Sunday and very often of Wednesday nights for all those years as a youth.  Nobody ever told me to pray to a saint.  Somehow I knew, even at eight years of age, that that would not fit in with my own church training.
   After continuing to search and even silently praying to Jesus to help me find my dime, there was no luck.  The fun grandmother told me that I might just try asking Saint Anthony because finding things for people who lose them is the job that God gave to him in heaven.  Reluctantly, I prayed to Saint Anthony kind of silently because I was fearful that I might be struck dumb for betraying Jesus.  I opened my eyes, looked down in the grass under my feet, and there was my shiny dime staring at me like it had been waiting for me to find him.  
   Was it a miracle?  Of course, even though, in my church at the time, praying for miracles was never done because those kind of phenomenons went away, we were taught, after Jesus Christ went to heaven to live with God. Going to heaven after we died was the only miracle we were taught that we were going to ever experience, and that was a great reward for going to church those many times every Sunday for all of those years.    
    As you can imagine, my mind was thoroughly confused after that event.  I kind of weighed things in my childish mind about who was right, the God of the grandmother with the disapproving look or the God of the grandmother who had faith in what I thought was a dead man helping me find my dime?  My religious thinking was fighting to get outside of its rigid enclosure, all of that over a dime.
   Anyway, that is my history about wrestling with the difference between forgiveness and judgment.  Now being an octogenarian, My spiritual walk is strictly along the freedom loving lines of forgiveness and definitely not judgment. However, occasionally the mindset of judgment secretly creeps into my thoughts because it was so effectively and numerously drilled into my mind as a child.  
   Now for an example that relates to the saying that I wrote about the tree in the forest and if it falls and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?  Not too long ago, I had an incident happen to me where that old judgment from years ago spoke a loud condemning thought into my mind.  After my loving husband died, I determined to live in my home for many years, at least as long as I can.  I decided that there are things that are preventable that can save me from problems if I will be careful and not take any unnecessary chances.  One is that I decided that I needed to always turn on the light in a dark room before entering it, even though I know where everything is located in every room in my home.  By experience I learned that things do get put out of place easily and if there is no light in a room then there is a danger of stumbling over something, falling and breaking a bone.  So that has been my self made rule for myself, to always make sure before entering a dark room that I turn the light on in the dark room.  I can truthfully say that I am usually very faithful to my self made rule and I have saved myself lots of problems by just always taking a few seconds and turning on a light before entering a dark room.
   Also, adding to that tidbit of wisdom, I had also decided during the Christmas holidays to turn on the outside lights before going into an even slightly darkened outside yard from the house.  At Christmastime I had put some lights up on some low places so as not to have to get on a ladder.  I have been true to my cautious rule and I have turned on the outside porch light before stepping outside on the porch to turn on or off the outside Christmas lights so that I don't stumble over something and have a bad fall.  (I can feel that you're ahead of me on this story.)
   One particular night I did not turn on the porch lights when I went outside to turn off the decorative Christmas lights, surmising that I was only going to the edge of the porch in order to turn the lights off.  Sure enough I safely turned off the decorative lights and then I noticed that a neighbor had put up some beautiful lights so I quickly decided to take a few steps off of the porch to enable myself to more easily see the neighbor's full display on his house.  I walked the eight steps  to the end of the sidewalk and carefully stepped down off of one step to see the beautiful display more clearly.  It was beautiful.  He had done a great job with multicolored lights twinkling everywhere on his house.   
   Remember, the problem was that I had neglected to turn on the porch lights, only intending to walk to the end of the porch, so in returning to the porch in the dark I  forgot to step up onto the one step that I had so gracefully and safely maneuvered which enabled me to see the neighbor's display.  Suddenly down, down, down I went onto the sidewalk, landing on my left knee, the accompanying elbow and my left hip on the rock studded sidewalk.  I yelled a word that happens to only occasionally escape from my mouth under trying situations when I am alone.  As I not so graciously fell, I yelled, "OH, S--------------------------T," very, very loudly into the peaceful darkness and pristine stillness of the night.  The second word seemed to hang onto every molecule of moisture in the cool air on that quiet December night, growing louder and louder as it reverberated in every direction.  Somehow, that particular word did not seem to fit with the Christmas card perfect appearance of our street with houses that were beautifully decorated and smoke pouring from the chimneys straight up to heaven, like a painting.  Nada, no fit, not one bit and not at all.  The word was so loudly yelled and with such perfect eloquence that I fully expected every door to open and people to come pouring out with disapproving looks, like Grandmother's,  to witness who had said what is commonly regarded as a curse word on a night in a world where the birth of the Prince of Peace was being widely celebrated.  
   I laid there on the sidewalk waiting, only mildly injured with a few scrapes on my knee and I was thankful that all of the Christmas lights on the houses around me remained steady with no bright porch lights suddenly appearing and people rushing to find out who had blasphemed the perfect picture of a peaceful world with such a loud "S--------------------t" piercing the peaceful Christmas card picture that our neighborhood presented to the world.  I carefully and very slowly, considering my age, raised myself up off of my sidewalk and walked slowly up the sidewalk, onto the porch and into my house, thanking God all the way that the grandmother with the disapproving look was not there to again judge me with a disapproving look.  I somehow knew that the fun loving grandmother would have laughed.  Maybe not when we were outside but she would have collapsed in laughter when we closed the front door and left the world in its picture perfect condition with that word still hanging somewhere in the atmosphere.    
    Now, I tell you this in my own defense when I tell you that I read an article in a magazine several years ago that said not to feel guilty when you say an inappropriate word during stressful times.  The article quoted a scientist who said that he hooked a few people up to brain machines, put the people under a stressful situation, and coached them to, at the proper time of approaching danger, say their favorite inappropriate expletive.  He found that when a person occasionally says a profanity during stressful times that it showed up on the brain waves in a positive way, as if saying the word robbed the flight or fight syndrome of the ability to flood the person's cells with negative hormones.  
   So that article solved a problem for me.  I no longer feel guilty because when there is no one around to hear me in stressful situations.  It's just God and me.  He understands and He acknowledges that science of the human body gave me permission to relieve the stress that accompanied my misstep.  Even though the loudly screamed "s-----------------t" word reverberated in the still, quiet night, it was like when the tree falls in the forest, there was no one around to judge the tree for falling and there was no one around to judge me for falling and screaming a word that is a slang word for the product of a necessary body function.  Like I said, I felt calm and peaceful, free from guilt because there was no one there to judge me with a disapproving look.  God forgave me immediately and I forgave myself immediately.
   I am a little sore from the fall and I only have a slightly swollen kneecap with three small abrasions where I fell on the rough sidewalk.  My body is aching with soreness as it had absorbed the shock from falling. There are no broken bones and no one to whom I have to apologize, just like the tree in the forest.  That experience makes me wonder if the tree in the forest on the way down shouts, "Oh---------------My------------God."
   It's so freeing not to be judgmental of myself or other people.  I have always said that I don't do guilt and I don't do windows.  I truly learned that lesson from my two grandmothers.  I know that God's ears can take a few inappropriate words if saying them during stressful times helps relieve the human body of the hormonal output that can do damage to the body of the speaker.       
   I can thank both grandmothers.  The one with the disapproving look was only mirroring her own church's teaching of guilt just like the other grandmother always mirrored her church's teaching of grace which she mirrored in her life.
    May we all be full of grace with ourselves and with each other on every occasion.  Grace extended to everyone, however it's expressed, always negates that damaging hormonal output of the human body when we are tempted to judge someone or feel judged.  Extending grace to everyone adds healthy years to our lives if we don't allow those looks of disapproval to emerge from the past and continue to condemn us.  The grandmother with the disapproving look never intended to leave that as her legacy with me.  I saw the contrast in the other grandmother, the one who taught me about love and grace.  Judgment stops with Me.  I intend to never leave it as a legacy with my own grandkids.  I intend to be the fun grandmother to them, always giving them looks of love and approval. I want that to be my own legacy.  After all, it's God's legacy to His children

 THE GRINCH WHO STOLE THE HEART OF A NATION
                                                              T. Wieland Allen
       He is not green and he is not an imaginary animal/person.  He is a poor man whose own father was neglectful in his fatherly skills and he denied the young Grinch the love, kindness, guidance and training in how to honor and treasure all  human relationships.  Instead, his father had taught him that money would buy him the love and compassion that the heart of the Grinch craved.  That emotionally afflicted father programmed his child to bully, cheat, rob and deceive other people in order to get what he thought that the Grinch needed, which was the same as  the attention and love of which Grinch's own father had in the same way been robbed by his also loveless father.  It was a curse to the third and fourth generations.
      Grinch's father and mother cherished money, houses and cars that they erroneously thought would buy them respect and praise from other people.  Instead, their robbing and cheating other people that caused them to achieve great wealth had dug a hole in their own hearts which was never filled with love, so they taught their "special" son to walk in their own footsteps which unfortunately had tread on the lives of their workers, business associates, women and minorities without a pang of guilt for their lack of compassion.  
     Their "special" son grew into his parents' flawed image, the reflection of their coldhearted, cruel, morally bankrupt, cheating, vindictive reflection of their own personalities.  As a child he showed no pity for anyone.  Stomping on the hearts, lives, finances of working people and especially on minorities brought joy to the Grinch as he matured into a man with no scruples, no moral compass and no value for other human beings, even in his own family, his parents or his siblings.
     Every business opportunity was based upon the elementary teachings of his parents whose tutoring of Grinch was paying off as the Grinch amassed a fortune built upon the broken hearts of workers, abused women and tainted money.  He left behind him broken promises to associates as the owner of his company, workers' bills unpaid, unpaid salaries and other moral crimes against the poor and working classes of people.   
     Delusions of grandeur took over a portion of the brain of the Grinch.  He began to visualize himself in a position of greater importance where he could be in charge of huge amounts of money which he hoped would do the work of amassing even larger sums of money for himself and possibly filling the hole in his heart which had grown into a huge chasm by this time as he matured physically but not emotionally, spiritually or morally.  Nothing had filled that huge chasm, neither his three wives nor his three children.  They were all dispensable.
     The hunger and thirst for power over a huge group of people presented itself quickly as the Grinch saw the opportunity to exert power over an entire country of people whom he considered inferior to himself, inferior in power, inferior in intelligence, inferior in physical appearance and inferior in the evil art of manipulating people into doing his will in their lives instead of their following their own wills.  He considered manipulation to be a gift and a positive personality trait.  
    Narcissism had taken over another area of his brain many years before, and paranoia had become his constant mindset when he encountered people who had opinions, morals, and intelligence contrary to the Grinch.  He hired and fired employees almost as quickly as when they came in the front door because many of them were soon ushered out the back door if they had unique opinions of their own.  People continued to be dispensable to him, even his own children whom he put in government positions which they were completely unqualified to perform.   
     A problem soon arose inside of the Grinch's political headquarters that stemmed from the fact that he demanded 100% loyalty from everyone in his large  circle of associations at the headquarters of his country.  Their personal opinions were detrimental to his goals in the eyes of Grinch because he, himself, only pursued narrow minded pursuits that made him look capable, always in charge, more knowledgeable and better looking than anyone else.   None of those characteristics were actually located in the personality of the Grinch except by his worshipful followers.  He refused to share the limelight, which he voraciously craved, with anyone.   
     Very quickly the Grinch used his cultish gift of persuasion on the multitude of followers in his position as head of a country.  He was gifted, as if from hell, in melodiously speaking lies that elevated him into the position of becoming a savior in the eyes of the mass of his followers who became his slaves and forever admiring lovers of his bullying, cruel, manipulative personality.  Even though his personal financial empire had fallen years ago, his self exalting lies about his unproven accomplishments were convincing to half of the people in the land, especially people who had a lack of success in their own lives.  They covered over their own failures by identifying with the arrogant and domineering character of the Grinch.  They deeply admired the Grinch which, in their own minds, elevated themselves to his level of pseudo-success, even though tales of his success were all a lie that he had formulated in his own mind and he had repeatedly laced his lectures with the lies.  He called his lectures "press conferences", but they were lectures that included his self gratifying lies which became reality not only in his own mind but also in the minds of his multitude of followers.  
    The Grinch's manipulative maneuvers over people that he learned from childhood from his own father worked on the masses of people just like it had worked in his business dealings.  His lies were believed by his followers.  He controlled his own children and his administrative staff with fear resulting from his frequent tantrums. Fear of having to endure more of his tantrums molded them to him even more tightly because of his constant melodious speeches about his pseudo accomplishment which became truth to them because the lies were played more and more frequently on TV in his efforts to control the masses by the sound of his own voice which  seemed so calm and caring but there was no caring in his character so that was a lie, also.  There were no other voices allowed into his conversations with his staff and his followers.  So consequently they found his bullying and name calling, his sarcasm and his lying to be normal because they wanted a domineering and strong king to claim as their savior.  They wanted to be dominated and controlled so that they wouldn't need to chart their own courses in life.  They adored him and each person allowed the Grinch to become his or own  substitute "self".  
   The followers of the Grinch saw in him the personality that they sought to be, seemingly self assured, seemingly wealthy, a man who appeared to be a friend of kings and the wealthy while, in fact, he was to the outside world a foolish, self promoting psychopath who had been trained by an expert in manipulation, that person being his own father.  His followers were blinded to his failures because of his constant braggings which were all lies, his self exaltation, his outlandish claims to fame and his pitiful need for attention and adoration.  All of his character flaws had become normal to his followers while the rest of the country and the world identified him as abnormal, classifying him as the Emperor Who Wore No Clothes.  He was naked of a moral compass, compassion, respect for others, love, kindness, pity, goodness and mercy but his followers were blinded by his self exaltation and they could not see his moral nakedness.      
    The endless words that poured from the mouth of Grinch were like honey in the ears of his followers while in truth they were sweet tasting, poisonous elixirs. Some followers even followed him to their own death, believing him instead of believing trained doctors and scientists when a medical plague entered into their country.  The Grinch then, in his narcissism, refused to follow the advice and guidance of health specialists, convincing his loyal followers that he knew more than the scientists with 12-15 years of medical training.   The Grinch's claim of being smarter than the medical personnel was based on his premises that he had an uncle who was a scientist so he had the uncle's vast knowledge transferred to the Grinch simply by osmosis, just by being around his uncle on occasion.  The truth was that the Grinch had paid people to take tests for him all of his life instead of his personally passing difficult tests in most of his educational pursuits.  Even though his lie about his gaining scientific knowledge by being in the same room with his uncle was probably the most absurdly bizarre form of a lie and it was completely impossible, the masses continued to follow the Grinch because he was convincing, filled with pride and arrogance, and he constantly told them that he would save them.  He became their god, which was his desire all along.
     The Grinch even polluted an entire generation of people who called themselves by the name of Christ People, their having been convinced of his godliness by the Grinch himself in his constant press conferences called by the Grinch in order for his voice to spew more lies in an effort to overcome the voices of logic and wisdom that his followers might glean from other sources of real truth.  Those people called themselves Christ People and he used his manipulative talents to lead them into abandoning their own fundamental evangelistic beliefs and bind themselves to the Grinch by his influencing them to abandon their own search for spiritual truth and instead to become emotionally empowered by his captivating, toxic words.  The tight bond between them was his promise to the Christ People that he would guarantee the passage of legislation for the entire country that would establish their narrow views of morality.  That toxic relationship was one person manipulating an entire class of people and vice versa, that group of people excusing his character flaws because of his promise to pass their moral prejudices, making them into laws.  In other words, it was as what commonly occurred in government, you scratch our backs and we'll scratch your back.  
   The Christ People gave to the Grinch their adoration in exchange for his promise to legislate morality for the country by instituting their narrow, legalistic religious laws.  Instead of their continuing to be Christ People, his followers became non-Christ-Like People, remade into the image of Grinch who had become their idol; therefore, he became their lord and savior, which was his goal from the beginning.  The people who previously were called Christ People became Non-Christ-Like People by their allowing themselves to be recreated into the image of the Grinch instead of their God.  Their new personalities distributed into the world his lies, division, discord, hatred, fear and prejudice, all in the name of legalistic religion and factious politics.    
    The political agendas of the former Christ People's many ministers and evangelicals caused them to slowly become reprogrammed into Grinch People as they became more and more grilled by him on his ability to assure them that he could make their political policies become moral laws for the entire country.  Their narrow minded political policies had become their new religion as the Grinch became their god and savior.
    There were many other people in the country who were not deceived by the divisive political and religious rhetoric of the Grinch.  They instead recognized the evil in the lies that the Grinch spoke about everyone outside of his huge circle of worshipers.  Outside of himself and his followers, his identifying everyone else as being demonic had begun to be the daily propaganda contained in Grinch's teaching sessions of lectures which he called his press conferences.  In addition, almost every day he sent frequent social media messages to his constituents in order for his toxic words to constantly occupy the minds of his many followers to guarantee their being accepted as being normal and convincing.   
   No one in his inner circle of worshipers was capable of reining in the Grinch from the constant spewing out of his outlandish accusations and lies, not his family, not his political constituents, not his followers, not federal judges, not the higher court justices.  Everyone cowered in fear at the likelihood of being present during one of his wild and unhinged tantrums which were frequent with ever increasing vengeance pointed toward a large percentage of people in the country.  Someone with governmental power such as the authority of the attorney general for the entire country needed to stop the childish tantrums of the Grinch but unfortunately that elected official had also been a Christ Person who became a dedicated follower of the Grinch, so he became the attorney for the Grinch instead of the general attorney for the country, which was illegal and immoral; but you must remember that the Grinch had no moral compass and he passed that trait on to his followers.
   An election was called and the Grinch lost the election because more people voted against him because they saw his cruelty to minorities, children, immigrants and his opponents.  More voters voted for his opponent than voted for the Grinch.  His followers continued to be blind to his ungodly character, his pride, his self righteousness, the pompous display of his bullying, his name calling, his mocking of his countrymen, his refusal to keep the constitutional laws of the country, and his willing associations with criminals and cruel dictators of other nations.
   In his falsely created reality that he himself had espoused and eventually also believed, his overblown ego contended that it was impossible for him to lose the election; and so the vengeful nature of the Grinch resulted in his stubborn refusal to give up his position as leader of the country even though he had lost the vote of confidence of his country by several million votes.  
   The devotion of the Grinch's followers accelerated instead of decreasing as they swallowed his continuing claim that he was cheated by illegal balloting in the vote even though he had lost by several million votes.  Of course they continued in their adoration of him as their savior because they had fallen hook, line and sinker for his lies that he knew more than educated scientists about the plague that had sickened many millions of people in the country.  The Grinch had convinced his followers early on in the plague that because he had an uncle who was a scientist that he attracted the uncle's scientific knowledge to himself just by being in the same room with his uncle on occasion.  The blind devotion that caused the followers to accept as truth such a farfetched lie falls in the proven category of cult leader and cult followers.
    The Grinch began to fall from power in the minds of a few of his political associates who had been his devoted supporters in the past.  When they no longer saw any political benefit to themselves by being associated with a loser who had refused to accept defeat by demanding recount after recount, they began to call his resulting behavior childish and ridiculous along with a large percentage of the country.  One by one his political supporters began to disassociate themselves from his paranoia, his narcissism, his self created reality, his lies, his infantile behavior and his stubborn denial that he had lost the election.  His insistence that he had won the election was soundly based upon the evangelists and ministers of the Non-Christ-Like People who had told him that God said he would certainly win the election, no doubt about it.  One of the ministers told him in front of a large audience that God told her that he was the apple of God's eye and that he would win the election.  The false prophesies to him from the evangelists reinforced his own lies to himself that he was special to God and that he could not have lost the election.  Obviously, the prophesies by the evangelists were just that, false prophesies.  
    Still, even with some of his administrative staff beginning to abandon him, the Grinch remained the Grinch, mean spirited and self consumed.  He continued to sue in different courts again and again for recounts, insisting that the election was illegal, a fraud and a hoax.  All of the lawsuits were denied by different judges over and over again.  Most of his cultish followers refused also to accept defeat.  They hated to give up their flawed, cruel tyrant with whom they were willing to associate because they worshiped his various flaws as if they were virtues.
    This sad situation is also reflected in many stories in history books about flawed dictators whose fragile egos would not allow them to accept defeat.  Without the endearing devotion of his political base that was made up of his children and his factious political party as well as the previous Christ People who had become Non-Christ-Like People by taking on his personality flaws and prejudices themselves, without their adoration of him the Grinch would not have been so convinced that he was the savior of the country and he probably would not have made such a spectacle of himself after his loss.  Their worship of him turned him into a much more flawed personality than his own father had originally created by his own adoration of the Grinch.        
    In the words of a prophet concerning another sad and tragic situation from centuries ago, the tried and true prophet's final warning also applies here:
     The prophet wrote this:  
    "The oppressor has reached his end,            
     and so the turmoil is stilled.
     The rod of the wicked has been broken along with the staff of the tyrant
        that struck the people in wrath with relentless blows;
     That rod beat down the nation in anger while the oppressor went unchecked.
     But the earth rests peacefully now and song breaks forth.
     Yes, the people, as trees, rejoice saying, 'Now that the tyrant is gone there
         is no one to cut us down.'
     The nether world below is all astir, preparing for his coming.
     All of the other cruel leaders before him wait to greet him.
     They all say, 'You, too, have become weak like us
         because you are the same as us.'
     Down to the netherworld your pomp is brought
         along with the words of your mouth.
     Men of power, be ready to stop his sons in the pursuits of their father
         lest they rise up and possess the earth again,
     Filling the breadth of the world again with tyrants.
         (Isaiah 14:4-11 and 21, The Bible, New Jerusalem translation)
   
                                       

ALMOST TOO MIRACULOUS TO BELIEVE

               ALMOST TOO MIRACULOUS TO BELIEVE
                                                           T. Wieland Allen
 
    What a Brother we have in Jesus and what a Father we have in God.  There is an old song that says, "What a friend we have in Jesus," but I have come to know Him as my Brother because we have the same Loving Father.  It is by the revelation of the Holy Spirit that I have come to personally know both Jesus and God.  The Holy Spirit is the spiritual umbilical cord through which revelations of spiritual truth, spiritual wisdom, spiritual knowledge and His love are fed into us so that we can intimately know God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
    Early on in My adventure with God I had read that the apostle Paul wrote that his divine purpose was to become intimately acquainted with God until he knew the fullness of His divine power and His suffering for us.  I determined at that moment that I would have that same purpose in my life, to become intimately acquainted with Our Heavenly Father.  I spoke that phrase again and again while meditating, praying and reading scriptures.  I remembered a song from my childhood that says, "Open my eyes that I may see visions of truth you have for me.  Place in my hands that wonderful key that shall unlock and set me free. Silently Lord I wait for thee, ready My God thy will to see.  Open my eyes, illumine Me, Spirit Divine."  I would sing that song over and over again as an appeal to God to open my spiritual eyes so that I would know him intimately and recognize His works in my behalf.  
    I was committed to praying in the language of the Holy Spirit and meditating with my mind on My Heavenly Father until I finally knew Him one on one and face to face.  It wasn't long until the Holy Spirit opened the scriptures for me.  It was like a barrier had been taken off of my human mind and revelations began to pour into my understanding about the loving personality of God.  It took a while for the old vision of a judgmental, vindictive God that I had been taught in childhood to be erased from My mind and a revelation of Him as being Unconditional Love flooded into my human mind by the tutoring of the Holy Spirit.
    From that time forth in my life, I have led an exciting, fruitful, joyful and exhilarating life in the earth.  Almost unbelievable miracles have increased daily and for me every day has been a marvelous journey in this earth.
    The previous two miracles have been breathtaking for me and everyone with whom I have shared them.  To prepare you for them let me tell you that my oldest son lives in the same town with me.  That son is God's caretaker for me.  He definitely is an extension of God's love in my life.  He gives me great joy and peace as he and his family share their lives with me.  He works for the regional VA office in our town and he works in the claims division of the VA office authorizing the giving of grants to veterans for educational purposes.  I also have a son in San Diego, California and a daughter in San Francisco, California.  That son has a degree in biomedical engineering and worked for years for the company that does most of the DNA testing for the US.  My daughter works for a nonprofit organization which gives large sums of money for grants to help individuals and nonprofit groups to better the lives of people.
     At the beginning of the pandemic of the Covid-19 virus, I had joined with some intercessory prayer partners in praying every day in the language of the Holy Spirit for Our Heavenly Father to reveal to scientists an effective treatment to cure the virus and a vaccine to prevent the spread of it.  We were committed to praying every day for discoveries which will relieve the suffering of mankind all over the world, knowing that the will of Our Father is the healing of diseases and preventing diseases.  We have prayed many hours every day for miraculous discoveries for five months.
    My son in California who had previously worked in the medical field for 25 years was looking forward to retirement from his last job of doing general engineering for the past eight years and he was looking forward to retirement in two years.  That engineering company had a cutback in management and he was left without a job, which was fine with him because of his anticipating retirement in a few years.  He enjoyed semi-retirement by playing golf almost every day but he had begun to check an internet site for openings for engineers in case he decided to take a contract job just for a few years in case he got bored.  A friend from his job in the medical field called him and asked him to go to work for him for a year.  He was pleased.  For a month I did not inquire about what he would be doing in the new job.  One day while talking on the phone to him, I asked what he was doing in this company.  He said that the company was going to do clinical testing for a vaccine for the Covid-19 virus and he was helping set up the lab plus eventually working in the lab in the clinical trials. 
    I almost dropped the telephone when he told me that news.  My prayer partners and I had been praying for months for God to provide knowledge to scientists for a vaccine and an effective treatment for the virus and here my son was going to be participating in a clinical trial on one of the vaccine discoveries.  That news put me into a state of complete awe of God, just like other miracles He had performed for my family.
    In my job of working in the legal fiend for 60 years preparing court transcripts for federal and district court cases I had read about the inequality in the court systems of the USA for people of color, those being Native Indians, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians.  I had often cried while preparing court transcripts at the lack of justice and equality portrayed in policemen, district attorneys and often judges in courts where there is supposed to be justice for all people.  Living in the South, a large part of the injustice was toward Black people.
    When George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by a long time police officer and it was recorded and the video was played on medias many times a day, to the disgust of the American people, I was hoping that the stark display of one police officer murdering a Black man without any look of compassion on his face would start a new movement of justice for people of color.  I had ordered a book on the Best Seller list a couple of months before the murder of Mr. Floyd and the book was called, America's Original Sin by Jim Wallis.  The book is a look into extreme racism in America and it contains Mr. Wallis' suggestions on how to solve the problem, which is based on training police officers on the supreme value of every person and also changing the punitive methods that the police departments, courts and prisons have been operating under that has not worked for 200 years, so maybe the new effective way of reformation and rehabilitation of lawbreakers and also police officers needs to take place.  The book excited Me, giving me hope about the legal system in America because the old ways have caused unjust killings, beatings and injuries instead of reformation and rehabilitation. 
   I was elated with the information in the book by Mr. Wallis about his suggestion  of going into Black and White churches and working with the youth and young adults and training them on peaceful ways of instituting a revolution in the court systems that will result in changed lives of lawbreakers, police officers and entire police departments.
   I was so excited about Mr. Wallis' ideas and I was wondering how to get his book into the hands of police departments and the Black population.  Then Mr. Floyd's murder happened.  In just a two days Black young people and White young people began to peacefully protest together in cities with the Black Lives Matter theme.  I was impressed with the media interviews of the Black young people who seemed to be in charge of the peaceful protestors in the cities of New York City, San Francisco, Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis and other large cities in the USA but also some foreign countries.  The leader/organizers were calm, orderly and peaceful, and when interviewed they all seemed to say the same thing, that there needs to be reformation and rehabilitation in police officers, police departments and in jails and prisons with prisoners.  They all sounded like they had all read Mr. Jim Wallis' book about America's Original Sin. 
   I was amazed that they all had the same attitudes that I had read in the book.  I was so astounded that I began to wonder if God had blown a trumpet and all of those wonderful, peaceful but determined young Black and White people had obeyed the call for JUSTICE and had begun a peaceful march at the same time with all of the leaders of the marches saying the same solutions that I had read in Mr. Wallis' book about America's Original Sin.  I was perplexed, wondering how someone had made it possible for Mr. Wallis' Sojourner movement to begin and quickly become organized at the event of the murder of George Floyd.   The peaceful marches were joined by millions of young people.  I was elated with the peaceful protests but I was also perplexed that all of the leaders of the peaceful demonstrations were united in speaking the same rhetoric that was in Mr. Wallis' book about racism and his ideas for the cure.  I wondered if someone had sent his book to people all over the world.  
    My own daughter, 14 year old granddaughter and son-in-law had joined a youth march in San Francisco and we talked later about their being so exhilarated about the peaceful march and the quality of the speakers at the event that they attended.  I told my daughter that I wanted her to read the book that I had just finished about how to cure the inequalities in the legal system caused by racism in America. I mentioned the name of the book to her and the name of the author, Jim Wallis. 
   After a long pause my daughter asked if the Jim Wallis who is the author of the book is the same Jim Wallis who started the Sojourners movement? 
   I said, "Yes."
   Again after a long pause My daughter remarked that Mr. Jim Wallis was one of her grantees and that she had given him a large grant to start the movement in Black and White churches to not only train the young people on how to have peaceful demonstrations for racial equality, how to reform the legal system that was unjust to minorities and also challenging them to encourage people to register to vote.                         
   I almost dropped the phone again at the encouraging information, as amazed as I had been with my son when he said he was working in a company who was going to do clinical trials on the covid-19 virus, for which my intercessory prayer group and I had been praying.  In this instance with my daughter I had been praying for years for another 1960 revolution against racism and for equality in the entire legal system, plus I had a month ago read a book outlining Jim Wallis' plan for what I had prayed for years.  And to hear out of My own daughter's mouth that she had granted a large sum of money from her philanthropic nonprofit group for Jim Wallis to further his vision of a cure for racism was a miracle that led me to sit down and cry tears of joy at the thrilling information I had just received on the telephone.
   I asked my daughter how she had convinced the Jewish family for which she worked to fund a Christian evangelistic movement on how to train future demonstrators in the peaceful way that Jesus Christ taught and how to train police departments on how to value the life of every person they arrest, treating them as children of God as taught by Jesus Christ.  She told me that when Mr. Wallis' appeal letter landed on her desk she had researched the organization and Mr. Wallis to affirm the authenticity of the Sojurners and also the reputation of Mr. Wallis.  After determining the efficacy of Mr. Wallis' organization and the need for the money, she had presented it to the Jewish family for whom she works which grants large sums of money for viable appeals.  She had focused on the need to register voters, for which her boss was particularly interested.  The funds the nonprofit granted to Mr. Wallis' vision for registering voters also benefited his vision for bringing justice to people of color and their cry for equality in treatment for all races in the police departments and the courts across the country.  The miracle is that the information in the book relates to the teachings of Jesus Christ and His desire for justice for all oppressed people.                           
   As the saying goes, the miracle "blew me away."  However God did it in His miraculous way was so encouraging.  That night when I was meditating on the possibility of the incident, I asked God how He was able to involve My own daughter who lives 1500 miles away from me in His answer to my prayers and His own desire for justice for all people.  I wasn't naive enough to think that I was the only person praying for justice for all people, of course there are many, many more.  But I was perplexed how God arranged it without my daughter knowing that I was praying for justice for people of all colors of skin, and without my own knowledge that she was presented with the opportunity to arrange a large sum of money to grant the money for a project seeking for equality in the legal system was puzzling to me.  That is why I asked Him how he did the miracle.  His answer to my question came into my mind immediately. 
   These words came to my mind, "I arranged all of it on one of those nights when you woke up from a deep sleep, couldn't go back to sleep, so you started praying in the language of the Holy Spirit and you prayed for hours in obedience to My commission for intercessory prayer warriors."  He said, "It was one of those nights that you were wondering if your prayers in the Holy Spirit were doing any good.  That's when I arranged all of it, through My words in your prayer language of the Holy Spirit."
    Tears flooded from my eyes again in my feeling of being overwhelmed with awe of God.  Many, many times when I pray in the Holy Spirit, doubt in my human mind tries to rob me of the joy of allowing the Holy Spirit to solve problems and find solutions to problems by the devil giving me doubt that it's not doing any good at all to pray, but I'm going to continue praying anyway.  Praise God that I continued on with praying anyway that night, even with doubt in my human mind.  God did a miracle through the Holy Spirit's words that He spoke through My mouth and He spoke through the mouths of others of God intercessors which now puts me in absolute awe of Our Heavenly Father all over again.          
    What an exciting life for a person to have when the person knows about the full gospel.  I learned a valuable lesson, too, that no matter how much doubt is in my mind on whether I am allowing God to pray solutions to problems and answers to prayers into reality or not when I pray in the language of the Holy Spirit, I am going to continue to pray anyway.  My Father told me how He does it and he said that I must persist even when doubt appears.  I believe Him and I have experienced the wonderful results of it. 

                               LOVE SIGNS FROM HEAVEN    
                                                          T. Wieland Allen
   It is so thrilling to know God, the Comforter.  He is always comforting people, but some people don't have the spiritual eyes to recognize His comforting gifts from heaven for them.  I have experienced the marvels of the Comforter many, many times in magnificent ways.  In one instance I had been praying for My grandson Stephen, that God would get him a new job with more stable supervisors and congenial workers.  He definitely needed new surroundings and new associations that would benefit him.
   Many months prior to Stephen's needing a new job, I had a wonderful dream in which I observed a young man approaching a low diving board to do a dive.  He systematically did a perfect approach, jumped on the end of the spring board, catapulted high in the air and did three perfect flips before entering the water, all in Olympic style.  In the dream I was impressed, and when the young man walked in front of me I got a closer look and immediately, in the dream, said, "Stephen, was that you?"  Stephen shook his head up and down affirmatively and started walking toward the dressing room.  In the dream I said to him, "I am so proud of you and all of the family is so proud of you," to which his smile broadened even more.  Little did I know when I wrote the dream in my dream book that events would happen in Stephen's life that required a lot of prayer and negotiations on his part.
   Several months later a situation happened in his life that required hours of intercessory prayer on my part, the part of his parents and also his part.  It became apparent that Stephen needed a new working environment in order to maintain a good lifestyle.  Our prayers continued on and on for him.
   I took a trip during the interim between praying and the answer to the prayers.  On the return trip I was in a busy airport waiting to catch my plane for the return trip home.  As I was approaching the gate which led to My plane, I heard music and assumed it was from the airport's intercom.  When I got to my gate I saw a young Filipino man playing a ukulele and singing. That was a strange sight.  As I passed the young man to get in line to board the plane he switched songs and began to sing one of my favorites, Over the Rainbow.  In my youth I had sung it many times at all sorts of venues, weddings, showers, social events, churches, club meetings, etc.  As I entered the tunnel leading to the airplane I heard the young man sing the phrase, "And the dreams that I dare to dream really do come true." 
    My thought was JUST A MINUTE, I had a dream about my Filipino/American grandson and here is a Filipino young man singing my signature song that says that dreams really do come true.  This incident had to be set up by God, the Comforter, to give me faith that the dream about Stephen would become a reality in the future.
     After I located a good seat on the airplane, I sat down and pulled out a paper and pen and began to write down the words to the song.  I was flabbergasted how much it pertained to the situation relating to Stephen.  As I wrote the lyrics to the song, the phrase "a land that I heard of once in a lullaby" stood out because I was researching and teaching about the kingdom of heaven coming into our lives on earth, which I was experiencing.  Another comforting phrase was, "a place where troubles melt like lemon drops a way above the chimney tops," exploded in my mind. Yes, God can make troubles melt like lemon drops.  That was what we were praying for Stephen.
    I wrote that wonderful experience in my God journal, as I call it, for future reference in case I needed a Red Bull shot of faith in the future.  God had impressed me to write down supernatural events in order to give credence to God's wonderful interventions in my life. I certainly documented that experience.
    A few months and many, many intercessory prayers later, Stephen got a new job.  We were so thrilled and were still praying that it would be the right job for him with the perfect supervisor and God-chosen associates with which he would spend many hours a day.
     Stephen was to start with orientation early on a Sunday.  On the day before, a Saturday, I had awakened at 4:00 am and prayed intercessory prayers for him and my family.  At 5:30 I did my breathing exercises and then got dressed for the day.  I opened the front wooden door in order to observe whether the morning papers had arrived.  When I peered out of the glass storm door I saw an unusual sight.  A young cardinal was hopping around in the grass adjacent to the sidewalk.  I have seen many, many cardinals flying around or perched in trees or power lines way up high but I never had seen one hopping around in grass picking up things in his beak.  That junior cardinal, as I call him because he was still thin, had dual colored feathers on his body and topknot but there were some red feathers on his head. 
     For some reason the junior cardinal reminded me of Stephen who is very tall, thin, and his beautiful, thick, straight black hair has a little cowlick at the top back of his head that sticks up a bit, just like the junior cardinal.  I automatically said, "Well, good morning, Stephen."  The cardinal must have been on his maiden voyage out of the nest.  That little bird continued to hop around in the grass until I quietly tried to exit the glass door.  Then he hopped right into the wisteria tree next to the sidewalk.  The words came to me that Jesus said He would send the Comforter.  That little junior cardinal comforted me and boosted my faith that God had everything under control that I had entrusted to Him. 
     The next morning, the day that Stephen was to start the new job, my day progressed just like every other day, waking early to pray, doing breathing exercises, getting dressed for the day and then opening the wooden door to see if the morning papers were there.  As I peered out of the glass door my thought was NO WAY.  Lo and behold, the same junior cardinal was there but he was on the sidewalk closer to the door so I got a better look at him.   His head was almost all red and his topknot had ruffled gray/brown feathers, many of them beginning to turn red.  His body had the same grayish/brown feathers as his topknot.  He hopped around on the sidewalk as if parading for me, and my gaze strayed long enough to see a bunny rabbit nestled in the grass close to the bird.  It was a restful sight and I took it as an effort to encourage me to rest in faith. 
     The junior cardinal hopped off of the sidewalk and right over to the same wisteria tree where he disappeared from my view.  Of course he was comfortable in the tree because it was my husband Steve's tree that I had bought and planted for him the year before he died.  Of course that junior bird who reminded me of my grandson Stephen would nest in the tree that was a gift for another Stephen, his grandfather. My faith was at mountaintop heights by this time.
     That was not all of the miraculous events of the day. I grabbed the newspapers, commenced to fix my breakfast, decided to sit in my recliner and eat the meal so I could put my feet up.  Before I read the newspaper, I reached over to grab a notebook sitting there, looked hurriedly at the front of the notebook and there on the opened page was the story about the song that the young Filipino man was playing and singing, the one that was confirmation that God was working mightily in Stephen's life.  I read through the words to the song Over the Rainbow and realized that bluebirds were mentioned in the song, and here I had witnessed comforting sights from God using a bird, even though it was a red cardinal. Yes, there had been more miracles apparent even then.
     Jesus told us to keep our eyes open because we entertain angels of which we are unaware unless we have spiritual eyes to see them.  God had sent that junior cardinal that reminded me of Stephen as a confirmation that He is working feverishly in Stephen's behalf.  He confirmed it to me in signs from heaven.
      God impressed me that the new job is Stephen's second flip off of the diving board, the first flip being the way he had handled himself in a mistake he had made.  He had taken complete blame, refusing to place the blame elsewhere.  His responsibility impressed the people involved which resulted in many compliments to him and about him.  Per my dream, there is one more perfect flip ahead for Stephen before he lands in the waters of life in  perfect form, coming out of all of this like an Olympic athlete, per my dream.  
       God doesn't have to confirm His miraculous works that he does in our behalf.  He does it because of His unconditional love for us.  We all need to pray for spiritual eyes to always recognize the miracles that He makes visible in our    behalf.  The Comforter is definitely worthy of thanks and praise for what he has done for my family.  Praises will continually be in my mouth for Him.
      Now, on to the next miracle. 
      Life is so exciting!

THE SHAKING LOOSE OF CANCER

                                              THE SHAKING LOOSE OF CANCER
                                                                                 T. WIELAND ALLEN
     Even though it happened years ago in 1986, it seems like yesterday because the events that transpired are too marvelous to forget.  To clue you into the events leading up to the event of the "shaking," I was born of the Holy Spirit in 1944 in a Baptist church in Borger, Texas and I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit in 1978 in my living room in Muskogee, Oklahoma.  It had been obvious in 1978 that I needed some kind of extra power in my life to overcome the hell that I had experienced by being married to an angry, alcoholic husband.  His verbal and emotional abuse had beaten me down into a submissive, lifeless form of a woman. God's power of the Holy Spirit in my life by being baptized in His Holy Spirit had caused me to overcome the effects of the abuse rather than be under its control.  Even though my husband Steve didn't change immediately by My having the power of God in My life, I was changed into a power filled child of God who would not take defeat as a way of life ever again.  In 1979 Steve also had become born of the Holy Spirit and baptized in God's Holy Spirit and was changed immediately into the man that I loved and adored the rest of our lives together.  We were different people by that time, being changed by God  into happy, triumphant people.
     We raised three wonderful children and had an enduring family life.  In 1986 I had a dream and I wrote it down in my dream book, after being encouraged to do so after reading a book by an Episcopal priest about how God speaks to us in our dreams.  After writing down that dream I wondered what it meant, thinking that maybe it meant that I needed to pray for someone who was dealing with cancer.  I prayed for whoever that person was, just praying a short prayer in the language of the Holy Spirit, the language of heaven that bypasses the human mind of the person praying and prays God's solution to the problem. 
    The dream was very detailed and I wrote down every aspect that I could remember.  In the dream I was walking around in a brightly lighted, clean white room that was a laboratory of some kind with lots of clear plastic cubicles containing material that looked like bodily organs of some sort.  In the dream I wondered what was in those cubicles.  Immediately into my mind in the dream a voice said that they were human cells that had been healed by God.  There was no visible person in the room, only a "presence" of some kind.  I replied back to the presence behind the voice that I wanted Him to put my cancer cells in a cubicle to be healed by God.  Then I woke from the dream, not realizing that I really did have cancer cells growing in my body at the time.  After writing the dream down, I forgot about the dream, surmising that my short prayer in the Holy Spirit had taken care of someone's problem with cancer.
    About four months later I had been swimming, was changing back into street clothes, glanced in the mirror and saw a lump on the top of my right breast.  I felt of it and, sure enough, it was large.  I occasionally did breast exams but had neglected it for a few months.  I did not remember the previous dream immediately, but in writing down another dream later I noticed the dream about the laboratory and realized the laboratory dream was about me.  I didn't panic, but was very concerned because breast cancer was still a death sentence for most people at that time.  I immediately made an appointment with my gynecologist who had insisted that I take hormone replacement therapy to keep my bones strong and my heart healthy.  I reluctantly took them, informing the doctor all the time that I did not like how the hormones were making my breasts feel, enlarged and sensitive. He kept insisting that my body was just getting used to the new med and he even increased the dosage of hormones instead of cutting back on them.  I had told him that I had read that the hormones could cause cancer.  He disagreed.
      At the appointment with him after finding the lump, the doctor checked the lump on my right breast and said that I needed to see a surgeon right away because the lump had grown so quickly.  I had some trepidation in using anyone that the gynecologist suggested because I felt that he had misled me about the hormone therapy, so I called a good friend in a neighboring large city and asked her to recommend a doctor to me.  She suggested a name but I had heard a negative fact about his personal life and didn't feel like we would have a rapport.  My good friend Sandy told me that she would call a man whom she knew who was the administrator of one of the large hospitals and ask him whom he would suggest for me.  Remember that breast cancer is always feared by women but years ago it terrified women and I was one of them.
    My friend Sandy returned My call the next day and gave me the name of a doctor suggested by the hospital administrator.  I made an appointment and saw him within a few days.  He examined me and said that he was suggesting a surgeon who was innovative, was even using alternate methods with cancer patients other than surgical removal of tumors.  That pleased me, and I still had the dream in mind, thinking that maybe that doctor was going to use an alternate method of curing me, per the dream.
   My husband Steve went with me to the appointment with the new doctor in the city.  The doctor read the gynecologist's report about the rapid growth of the tumor, examined my breast, called my husband into the exam room and with tears streaming down his face he told us that he was going to try to save my life because the cancer had obviously invaded the lymph nodes under that arm and spread to other organs.  He wanted to immediately enter me into the hospital and operate the next morning.  We needed to get someone to take care of our business in our own town, so we convinced him that if he would schedule surgery for two days later it would be more convenient for us.  He agreed but warned us that the obviously malignant tumor needed to be excised as soon as possible.
     Steve and I left his office stunned with the news, having gone there thinking maybe he would give me the option of some alternative method.  Instead, the situation became crucial. 
     When we arrived home at about 5:00 p.m. Steve called our son De and advised him of the situation and asked him to take care of our business while I had surgery.  Of course he agreed.  While Steve made the calls to relatives, I knew that I needed to pray in the language of the Holy Spirit, per the dream about my cancer being healed by God. It had become a life and death situation after the office exam with the surgeon in Tulsa.  I left Steve on the home office phone making calls to relatives and started walking around the entire inside and then outside of the house, praying in the language of the Holy Spirit.  I had read about dramatic healings and I remembered the prophetic dream, so I was convinced the Holy Spirit's prayer language was the key to my healing of breast cancer.  
   A long battle began with me allowing the Holy Spirit to pray through my mouth in God's heavenly language but the devil kept feeding into my thoughts the words of the doctor while he was crying, that he was going to try to save my life.  It was a monumental battle between faith and fear.  I kept praying in tongues and then I would sing a new song that came to my mind with the words that said that My Heavenly Daddy is bigger than cancer.  I would go from praying God's solution in tongues and then sing the song of confession in God for hours.  I prayed and walked from 5:00 p.m. until about 10:00 p.m. and became exhausted.  Battling the devil is exhausting but the prayers in the Holy Spirit were empowering. At 10:00 I went in the house to talk to Steve, expecting him to also be praying for me.  No such luck.  He was sound asleep in front of the TV.  I almost got angry at him, remembering the hours and hours and hours that I had prayed for him when he was an alcoholic.  Immediately the thought came to my mind that if I got angry at him, it would invite the devil to control the situation and take it out of God's hands.  I immediately forgave Steve, knowing that he had escaped the seriousness of the situation by tuning into the TV.  It was his way of handling the situation, escaping into the TV.  I woke him and told him to get in bed, that I was going to pray some more.  I resumed praying and told God that it had always been Him and me together, anyway, fighting the devil.  So I went back to walking and praying.
    In just a few minutes I realized that I was physically too exhausted to walk any more and my emotional energy was depleted from praying so much, so I went in the house to go to bed.  Instead of finding Steve already in bed, he was sitting in his recliner in the den/library adjacent to our bedroom praying in the Holy Spirit, too.  I told him that I was going to bed but he kept praying.  I got into my nightgown and fell on our bed while still praying in the Holy Spirit's heavenly words.  I could hear that Steve was still praying also in the adjacent den/library.  In just a very few minutes I saw in a quick vision that a streak of lightning began connecting Steve and Me in an arch of power.  It was only a few seconds before my body started shaking on the bed so dramatically that the bed began to slam against the mirrored wall behind our bed. It slammed so forcefully that it sounded like a sledge hammer hitting the wall.  My body was doing the shaking that cause the bed to hit that wall so loudly.  My thought was, "Oh, God, I didn't sign up for this."  My body was burning up and I sensed that I was laying in a puddle of sweat on the sheets from the heat of my body's high temperature. 
   Immediately I said in my prayer thoughts to God that I didn't want to do things that the crazy Pentecostal ladies did that we used to joke about, but I prayed these words in my mind, "If this is of you, Father, give me scriptures in my mind so that I know it's you."  I had always asked God to give me confirming scriptures when he told me something so that I would know it was Him and not some deception.  That night in those, shalI I say, unusual activities I really need his reassuring words and confirmation.  Immediately the words came to my mind, "I will shake what can be shaken so that what cannot be shaken remains," and also the words, "For My God is a consuming fire," came into my mind.  With those confirming scriptures from My Heavenly Father directly from the Bible I knew I should relax and enjoy the ride, which I did. 
    Steve was alarmed by the sound of the bed hitting the wall and he thought I was having a seizure and came running into our bedroom to hold me down.  I told him not to touch me because I was burning up and that his hands would be burned if he touched me.  He took my advice, but he didn't know what was taking place because I had never told him about what I finally knew was a prophetic dream.  The shaking stopped and I was so thrilled to be in the presence of God's healing power that I didn't move a muscle, afraid that it would all be over.  Steve got ready for bed and when he came to bed he crawled in the bed the farthest away from me in the bed as possible. The rest of the night I was immobile, having been healed by God in a very dramatic way, per the prophetic dream.  God covered all bases. 
    The next morning when I woke I heard Steve in the bathroom getting ready to go to the federal courthouse to let them know about the events of the previous day, meaning the doctor's diagnosis and letting them know that he might be preoccupied for a few days.  We planned to leave for the hospital at 1:00 to be checked into the hospital for a breast biopsy and possible removable of the tumor, removal of lymph nodes and other surgical things in order to save my life, which would happen the next morning.   I knew that my life had already been saved, and it was saved right there on my bed when God burned out the demon of cancer and it shook my body dramatically when it left.  Steve was a part of the heavenly drama and later told me that while we were praying at the same time that he saw a vision of a ball of light enclosing my breast, but the next day he still thought I had had a seizure.  He said he would be back later for our trip to the hospital.  I continued to lay in the bed, enjoying the presence of God.  In my prayerful thought I told my Heavenly Father, my Healer, that I was afraid to get out of bed because I was enjoying His presence.  These words came to my mind, "Today consider yourself an only child with all of My attention. You are in a cocoon of My love."  That did it, gave me the knowledge I needed to know that wherever I was that day that He was also there. 
   I showered and dressed but when I walked out of our bedroom a sense of fear struck me.  I called my prayer partner, whom I had not told about the cancer, told her that I needed her to pray for us, that I had just been healed of cancer but Steve was confused and his unbelief was filling the rest of the house.  She told me she would be at my door in five minutes, which she was.  When she rang the doorbell, I opened the door and she stepped in.  She said immediately that unbelief was so strong in our house from Steve that she needed to go back to her house and intercede for us.  I knew I could count on her to be a prayer warrior for us.
   At the appointed time Steve came home and we loaded up in the car and drove to the hospital in Tulsa in silence.  I felt like I was in a cocoon of love, like our Father had told me.  When we entered the hospital admitting office and told the lady that we had an appointment for surgery, we heard a male voice tell another admitting lady that when a lady named Tommye Allen checked in that they needed to call him.  The lady admitting me called out to him that I was at the moment being admitted. The man behind the voice was the administrator of the hospital who had been called by my friend in Tulsa.  He came into the room and said that he was going to personally usher us up to my hospital room, which he did.  When we entered the room it looked like a hotel suite.  It was on the top floor of the hospital with a living room, a bedroom and a huge bathroom.  Sitting on top of the table next to the bed was a bouquet of flowers from the hospital for me. I knew at that moment what God meant when He told me to think of myself as an only child.  I was relishing in His personal attention, although I knew He was busy with others of His children, too.
    The nurse waiting in the room for me made us comfortable and asked what kind of surgery I was having.  It told her I was having a beast biopsy but also told her that I had been healed by God the previous night.  The nurse raised her hands to heaven and thanked God for His healing power.  Yes, I was God's only child for a day. I slept that night in that suite at the hospital with the lights of Tulsa shining in the floor length windows on two sides of the room.  Oh, the love and blessings of God were magnificent.
    They wheeled me into surgery early the next morning after I had met with the surgeon and an obstetrician who was also going to remove an IUD birth control device while I was anesthetized.  I said nothing about the healing, somehow knowing that the surgeon needed to find out on his own with his own eyes that I had been healed.
    I woke in the recovery room after surgery by the surgical nurse who told me that the doctors had taken three biopsies of the tumor.  She told me that the surgeon had taken a slice out of the center of the tumor, sent it with the pathologist to be biopsied, and he had come back into the operating room and said, "It's benign." The nurse continued with the story and said the surgeon said, "That's impossible."  He took another slice out of one end of the tumor and sent it out of the room with the pathologist, who returned with the same news, "It's benign."  The surgeon took another biopsy out of the other end of the tumor and sent it out for a final biopsy, thinking the cancer was certainly in that part of the tumor.  The pathologist came back with the same finding, "No cancer." 
    God had told me the night before the surgery that the operating room would be full of angels, so for me not to be afraid.  After the three reports of the three biopsies the surgical nurse told me that she witnessed something she had never seen before in an operating room.  She said that after the third finding of the biopsy was no cancer, that the entire room of doctors and nurses yelled hallelujah and cheered.  She said they knew the prognosis had been one of an aggressive cancer so the operating room staff reacted with joy.  I knew they were responding to the presence of the angels in the room.
    That night was the culmination of my feeling like being God's only child that day.  I was not given a hospital meal that night.  The hospital chef had prepared the dining table in the suite for a feast for us.  The chef wheeled a white clothed serving table into the room on which he had the vegetables for a huge salad for both Steve and me.  He mixed the salad in our presence as if we were in a five star hotel.  While we ate the salad, he wheeled the cart away and returned later with appetizers of shrimp and huge lobsters accompanied with a bottle of wine.  It was dark outside and the lights of Tulsa were strikingly beautiful as viewed from the dining table, adding to the ambiance of the evening.  The next course was steak, a delicious cheese encrusted potato and asparagus with another bottle of wine.  We were in paradise, with God joining in with our celebration.  The final course wheeled in by the chef was bananas foster.  The chef prepared the dessert at our table with the addition of the blaze of fire which makes the dessert bananas foster.  It was a glorious celebration, all at the cost of the hospital, having been arranged by the administrator of the hospital -- or rather shall I truthfully say Our God.
   The next morning God impressed upon me not to tell the surgeon the entire story about the healing, that he had witnessed a miracle and he needed to meditate on it for a while.  I only told him that God had healed me to which he said, "If I ever need prayer, I know who to call."   The doctor who removed the IUD during surgery confirmed the surgical nurse's comment about the cheering and high-fiving each other of all the people in the operating room after the pathologist returned with the third finding of no cancer.   He told me that he had never seen or heard of that happening in an operating room.
   On the way home that afternoon, I had the car seat laying back and was trying to assess the events of the previous 48 hours.  I was talking to God in my thoughts and I asked Him if the tumor had been benign all of the time.  Speaking firmly and emphatically in my thoughts he said, "I don't waste that much of My power on something that is benign."  My weak reply to Him was, "I understand, Father."  I had allowed unbelief to minister to my mind for a few minutes. 
    I noticed that the doctor had not removed the tumor when I got home.  When I had the two week post surgery appointment with the surgeon, he remarked that he did not remove the tumor because my body was consuming it and he wanted to see how long it would take for the tumor to disappear.  It was a large one.  He said that my body had consumed a small portion of it in the two weeks post surgery.  When I had the six week appointment with the surgeon, he remarked that my body had completely consumed the rest of the tumor.  He was delighted.  I knew not to comment about praying and the miracle of the healing and the shaking and the extreme heat in my body.  He had observed the miracle and needed to keep it in his heart and meditate on it. 
    A shaking and a burning had definitely happened on my bed at home.  I didn't know where to find the scriptures in the Bible but when I found them in the book of Hebrews I saw that they were related to God's shaking out of our lives the demons and their activities.  The scripture says, "In times of old He made created things shake but now he had given us the promise that He would make the earth shake even more, and not only the earth but the heavens also, as well, so that the shakable evil things would be changed but the unshakable things of God would remain.  We have been given an unshakable kingdom of God.  Therefore, let us hold on to the grace that we have been given and worship Him in the way that He finds acceptable, in reverence and awe.  FOR OUR GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE."  (Hebrews 12:26-29)  We had participated in the miracle of the "shaking" of the devil's cruel works until they left me, and I experience God burning the cancer demon out of My life. 
   It all started as a dream and culminated in a miracle.  And I got to be God's only child for a day as a way to calm my fears and celebrate God's victory.
   The documenting of this story is to prove the love of God for His children.  Now you know why I adore, revere and am in awe of Him for all of My days in the earth.  We are so blessed to be called His children.  I experienced the totality of His love and can tell you that He deserves all of our reverence and awe because He is LOVE. 
   Seek to know Him and His love and you will find Him. I can attest to you that HE IS LOVE.

PRAYING AHEAD

                                                       PRAYING AHEAD
                                                                               T. Wieland Allen
   A lesson well learned is worth passing on to other people in order for them to also glean an excellent result from their actions.  A Christmas trip to California was the necessary occasion for the happenings which could have been catastrophic time-wise as far as the result but instead turned out to work in my favor.
   My son De had planned to take to catch a commercial airplane in another town 50 miles away in order for me to ge to Sunny California for the holidays.  He is always punctual and I was ready two hours and 15 minutes before the flight for him to load my two large pieces of luggage into my SUV and then we would drive the aforementioned SUV to the airport.  We were well on our way in order to get me to the airport an hour and a half early in order to safely maneuver through security and get me to the gate where my flight was to depart.  A problem had presented itself that morning in that fog was very dense and it was difficult to see beyond a few lengths of cars.
    A few days prior to our leaving for the airport I had checked on my flight schedule and notice that an early bird check-in was available for extra charge of $15 per flight.  Since I had purchased my ticket for a little over a mere five dollars because I had so many Rapid Rewards points, I decided on a "whim" to go ahead and give the extra money to the airline since their Rapid Rewards credit card which I had purchased had resulted in my taking flights to California almost free for several times a year.  Yes, I felt like I owed it to the airlines for allowing me to use my credit card for only a fee of $69 a year and I received four to six flights for five dollars per flight.
   I always thank my markdown angel who goes ahead of me and marks down everything I buy.  The Rapid Rewards purchases go above and beyond the reason for which I got the credit card.  In return, of course I did not have to wait and check in 24 hours before my flight in order to get a good number for standing in line for the flight.  I would get an A number and be able to be at the front of the line at boarding time.  Little did I know that that decision would be pertinent to my making it to the flight on time.
    The day of the flight my son De and I were on our way with plenty of time for me to check in, get through security and line up for the flight, even driving in the dense fog which had formed very early in the morning.  However, as we left the state highway and my son De drove my SUV onto the turnpike which takes us very close to the airport, De commented that the engine light on the car had come on.  That had never happened.  The power in my car slowed down but then De could get it up to 60 mph for a short time.  As I said, this had never happened to me before.  In fact, the car had never had any corrective maintenance in the 13 years I had owned it.  We were on a turnpike with no place to turn around and go back to my house and exchange my SUV for De's pickup, so we decided to make it to the toll booth slowly since there was no real speed to the car, exit there and drive on the other side of the turnpike back to my house and hurriedly exchange cars.  The SUV did not cooperate with our plans because a couple of miles on the return trip to my house the car lost all power and refused to start again.  The engine light continued to proudly display on the dash.
    That new situation left us with quite a dilemma, that being what to do since I had the purchased tickets to two towns in California and I had to notify the airlines within a certain time or I would lose the price of the tickets.  There we sat, on the turnpike shoulder going in the direction of my town, not in the direction of the airport.  I had, neglectfully, left AAA card in my wallet at home and the towing number for the Lincoln company didn't answer since it was Sunday.  I started to call the airlines and cancel my flights but De insisted that he was going to get me to the airport in time although we were sitting in an inoperable car on the shoulder of a turnpike and time was flying by.  We surmised that if we had been able to call AAA that it would probably take an hour for the tow truck to get there and I would never make it to catch the flight because if we went all the way back to my house by then, since some time had passed, it would be too late.
   After discussing the matter a few minutes, I suddenly told De that we should call his wife because she might have a suggestion.  He agreed, to which he called her and told her about our dilemma.  She said that she would call a local tow truck, send it on the way and that her adult son Drew would drive their second pickup to our location on the turnpike, give us their pickup, and Drew would wait for the tow truck while my son De took me in their pickup to the airport.  It was a workable plan but Drew had to drive from their house to where we were, which was 40 minutes from their house.
   While waiting in the inoperable SUV for Drew in their pickup, a patrolman stopped to see if we were okay.  We told him about our situation and I jokingly asked him if he wanted to take me to the airport.  He laughed and said it was not legal for him to do that kind act.
   Finally our rescuer Drew arrived in the alternate vehicle.  The only problem was that we were a good 30 minutes from the airport and 30 minutes from our town.  When Drew arrived he was amenable to waiting for the tow truck while my son took me to the airport in their pickup.  We threw my luggage into the back of their pickup, jumped into the pickup after giving to Drew a credit card to use for the two truck and the keys to my SUV.  We were on our way, but in the wrong direction.
   De put the pedal to the medal and at least we were in an operable vehicle even though we were headed in the wrong direction.  De was determined that he would get me to the airport on time, so he decided to use the emergency exit used only by the highway patrol and ambulances in order to get onto the other side of the turnpike.  He pulled over onto the shoulder of the turnpike, allowed all cars to pass us, watched for a clear path in the opposite lane of the turnpike and drove his pickup so that it passed safely through the emergency exit with caution.  After all, this was an emergency, not what the highway patrolman would consider one but it was a emergency to us.
    While speedily driving to the airport De admitted to me that several times while driving to my house that morning the thought had come to him to take me to the airport in his pickup instead of taking my car.  It was too late for me to lecture him on listening to that inner voice of God because the fog had not lifted so I wanted to avoid any conflict which would interfere with his safe driving.  We could see the highway directly in front of us and we could see the lights of oncoming traffic but De still had to be very cautious.
    We arrived at the airline entrance 15 minutes before the plane was supposed to leave the terminal and I still had to get my boarding pass, check my large luggage filled with gifts and go through the long security line before running down the long lengthy hall to the gate, which is not easy for an 84 year old lady to run that distance speedily, although I am in great shape. 
   I quickly lifted my large heavy luggage onto the appropriate place and told the young man at the counter my name and my destination.  He told me that it was my "lucky" day, lucky in that I had gotten the early bird check-in but also lucky that the plane I was to board was delayed 25 minutes, just long enough for me to get to the gate.  He handed a paper boarding pass to me, even though I had it electronically on my phone.  Having observed in the past that sometimes the electronic boarding passes are hard to register at the gate, I took the boarding pass and ran to the escalator which took me to the crowded security area.  The line was long, but at least the plane was going to be a late in taking off, so it finally looked like I was going to make it.  De had dropped me off at the airline entrance while he parked the car because he didn't want to leave me there in case I hadn't make the flight.  As I started the run down the long hall to the gate, I heard him calling my name, "Mom," and saw him outside of the security entrance waving at me.  Every other mom in the airport was looking around to see if some offspring was calling her. 
   When I arrived breathless at the scheduled gate, the other passengers were lined up at the proper place and I slipped into my spot in line with the A31 numbered boarding pass for which I had paid for have early bird check-in four days earlier on a "whim", not knowing that it would be pertinent to my being able to leave on the flight. Also, I thanked God that, for the first time in the many, many years of flying that same flight that it had never been delayed except for the one time that I needed the extra time. 
   I made it but it took divine intervention to get me there and a son who was determined.
   I had been a stressful situation but while waiting on De to pick me up that morning these words popped into my thoughts, "Don't fret.  Don't worry.  Have faith and take your hands off of the situation."   When those words came to me that morning I had no idea that there would be a stressful situation that day, but there was, and those words kept going through my mind like a ticker tape, cuing me not to fret, not to worry, to have faith and to take my hands off of it.  What else could I do anyway?  I couldn't sprout wings and fly to the airport so I had to take my hands off and trust God.
     Our Heavenly Father came through, as always.  Now He gets the credit every time I tell the story.  After all,, He wanted me to manage to take the trip to be with other loving family members to celebrate His Son's birthday.  I felt like I had an engraved invitation.  My own son had participated in the solution and his determination kept me calm and steady, even sitting on the turnpike. 
    The entire scenario reminded me of a scripture that says to pray for one another so that you will be healed.  I belong to a Prayer Posse in which we pray intercessory prayers for other people.  Lo and behold, God performed a miracle for me according to His Love. 
   He is truly the Best Dad!