If you can, listen while you read. It's Princess' new favorite song!
I thought my wife knew Jesus the way that I know Him - personally, spiritually. We both grew up in the Christian faith. She always prays before she eats. We’ve been to church together. We taught our children about Him (turns out they were teaching us, but that’s another story). About a year ago, sitting on the back patio, getting high, we were talking about Him. But when I said something about the Holy Spirit, her face changed. This is the moment I was schooled in more depth on the beliefs of Jehovah Witnesses - the faith in which she was raised, and has since been disfellowshipped.
She didn’t believe in a Trinity. Now, I have been drawn to the trinity in all of its beautiful forms, no matter the faith, but never realized its true power until this moment. She believes in God. She believes Jesus is His son and died on the cross and was resurrected. She was taught to understand, though, that there are only a chosen few who can talk to Jesus Christ, Himself. And of course any mention of a Spirit of any kind is considered demonic.
Enter cannabis.
Prior to this discussion, we had been doing “sessions” - smoking one of a few favored strains for this and having these sort of impromptu convos that we let happen in whatever shape and form they would take, guided by whoever, whatever, but definitely some Higher Power. I had mentioned in one of these sessions that we should name that power that seems to come to us, and I offered that we should just call it Jesus, since we both know him. She agreed. Church is anywhere you open your heart, anyway. But that particular session was . . . awkward, and soon she was complaining of a severe headache. Off on another plane myself, I just took her into my arms and rubbed her head, rubbed her head, kissed her head, rubbed it some more. She felt better and I put her into bed for the night.
It was the next day we had this conversation about the Trinity.
She came to me and asked, “What was that? Last night?”
“What was what?”
She told me that, laying in my arms, she felt something she had never felt before. (Don’t go there! It wasn’t like that, though yeah, I might’ve smirked, lol.) What she went on to describe I can only explain as her having felt, for the first time in her life, the Holy Spirit. Said she never slept so well as she had that previous night. She felt safe, warm, and light. And when she reflected on our session, she got chills. She maintains that He was speaking to her through my touch. Now, now… that doesn’t make me Holy. It makes me a vessel, as God intended for all of us to be in one form or another, though we don’t always get to see the outcome or even necessarily the growth. To God be the Glory and all that.
What’s important here is that she heard Him. She felt Him. And now, after so many years of feeling unworthy, of imagining she was an untouchable, she realizes the truth that He KNOWS HER and His Holy Spirit is always, always with her. I wish you could have seen her face the way I did when she spoke of understanding that this Holy Spirit is how He comes into our hearts, our being, our ways of knowing. She sees now that He loves her, adores her even - that He laughs and cries with her, with us - and that He is here to move us with His grace if we’ll just let Him.
Now, as part of her medicinal regimen, I watch Princess indulge in a private session every morning to check-in and re-connect with Him. She prays and she smokes and she sings out loud to what I lovingly call her “Jesus music” (MercyMe, For King and County, and the like).
There's that feeling we get when we see someone "accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior...," like at church on any Sunday - there is that synergy in the room, co-pathy is a better word - but it is something profoundly different to see another so gently, innocently uplifted by His Spirit, knowing that you are in the presence of something magical, miraculous, transformative. So to eliminate any of this experience from her story of her road to wellness would be a great injustice to Jesus. As we’ve said, weed has had a prominent role in her recovery, and we have Jesus to thank for that.
[Sidenote: No shade here for Jehovah Witnesses. Princess’ mother represents that faith and has never been anything other than one of the most beautiful souls I’ve ever met.]
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