Peace Train Lens: Listening Brook
Learning to Listen to Your Heart and God’s voice Even in Surreal Moments
It just so happened that several of the youth leaders I had met when I chose Jesus after high school also attended the church I later found. I didn’t feel like a stranger there.
As I continued the process of growing in Christ, He began healing me from my past. One of the big crossroads in this healing was coming to grips with why my life seemed to have begun when my parents died.
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Strange and supernatural things…
When I was living with the Christian family my brother and I had run away to, he ran away a second time—leaving me behind. That’s when some unexplainable events began happening.
After he left, I began to see that kids are often very different from their parents. The parents were truly developing their relationship with Jesus.
At 15, I visited a Spanish congregation with them where a traveling evangelist was speaking. One night I found myself speaking in a strange language—a supernatural experience I couldn’t comprehend.
I could start or stop at will, but it made no sense to me, so I stuffed it away like another landmine.
I discovered the contrast in the older children when I was left behind to babysit some little ones. One of the sons showed up. I thought I was getting special attention when he made me a tequila sunrise. I was thinking of good “I see you” attention. It was “I see you as an object to exploit,” and the tequila sunrise resulted in a quick sunset—I passed out. I did not tell anyone. I was ashamed and did not understand what was happening. My silence led to further molestation. I felt trapped and cold—betrayed by my body as well as my silence.
What looked like kindness became a hidden landmine.
Later, in college, I shared a house with a roommate I considered a “Holy Roller.” She believed our neighbor was a warlock and prayed hedges of protection around the house. I rolled my eyes at her stories—until the night I saw him trying to light a barbecue in the cold. Smoke rose, but it wouldn’t cross the property line into our yard, even though the wind was blowing our way.
The smoke rose, but it wouldn’t cross the property line.
The next morning I tripped over what looked like a human leg bone on our patio. I panicked and threw it back over the fence. Another landmine stuffed away.
That same week, I had two terrifying dreams. In the first, I awoke paralyzed—unable to move or scream. In panic I yelled the name “Jesus!” in my mind and instantly my body was free. In the second, I floated out of my body, over the fence, and into the neighbor’s kitchen. Cabinets opened and shut by themselves. Again, I was paralyzed and couldn’t speak. When I called “Jesus” in my thoughts, I was once again free and able to talk.
By then, I no longer wondered about my Holy Roller roommate. Lisa and her husband prayed with me, encouraged me, and recommended that I seek prayer counsel at Elijah House. I tucked these supernatural memories into the same dark space as all my other incomprehensible experiences.
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Coming to grips with buried memories
Several months later, I went to Elijah House in Idaho for prayer healing, hoping to find some relief from the pain I was in. There was so much pain to choose from that I’d almost forgotten the events that led me to make the appointment in the first place.
Upon arrival, I dropped off my journals for whoever my counselor would be. After my first prayer session, I was given homework. Distractions were plentiful!
That night, at the hotel, I tried once again to do my homework. The room had a television—something I didn’t have at home—and it quickly became my escape hatch. I slipped into a loop: “after this 30-minute show I’ll start my homework…” The cycle repeated until it ended with a blackout.
Yes — a literal blackout in the hotel.
Startled, I rushed out the door into the parking lot in the middle of a blizzard. It didn’t even register that there were lights on at the gas station across the street and in the parking lot itself.
Pacing in the snow, fists raised toward the sky, I cried out to the Lord:
“If You will only use it to help someone else, I will agree to feel the pain I have been avoiding.”
Sobbing, I returned to the hotel and found the lights were back on. I turned off the TV, finished my homework, and finally went to sleep.
I awoke in the night, scared—the wind was howling and a branch rubbed against the window, its outline lit from outside. That simple image became a mirror of what God was doing inside me: the storm outside pressing against the place where memories were about to break through.
The next morning, my counselor asked about who told me not to tell. That question became the catalyst for memories to return—memories I had buried since I was three years old.
I remembered the smell of onions. My father’s scratchy beard. And then the truth: years of incest, beginning around age three and ending only when he died in the car accident when I was eleven.
The pain intensified when I remembered telling my mother what had happened and her not believing me. That disbelief marked the beginning of my “amnesia years,” when memories disappeared until just before my parents’ deaths.
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Jesus in the rubble
Elijah House didn’t remove the landmines, but it uncovered them. It was shattering—yet Jesus was faithful to meet me there.
Even in buried explosions, His voice was louder than shame.
He began planting new anchors in my soul—through Bible study, through voices of truth like The Search for Significance, and through scriptures like Joel 2:25:
“I will restore the years the locusts have eaten.”
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Breadcrumb forward
Marriage would uncover its own landmines—loss and longing intertwined. But it was also where the first hints of lemonade began to appear.
Some of my landmines looked strange—even supernatural. Yours may look different, but the effect can feel the same: confusing, overwhelming, hard to explain.
The truth is, buried explosions don’t mean you’re broken. They mean your heart is carrying something hidden.
👉 If you’re curious what your hidden wiring might look like, the free What’s Good About You? Quiz will help you notice how you process emotions and where survival mode might still be shaping your reactions.