The Awakening

It is possible to experience an awakening in this life through realizing just how precious each moment, each mental process, and each breath truly is.

— Christy Turlington

God woke me just after midnight. It was June 15, 2016, shortly after the birth of my granddaughter Danica Kay, who was born with my mother's blue eyes. She was the only child of four to have blue eyes. Her father, my son Derik, and his wife, Barbara, both have brown eyes. I and Derik's father both have brown eyes. All three of Derik's other children — Jaci-Layne, Gabriel, and Ezekiel — have brown eyes. But Danica Kay was blessed with the blue eyes of her great grandmother, which I know to be the beginning of her story. It was five weeks after the passing of my mother, four weeks and six days after the day she'd allowed me to see God in her blue eyes.

I was triaging on call that night and was awakened shortly after midnight with a call that one of our patients had died. I got up and handled the situation as I had done many times before. I went back to bed and attempted to go back to sleep, but it was not to be. I didn't know it was God at first, but as I lay there wide awake, it became clearer to me. A million thoughts were running through my head — thoughts about my mother, thoughts about a patient I had taken care of two years earlier, thoughts about a book that I had started over twenty-five years ago. These thoughts did not seem to be connected in any way and did not make much sense to me at first. But soon, it began to come together.

Sometime during my mother's final days, I had come to view her illness, ALS, as a blessing. It was much the same way that the patient who came to my mind that night had come to view his cancer. Up until that time, my mother had spent her life in search of something, not knowing that what she thought was missing was inside her all along. All she had to do to unbridle it was be still and listen. Once she was no longer able to talk, she had to be still. And once she was still, she had to listen. It was then that she began to hear God. As she began to follow His voice, she found herself in church again after many years. It was there that she finally found the peace that she had been so desperately searching for her entire life.

My mother and I had never been close due to the complicated circumstances of our lives. But once she found that peace, it allowed me to have compassion for her and to love her as I had not been able to do before. I am a hospice nurse, and I have true compassion and love for all my patients. It's a powerful love that fills me with joy every time I visit or simply think of them. Toward the end of my mother's illness, when she was not unlike one of them, I was able to transcend that love and compassion to her. I will be eternally grateful to God for graciously allowing me that in her final days.

That night, in those seconds or minutes or hours, as the whirling thoughts began to come together, I felt the excitement growing inside of me. I realized what was happening, that this was coming from somewhere beyond myself, beyond this world. This was God! As my heart raced, I began to write desperately and furiously, noting everything that came into my mind. It was page after page of mixed-up, jumbled thoughts. As the world as I knew it slowly came back into view, I knew exactly what I was to do. I was to bring out the book that I had begun almost twenty-five years earlier and finish it. It would be a tribute to my mother, and it would be about Him. That was all I really knew, when I finally crawled back between my cool sheets in the early morning hours and drifted off to sleep.

My life changed from that day forward. I had always been a believer in God. At that time in my life, I had what I had considered to be a very good relationship with Him. But following that glorious awakening, I realized that I had only had a tiny glimpse of what was out there for me. I began to see God in everything, hear Him in the slightest breeze, and think of Him constantly throughout my day. I had been on a spiritual path of sorts from the time I got sober through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) a little over twenty years earlier, but it seemed so minute in comparison to where I was headed now.

The morning following the awakening, I was so excited that I could barely contain myself. I went online in search of the perfect place to stay for a few days and begin writing. I was directed to a bed and breakfast in San Antonio with a fabulous view of the Blanco River. I booked a room and got an e-mail the next day saying that it was not available. I started to look for another place but was compelled to call the same place back instead. I reached David, the resort owner's nephew. As we talked, I found out that his sister had recently passed away while on hospice.

David and I felt an instant connection, and he began working on a way to get me a room. He told me that the room that I had looked at was not the room that I needed. He had another room that he thought would be perfect for me — one with an awesome view of the river. He told me that the room was available for two days at the beginning of July, and I booked it right then. I couldn't wait to go there and get started on this task that God had put before me. I knew that this was going to be the perfect place for me to do some great writing.

Once I knew that I would be writing a book, I started writing little notes and thinking about all the things I needed to say. I had not yet realized that He would be telling the story. I was so excited and couldn't wait to start writing — and I didn't have to! God woke me up the very next morning at 6:30 with the first words, and He continued to do so every morning from that day forward. I must say that I was not happy about this at first. I had never been an early riser, and my job as a hospice nurse provided me the luxury of staying in bed a little later than most jobs.

In fact, prior to God's wake-up calls, I would set my alarm for 8:15 every morning. We had a conference call at 8:30, so I would hit snooze once and then hit the 5-minute alarm that I had put in place. It was perfect! I would wake up a little at a time, and at 8:29, I would be awake enough to make the call. After the call, sometimes I would get up and sometimes not, depending on the day I had ahead of me.

Needless to say, when God decided to start waking me up every morning at 6:30 or 7:00, I was a little disappointed. However, the way he woke me made it okay. At about 6:30, I would start rolling around and having all these thoughts related to the book. Then I would jump out of bed, open the blinds over my lake, and say, "Good morning, God!" It was incredible how it came so easily. I'd never dreamed I would be an early riser, and I certainly didn't think that one day I would actually look forward to being one. But the truth is, every evening when I went to bed, I would wonder what was waiting for me the next morning. I couldn't wait to go to sleep so I could wake up and it would be tomorrow. Like Christmas Eve for a child.

God had blessed me with a small apartment overlooking a lake, and I sat on my patio most mornings and read my Jesus Calling daily devotional. I had been reading a lot of material from Dr. Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra on meditation, and I tried it out a little. I had not been very successful at it, but I didn't give up. I wanted to one day attain that incredible state of consciousness that others described. I had also begun using binaural beats, which I had picked up somewhere along my journey. Incredibly, directly following the awakening, meditation began to work for me. After I jumped up and said my good mornings to God, I would fix a cup of tea, sit on my patio, and listen to my binaural beats. Things would come to me, and I would put little notes in my phone, or even write a whole section for the book and e-mail it to myself later.

One morning, after several mornings of waking up and knowing exactly what to write, I woke up to some other thoughts and was a little sad. I said, "So, you don't have anything for me to write about today, huh?" (I love that I have that kind of relationship with God — that I can talk to him like that). Almost immediately, I started thinking about blogging, which is something I had only heard of. I had no idea what it was or how to do it. However, I had been listening to some videos from Reid Tracy, the CEO of Hay House Publishing Company, and I remembered him saying something about blogging. I said, "Oh, we're going to start blogging today, huh? That's cool." And that's exactly what we did. We created my webpage, and I started blogging.

Not only did thoughts and ideas start coming to me clearly, but people also started appearing in my life that were to be part of my story. Also, people who were already in my life began to fit into my story in unexpected ways. There is a nearby coffee house that I discovered not long before my mother died, and it had become part of my daily routine. It is a small, individually owned place, and I was immediately drawn to the owner and staff there. They were expanding at the time, and even with all the construction going on, it was such a comforting place to be. All of them knew me and knew about my book, and they seemed genuinely interested. Often, one of them would help me with a problem I was having with my computer or the Internet connection. A couple of the baristas even helped choose the photo for my blog page. After what I came to refer to as "the awakening," I went there almost daily to write.

One day I was standing in line, and I had on scrubs because I was on my way to work. A young lady was there with her three children, and she commented on my scrubs. We started chatting a little, and I mentioned that as a hospice nurse, I could wear any color scrubs I wanted. After she and her children left, a young man standing in line asked me for what hospice company I worked. I told him, and he said, "I lost my wife to cancer a week and a half ago. She was on hospice." He looked to be in his late twenties, and a feeling of sadness washed over me — not for her, but for him. I knew she was okay, but I knew that he had a long road ahead of him, especially after he told me that they had two small children.

We talked for a long while. He told me that his wife had been a school teacher and that many people had loved her. He also told me that his brother was a pastor at a nearby church, and many of his wife's friends started coming to the church since she had become ill. We both cried a little, and I thanked him for sharing his story with me. When we are in the middle of a tragedy, we never know how God will bring good from it, but this young man told me that he could already see the good coming from his loss. He shared that more and more people who had known his wife were coming to God through his brother's church since her passing. I thought again how amazing God was. As I walked away, I thought, What a fabulous young man. He's going to be okay. And I said a prayer for him and his family.

When the first week in July arrived, I got everything together for my trip to San Antonio. I started off like any other trip I took by putting the address in maps on my phone. Then I started driving. After a while, I realized that it was taking me a different route than I usually took to San Antonio. I remember thinking, Oh, well. God's in charge; I'll just follow along. I was familiar with the route, so I wasn't worried, but it wasn't the one I usually took. On the way there, I went through or around a little town called Brenham. It was home to "the little creamery in Brenham," where Blue Bell Ice Cream comes from.

I began to think about a patient I had taken care of who had died several months previous. Her name was Martha, and she had been one of my favorite patients. I'm not sure what it was about her that drew me to her so strongly, but she was very special to me from the first time I laid eyes on her. Martha lived in her own home, and her daughter Cynthia had moved in with her as her illness had progressed. While Martha was under my care, circumstances changed, and Cynthia moved out. Another one of her daughters, Valerie, and her husband, Bob, moved in to take over Martha's care.

I became very close to Valeria, and as I was driving to San Antonio, I remembered that she and Bob lived somewhere around Brenham. After her mother's funeral, Valerie had left with an open invitation for me to come by any time. I called her and left a message that I was headed to San Antonio and would be passing through in a couple of days on my way back, and I would love to come by and see her. She called back, and we made plans for me to stop for lunch on my way home.

When I arrived at the bed and breakfast, I was amazed by the size of the place. I approached the grand entrance and knocked. David opened the door and looked nothing like I had expected. In fact, I remember thinking, Wow, this guy looks kind of like a crackhead. (Because I had been a substance abuse counselor and knew what they looked like, I could think things like that.) It kind of freaked me out for a minute, but then I remembered God was in charge, and I relaxed. As I stepped inside, it felt like the most magnificent view I had ever seen. I'm not sure that was the case, because I have been to several places with spectacular views. However, at that moment, I was certain that I had never seen anything more glorious. I knew that once again, God had directed me to the perfect place.

I had been to a restaurant on the river several times, and I had always loved the view. As God has shown me again and again, he knows exactly what I need and when. He had sent me to a home that was within walking distance of the restaurant. I couldn't wait to start writing. I had written some already in the evenings after getting through working, but I had plans to spend this entire two days doing nothing but writing.

David showed me to my room, which overlooked the river from every angle. There was even a window in the shower! I danced around like a crazy person and thanked God over and over for loving me. Then I got into my bathing suit; grabbed my computer, headphones, and towel; and headed down to the infinity pool, which also overlooked the river. As I sat there grinning from ear-to-ear, I looked up and saw David on an upper deck with a young couple. He was showing them around, and I heard the young man ask how deep the pool was. Then I heard them talking about people jumping off the balcony and into the pool. I smiled up at them and said, "I'm a nurse, but I'm not working this weekend, so please don't do it."

The young man smiled, pointed at the woman, and replied, "So is she. And I'm a doctor." We all laughed.

They came down to the pool after they settled in. As we talked, I found out that he had had a near-death experience at one and a half years old and remembered it vividly. He said that when he could speak well enough, he had told his mother about it. I knew that this was somehow connected to my story, but I wasn't sure how at that point, so I noted it and waited for God to tell me what to do with it. Over the next few weeks, several more stories of near-death experiences came across my path.

During my stay, David and I talked quite a bit, and somehow it came out that I'd been a counselor before I became a nurse. When he asked, "LCDC?" I immediately knew that my first impression of him had quite possibly been right. LCDC stood for Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor, and anyone who knew that acronym had either worked in the mental health field or had issues with drugs or alcohol himself. As it turned out, David had been struggling with a crack addiction for many years. He was forty years old and was one of the most intelligent men I have ever met, but he was also overcome with such shame and guilt that it seeped from every pore of his being. I wanted to take him in my arms and hold him, and I did so several times over the next two days.

David expressed an overwhelming sense of love and respect for his mother, and he shared with me how the shame of what he had put her through tore at his very soul. I knew without a doubt that God had put me here to help guide him, and so that was what I did. I wrote, I meditated, I swam, and I guided David. I told him stories of my own struggle with addiction, and of my recovery, and of my years as a counselor. I shared my newfound faith with him. I showed him my Jesus Calling meditation book and he told me that just this week, he had run across a copy of it while dusting. I don't believe in coincidences, and I told him that the book coming across his path twice in one week meant he needed to pull it out and put it to work in his life.