The Gift of Free Will

I had decided to become a local pastor with the United Methodist Church in 1987. (A “local pastor” is not ordained, but serves a church while working towards ordination. At the time I entered into the program it was designed for older people as a second career.) I had already completed the necessary steps on the local level and was scheduled to meet with a board for approval to serve a church when disaster struck, causing me to indefinitely postpone my plans.

Donna (my previous wife) was diagnosed as having uterine cancer and, though we didn’t know it yet, was dying. When cancer strikes a family, that family’s life is forever changed, no matter what the outcome. Our lives, which had been fairly ordered, were now interrupted round after round of local treatments, plus long distance trips to Portland for additional diagnosis and treatments. (Cave Junction is near the California Border of Oregon, while Portland is in the north, next to Washington, a distance of 274 miles.) There were also many different stays in two of the local hospitals. Nothing, it seems, did any good. In fact, as soon as the treatments started she got worse.

Donna’s family lived in Norfolk, VA and wanted her there so they could be with her and help out. They had made arrangements at Duke University Hospital for treatment and then paid her air fare back. Our original plan was for her to spend one month there for diagnosis and then return. However, during that thirty day period her condition deteriorated to the point she was too weak for the return flight.

When she left my life suddenly became easier by returning to some semblance of normalcy. No more closing up my custom wood shop to take her places for treatment. No more face to face reality watching the deterioration of a loved one. Except for our nightly phone calls, the situation was easy to ignore.

Our original plan for thirty days disappeared because she became too weak to fly. Before I knew it, one month had turned into two months, pushing three.

During the second month I knew I need to go to Virginia. Even though I knew I should be there, I really didn’t want to go. Why should I? By now we knew it was terminal and by going back there I would only watch her die, which I didn’t want to do.

One day, around the end of the second month, I was working in my shop thinking about our situation, and I knew I had to leave. I called her that night and told her I was putting our house on the market and was coming back.

I called a Realtor friend, Walt Farmer, and told him that I needed to sell and that I needed to sell fast. He said he’d try, but warned me that property wasn’t selling very fast. I knew even before he told me that there had been a real estate depression going on for over ten years.

That night, after talking with Donna, I prayed for help in selling the place. As I was praying, I heard a thought, “Your property will be sold within thirty days.” Along with the thought came the total assurance that it would be. This type of assurance is hard to explain if you’ve never experienced it. Along with words in the mind comes total knowledge and conviction.

The very next morning Walt came by with a client. I showed them around, and after they left, I “knew” they would buy. But after three days passed with nothing more heard from them, I assumed I was mistaken. On the fourth day Walt called and said they had decided to buy, and he would be coming by soon with a contract.

Our new life in Virginia was horrible. Mike, my youngest son, and I lived in a one room apartment above a single car garage at my mother-in-law’s place. Our only amenities were a tiny refrigerator, a minuscule bathroom and a window. Because it was free I know I should have been thankful, but I wasn’t.

Because I needed to work, knew this area well and had the equipment, I became a painting contractor once again, making me feel like a caged animal. I had a sick wife who was dying, I was living in a one room hovel with my son, Michael, and I was doing work I hated. Life had lost its glow.

At one time or another each of us will have to face the experience both of dying and being around those who are. As much as we may not want to, dying is an integral part of life. For me, the only way to ease the pain was to keep busy. During the day I did this by painting. Nights were another matter.

I was still planning on becoming a minister, but I didn’t know the status of my ministerial situation. What should I do? Transfer that process to Virginia? Or wait until Donna died, then go back to Oregon?

Because I still meditated and prayed, it was only natural that these things should be on my mind while doing so. One morning, filled with self-pity, the gist of my meditation went something like this:

“God, what good does it do to love you? You never help us. Look at me. I’ve loved you all my life. I’ve done everything I know to please you, and what good has it done? I live in a state I don’t want to be in, and doing work I detest. Plus, the wife I love is dying of cancer. How could I possibly bring anyone to you? How could I tell them of your love?”

On and on I droned, sitting so high on the throne of self-pity I should have been air sick. The way I moaned and wailed you could have thought it was me who was dying. Self-pity—a form of depression—does that to you. Anyway, by the time I finished, I was feeling a little better. I finished with a prayer saying, “Even if you didn’t exist, and I know you do, I would still live my life the same. This world has enough problems and corruption the way it is. I would live as well and honestly as I can.”

I had been painting an apartment at the Williamsburg Townhouses on the previous day, and the work wasn’t progressing as fast as I had hoped. I decided to call my son, Lloyd, off another job we were doing so he could help me here.

There was nothing unusual about these apartments except they were two story and larger than average. Ordinarily I supplied the paint when painting, but the Williamsburg management preferred to use their own. That way they always knew what color and what quality of paint they were getting. The day before they had given me a gallon of semi-gloss enamel (shiny paint) to paint the doors, windows, kitchen and three bathrooms with, and five gallons of flat latex (dull paint) for the remainder of the walls.

I had painted the kitchen and the two upstairs bathrooms with the semi-gloss enamel the day before and had run out. I then continued by painting the bedroom walls with the flat paint.

When I had finished painting the upstairs walls, some touch-up work needed to be done. (“Touch-up” means getting the missed places with a brush or roller. Missed places are called “holidays.”) Because a five gallon bucket of paint weighs in the neighborhood of 75 or 80 pounds, it is too heavy to comfortably lug around. Therefore, I took the empty one gallon enamel bucket and poured some of the flat paint into it. I then started doing my touch-up work using this mislabeled bucket. At the end of the day I took the one gallon bucket into the kitchen, put a lid on it, and went home.

When Lloyd arrived the following morning, I sent him to the manager for another gallon of semi-gloss. When he returned, I had him go upstairs to enamel the windows, doors, baseboards and wood trim.

All was going well. Lloyd was upstairs painting away and I was down stairs spraying out the living room, hall and dining room.

I had stopped at the bottom of the stairs to either rearrange drop cloths, or for some other reason, when I suddenly saw a figure standing at the top of them. He appeared to be a small man, maybe five feet tall, standing with his side to me and facing into the bedroom at the left of the stairs¾the very room Lloyd was painting. A brilliant bar of gold appeared to extend above his head, pass through his head and into his chest via his neck. (This bar was easiest thing to see. It appeared solid while he appeared to be somewhat translucent.)

Startled, but pleased, I thought, “Welcome.” I continued to stare for at least a minute, then I looked away for an instant. When I looked back, he was gone.

I didn’t know what to make of this incident. Was I hallucinating, or what? The visitor didn’t look like a ghost, but he sure didn’t fit the description of any angel either. Anyway, I didn’t say a word to Lloyd. He would have just laughed and said, “Sure, Dad,” in a way that dripped of sarcasm.

After an hour or so had passed it was getting close to lunch time. By then I had pretty much put the incident out of my mind. Lloyd had finished enameling the upstairs, the stair risers, and was now painting side by side bathroom and closet doors in the downstairs hall.

By now the day was already over a 100 degrees when he said, “Boy, this paint sure is drying fast.”

I went to where he was painting the two doors and, sure enough, they were drying fast and, sure enough, they were drying as flat and dull as could be.

I was instantly filled with rage. “Why hadn’t he used the new paint,” I thought. “The whole morning has been wasted.” I wanted to yell at him, but I knew it was my fault for not telling him which can to use—and also for not labeling the old semi-gloss bucket filled with flat, as “FLAT.” I just assumed that he would use the new bucket. (What made this even worse is that I had done this same thing before.) Somehow I managed to suppress my anger and simply said, “Well, we’ll just have to start over.”

I don’t know how Lloyd felt at that point. He just put his brush down and started cleaning up for lunch without saying anything. I went upstairs to gauge how much we were going to have to repaint.

When I reached the first door, the one with the little man standing in front of, it wasn’t painted in flat. In fact, it was beautiful, and it was all semi-gloss. It also looked very fresh. “Boy,” I thought, “I’m glad Lloyd missed this door. At least it won’t have to be redone.” Then I walked into the room and looked at the bathroom door. (Each bedroom had a full bath.) It, too, was a beautiful semi-gloss.

I then went downstairs to recheck the two doors Lloyd was painting when the error was discovered, passing Lloyd going upstairs to see if I was crazy as he thought.

I couldn’t believe it. Everything upstairs that needed to be done in enamel was. But they couldn’t be. Why were they?

That’s when I remembered my meditation of that morning, “What good does it do to love you? You never help us.”

I can’t describe the feeling of emotion reverent awe that washed over me. I had been helped in an unprecedented and overt manner. There was no subtlety at all about this. I had even seen the helper.

Similar stories happen all around us every day. Most miracles aren’t as blatantly obvious as this one was, but some are. The magazine, Guidepost, and two books by Sophie Burnham, A Book of Angels and Angel Letters, are only two books that contain many amazing and true stories of this nature.

Miracles are simply matters of perception. You and I are unable to manipulate the molecular structure of matter (as with the paint). Therefore, anyone who could would be considered a miracle worker. From an angel’s perception, changing the molecular structure of paint may seem quite basic. To them, you simply have to desire it done. To us it is miraculous.

The important question about incidents such as these are, not that they happen, but why don’t they happen more often? And why do they happen to some people and not others? And even to those who have received them, why don’t they happen more often?

Miracles usually happen in response to prayer but, in this case, I hadn’t prayed for help. In fact, I felt sorry for myself and was angry at God and had let him know it.

I believe it was because of a series of choices I had made in exercising my freewill to do what was right. It would have been real easy for me to stay in Oregon and hide. Almost all my life I had moved every year to two. When I moved to Oregon I promised myself I would never move again. My desire to establish roots was extremely strong and, finally, in my mid-forties, I had a home. I’m a west coast person. I did not want to go back to the east coast. No, I really didn’t want to leave.

The God who blankets the universe, holds the planets in orbit, knows the numbers of hairs on our heads, and is aware of the sparrow falling to the ground, is both knowledgeable and strong enough to force us to love, worship and obey Him. Never are we forced to do so, however. For this reason, whatever we do is of our own freewill and not from coercion. When, of our own freewill, we do what is moral, ethical and right, and do it because we want to, we are living spiritual lives. When we live spiritual lives we get blessed in unprecedented ways. It’s that simple.

Coercion is an attribute of mankind, not God. It is us who force people to do our will, and in the most unique ways, including everything from brute force to whining, cajoling and nagging. God will never force us into any situation or harm us in any way. We can deliberately sin against God without any fear of retribution, reprisal, or eternal damnation in a “lake of fire.” Our God is a God of love and love cannot hurt or bring harm to anything or anyone. Even human love is gentle when genuine.

The genuine love of God does have a plan for all of us. He calls to each of us in the gentlest of voices saying, “Look for me. I am here.”

We don’t have to listen. We can crawl under fences picking up scrap metal that really isn’t scrap. We can be immoral. We can be mass murderers. We can even stay in Oregon. The worst thing that will happen to us is that He will withdraw from us and we will be left alone to our own devices to do as we please. [1]

No, God will never harm us. But, there are rewards for those who seek Him out; little helping hands along the way that we may never even notice. When we reach the point where all seems helpless and lost, we get that little nudge, or one of those mysterious doors in life swing open just a crack, just long enough for us to scurry through. For those who keep trying the help never ends. It’s just a matter of exercising our freewill the right way. In other words, it’s just a matter of choice—ours.

Our choices range from following the urges of our savage animal heritage, to aspiring to subliminal heights of spiritual glory. Though we may have evolved from slime as one celled amoebas and, though our roots may be those of the most savage of beasts, we can still be gentle and loving because of a spirit potential that is practically limitless. We have but to reach for it. We have but to desire it. When the good, the righteous, and the beautiful become our desire, when it is our will to overcome individual corruption, then we are reaching for the heights of spiritual glory. We are exercising our own freewill and doing the will of God at the same time because our two wills are aligned.

Once we start doing these things, we get unprecedented help that stays with us the rest of our lives. But, the choices keep coming and the decisions are many and varied because this life is a school and we are being taught. With each option of our freewill we become ever so slightly more spiritual, remain the same, or slide back a rung. But the choices will never be more than we can handle. And until each lesson is mastered, it will keep on returning. Or we yell out, “Leave me alone! I don’t want you!” And mean it.

The Red Sea wouldn’t have parted for Moses if he hadn’t been doing the will of God. Because of our choices the help we get is sometimes of the highest order, like the turning of water into wine at the wedding celebration at Cana, or the changing of the paint for me. I’ve known quite a few people who have had genuine miracles occur in their lives, the type of miracles that can’t be cast off as mere coincidence.

Don’t think that a spiritual decision is one of going to church, or whether or not to love God or Christ. No, they are far more ranging than that. In fact, on the surface they are plain and simple everyday decisions pertaining to normal, everyday life, such as deliberately taking the biggest piece, or noticing you were given too much change, but saying nothing.

All of us have the blessed gift of freewill. We have the ability to choose love, which leads to life, which leads to happiness, and which ultimately leads to peace on earth. Or we can exercise our freewill and choose the path to aloneness, misery, war, disease and destruction. For me there is but one choice.

As God as my witness, the above story is true. The quotes may not be exact, but they are close. (I’ve added that line because of what happened when I wrote the story of the paint. I don’t want to have to retype this thing.) It happened many years ago, and is the only incident I have ever written down in a journal so I wouldn’t forget it. (Not that I could.)[2]

By the way, if you think that miracles don’t occur everyday, take a look at the news when there is a cyclone or tornado and houses, stores, barns, truck and cars are absolutely destroyed over a wide and long area, and there are either no casualties or only one or two, and then tell me miracles don’t occur.

And again, about the few that do die...is suspect that this would be the most advantageous time for them to be taken; quickly, easily and without a long, drawn out and complicated death.

[1] He withdraws because we repel Him, not because he wants to go.

[2] An edited form of the paint story was published in the March/April, 1997 addition of Angels on Earth, published by Guide Posts.