Me, Myself and God! Part 5

I did a lot of deep thinking when I lived in the women’s residence.  I used to go up on the roof and just look down over 24th street and I could see 23rd street also.  All the people walking around rushing here and there and I would think, “what on Earth is everyone doing, I don’t get it, working all day to earn green pieces of paper”?  That just seems pointless to me.  At the time I would pray to the god I thought was God, which is nothing and no one I guess.  Some idea I had in my head compiled of lots of different things I liked or what I thought god should be.  I felt like I had to do something, something meaningful like open an orphanage, or save homeless people, or some other idealistic project.  I thought that is what God wants.

After I got my Vitamin D addressed I felt like a normal person and had the energy to do active things.  I enrolled in college to finish my degree.  I was excited to start, or should I say finish, this piece of my life.  I was about 25 years old now.  I walked in Central Park every day.  I LOVED walking back in the day.  I had received a new pair of roller blades from my parents as a gift.  I wanted to try them out but for some reason was always too chicken to go to the park and roller blade by myself.  I think I knew I would look like an idiot on them and didn’t want to look stupid alone.  My friend came with me one really nice summer day.  I was zipping around the park doing well, not out of control, but going at a good, steady pace.  I rounded the upper part and was heading back down the west side of the park when a police officer blew her whistle and was telling all the roller bladers to SLOW DOWN.  People were trying to cross the street to go into the park.  Moms with strollers obviously didn’t want to dash across with their little ones in tow trying not to get hit by roller bladers  I tried to slow down but there was a filled in pothole right in front me and it was pretty bumpy.  It all seemed like a blur but I skid down onto the pavement and scraped the skin off my leg, face, and smacked my head and shoulder so hard they bounced.  I fell right in front of a police van just sitting there!   I had not seen it before I fell.  The guys in the police van came over and radioed an ambulance.  I was sitting on the pavement wondering what just happened??  That came out of no where and felt as if someone literally pushed me down.   I dislocated and fractured my shoulder and had a hard time working because I couldn’t lift my arm above my waist.  I was worried thinking about how am I going to carry school books, a backpack, go to physical therapy, and work with my shoulder broken.  That fall created the period on  the end of that chapter of my life, my life in NYC.  My parents thought I should move back home until my shoulder healed so I didn’t have to worry about working.  I was able to transfer, register, and start college in Rochester all within 2 weeks!!  What??  If that isn’t God I don’t know what is!

I finished college and went on to graduate school at RIT.  I really had not had any more spiritual things happen to me and I didn’t really think about it either.  While in grad school I did an internship at Heidelberg Digital, a German company.  Heidelberg bought the color copy division from Kodak just recently and moved into a building in Rochester.  I created an entire training catalog of all the jobs at Heidelberg and what training, degree, or experience you needed for each job and what was needed for promotions.  The man I worked under loved what I did.  As soon as the summer was over and I graduated, I was going to be hired on at Heidelberg.  About a week or two after I finished my degree 911 happened and that changed everything.  The minute the planes hit the twin towers, all airplanes were grounded.  I’m sure you remember.  This played a huge roll in my salvation.  Heidelberg manufactured HUGE color printing machines. The kind a magazine publisher would use, or someone creating large, really nice catalogs.  These were not printers that you find in an office or your home.  These were million dollar machines that mostly were sold at conventions.  The day the twin towers got hit was the first day of the Heidelberg Convention in Chicago, Il.  People fly in from all over the world to buy these printers.  This time no one could get into the country to get to the convention. Even if someone had made it halfway and made it in the country there was still no way to fly within the country.  This was devastating to the company financially and it created a U.S. hiring freeze.  There goes my dream job.  It seemed as if no one was hiring at that time, not in my field anyway.  I thought about going back to New York but didn’t really want too at this time.  I decided I would go to a temporary agency to get a job on a B shift somewhere so I could still look for jobs during the day.  I knew I was over qualified but didn’t care I wanted a job.  The person behind the desk said he didn’t have any B shift jobs.  I said, “ok do you have any A shift jobs”?  He said ,”No”.  He then says,  “I do have one job but you wouldn’t want it, your over qualified”,  I say, “what is it”,  He says,” you won’t want it the pay is really low”.  I am thinking to myself, “if it pays more than zero dollars an hour I’ll take it”!  So I have to keep prodding him to get the job out of him.  He finally tells me it is a customer service job at Sears Home Repair shop.   Finally!!  That’s no big deal, I’ll take it.  This is where I met a Christian who lead me to the Lord.

 

Me, Myself and God! Part 4

 

I am now home and going up the elevator into my tiny room at the residence.  I  unlocked my door, still feeling like something is following me.  I walked into my room and went over to my bed to set down my bag, take off my shoes, and relax.  Within in a minute of being in the room my huge, really heavy shade flew all the way up, all by itself.  I was totally startled by it as that shade was really heavy and really hard to get up manually.  I felt like it was related to everything that had happened that night.  The crazy non-conversation I had with my friend at her apartment, the long walk home with who knows what over my shoulder, and then the shade flying up and it had never done that.  All these things can be sort of explained away as non-spiritual.  I wasn’t sure of it at the time but had a strange sense that it was all spiritual.  I feel as if I would not have had these strange senses of things if God were not guiding me and keeping His hand on me.

When I lived in that apartment I used to have this overwhelming sense of, I want to go home, but where is that, where is home?  I would walk to the grocery store and it would just come into my head with a sigh, I want to go  home, but where is that?  This went on for years.  I also would get depressed every fall almost like clock work.  I know now I had low levels of D,  and that probably affected my thyroid too because I was always tired.  I started to really not enjoy   acting as much, just kind of lost interest.   My acting teacher and manager weren’t too happy about that but who cares, it’s my life.  I wanted to go back to school and do something interesting, not pretend to be someone else for a living.   At night when I went to bed the strangest things started to happen.  I don’t know if it was related to that demon I had seen in my old apartment   I wasn’t a Christian so I thought maybe someone died in here and there are ghosts.  People believe all kinds of weird things and that’s just how Satan likes it!!  I met a girl who also did acting in the building and through her I learned about Tarot cards.   I thought they were “fun” ( oh boy was I naïve).  She went with me so I could get my own deck.  This is when I look back and I think I was lucky things didn’t turn out worse.   We would do them in her room and my room, but my room was a lot stronger.  When  you put your hand over them to choose one you could feel something grabbing your hand and moving it to a specific card.   When we did the cards in her room , it wasn’t as strong or didn’t feel like something was guiding your hand.  As a non-Christian you think there are only good angels that are helping you.  If you can predict the future, which I did some times, you think that must be from God and you are more “spiritual” than other people.    Doing Tarot cards basically gave Satan and his demons and open invitation into my life.

At night when I went to bed I started having REALLY strange things happen.  I would turn the light out and lay there a bit before I fell asleep, like most people do.  I would suddenly feel pinned to the bed, I could not move, and it felt like something was trying to kick me out of my body.  It started in my feet and was like a whoosh up the inside of my body and I would lay there petrified, literally, couldn’t move my arms, screaming in my head, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!  This would happen almost every night!  I told one of my friends and she said, “I think God is trying to come in and make you better”.   UGH ! You see how very naïve my friends and I were about God?  NO, that was NOT God, I would not have been scared if that was God.  One night I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and when I got back and got in bed I laid down and something smacked me extremely hard on the back of my head.  It felt like I had been hit with a bat or something.  It was hard enough that I said “OW” out loud.  I turned the light on and there was nothing in my room, nothing I could see anyway.   I turned the light off and laid down on my pillow VERY slowly, I did not want to get smacked again, that’s for sure.

I never went into the church sanctuary in the residence.  I also had a super hard time being in one of the rooms that had a cross with Jesus nailed to it.  I didn’t know why I felt so strongly about getting away from this cross at the time.  I know now that Satan was with me or around me and was very uncomfortable.

It was turning into fall again and just like a light switch I was fine one day and the next day I was super depressed.   I was dog sitting for a friend who was out of town.  I literally woke up in her apartment and could not stop crying, could not stop.   Nothing happened, no one died, I didn’t break up with a boyfriend, I didn’t have a fight with a friend, I didn’t lose a good job.  Nothing.  Vitamin D wasn’t  checked that much back then, not like now.  Both my  kids have low D  and so does my husband, so I am  on it  with the D3 and K supplements.  Especially from Fall to Spring.  Also, you can’t rule out the spiritual, especially with the activities I was doing that I thought were innocent.  I also went to psychics to see what they had to say.  Again, all Satan’s territory.  I had got so bad that I would cry for ten hours straight.   I couldn’t fall asleep because I couldn’t stop crying.  It’s pretty impossible to sleep and cry at the same time.  When I walked I felt super dizzy and would have to tell myself, “don’t fall over, don’t fall over”.   I could barely make it through my waitressing shifts because I didn’t have the energy to stand up and it was hard to not cry for 5 hours.   I had seriously considered killing myself,  not because I thought that life was bad, or anything other than I couldn’t function.  I thought I can’t do anything feeling like this.  What if I just go to sleep and don’t wake up?  That would be o.k.  So I bought a bunch of sleeping pills at Rite Aid or CVS ,can’t remember.  I kept thinking, with my luck, I will take these pills and sleep for a week then wake up and everything will be the same.  One particular night, when I was crying myself to sleep, I was laying on my side with one arm hanging over the side of the bed.   I cried out under my breath while I was laying there in desperation “help me, help me,please help me”.    At that  moment something grabbed my hand and held it. Not just held it up but held my hand intimately with  interlaced fingers.  I felt immediate calm and warmth and at total peace.    I stopped crying within a second.  I felt that comfort and love that only God can provide and I fell asleep within a minute.   There is no way to describe the love I felt that night.  There is no such love on this Earth.   I knew that was God , He was helping me and my whole life changed after that night.

 

Me, Myself and God! Part 3

I am homeless.   One of my friends lived in a women’s residence in Chelsea so I went to see if they had an opening.   The residence is called Jeanne d’Arc on West 24th street. It is run  by the Sisters of Divine Providence of Kentucky.  It is still there going strong to this day.  It was only $200 a month and you get a tiny room with a communal bathroom on the floor.  I actually liked living there. The sisters were so nice and it was safe and very convenient.  A lot of women like me were there.  I moved into room 408.  This is where the spiritual battle took place and I can tell you now God won!

The friend that lived in the residence with me got a really good sales job and moved  out into a fancy doorman building on the east side.   I went to visit her one night after she was all moved in so she could show me her new place and how its set up ,etc.    After we eat and just hang out, I was helping her fold some clothes and I hear, “Why do you always wear the same clothes every day”?  I’m stumped for a moment because it seemed like an odd question and not something she cares about.  So I said back to her, ” I don’t know, I guess I just like to be comfortable”,  to which she responds, “huh”?  So  I repeated my answer about being comfortable .  I then said, “well…. you wear the same clothes too”?  The whole time I am feeling like what is going on here and why is she responding to me so oddly.  She says,” what are you talking about”?  I tell her she asked me why do I wear the same clothes everyday.  She tells me adamantly, “NO, I DID NOT”  I say, “YES, YOU DID”, then back and forth for a few more rounds of you didn’t, you did.  She then says ,” Does that even sound like something I would say”., I said thoughtfully, ” No, it doesn’t”.  Then  I realized I didn’t even see her lips move but it was her voice!!!!  She says, ” Cindy, it’s like you started having a conversation by yourself”,  she says, ” I bet there is some little gremlin up in the corner just laughing at you”.  I was freaked out because it was so true.  I did not see her lips move but the voice was hers.  When I went home that night I walked from her place to mine, which is across town East side to West, so they are long blocks as opposed to short numbered blocks, like 20th street, 21st street.  It was dark and honestly I always felt weird going out at night in NY it just felt like bad vibes, I don’t how else to describe it.  I walked home thinking about the gremlin and I seriously felt like it was following me.  I hate writing this down in this blog because it sounds like I’m NUTS.  I have never told anyone this because of the crazy factor.  I am writing it now because I guess God wants me too?  I am just following a hunch that He will use this in His plan, whatever that may be.  I’m putting it out there for others and He can do with it what He wants because he loves me and I want other to know HIM!!

Read Part 4 to find out how an angel saved my life and another changed it….  I know Satan is trying to stop me from writing this because I have butterflies in my stomach as I type.

Me, Myself and God! Part 2

It seems as if most of the craziness involving the spiritual world began in that apartment I sublet near  Columbia University.   I came to this apartment by way of my acting coach.  I needed to move out of my apartment in Chelsea on 26th street.  My roommate was leaving the city and I didn’t know anyone that wanted to move in or needed an apartment at that time.  So my acting coach told me about her “friends” that were going to Michigan to do some theater work for a few years.  I will explain what I mean by “friends” later.  I went to meet them, they seemed super nice and their place was super weird.  I didn’t care, it was big and clean and I liked the street, it was really quiet.  They didn’t have couches or furniture, they had twin beds and were using them as couches, I guess, by placing them up against the wall with pillows.  The building had a courtyard and the bedroom in this apartment was facing the courtyard.  The bedroom window was directly across from the apartment across from me and looking into their kitchen.   I sometimes woke up in the morning or afternoon (if I had a late shift waitressing)  with this Asian family eating breakfast and looking at me sleeping.  Nice, right?  I NEVER saw them in the hallway only in the window when I woke up and they were looking at me while eating their cereal.  The kitchen in this sublet was really tiny and filled with roaches!!  I had to buy Borax and pretty much line the entire kitchen floor, counter, window, and cabinets with it.  It worked like a charm and the little buggies were gone.  There were self portraits of the two guys that lived there on the wall.  Clearly one of them enjoyed painting but whenever I had a friend over the paintings were quite the source of amusement.  If the apartment had been updated it would have been a really nice place.  It was big, large windows, French doors, and two living rooms. This couple had been living in this apartment for 17 years and it was only $300 a month.  SCORE!!

After I moved in I would get strange looks from the other tenants who must have been wondering how I, a 24 yr old at the time but looked younger, could afford this apartment by myself.  All the other tenants in the building seemed like married couples that either just had kids or had grown kids.  I think all the other apartments in the building had been updated so they probably went for around $2,500 /month and this was over 20 years ago.  I know God was looking out for me even though I did not know who He was at the time or that He even existed.  He had His hand on me the whole time I was in NYC and before.  It is all in His plan.

After the biggest audition I had where I cried out to God and gave myself a jolt it was pretty mellow for awhile.  I never had a hard time getting a job, there are a million restaurants with wannabe actors, actresses, writers, musicians, photographers, you name it.  So I just joined the club and got a waitressing job.  One of the restaurants I worked at was on or near West Fourth street.  I can’t remember the name of the place but it was a hike from the Columbia University area where I lived.  I loved to walk when I lived in NYC so sometimes I would walk home from work if it was early and that was over 100 blocks.  When you walk that many blocks as fast as I did it felt like you were on a treadmill and the scenery was changing around you while you weren’t moving at all.  One night when I took the subway home from work around 2AM , I forgot that I was on the express train and that it would skip my stop.  I forgot to get off and I ended up going to 110th and  Lenox in East Harlem at 2 O’clock in the morning!!!   I got off the train because I did not know where I would end up if I stayed on and when I came up to the street it looked like I was in some other state.  I recognized nothing and just told myself to walk west because I lived on the west side close to Riverside Park.  This is one of those times that God protected me without even knowing it.  There was not a single soul around and you could hear my boots clicking on the sidewalk.  I walked and walked what seems like forever and came to Morning Side Park which started on 110th street.   When I lived in NYC 20 some odd years ago you didn’t go to Morning Side Park after dark….lots of drug dealers!!  Now I am even more scared but getting closer to my apartment.  I raced around the park went one street over and on to my apartment.  I was so relieved to be home, safe, and in one piece.

It used to get so hot in that apartment and I would open up one of the giant windows and just leave it open, while I went to work, to cool it off.  One night when I arrived home, I walked into my living room and noticed everything was messy and moved around, the curtains were off the windows, things were knocked over, etc.  I was super scared and started looking around for an intruder and then I heard a little shuffling noise over my  head.  I looked closer and saw a huge pigeon up on the curtain rod just sitting there.   I saw a little band around his (I’ll just call it a him, it could have been a girl pigeon) ankle and realized it was a carrier pigeon that must have got lost and came in my open window!   I got a blanket and put it around the pigeon and put him out the window and closed it.  I thought that was super weird!!  The next night I did the same thing, opened my window, then left for work.  I came home to find the same visitor I had the night before!!  This night it was late and I just didn’t want to deal with it so I let the pigeon stay in the apartment.  The next morning I awoke to a lot of clicking and remembered the pigeon from the night before.  He was walking through the closet and on his way to my bed.  I sat up at the exact moment he was trying to jump on my bed and starting hovering full wing span above my bed!  I started screaming and waving my pillow at it to get it down and out of the bedroom.  I got the blanket and put him out the window again and the next night did not open my window.  The little fella  came back and sat on my window sill looking like “Hey, I can’t get in”.  I just watched  him, he wouldn’t leave, I went to bed and the next morning he was gone and that night he did not return.  I don’t know if this is a common occurrence in Manhattan or not. I just kept thinking it happened for a reason.  Maybe he just ended up in my apartment because God knew I love animals and would not hurt him, or maybe he was trying to bring me a message, who knows.

The last two events I told you are mild and could be considered somewhat normal as in it could happen to anyone.  The next thing is absolutely the craziest strangest thing that happened to me in this apartment and I still remember it today.  It was a pretty normal day nothing unusual happened, didn’t meet any new people or have any visitors in my apartment.  I went to bed that night and something woke me up in the middle of the night and when I opened my eyes I saw a person/ghost type thing  right next to my bed kneeling down on one knee with his head resting on his hand, staring at me with a little smirk on his face.  He was all white, white hair kind of a buzz cut, white eyes, white goatee, very chiseled features and it did not look human.    I screamed at the top of my lungs and tried to get to the other side of my bed as fast as I could.  I didn’t know what to do so I hid under my covers but I could still see him.  I kept blinking and blinking and blinking and the image finally went away.  I did not believe in God at this time at all nor did I believe in anything or Satan or ghosts, nothing.  I called my friend and told her I saw this face and I was awake and I never saw this person before, I was not dreaming, etc.  She kept asking me is it someone from TV? Did it look like someone I pass on the street?  All I could tell her was NO, I never saw this face before and something about it wasn’t human and the only word that would come to my mind was demon.  I kept saying it looked like a demon.  That in itself is odd because I don’t know what a demon would look like, ive never seen pictures of demons or movies with demons, etc.    Plus I don’t use the word “demon” ever when I talk, it’s not part of my regular vocabulary.  So the fact that I could not think of any other word to describe this person, ghost thing was that it looked like a “demon”.   I am not sure if this “demon” was in this apartment already or if I somehow summoned it or it was battling with an angel over my soul.  I had no idea at the time.  In hindsight, YES, it was definitely in a battle with God for my soul.  After that night, every night seemed to be strange and I was so afraid I was going to see that thing again.  I never saw another one.  I can 20 years later still see it in my mind.  Exactly what it looked like.  The spiritual world is very REAL my friends.

I lived in that apartment for about 3 years.  I was sending the rent money to the owners of the apartment in Michigan the whole time.  I came home one day to find an eviction notice on my door.  I thought it was strange and a mistake so I just ignored it.  I then got another one.  Then another one.  I called the man I was sending rent money too and asked him what was going on, he said he had no idea and would call Columbia University for me to find out.  Columbia owned the building.   He never called anyone, I had to get a lawyer and go to court.  I did have to move since I was just subletting.  One of the men I was sending the rent money too, Richard, had a huge alcohol problem.  Why my acting coach never told me this, I don’t know but I was furious. I was sending the rent money to him, he was then spending it on alcohol, hiding the drinking and liver problems from his boyfriend, and not paying the rent. I do not know how Richard managed to keep all this a secret from his boyfriend but he succeeded.   So in the end I moved, the guy with the alcohol problem DIED, and his boyfriend had no idea and was calling me and telling me I owed him for the apartment.  Are you kidding me!?!?! I had my acting coach call him after she apologized for even suggesting I sublet from them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Me, Myself and God! Part 1

This is my story, this is my song, praising my savior, all the day long……..

I did not grow up in a religious household.  My brother and I weren’t taught any religion at all.  I do remember going to church when we were very young but my mom would always find a reason not to like the church and we would move on to another one.  My mom grew up Catholic and that’s like a cross between the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Going to confession and telling another human being (priest) your sin and having that human being tell God, is completely Old Testament.  Jesus is the only priest you need to talk to and He is the link between you and God. I also remember my grandmother telling my mom she should be teaching us about God.  Now that I’m a parent I 100% agree with my Grandma.   Anyway,  back to me,  as I got older I remember there being lots of families going to church and we never went and I wanted to be a part of whatever it is everyone else was doing.  So I went one time in highschool when I was old enough to drive and I went to a Catholic church, I had no idea what anyone was talking about or why they were kneeling, and all those little  sing songy things that they sing .  When I was 18, I think, or maybe 17, can’t remember exactly, it was all over the news that they had found the shroud Jesus was buried in, or the Shroud of Turin.  I asked my parents why are they talking about this so much on the news, I said “Jesus wasn’t even a real person”!  I had no idea who Jesus was, why anyone talked about him etc.  I thought he was like a Buddha type statue thing people were attracted too.   Both my parents told me yes, he is real.  I said he is?  Why does everyone talk about him.  They proceeded to tell me that some people think he is a prophet and some people think he is the son of God.  I asked , which one do you think he is and they both replied a prophet.  Hmmm interesting.

When I was in highschool I just wasn’t into all the things normal teenagers do, I didn’t drink, go to parties, go to concerts, etc.  I did go to one concert when I was 14 I think. Journey with Bryan Adams opening.  It was at Hollader Stadium in Rochester, NY.  It was super hot, and Journey didn’t put on a full show they just did a short version of their hits, which I felt was a rip off.  Bryan Adams on the other hand delivered in a big way with a full show.  Anyway, looking back I some how feel like God had his hand on me and was trying to reach me. When I went away to Michigan State for college I met a girl on my floor in the dorms and we had a huge conversation one night about God and she kept asking me why didn’t I believe in God and I said I just need some proof. I don’t not believe in Him I’m just unsure and need some proof.

Fast forward a few years, I’m now about 21. I ended up dropping out of Michigan State didn’t really know what to pick for my major.  I ended up taking an acting class back in Rochester and really liked it.  I thought I will just move to NYC for a few years than to LA than go back to school.  I was super naïve about a lot of things especially moving to NYC. I didn’t know anyone I just looked up some people who needed room mates in the Village Voice and called them and went to meet them to see if they would be good roommates.  Lucky for me the only place I went too worked out great and I moved in a month later.  Through one of my roommates I met an acting coach and got a manager and agent.  I wasn’t your normal looking actress so I did get a few auditions, being chubby puts you in a very select group when everyone else is tiny and gorgeous.  I auditioned for some Matt Dillon movie, I read for the guy who wrote Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolf.  I can’t remember his name (and don’t care, honestly)  he was a bit of a snob. I read a few times for Gus Van Sant movies also.  I never read for theater because I can’t sing or dance and honestly, I don’t like musicals or theater.  The audition that changed my life in the biggest way was the one for The Rosanne Show (Rosanne Barr).  I don’t mean changed my life in that it was my “big break”  in actor terms.  I screen tested in NYC and after screening on both coasts it was between me and one other girl who already lived on the west coast.  Rosanne Barr and Tom Arnold watched the two tapes and , of course, picked the other girl.  I was DEVASTATED to say the least.  My manager called me and told me the bad news and just kept repeating sorry, sorry, sorry,sorry on the phone to me. I was subletting an apartment a few blocks from Columbia University at the time , that apartment has a story all to itself, when I got the call.  I remember yelling, out loud, “WHY” and flopping down on the couch.  That was the pinnacle moment for me because I wasn’t yelling WHY to no one or anyone, I was yelling to GOD!!  I was so surprised by this that I literally got shook up and was questioning myself as to why I just did that.  “I don’t believe in God, why did I just do that.  That was super weird, what is going on .  Do I believe in God?”

 

Read Part 2