spirit art

well i had a crazy experience a couple of weeks ago that i've been forgetting to blog about, so here goes.

two fridays ago i was researching what's going on in town & found this art walk at one of the malls. all of my friends had other plans, but i didn't want to let being alone stop me from doing something fun. i thought i might really enjoy this art thing. plus, i felt like the Lord wanted to specifically spend the evening with me & since i haven't done that since who knows when, i thought it would be great for us to do together. so i went to the mall & started walking through.

i passed this guy in a hat & white t-shirt walking the other direction. the only reason i noticed him is that he stared at me as we passed & i thought it a bit weird. so i'm walking along, saw an antique store & decided to go in. i'm about halfway in when i realize he's turned around & followed me in. he follows me through the store at a distance, i hang back to stay away, then he looks at me & walks out. i was trying not to be too paranoid, so i blew it off, and went on to a gallery next door. as i'm in the gallery, he walks by the entrance & looks in at me. t-shirt man was really starting to creep me out, and, frankly, ruining my art experience. i decided to try one more gallery to try & lose him before leaving. i had my confrontation all ready in my head should i see him again. you know they always say really confident & aware women are far less likely to be targets, so i was ready to confront.

anyway, i chose a very open gallery with large pictures that intrigued me. there was weird music playing & the entry said "spirit art". then i saw an indian head on the wall & pretty much wrote it off as native american witch doctor art, but decided to give it a look anyway. the artist, rickey paul (www.spiritartofmikeal.com/), was talking to a couple about his art. i caught pieces of the conversation such as "painting what he tells me in the dark," "i sign his name on all the pieces," "i don't know much about art," and also some angel stories. as i was eavesdropping, i saw an article on a table about him. apparently 6 1/2 years ago an angel started speaking to him & telling him what to paint. i was almost done walking around once, but i just had to speak to him & he was still talking to that couple, so i started round 2. this time i saw more in the paintings than i did the first time. they were amazing! when the couple walked away, i made a bee-line for him & introduced myself. i wanted to feel this guy out, what he believed was happening, etc.

so i started asking him questions about what i had heard, about what he believes. he said he believed in God, Jesus, "the whole bit", just didn't do the whole religion thing anymore. he was raised Catholic, but didn't think that the rules were a reflection of how God intended our lives & church to be. well, i can definitely appreciate that. i'm not a fan of legalistic religion & i don't think God is either. rickey said that one day he was having lunch with a friend & the friend told him that there was a 9 foot angel behind him that was saying he's "not leaving this time". the angel told the friend that he wanted a combination of the names "mickey" and "al". his name is michael (i think rickey thinks he's the archangel michael), so "mickey" is a child-like nickname and "al" is like "spirit" because he wanted their relationship to have a childlike spirit or something, so this is where he got the name "mikeal", which is the name he signs on the artwork. rickey said he used to go into a dark room & let mikeal tell him what to paint. he said he doesn't know much about painting, but after mikeal tells him he's done, he turns the light on and mikeal tells him the story behind the picture and how much to charge for it.

he believes each painting is intended for a specific person. he said they'll usually walk in, go around once & leave. then they'll re-enter and say something to the effect of ownership about a painting - "that's my painting" or "this one is for me". he said one lady did this, took her painting home, and hung it in the living room. she placed it there so she could look at it as she drank coffee at the dining room table. she said that one day as she was looking at it, her entire living room turned white, Jesus walked out of the painting, took 3 steps, and told her that otis was with him and was alright. otis was her deceased husband that she had worried about his eternal destination. hmm.

then rickey told me another story of how he began noticing a lot of native american themes showing up int he art. he asked mikeal about it & mikeal said, "shouldn't they be healed, too?" i asked him how mikeal communicates with him & he described it as a "knowing", not audible. this is how i feel the Holy Spirit communicates to me, but i'm not sure if rickey thinks God or the Holy Spirit is communicating to him through mikeal or if he just thinks mikeal is communicating to him directly of his own initiative. anyway, at this point rickey said he realized how little he actually knew about native americans.

one day an indian chief came into his gallery & introduced himself as "two bears". they spoke and he later discovered that no one else had seen the chief in the gallery. from their conversation, rickey felt like he was supposed to go north to montana to where custer fought his last battle with the indians. when he & his wife got there, there was a path to the right to the battlefield and a path to the left. he took the path to the left and came upon an indian monument specifically for two bears & his tribe's involvement in the battle. *chills* rickey's explanation of this is that two bears wanted him to appreciate what he had done in his life. rickey's wife thinks that rickey is just so close to the spirit world that two bears was able to appear to him. again, hmm.

at this point i was feeling a little weird because while i think this guy & i could be on some of the same pages, we're probably not on all. after the two bears story, i felt it necessary to ask him about his thoughts on the afterlife. his answer was that he didn't know because he hadn't been there....um, ok. he said he's died 3 times from heart attacks and come back. he said one time while he was recovering from one of his heart attacks that his wife told him he sat up in bed and began having a conversation with several angels as if they were at the foot of his bed. she said he was telling them that he couldn't wait to join them. she saw no one else in the room besides the two of them. rickey also said that mikeal has told him that he has his sword and shield ready for when rickey joins him "in the fight". i'm not sure if rickey thinks he becomes an angel upon death? i told him that i've never really believes that dead people appear to the living. i said when i refer to the "spiritual realm", i'm referring to demons & angels. he refers to the spirit realm, seeming to mean angels, demons, and spirits of people who have passed. right after i tell him this he gives me this knowing look & says, "yeah, but they show up in your dreams, don't they?"

..................................i just about peed my pants right there. 4 weeks prior to this i had a very intense dream with my deceased maternal grandfather as one of the main characters in the dream, crystal clear as if it was circa 1993. i don't have any grandparents that are alive & have lost a lot of relatives in my short life & i've always had dreams with them in them. i thought it was normal. as a side note, i'm reading the shack and in that book the deceased sister visits and plays with her siblings in their dreams, so that just draws some weird parallels. not really conclusions necessarily, but definitely parallels.

back to the story. after telling me this, i'm sure he could tell he definitely had my attention. then he casually tells me that he can read all of the people that come into his gallery like a book. he said he's not always supposed to tell them what he sees, but sometimes he is. he said i had a very strong rainbow around me (chelsey said that means i'm confused, but i prefer to think it means something awesome along the lines of promise, ha) and asked if there is a strong influence in my life named "sarah". i told him i have a lot of friends named sarah, but none really stand out as this strong influence/mentor he seemed to be getting at. in our conversation i was telling him my fascination with art and he said, "yeah, but art really isn't your thing, is it?" i was kind of confused because i've always considered myself an artistic person. he said, "you're fascinated with the process of creating something from nothing." now that is true, but i don't think it's all that uncommon. i am always looking at things around me & wondering how they are made & thinking of how i would make them, but i'm sure there are other people who do this as well. then he looked at me & said, "i'm going to tell you something." he stared at me directly in the eye for at least 30 seconds as if debating whether i could handle it. i just stared right back, assuring him i could, haha. then he says, "you're going to have 3 dreams. you really need to pay attention to the 3rd one because in it is a very clear life direction. then come back and tell me what it is. well, that's enough of that for one day." and that was it - our conversation was over.

let me just say that while i did write all of this down, i'm not just eating it up as fact about my life. i'm a firm believer in praying about this type of thing for confirmation. i will say that i felt peace and the Lord's presence throughout the entire conversation. as i said before, i'm not entirely sure this guy & i would agree on everything, i felt like i was supposed to pay attention to this experience. so of course i was hoping for like 3 amazing dreams from the Lord in a week, but it was almost 2 weeks (tuesday night) before i had a dream. let me explain the dream thing: i dream all the time, like all the time, but i know a dream is from the Lord because i remember it differently, with a distinctive clarity. i can't explain it better than that & i don't always know the purpose/meaning, but i know when i'm supposed to pay attention to it, i try to always write them down & hope i get the message whenever i'm supposed to. the next post will be my dream. could it be dream #1? ;-)

by the way, i never saw the creepy guy again, thank the Lord.

always planning

I think it's so weird that girls are always planning their wedding. I was just thinking the other day about why people get into relationships. Obviously i know there's going to be exceptions, so I'll just speak for myself & those who were around me.

When i was in 9th grade, I made my little list about the qualities I wanted in a husband, blah blah. From that point forward, I felt like i needed to justify every relationship I entered into by finding some "marriable" qualities in him. As a side note, I am a pretty firm believer in dating people with marriable qualities, but at the same time, I don't think you can know the outcome from the beginning. All of that to say, it's like in every relationship, I've always found myself taking notes - does this mean he'll always be this way, is this a habit that i can live with, etc. It's like constantly evaluating this person, like they are under the "perfect match magnifying glass" & when I realized they just weren't going to work out, I cut it off. They probably entered into a relationship with me because they thought I was fun or pretty or just wanted a girlfriend, who knows, definitely a simpler reason than mine.

This isn't only with dating relationships. I've been making & re-making my bridesmaids list since high school, trying to tailor it to the number of people that the person I'm dating would be able to have & re-evaluating who "makes the cut" or who I've lost touch with. I don't know why, but it's just like this distant huge turning point in my life that it feels like I've been constantly preparing for for like 10 years, yet feel no closer to or any readier for - why am i wasting my time? Why do i need all of these things figured out? It's so weird because it's not necessarily like a need to be married now/soon or even that I think I'm ready to be married. I guess it's just this feeling that I need to be as prepared as possible when the time comes so I have fewer decisions to make? Who knows.

I was just thinking about an old friend today & caught myself thinking, "We don't really keep up much anymore, I wonder if it would hurt her feelings if she isn't a bridesmaid in my wedding?"

............what?!?!

Am I engaged? No! Am I close to being engaged? No! Where do these crazy thoughts come from? I think part of it has to do with summer, also known as "wedding season". Summer always does weird things to me - too many people get engaged & married in the summer. It takes me a while to recover.

Anyway, this thought pattern kind of falls into what I've been trying to do lately: live in the moment. Not in a crazy way, but in an actually enjoying life kind of way. I want to enjoy my friendships & relationship as they happen, as they unfold, not be focused on what hasn't happened. If I let myself, I can get totally caught up in my mind & create conversations as I imagine they would go, create scenarios as I imagine they would go, set up expectations for other people's words/actions, get angry at people for what I imagined they said, and basically set myself up for a world of disappointment, all the while missing out on what life, or the Lord rather, is offering me now. It's really a horrible pattern. I think girls deal with it a lot because it's so easy to get caught up in that you don't even realize you're doing it.

I recently met with this girl & we read a book together. She's like 5 years younger than me & we were kind of getting to know each other the first time we met when she was talking about her boyfriend. She told me this wonderful story about how they started dating, etc. Then she mentioned that during the summer, he was being kind of lazy, not spending his time wisely in her opinion, etc. & she wasn't sure what that was an indication of. I knew immediately we were kindred spirits, as Anne of Green Gables would say. :) So I asked if she was worried that if they got married that he would be sitting on the couch all day, drinking beer, jobless, and making her go to church alone? She gave me that "how did you know" smile. Well, because I've been a professional life-imaginer my entire life! It's amazing how you can take one little thing & in 30 seconds have figured out how it's going to affect the rest of your life. So exhausting. It made me so happy to be able to share some of my new findings, mostly about men & women relating, with her. It's so fun getting to share things with people that you just figured out & that may help them avoid some of your pitfalls. By the way, I assured her that it means it's summer & he's just relaxing before having to enter the real world & that it has nothing to do with the failure or success of her future. ;-)

I have also decided that I'm never going to fully figure out why men think the way they do & how to get them to understand the way I do (also that i need to be ok with not understanding). Neither really makes sense all of the time. I will hopefully choose to see this as an adventure of discovery & laugh about misunderstandings along the way instead of letting myself get caught up in them.

heavy clouds of thought

I feel heavy today, not physically heavy, but burdened with a heavy feeling. Some things around me are affecting my mood: friends who have been falsely accused of abusing their children & are fighting to get them back, friends who can’t have a baby, friends who were great parents & their son still committed suicide, a sinking feeling that things in the world are getting worse when I hear of new things closely lining up with prophecy I’ve read in the Bible, and, finally, knowing what to do with myself in my own life.

I’m not complaining, just sharing a plethora of thoughts adding up to a little cloud hovering over my head. At my church, we’re doing a study on Habakkuk & learning “the reply to why”. Basically why do bad things still happen to “good” people, etc., etc.? It’s so interesting how many times in the bible that God gets glory in the end through evil, like wiping out nations & just allowing things to happen. I’m not so naïve as to think He doesn’t allow these things. There’s so much I don’t know, but a few things I do know to be true: I know that we have victory in the end; I know that this is a fallen world; I know that Habakkuk cried out to God asking him why he tolerates the evil in Judah & God’s response was that he was raising up the Babylonians to take them over. Using evil to get rid of bad?!

It doesn’t really make sense. But then I think – does it have to? I’m the kind of person who wants to understand everything, but when it comes to the ways of the Lord, I have to just make myself accept that I can’t always understand. So then what am I supposed to do now that I’ve accepted the fact that I don’t have to understand? I still strongly believe that I shouldn’t just be ok with everything that's happening. I want to be the kind of person that cries out to the Lord about the injustice I see surrounding me, to pray with boldness for answers. Our pastor made the interesting point that the cross is one of the worst torture devices in the history of man, used by one of the most corrupt governments in history, and ultimately that’s what gave me my salvation. Why do people walk around saying that God wouldn't allow terrorism or even worse natural disasters than we've already seen? Definitely something to chew on.

The first three things I listed that are on my mind have to do with children. Now, I don’t have children. I do desire them at some point in my life. Sometimes I almost think I wish I were in that stage now, but then I realize I’m not even close to being ready. Anyway, these problems & then the way the world is now really make me question whether I want to bring children into this world. Are they just going to be taken away from me? Will they take their own life after i've poured so much of mine into them? Am i fit to train up someone in the way they should go? What if they never accept Jesus as their savior? Will i be able to protect them? Will i be able to accept when situations are out of my control? I’m not losing sleep over it or anything, just something that crosses my mind every so often.

Ok one of the things that I started thinking about today in reference to the prophecy comment before is Oprah. I’ve seen some things recently about these new people she’s endorsing that are fairly new-agey & what I perceive to be lies disguised as feel-good truth. Anyway, one of the most alarming things is that the author of this book & supposed spiritual advisor to Oprah is head of this peace alliance, trying to start a U.S. Department of Peace. Now, peace sounds great. World peace sounds even greater, but when you get someone who is a proponent of “mind training” and a year-long self-study “course in miracles”, thinks we’re all destined to be as Jesus on one hand & that she’s a magical witch on the other, I have to start questioning. Oprah & another author are teaching a class online every Monday night to something like 2 million people. Oprah thinks that sharing this guy’s book is a fulfillment of her life’s purpose & the book is predicted to be the best-seller of all time. I guess we’ll see.

I saw another thing about this book called don’t drink the kool-aid. The title is a reference to an occult mass suicide in the 70s. This woman, a Christian author, is basically saying that this “Oprah movement” is occult-ish & that Oprah is reaching more people daily than most pastors will reach in a lifetime. She addresses Oprah’s endorsement of Obama and how it has given him an assent to power quicker than he ever would have gotten there alone as well as references the teachings I previously mentioned. My first inclination is to blindly believe everything this woman says, but then am I just as bad as the people I’m accusing of being deceived by blinding believing everything Oprah says?

Lastly, I just want to make the right decisions in my own life. I know that i can't be ok & make the right choices all the time, I do. I just desire the discernment for making the right decisions & the ability to accept & forgive myself when I don't, moving on to hopefully make the right one next time. I find myself making decisions of the moment as of late in an effort to not need to see the big picture, but be satisfied with the present. The result is a series of decisions that I’m not sure were right, but not sure if they were necessarily wrong. I want to bring glory to God. I also want to love & be loved. Emotions & rationalization can really get in the way of clear thinking.

I’m going to look up some of the prophecy I’m talking about so I can quote scripture next time instead of just a jumble of questions & general wonder-ing…ments (FRIENDS).