Divine Intervention

Santa Rosa de Copán Cathedral, Copán, Honduras

July 5, 2024 (From my dream journal)

3:10 AM

I am in an unfamiliar town where I am first walking and then riding a bike through the streets. After several turns, a celestial cathedral looms in front of me at the end of the road. I ride past it, arriving at its doorsteps over and over again. I am in a maze of sorts made up of city streets like those in the French Quarter. I am in awe of its grandeur. 

Then I am in the cathedral to perform in adoration to God. Along with other dancers, we stand before the altar. I close my eyes and let the music shoot through my body. It is the Holy Spirit’s music. It is pure rapture—glorious!

Each time I open my eyes, I am looking up, up, up at the ceiling of the cathedral. When the music ends, I am lying on the floor, my legs tucked underneath me, my arms outstretched. My heart is pumping hard and fast. I open my eyes to witness the stained-glass cathedral ceiling gently swirl and undulate. I hear someone say: “I have never seen anything like this!”

My husband and I were abruptly woken by our neighbor’s setting off fireworks. “Where’s my dream journal? I need to turn on the light. Sorry.”

Ron, still semi-asleep was confused, “What’s going on?”

“A dream. A divine dream, that’s what’s going on. Go back to sleep.”

He turned over, pulling the covers over his head as I stumbled in the dark for my journal while trying to turn on the lamp next to the bed. “Oh my God. It was incredible, Ron.”

“That’s nice,” he mumbled.

 As I wrote, I wiped away tears, still basking in the glory of it all.

This is the third divine gift I have received. The first was in 1993 as I lay writhing in a malaria-induced fever in a tiny adobe house in the mountains of central Honduras where an American nun, lacking medical knowledge and empathy, ignored my pleas for help. “You’ll feel better soon,” she said.

 Both the pain and hallucinations were terrifying. At one point, I caught a glimpse of Jesus standing vigil in the clay ceiling tiles above my bed. “Help me,” I pleaded. “I don’t want to die here.”

For three days, Jesus watched over me. He was there when a curandera held my hand and prayed the rosary. He was there when the nun changed my sweat and puke-soaked sheets, her unwavering hostility filling the space between us. He was there when three elderly women wearing their Sunday best floral dresses came and argued with the nun. “She needs a doctor. We are taking her,” they said, and I teetered in their weathered arms surrounded by flowers as they helped me out the door and into the bed of a pickup truck.

In 2001, I was pulled from another realm, waking up to the sound of my own voice howling, “No! No! No!” after witnessing the Crucifixion of Jesus. First, at Mary’s feet as a blade of grass and then as a crow up in a tree high above the crowd; the smell of rotting garbage, sweat, and death permeating the air.

My heart broke for Mary’s loss—a mother’s loss. I closed my eyes praying God would return me to Mary’s side, but returning to this world slammed the Divine door shut. I sobbed into my pillow and begged God, “Take me back. Please, take me back!”

Close friends know of my experiences, and sometimes I will share them late at night around a kitchen table or in someone’s living room after a good meal and passing around a bottle of tequila. These Divine dreams act as currency to gain access to tales of unexplainable dreams and events others have encountered. It’s like sharing ghost stories around a fire, only we are adults, and the stories are true.

Since my sacred brush with Jesus in Honduras, I have asked myself: Why me? I am an ordinary person, one who is not especially religious or moored in doctrine. I keep my faith under wraps and feel uncomfortable when people evangelize. And I worry that if I share these experiences, I will make others uncomfortable. But sometimes the Divine startles us into stepping from the shadows to share what is glorious. So, today I step into the light as I did at the altar of the cathedral.

The thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet Rumi stated, “Each moment contains a hundred messages from God.” In a world that appears to have gone a bit mad, maybe it’s time to listen.

Do you have a Divine story you would like to share? I would love to hear it.