TERRI'S EXPERIENCES










TERRI'S EXPERIENCES




Date: Thursday November 1, 2012

Hi Cheryl

Here is one of the stories I wanted to tell you about. You can post the story below if you like. It's one of 2 that I can remember off the top of my head. I'll send the other one a bit later. I hope I explain it well enough...

I was 20 years old and I was driving a little 2 seater RX 7, standard, and admittedly it was old, but it had been my dad's and he had taken very good care of it for years before giving it to me.

I had gone on a hot August day to an interview. I disliked my job intensely and was trying desperately to find something new. The interview was an hour's drive away. But I went to the interview at 3 and by the time I got out and got near the highway is was pretty crowded on the road.

I was entering the highway (6 lanes going 1 way, a medium and 6 lanes going the other way) when something strange happened. My car started fishtailing. The back end had a mind of it's own. I tried not to panic but when I started doing 360's, completely out of control, panic I did!

I was whipping my head around wondering how many cars were going to slam into my little car. By the time I crossed into the third lane I spotted an 18 wheeler bearing down on me. I distinctly remember screaming "I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die!!" I was completely convinced of this. His wheels were smoking and his horn was screeching at me...as though there was something I could do about an out of control vehicle!

Somehow he managed to not hit me by inches as I careened into another lane. Cars started slamming on brakes and veering off to avoid my car. I slid into the medium still spinning. The other side of the highway was heading in the other direction, it wasn't nearly as packed and cars were whizzing by at higher speeds. My last coherent thought was that this highway would soon have a cross bearing my name on it. I just knew it, convinced again.

But strangely my car came to a sudden and lurching stop. As if someone just put a hand on it and stopped it in it's tracks. I sat there with both my pedals pressed down - I wasn't thinking clearly enough to put the car in neutral - and my legs were shaking so bad I couldn't believe my feet didn't fall off the pedals. I was screaming and sobbing, drenched in sweat and just couldn't think straight.

I remember I was screaming for someone to help me (no one could hear me of course, I had the windows up and the air on) but not one person who had watched this drama unfold stopped. Not one. But somehow, I (maybe my angel?) finally straightened me up but I was again convinced that I couldn't do something: drive home. I was too scared. This was before cell phones, and I had only one choice - to get all the way across those same lanes of traffic, get off at the exit, and stop to use a pay phone and call someone for help. I looked around for a likely phone and I could see the top of a movie theater across the highway at the next exit which was very close to where I was, and I figured they would have one.

Sitting in the medium, I looked at those 6 lanes I had to cross, and quickly, the traffic even more packed, and I thought "I'll never make it" . Yup, I was convinced. But again something happened. I put my car into first and got not only on the highway but all the way across it safely, and it was also in time to make the exit.

I called my boyfriend (future hubby) and told him he needed to drive out and pick me up. I was too scared to drive. He talked to me for a long while and convinced me to try to drive home. I had no choice. At the time I was devastated that he wouldn't come and get me but I understood later that he knew if I didn't "get back on the horse" right away I would probably never drive again. I was that spooked.

I managed to make it almost all the way home before the engine started smoking. The tailpipe had gotten packed with mud from my spins in the medium. I called my future hubby again from a store parking lot and he met me there to clean it out but he still couldn't explain earlier when the car was still spinning, stopping so abruptly. The mud wouldn't have made it stop that way. And with how packed it was, it should have been smoking long before now.

At any rate, I finished the drive home with future hubby following and called in sick to my night job. I was sore everywhere but had a sense of wonder that I had lived through so many imminent dangers. Somebody was working overtime that day! I thought about it for a long time. Why was I so convinced about every bad thing? And how, despite them not coming true, which should have given me courage but didn't, did I manage to do what needed to be done anyway?

I do believe in angels. But having never had that deeply spiritual connection to KNOW about my guardian angel I wondered. But I believe it was my guardian angel that kept me from dying, stopped the car, got me straightened out enough to put me back on the road and got me to drive home...


~Terri




Here Is Terri's 2nd. Story Sent To Me In December 2012!!

TERRI'S CHRISTMAS ANGEL


After the 9/11 attacks, there were a lot of companies that had to lay people off, and in some cases, close up shop for good. The company my hubby worked for was no exception. He worked from home a lot of the time but they called him in to the office for a very important meeting Nov. 1st, 2001. That was the day they let him and several others go. He works in the IT industry and figured his severance and what little we had in savings would be plenty do get us through for a couple of months until he found another job. I was a stay at home mom and made no income. He filed for unemployment, put out resumes and called all his contacts, but we had no idea we were staring down the barrel of 3 years of unemployment.

Our son was in private school (kindergarten) and I worked with the lady who owned it and lowered out monthly payment by extending the payments through the following summer. By spring of 2002 we had cut every bill and expense we could find - no more cell phones, cable, internet or night's out. I became fanatical about lights on and tv on with no one watching. We borrowed money, started accepting grocery donations from family and friends. I worked at temporary jobs on and off as they became available but there weren't many I qualified for. Hubby started working any odd job he could find to put food on the table. There were times we ate peanut butter and jelly on crackers so our kids could have a hot meal of leftovers. No more health insurance either. The state refused to help with the flawed reasoning that 'hubby used to make too much and we should have saved enough for health insurance for years in case something like this happened' We had used our savings for food - silly me. Eventually the savings had run out - that's why we were asking for help - but they wouldn't listen. When we couldn't make our house payment we would borrow half from my dad and half from hubby's dad. Not everyone was so helpful: Hubby's dad is married to his second wife and she said the kids could come and stay with them but hubby and I were not welcome. (I refused to be separated from my kids though. Anytime hubby's dad let us borrow some money, he gave it to us in secret.) My son's 6th birthday was in July and we had no air conditioning so we threw him a water balloon/slip 'n slide party. (LOL My mom bought the balloons and we spent half the night before filling about 500 balloons and putting them in big tubs. Even the adults were throwing balloons at eachother - it was fun!) As I couldn't afford to make one my SIL made him a birthday cake. We sneaked through his birthday, the start of public school, and my daughter's fall birthday without the kids knowing what was happening. We didn't want them worrying so we never told them what was going on. We had another Christmas looming, the kids working on their lists for Santa Claus. Then, the company we had our 1 car through came and took it for non payment. My mom was living with us and I would take the kids to school with her vehicle before she went to work and I had a friend down the street pick them up every day. We had to borrow again to make another house payment. Both our dads came through again but after this there would be nothing more they could do - they were tapped out. We decided we would put our house on the market right after Christmas and if it didn't sell...well it would be foreclosed on. To say the least, things were bad.

The morning of Christmas Eve I worried about what to do with the kids. I had managed to get a couple of small things for their stockings for the 2 of them but nothing for under the tree. My best friend called me and told me not to leave the house - really, where was I gonna go anyway? But she showed up about an hour later and when she showed me what she had I cried my eyes out. Her and her husband had pulled together their meager resources and had a bag full of 'Santa' presents for my kids. Nothing big or expensive, and some were clothes as the kids were busy growing, but they were gifts just the same. It bought them both 1 more year of believing and 1 more year of their childhood. We pulled them secretly into the garage to await the night when I could put them under the tree, and I told her how very much she meant to me.

That night as I tucked my kids in bed my son said that his throat hurt and he didn't feel good. I told him to get a good night's sleep and hoped he would be better by morning. My mother invited me to go to midnight mass with her. With everything we were going through I didn't have the energy to get all dressed up so I went in my sweats and knew that God didn't care how I looked. So I went to church while my hubby and children slept. I prayed and prayed for help. I cried and kept my eyes closed concentrating on God hearing my message. When services were over we sat in the pew for a few minutes while the crowd dispersed. A woman came up to me and put out her hand as though to shake mine. As I took her hand she said, "This is for your son." And she pressed something into my hand. She quickly turned away and I looked down. In my hand was a folded up 100 dollar bill. Shaking I turned to my mom and said "Look!! Look at this!" She was as shocked as I was and asked where I had gotten it. I told her, this woman gave it to me, and turned to point her out to my mom and tell her I could not accept it, it was too much. But she was gone. I spotted her way up towards the front of the hall in front of the large crowd. I reached down and grabbed my coat, I wanted to try to catch her but - when I looked up again the crowd was barely moving - and the woman had disappeared.

A hundred dollars???!!! How could she have known how desperately we needed some money? There is no way! And what about 'this is for your son"???

Christmas morning my son woke up with a fever. We nursed him through the day and took him to an urgent care center the next day. With no health insurance it was 50 dollars to walk in the door. They discovered he had strep throat. 60 dollars for medicine - 110 dollars. Without that money we could not have helped our son. HOW DID SHE KNOW??? Only one answer: God had heard my pleas for help - and sent me an angel.

The new year began. Collectors would come to the house, demanding we give them all our valuables to make up for not paying. (Which we didn't do and found out later was illegal for them to do) They would threaten us, berate us and call all day. They would go around looking in the windows, park outside and watch the house. I made a game of hiding from them with the kids. We would go upstairs, stay away from the windows and play the quiet game until the doorbell stopped ringing. If we were out, I would drive past our street and look to see if anyone was parked there before finally pulling in and going into the garage. It was a nightmare.

In the end, we lost everything, except each other and our faith. We had already lost our car. Then we declared bankruptcy on 3-13-2003 - hubby's birthday. With all the legalities and the time it took to sort everything out, we manged to stay in the house until August. Then my mom bought the house where we currently live, out in the country. It was a very old mobile home, needed a lot of work and was abandoned, but it was a roof over our heads and with hubby and I making the much smaller monthly payments we were able to start putting food on the table a little easier. He finally was hired in January, 2004, to go back into his field and we could get our lives back on track. We had health insurance and internet again, but we passed on some other things for many years and still don't have cable or a land line phone. Our cell phones are still just plain talk and text phones, no internet or web services with them. We were just starting to breathe a little easier when disaster struck again. After just a few weeks of work hubby became very ill. It took 3 months and numerous tests to find out what was wrong with him and he almost died. It was miraculous that he survived. I think he has a guardian angel of his own. His mother died the year before we were married. Maybe she is watching over him as mothers always do. But survive he did and 9 years later still takes 14 different pills every day just to stay alive, but he's still here with us.

The whole process was a very humbling experience. But that one Christmas Eve was inexplicable and awe inspiring.

~Terri



THANK YOU TERRI FOR SHARING YOUR STORIES WITH ME & MY VIEWERS...IT MAKES ME VERY HAPPY KNOWING THAT MY PAGES ARE MAKING SO MANY PEOPLE INSPIRED TO TALK ABOUT THEIR OWN PERSONAL SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES. I LOOK FORWARD TO READING MORE ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES! THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME ADD THEM TO MY SPIRITUAL PAGES!!
MAY GOD`S BLESSINGS BE UPON YOU & YOURS ALWAYS!!











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