The following is a former winner of the Amazing but Incredibly True Story Contest.
Copyright Muse Enterprises, 1999
I was an abused child and developed a multiple personality and anxiety complex as a result. When I was fifteen I realized that I was mentally ill, but I had nowhere to turn and no one to go to for help. I had been brought up as a Christian, and though I was afraid of sleeping, I often managed to get to sleep at night by singing myself hymns and gospel choruses. One night I was singing myself a song that went, "Jesus has his arms around me," and I thought, "That's interesting. I go to church all the time, but I never really think of Jesus, just of God. I pray to God. I wonder what would happen if I prayed to Jesus."
I was at this time lying in bed trembling with terror. The window was closed on a hot August night because I was afraid a vampire might fly in if I left it open. I lay facing the door in case something dreadful walked through it. All I could think of to pray was, "Jesus, help me. I'm going mad. Help me."
I thought as I prayed then that I had to demonstrate my faith somehow. I turned my back to the door although the terror I felt made me sick. I lay singing to myself until the terror dissipated a little, and I thought I might go to sleep. Then the fear was realized: suddenly I knew there was someone else in the room with me.
I was not going to let it destroy me unawares. I sat up and faced the door. Between the door and my bed stood an impossibly tall man dressed in white. He was so tall that I could not see his face; it seemed to be beyond the ceiling somewhere. He held his hands out to me in a gesture oflove. I looked at his hands, and saw that there were holes in the wrists. Was this Jesus Himself?
A sense of infinite peace flowed through me. I was conscious of a great joy that waited for me, just around a bend somewhere. I was aware of being thoroughly understood, thoroughly loved. A voice spoke: "Follow the glow of my feet." I looked down, and saw that His feet gave off light. And then He was gone.
I got up and opened the window. I went to bed and went to sleep. In the morning, I wondered about it. Surely, Jesus would have had nail marks in his palms, not in his wrists? Not only that, would Jesus come to someone like me? However, doubts and all, I decided to keep my eyes open for "the glow of his feet."
I first saw that glow hovering over a book of essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. I picked it up and read, "The only way to overcome fear is to do the thing you fear." I made a list of all the things I feared, and I overcame those fears, one by one. It took ten years. During that ten years, I saw that distinctive glow many times.
When I was at university, one day I saw the glow hovering over a book about the Crucifixion. I read it, and discovered that the only way Jesus could have been nailed to the cross was through his wrists, not the palms, despite what the artists and preachers had taught for years.
I am now in my mid-forties. I am at university again, trying to find a new career. Three psychiatrists have told me I am perfectly sane. I take medication to keep my anxiety complex under control, as they believe there is some genetic basis to it, but I do pretty well for an anxious person. I have slept alone in a cabin five miles in the woods; I have walked in the dark through forests where bears prowled; I have produced my own play; I have learned to drive and to sing and to love, and do a million things I never dreamed I could. And I still look for the glow of His feet.
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