Former Atheist/Jehovah Witness Finds Spirituality Through Near Tragedy

2007-04-05T14:18:00.000-06:00

The following edited excerpts were taken from my book, Out of the Cocoon: A Young Woman’s Courageous Flight from the Grip of a Religious Cult (RDR Publishers, 2006):

After longing for a baby and then suffering a heart-breaking miscarriage fifteen years earlier, my second trip to the obstetrician was filled with great anticipation. A movie billboard along the way said: “Parenthood, It Could Happen To You.” That was a good sign. The results came back: I was pregnant! This time I couldn’t see the road as I drove home because the sun, which shone brightly in my eyes, created prisms through my tears of joy. Ahead the horizon glistened with the colors from a rainbow, and it was brilliant.

Unexpectedly, this day turned bittersweet. As I walked through the door of my lovely home, I noticed my answering machine blinking. I casually pressed the message button. It was my aunt: “Brenda, your grandmother has passed away.” I dropped the prenatal information in my hands as I fell to my knees and wept. The woman whose hands I had held just a few months earlier, the woman who had lovingly hand-sewn a blanket for me with those hands, would never hold my child.

In the days that followed, I took solace in knowing that the quilt she had made for me--the only loving gesture I had received from my 'family' after I left their religious cult--would someday wrap my child in warmth. Perhaps someday he would sense her presence watching over him.

Nine years ago I tagged along with my son Derek’s class on their third-grade field trip. We eagerly anticipated our first school excursion together. We really looked forward to enjoying the crisp mountain air and the opportunity to interact with the other parents and children. As night rolled around, we began laying out our sleeping bags in the corner of the lodge close to the others in our community. It was five minutes until lights out. As I sat on my sleeping bag with Derek right beside me, a lightning bolt of intense panic hit me. “Can’t breathe. No air!” Someone was telling me we weren’t safe. I tried to dismiss the feeling, but it was too powerful. Grabbing the sleeping bags with one hand and Derek with the other, I announced that we were going to sleep in the basement. Everyone thought I was crazy, including Derek, but he didn’t question my authority.

After we awoke the next morning, we climbed lazily to the top of the staircase, only to discover several people in a semi-conscious state. Carbon monoxide had inaudibly curled its way through the main level and poisoned the unsuspecting sleepers. As we evacuated the sick and opened the windows, a stream of ambulances arrived to take approximately thirty people to the emergency room. We stood outside for three hours in a snowstorm while the fire department evaluated the building’s safety. Needless to say, the trip was cancelled. We went home hungry and cold but very thankful that we awoke before anyone died.

The very next year, Derek’s school planned another field trip. I received another unexpected message: “You must go.” However, I knew that, after the last fiasco and subsequent outrage, parents weren’t invited. I resigned myself to defeat and tried to reassure myself that everything would be fine. A few days later I got a call from the school. The staff had decided to enlist a couple of parent volunteers. Since I was one of the few who didn’t get sick or complain last time, they thought I might be a willing candidate. Would I like to go? Would I like to go? Of course! While I wouldn’t be able to sleep in the same tent as Derek (a father would sleep with the boys), I felt reassurance that I would at least be close by.

The first night came and went without incident. I began to dismiss my sixth sense as just a nervous mother’s separation anxiety predicated by a previous bad experience.

During the second night, however, things changed dramatically. A tornado ripped through the area. Our campsite was located in the boonies, set back more than twenty-five miles back on a secluded dirt road. Night had already fallen so it was very difficult to see. The children’s terror climaxed as we haphazardly threw our belongings into the cars. The winds continued to whip ferociously. As the storm grew closer, my tent was literally ripped out of my hands, never to be recovered. We piled the kids into cars any way that we could manage—on top of clothing, sleeping bags and each other. Pandemonium reigned as we drove to a 4-H emergency shelter. The children who didn’t have parents with them were the most upset, visibly shaking and crying. As I held Derek in my arms and assured him that everything would be fine, I knew why I was there—to protect and comfort my child and as many others as I could.

Although we were forced to sleep on a cold concrete floor that evening, we were safely out of the path of danger. The school learned its lesson: future field trips were cancelled.

What makes these experiences quite unusual to me is that, at the time, I considered myself an atheist, devoid of any real spirituality in my life. Living trapped as a Jehovah’s Witness for so many years stripped away any notion that there is life beyond this one. One could understand a religious person having such an experience and could chalk it up to the fact that he or she is probably just embellishing his or her current belief system a little. But when this happened to me, it opened my eyes and heart. Since that moment, I have come to believe that somehow my grandmother communicated with me. We must have guardian angels looking after us. There is no viable explanation as to why I would look around the room at the last minute and think, “Can’t breathe. No air!” In my mind, the correlation ties too closely to carbon monoxide poisoning for this to be a mere coincidence.

When I was a young girl, my father shared with me a supernatural experience he had had as a youngster. It still sends shivers down my spine when I think about it.

According to Dad-i-o (what I fondly called my father as a child), his similar encounter went something like this: One day after school as he reached the crest of the hill, he gazed upon a landscape that appeared quite different from the one he had seen that morning. “Where’s my house?” he asked his friend. As he walked closer, he realized there had been a fire and that his house had burned down. Tragically, his baby brother died, and his mother was badly burned trying to save him.

The previous evening an invisible entity had paid a visit to their home. It was bitterly cold with a steady snowfall. Nevertheless, all through the night, his entire family heard loud knocking around the perimeter of their home. Curious, they looked outside, but found no one there. They also noticed that there were no footprints in the snow that might have given away any neighborhood pranksters. The knocking continued for hours, making my grandfather very angry. At some point after my father left for school the next morning, the house caught fire. My father adamantly believes to this day that someone was trying to warn them that danger was imminent. In light of my own encounters, I can’t help but agree. I often wonder who their guardian angel was. If only someone in his family had taken heed as I did.

I believe that my son’s strong sense of self and balanced outlook come from more than his inherent common sense and a mom who is a good mentor. I believe that his great-grandmother is contributing as well. Perhaps that quilt that she made so lovingly for me, the one that embraced me at the vulnerable age of eighteen as I exited from my cocoon, and which now envelopes Derek, links her world to ours. It may be that her spirit—a spirit that gives us the wisdom of a much older, wiser woman—is woven into that special blanket. Ever since her departure, I have embraced the belief that my grandmother’s spirit left this world—just as my son was conceived—so she could become his guardian angel.

While completing my book, I discovered that there are parallels to be drawn between one generation and the next, parallels that bind us to our ancestors and which serve as a road map to our children’s future. What parallels exist in my life?

For one, my father encountered guardian angels, as did I. And I have no doubt that future generations will encounter them as well, if only they are intuitive enough to hear them when they speak.

For more information, please go to Brenda Lee's website

Guardian Angels: Do They Exist?

Former Atheist/Jehovah Witness Finds Spirituality Through Near Tragedy