As Personal As It Gets

Time to get personal. It’s time to finally tell this story.

This past summer, about a couple of months before I came down to Los Angeles, I had this series of events. I’m going to interchangeable call them events and experiences because well there aren’t many other words to describe them. At times I may call them dreams, but really they happened as clear as day. Even thinking about writing about this is giving my goosebumps.

For months after I graduated from school I stayed in a little cottage style house about 300 ft from my parents house. Little kitchen, bedroom, living room and a bathroom. When I moved in, it was stuffed to the ceilings in every room with things that had been left behind from my grandparents, sister, and family who just wanted to store things away from the main house. I guess you could actually call it more of a storage bin than anything else.

This little place became my home.

I could figure out exactly when this happened, but it doesn’t really add much to the story to have the exact date here. I have never asked this of anyone, but I would like for you, if you are reading this, to respect this story and take it for what it is. I don’t have an explanation. But I do have thoughts on this subject and I need to get them out.

The first of three.

I woke up paralyzed, looked out into the middle of the dark room, and there it was. I have never been more frightened in my entire life. The hair stands up on my arms as I write this and tears are coming down. It approached, and my body unable to move felt like it was at the will of whatever was about to happen…and then it was gone. I remember this wave of emotion came over me and my mind seemed to go through a massive set of flashes of colors and light and then it was all over. It was gone. But I was there in bed, I can’t remember how long for, paralyzed and frightened beyond belief.

If you’ve ever seen “The Ring” and the little girl who has hair over her face, dress tattered and torn…it was what I saw. That image is branded into my mind and even all this time later, it still tears me up inside.

I hid under my covers that night. Morning came with a sense of relief.

The second of three.

It took me a while to sleep easily again. What I experienced was nothing short of, well, one crappy experience. We all get scared from time to time and have visions etc. so I just passed it off as nothing. I read up a bit on what it possibly could have been. Sleep paralysis. Apparently it happens to a good chunk of people and they have the same experience. Phew. I thought I really was in for something bad.

Well, about a month later, it happened again. But this time…it was really different. I woke up again, but not to something in the room, trust me I checked…but to this feeling of the greatest force imaginable pushing me down into the bed. I felt like I was being crushed, and while I could still breathe properly, I was becoming part of the bed. And then it happened. The feeling went away, and I felt as if something inside of me was being lifted, as if there were two fingers gently pinching and ever so softly lifting a sheet up off of a bed into the air. I felt as if I was being “separated” from myself…and that was completely okay. For a split second I was given a birds eye view of everything that was happening, and I saw myself separated from my body. A spirit, soul, or whatever you want to call it, was being lifted.

Then, I snapped back into the bed with great force. The bed seemed to spring back and forth…but not a sound was made.

The third of three.

That morning, I read up again on sleep paralysis, and there were reports of people having “other” experiences. I began to become interested in what was going on. I have never experienced anything like this before… and now twice in two months?

Strange.

What was about to happen would change my entire life.

There’s no other way to tell this story than to just tell it. I will never forget this. I can’t call it a dream, well, because it wasn’t one. I was asleep yes, maybe? But in reality, I never was more awake.

I was at a 49er’s playoff party with my two good friends J. and J. and I was slightly removed from the situation…just laughing and watching those two boys flirt and dance with girls in the other room where everyone else was. It was a modest sized house, the interior covered with gold and red party balloons and plates…and yet everything else in the house was pretty basic and white.

I’m not exactly sure why I decided this, but I said “I’m just going to go lay down for a bit and relax.” I turned around and walked to the room right behind me…and went to lay down on the bed and ever so nonchalantly had the thought of…”Oh, there is God.” So I put my feet up on the bed and rested my head on the nook between his chest and his right shoulder and had this overwhelming sense of warmth come over me. There was no face. There really wasn’t much besides this undeniable energy and light that wasn’t blinding, but at the same time you couldn’t see anything but a body covered in white cloth.

So I just laid there for a while.

And then…I started to ask questions out loud.

“So you mean to tell me there are demons?” He responded in a very easygoing way, “Yeah, they pop up once in a while, but we try our best to keep them under ground.” In that moment he answered, there was a flash of the scene that happened when I was in my room terrified because of what was in the black in front of me. I calmly nodded my head in agreement as I understood what had happened.

“So you mean to tell me there are miracles?” He looked at me and said, “Evan, I think you know the answer to that.” Again, in that moment, I was shown the experience I had when I was being lifted like a sheet from myself. I nodded again.

I paused for a while.

“So you mean to tell me there are angels.” He said, “Of course there are.”

And for a while I continued to sit there against his chest quietly, not a thought running through my head.

And then, in my mind, I asked every single question I could. I asked, he answered. Everything and anything. Events from the past. Questions in general. Everything became crystal clear. These questions went on and on and were answered almost in a blur.

The room became sharper and sharper. Everything was impossibly clear. My vision became the sharpest it had ever been. I continued to lay there on his shoulder, overwhelmed with warmth…

And then I woke up.

My hands were shaking. I was in tears. But not tears of sadness. I was crying because I was overwhelmingly happy. Quickly I knew I had to tell me close friend and I tried texting as fast as I could but my hands kept shaking.

I just knew I had experienced something special.

I’m telling you this tonight because I believe in something. This is the first time I have, in over 3 years, talked about my faith but it is time. I believe in something. At this point in my life, I really don’t know what that exactly looks like, but I know there is something. With the experience I had above, with the conversations I have during the day, the feelings I have run through my as I run into the wild to go fishing alone and hear the voice coming from inside, and the events that have happened in my life, I know that there is indeed something.

There is certainty in my mind.

I cannot possibly define what I have experience because I believe it is undefinable. I can only tell the story and know what is warm in my heart. For months, I have thought about these series of events every single day and tried to figure out how they were going to fit into my life. And then this evening I let everything go that was restricting me and put my faith into something that I cannot see, but oh I can feel.

For months I haven’t dreamed. I have had two dreams since this summer, and both were around very big questions of what to do – and both times – I woke up with answers.

Faith is a very interesting thing. But I know that faith was actually what I was missing from my life. Faith in myself and whatever may be above watching to see what we create with the gifts we have been given.

Love. Passion. Never Quit.

- Evan Sanders

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