I grew up in a small, conservative town in North Texas, born into one of only two families who attended a nearby Christian Science church. While the ridicule and stigma of being someone "who doesn't believe in doctors" followed me throughout my childhood, it also compelled me to prove my faith through demonstrations of healing. In time, people stopped taunting me and started asking, "How are you doing that?"
As I entered my late teens and early twenties, my innate curiosity sparked a desire to research other religions, and I was fascinated with the differences and common practices of each. Every step I took firmly planted my feet deeper in the ideas I grew up understanding. Without that knowledge, I cannot imagine how I would have gotten through the next 20 years of my life, and yet, there were moments the flame faded to a dim flicker.
Trying to reconcile my vision of a loving Father-Mother God with the torment of my soul, I often found myself asking, "What did I do to deserve this?" I had been a "good little girl," growing up in a physically and emotionally abusive environment, where I quickly learned being perfect and invisible was the safest place to hide the terrified and heartbroken inner child of my being.
The chaos of my life challenged my deepest beliefs. My parents divorced my senior year in high school, after years of an unhappy and volatile marriage. Desperate to find my own way, I married young--a fragile, naive girl of 18. The marriage was a disaster, as I watched myself mirroring the anguish my mother had endured all those years she was abused by my father. It seemed I couldn't do anything right, and I spent many dark nights crying myself to sleep. I drifted through my early twenties, battling depression, searching for a purpose in all this sadness. Did God abandon me? I struggled to remember all I had learned as a young girl, but that understanding didn't explain the oppressive loneliness in my life. I begged for death to find me, but my cries went unheard.
Only 27-years-old, I found myself sitting on the brink of hell. It was the fall of 1979 when I discovered my first husband had not only been unfaithful, but was also gay and a pedophile. I spent the next few months immobilized by shock. In May of that year, just after Mother's Day, I walked into the flower shop I jointly owned with my husband and told him I was going to visit my mother in New Mexico. I returned a week later, asked my husband to move out, and filed for divorce. By late summer of 1980, my divorce was final and I found myself involved in a wonderful relationship with a caring, compassionate and handsome man. I packed my life and my two kids into my tiny white Subaru, and took my battered heart and wavering beliefs into a second marriage. My second husband was a saint, patiently allowing me to work through the emotional abuses of the first two and half decades of my life, but my oldest child began suffering with numerous emotional traumas of her own.
Once a beautiful, popular, talented and intelligent cheerleader and beauty pageant winner, my beloved daughter was now continuously defiant, belligerent, and difficult. She was in and out of the offices of counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, and religious workers. She started running away. She turned to drugs and attempted suicide on several occasions. I called out to God, yet again, repeatedly asking, "Why? " I relied on alcohol as my personal method of escape. I was exhausted and weak after being kicked around by life. The roller coaster ride of ups and downs seemed unending, and I was close to surrendering my soul. The flame was flickering.
In the late 80s, my stepfather was run over by a car in the Astrodome parking lot in Houston, Texas. For three weeks, I sat in the intensive care unit with my mother, watching as he battled back from death. Leaning on the teachings of my earlier years, I reclaimed all I knew to be truth, and I witnessed his miraculous return to life. When he told me something good would come from his experience, I knew he was right. I put alcohol out of my life, and dusted off the Bible handed down to me from my grandmother. I remembered all she and my mother had taught me. From that day forward, I set out on a spiritual quest to reaffirm my earlier understanding. This time, however, I didn't look outside myself for the answers. I knew I embodied them.
The emotional ups and downs continued, but I no longer rode the roller coaster ride. I observed it. My father went through various physical ailments and finally, a complete nervous breakdown. After years of smoking and drinking, he died of heart complications and lung cancer. My older sister committed suicide, leaving four precious young boys without a mother. My daughter discovered not only that she was pregnant, but also that she was HIV+. Later, it was confirmed she suffered with schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, with a heavy dependency on methamphetamines. Sometimes I stood on mountaintops, celebrating the glory of life. Other times, I walked through valleys, witnessing the lush growth that only happens in the lowest places. Through it all, I kept moving forward. People were amazed at the calm, peaceful, joyous person I was in the midst of all this chaos.
I graduated from college in 1984, with a secondary education degree in English and journalism. I was awarded "Outstanding Secondary Education Student of the Year" and an honorary membership in a teaching sorority. We moved, shortly thereafter, to South Texas, where a third child was born into the family, after a miraculous reversal of a tubal ligation. My husband, new baby and I were flown to New York City that same year, appearing on an early morning talk show hosted by Phyllis George. We had the honor of sharing the stage with Muhammad Ali and Placido Domingo.
I briefly did some substitute teaching, but primarily became a stay-at-home mother. I did a lot of volunteer work at the schools, and authored, edited, produced, and distributed thousands of newsletters for various athletic organizations. In the early 90s, I did some freelance writing for the local newspapers, and won first place in the Adult Division of the New Braunfels Arts League for poetry. I was a teacher and then director of an alternative school in the mid-90s, but resigned to help my husband with his homebuilding business. I returned as a teacher for another at-risk school in the mid-2000s, and won "Teacher of the Month" in the second quarter.
In 2005, I was involved in a serious car accident that totaled my vehicle, but left me unscathed. It was a pivotal point in my life. At that time, I had been seriously studying metaphysical teachings, and had experienced an epiphany during meditation that changed my entire direction in life. In the spring of 2007, just months after the hit movie The Secret burst on screen, I taught a workshop titled, "Discovering the How and Why Behind The Secret." The highly successful series encouraged me to begin seriously pursuing publication of what I had learned. I embraced my passion... delivering my message of healing and miracles to those who wanted to hear. I traveled to Los Angeles, in September 2007, to attend an NLP workshop called "Breakthrough to Success." Upon returning, I learned that my application had been accepted by the producers of the upcoming movie, "Try It On Everything. " In October, I traveled to Connecticut for the 4-day filming of the movie. It was just another in a long series of miraculous events that no longer surprised me. I now expected them.
In November 2007, I received my Level 1 and Level 2 EFT-CC certificates, and, in a matter of weeks, finished my first book. One week later, I wrote an e-book, and started working on a fictional book about a journey into the afterlife. At long last, I was following my passion to my destiny.
GOD IS I AM, my first narrative non-fiction book, chronicles my life journey, while teaching others how to manifest their own miraculous lives. It takes the reader through the heartbreaks and the celebrations. It moves out of the mind and into the mystical, as each lesson brought me closer and closer to refining a proven method of healing and manifestation. Looking back at my life of pain, joy, abuse, love, sorrow and abundance, I realize miracles happened, all along the way.
GOD IS I AM finally answers that question so many have asked of me.
"How are you doing that?"
I AM...Jodi
GodisaVerb.com
