God Speaks

Speaking of miracles (I wasn’t, but I’ll just pretend I was). I wish to share something that happened to me. At some time in our lives, we’ve all wondered whether or not God is real or not. Or, if He is, why doesn’t He do a little bit more than He does. It’s like He set everything in place (ignore my theory about Satan for now) and then just left it to run by itself. Still, every once in a while there is a little miracle somewhere, sometime.

When I was really young, I attended a Catholic School. At the time, there were a few nuns serving as teachers in the school. I don’t remember what grade I was in—I think sixth. Anyway, I had a nun for a teacher and I remember her telling the class an anecdotal story about God and His action in some people’s lives. According to the nun (much of the story has faded from my memory except the highlights which I will retell here), there was once a young boy named Jim who walked to school every day. Every day on that walk he passed a church. And every day (either after school, before, or maybe both) Jim would stop in the church and kneel down and say, “Hi God, this is Jim.” He did this for many years. Then, one day he was in an accident of some sort—either he was hit by a car or had a heart attack or something. Anyway, in his time of crisis he heard a voice in his head say, “Hi Jim, this is God.” Like I said, I’m not sure of all those details except the bits of conversation. I remember Jim’s words and God’s words quite distinctly from the nun’s story. But that’s about it.

Anyway, moving along, ever since hearing that story I have wondered about it. As a young kid, I thought I was a decent boy and I always wondered why God never spoke to me. I mean, I talked to Him a lot when I was young, but He never spoke back. Such thoughts remained with me for many, many years not always front and center, but in the back of my mind when I thought of God. As I grew older, I kind of grew distant from my faith and pretty much abandoned it.

Then, I had my melt down.

I had an experience which convinced me I was the antiChrist (which is a long story in itself—I wrote a short book about it a number of years ago entitled Delusions of Grandeur wherein I exposed my hideous ginormous ego for the whole world to see and told a bizarre tale of demons and deities). They tell me it is a mental illness; I don’t really believe them (which is another long story), but part of the experience does seem similar to mania. If I’m off my meds or they aren’t right for some reason, I’ll start interpreting everything as a sign from God that I’m supposed to interpret. I’ll start with, maybe, the title of a song on the radio, or, hah, I remember one: I heard the name of a band on the radio “No Doubt”, which I took to mean that I was proving the existence of God to the world (by acting strangely and driving all over the place) leaving the world with “no doubt” about the subject of God’s existence. This sign would be followed by another sign demanding some odd behavior on my part, and then another, and so on. Without medication, it led to a kind of maniacal antichrist death spiral where everything became a sign; I was hyper and manic, and acting crazily. Normally, I would have these experiences for a few weeks at a time, and then be down for an even longer period of time (one of my earlier diagnoses was bipolar disorder). Anyway, a few years back I was having another of these experiences and when I reached my antichrist death spiral growing more and more terrified because I was convinced I was damned with no hope, I heard a voice in my head say, “Hi Matt.” A.k.a. the voice of God. The voice didn’t cure my delusions or whatever you wish to call them, but it did knock me out of the death spiral to the extent that my terror was alleviated. It was a gentle touch; not enough to cure me, as I’ve said, but enough to dull the edge of my suffering.

I know. I’ve been diagnosed as mentally ill, so you have no reason to take my story seriously. But I do. And I offer it to anyone who wishes to take comfort from it.