SUPERNATURAL ENCOUNTERS ... CONFESSIONS ... Why Tell?

     
        

                     SUPERNATURAL ENCOUNTERS ... Confessions ... Why Tell?      

                  From Memoir  by Marggie Rassler     Chapter I   Confessions ... Why Tell?

                    

                   PART I  

      
          The tour of the mental hospital terminated. My friend, a counselor from the area where I lived, had invited  me to come with her.       

          "I need to know what to recommend when someone needs a safe place," she said. "Will you come too?"  I must have looked hesitant.

           "You know, you might need to do the same," she said.

           The man that took us around dressed in a dark grey suit, white shirt and a thin black tie that matched his pencil-slim shape. He looked at me and said, "When we invited your friend to tour our facilities, she informed us she was bringing someone with her." He crossed his arms loosely and smiled. "She said you have quite a story to tell. Would you mind telling it at a conference we're holding for clergy , doctors and counselors?"  I turned to my friend and squinted. Her eyes darted away from mine as she smiled like a cat already digesting the canary.

          

         The Conference         Early 1980's

              The big cafeteria  held a good size crowd, a hundred, maybe more. The walls, snow-white, tables and chairs, facilitated note taking. At first the place buzzed with chatter. Then, those attending sipped coffee quietly while different speakers came and went ... policemen speaking about teenage crimes and cults, doctors lecturing on medications, clergy communicating about the compassion needed to minister to the disturbed ... then, my turn.

              I stood to share my story and began with prayer. I needed help. I had done this same sharing many, many times before to multiple groups in different places ...  parents, college students, teen-agers, women's groups, churches, and a radio program. It never ceased being hard.

             The story unfolded like the other times before. I spoke of my hellish nightmare life of the year 1979. My pull toward the occult. My stepping into a world as real as the everyday world most people live in today. I spoke of encounters with evil beings that tortured me mentally, physically and spiritually till suicide seemed the only escape. I told of a God I had encountered through it all and His supernatural ways of stretching His arm to help me.

             I finished my talk and sensed the place around me with cemetery silence. One person started the clapping and then the rest rushed in. To my ears it communicated the sound of something stamped.  One more time my assignment finished.  

            She approached me first, in her black and white. The little nun with the huge smile.

           "God is going to use you," she said. "But you know that." She took my hand I thought to shake it, but just held it lightly. "He'll protect you," she said.
            A man came up right after. "Have you put this down?"
            "Down, on paper?" I shook my head.

            "I think you need to." I watched him scribble something fast on paper.

            "Come see me. Sometime. Got something for you."