The few people I had been around who were walking with the Lord seemed to have twenty-four-hour smiles slapped on their faces. I used to have a twenty-four-hour smile too, but it was a fake smile most of the time.

My fake smile was finally taken from me at the nail shop. I bit into rice and my second-to-the-front tooth broke off. Who breaks a tooth on rice? I couldn’t afford to have it fixed, so when I smiled, it was a lip smile only—no teeth showed. I was humiliated. That really knocked me down a couple of pride rungs on the ladder of life. After several months, I was able to get a replacement, which gave me a newfound appreciation of the smile I had always griped about.

The smile I wanted now came with a new way of life, and I wanted that. I also wanted again the material things I once had that had been stripped from me, little by little, until I had almost nothing left. I would have given anything for a good job with benefits. I want. I want. I want. Did God have any of these things for me?

I discovered that the same man who wrote the daily devotional I had been given in the hospital when I had shock treatments had a TV program. What he said and how he said it was unlike anything I had ever heard before from anyone, in church or out of church. He touched something deep inside of me that I knew, that I knew, that I knew was coming from a supernatural source. I thought I had felt every type of emotion that a human could feel, but the feelings I was now having were deeper, containing a hope that there was something yet to be discovered in this life. I heard that I could be forgiven for all of my sins, even five abortions.

The preacher would say, “You can be made new.” That triggered the picture my ex-brother-in-law painted for me years earlier right after my first husband left that said, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). My brother-in-law had tried so hard to convince me years earlier that Jesus was the only answer for me, as he would calmly stare into my eyes.  As each day would pass, turning into the next without my husband returning home, at my deepest times of despair, I would hear a knock at my back door.  There my brother-in-law would stand ready to tell me about a new life.

Now the time had come and I wanted to be new, and I wanted a new life. Dara needed me to be her parent, and clearly, I wasn’t doing a good job of it, but I was trying. What I thought was going to be the answer—the nail shop—wasn’t.

I figured that, while I had the time, I would use it to my advantage. At night, when everyone was settled in bed, I could study the Word and not have to be concerned about anything but soaking up God. This time became my refuge.

The days passed, and I was beginning to feel that this was going to be my last chance. I knew I had better buck up, get my crap together, and do this—find out what God had just for me—so I wouldn’t be a living, breathing failure for the rest of my natural-born days. I could almost imagine myself standing in a corner, smoking cigarettes, pointing my finger at others and blaming them for my lot in life. I knew I had a choice to make, and it seemed as though God was trying to get something to me. This time no one had to make me go after God. Every single night, I would race to my sanctuary to be alone with God. I would pull out my TV tray, open my NIV Bible, have pencil and paper ready, and get right into the Word. The feelings I had were overwhelming, and I was determined not to quit.

Through the guidance of the man who wrote the daily devotional I had carried now every day for several years, I began in the New Testament. I would read and talk to God out loud. I pretended as though I was speaking right to him and that he was listening to every word I said. I was talking, but then I also got still and listened. Listening was a major change for me; I was always so busy talking that others could hardly get a word in.

I was thrilled. Something started to change inside my heart. I felt like God was on the throne 24/7, and his ears and his eyes were attentive only to me. I felt as though he gave me his undivided attention. He never one time said, “Time’s up. Give me a hundred dollars, and I’ll see you next week.” It was glorious and I didn’t have to have insurance to do it.

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From youth I had been concerned with the way I looked and how others perceived me. I spent time posing my legs and shoes just right, admiring the way I looked while people would sit in front of me talking. Was my look okay? I would always be thinking, Yeah, whatever, just hurry up so I can speak. I would even be going over different things in my mind that I had ready to say, waiting for my open door. However, when I was overweight, all the “self care maintenance” I was concerned with when I was thin was abandoned. I withdrew into a cocoon I felt was my safe place that sheltered me from the hurt and pain I suffered deep inside my heart. Being heavy took my eyes off myself during those times. I wanted to break the cycle of instability in all areas of my life once and for all.

I had never done this Jesus thing before, but this time I believed that there were going to be permanent and drastic changes coming in several areas of my life. I believed I would become different, but I was not sure just how it was going to take place. Was God going to zap me? The answer was unclear at this point. I did know, however, that if I put my heart into it, I was going to find out. I had lived the “me” life all of my life, but I was now willing to put God first above my wants.

There was so much in the Bible that it was overwhelming to me. So, I decided to close my Bible and then flip it open, hoping the words I would read would speak to me in some way, much like the old Eight Ball I had as a child—except I wasn’t looking for a yes or no answer this time.

As I was kind of flipping through the Bible one night, I repeatedly came across the word “fear.” I looked up to heaven and said, “What is this word “fear” I keep coming across? Do you want me to be afraid of you or something?”

All of a sudden, a very clear voice stated, “Molly, I want you to have a healthy enough fear of me. It is going to help keep you in line.”

Fear God? I thought God was a God of love. What was this I had just heard?

For some reason, I just looked up in the air and in my mind, I could see a big, black, wild stallion bucking and fighting against the rope that was around his neck. I spoke out to God, “I feel like a wild stallion that you are just going to have to break.”

I started laughing. I thought it was funny. Then a voice sternly said, “How hard you fight against me is going to determine how easy or hard your ride with me is going to be.”

Well, that wasn’t very funny. That night has since become known as the “wild stallion night.”

I didn’t like what I was hearing. Fear had stopped me from everything in my life, and now I was going to have more of it? My heart sank. I then came upon the scripture in Matthew 7:13–14, which says that the way to life is through a narrow gate, and that wide is the road to destruction.

All I could picture was being a horse with blinders on. I had to keep them on either side of my face, keeping my eyes straight ahead, not looking to the right or left in order to stay on my path. I had always paid too much attention to what others were doing instead of what I should be doing. I would always look all around, even when I was driving, to see who I could spot as my next quest.

Suddenly, I knew all of that was going to have to be over. I was going to have to straighten up and do this God’s way, but I needed to know what this fear was I was now encountering. I thought God was only a God of love, and I was getting an ache in my stomach again; I didn’t like it. On second thought, I could just stop doing this Jesus stuff.

That very night when I went to sleep, I was just plain scared. The hour was late, and I was the last one awake in the house. I was so scared inside I could almost feel myself shaking.

Fear was looming all around me. I knew I was becoming afraid of God. What would he do to me? Would he hurt me? Would he destroy me? Would he rain down fire on me? Would I be awakened drowning in water, as in the days of Noah? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t sure that night when I went to bed if I wanted to go on with this. I thought I had wanted to go after God, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him hurting me. I turned my face to the back of the couch, which was unusual for me. I always slept facing forward so I could see anything that might try to harm me; I never turned my face to the wall to sleep.

I cried out, “I am scared, God. I don’t know why I am scared, but I am. I am scared of you.” I almost didn’t utter those words. Then I trailed off to sleep.

For the first time since his initial appearance in the dream years earlier, David appeared to me again in a dream. I couldn’t tell where he was, but it seemed as though it was green, like a grassy area. He was sitting with his hands folded around his legs. He said, “Molly, I am happy, and there is nothing to be scared of.” I woke up the next morning mulling over the dream for a while before it started to make sense.

Seeing him as clearly as I could anyone else on the planet somehow assured me in my childlike heart that everything was going to be all right. In one fell swoop, it settled the fear in my heart. I knew he must be in heaven, and if he wasn’t scared, then I wasn’t going to be scared either. I knew he was with God, and God loved me enough to send someone I had loved to tell me there was nothing to be afraid of. God talked to me through David, but I didn’t tell anyone. What was going on in my little sanctuary was between God and me. No one else needed to know except Dara. I pressed into God and kept doing what I knew to do. Days later the actual fear of God started to disapate.

Unexpectedly, my life became rooted in something supernatural; it was giving me strength from within. This was the greatest Sherlock Holmes mystery of all. I could picture me with a magnifying glass, looking in every place for the answer, and now I was being given bits and pieces of answers. I was being driven forward by something I felt but couldn’t see, and I knew it was going to be up to me to get what God had waiting. I searched it out, guided by an unseen hand. The answers for my life this time couldn’t be obtained by calling a stranger on the Psychic Network, obtained by having someone look into a crystal ball, going to a bar picking up a man, or by being drug-addled. This time, I couldn’t suck people dry for what I needed.

I was learning that I was not going to be able to go and grab what I wanted from God—or what I thought I needed—and go back to doing life my way. If anyone could have stood on a stage in front of millions of people singing the song, “My Way” it was me, but now things had changed. I asked God to show me he was real, and by God, he was doing it.

I tried to keep a low profile and not beat people over the head with Jesus, yet at the same time, I was becoming very curious, picking the brains of my customers about what their knowledge of God was. I took the information I learned from them to the Word to see what it said about their interpretation of it, and I wondered why their thinking was twisted at times. Who was right?

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I would get up in the middle of the night after working all day, sit down, and talk in to the blackness of night for several hours about my life—what I had heard from others and any concerns I had. Then I sat and listened for God to talk to me. Many times, something would come into my heart that I had been through in my life, and I would begin crying and asking God to forgive me. When I would get it all out of my system, I would tell God how much I loved him and then I would fall into an exhausted but sweet sleep.

I started asking God to give me back the time I had spent with him so I wouldn’t be tired the next day, and that is exactly what happened. It was like dope to me, only it was better than any drink or drug I ever took. I talked to him about my hopes, my dreams—what I wanted to do. Some nights, I would get up, hold the Bible in my hands, walk back and forth in my little sanctuary, and talk to crowds of people on the wall. (Of course, the people were there only in my mind’s eye.) I would be like a full balloon, then after a couple of hours, I would be all out of air. I emerged from these times with a feeling of great release—a feeling I had not felt before. It was as though I was being set free from prison bars within myself that couldn’t come off any other way. It was supernatural.

There is a scripture in the Bible that says, “Whom the Son sets free is free indeed” (John 8:36). My steps were becoming lighter as the days went by, and I felt freer than I ever thought I would.

The more I got into the Word, the more I was changing. There were deep-seated things inside of me that I wasn’t able to deal with, except with God. God knew how much I could take, as far as coming to grips with the things that were in me, and he was bringing up what needed to be healed with his hands one piece at a time.

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One night something happened that sealed my fate and belief in God forever. I had seen David twice now through dreams, but this was something entirely different. After this experience, I was never the same.

Dara was all tucked in; I had studied in the Word as I always did—had one of my marathon nights with God—then went peacefully to sleep on my couch. As I lay there dozing off, my last thoughts were, The peace I feel is amazing, and my mind doesn’t reel on and on like it used to.

All of a sudden, something like a mighty force I had never felt before propped me up. I had no choice; I was going to sit up! The first thing I saw was the brightest white light I have ever seen. It was blinding. Immediately, I knew who it was; there was no mistaking it.

I felt a foreboding—that I must be in trouble. My head was bowed, and I did not look up. I thought, You cannot look upon the face of God and live, so keep your eyes from his gaze. No one looks God in the face and lives except Moses or Abraham—not Molly Painter from St. Albans, West Virginia.

I fumbled and reached out my hand to feel the person who was sitting on the end of my couch. Why was this happening to me? Naturally all I could think of was, This is not good.

I slowly started to look up somewhat—curiosity getting the better of me—and all I could see was about four inches of brown hair laying on a white robe. My eyes then slowly began to look all the way down his knees, and I glimpsed brown sandals. Then my eyes slowly moved up his figure, and I saw his hands, which were crossed on his lap. They were the most beautiful hands and feet I had ever seen on any man. Then my eyes rested upon scars in his wrists.

All I could seem to think was, Why are you here? Why had he appeared to me? As usual, I started blabbing my big mouth before he could say anything. I said, “I promise I’ll do better. I promise. I promise.”

In the most beautiful, manly voice I have ever heard, he said, “You are not being obedient.”

Again, I replied, “I know. I’ll try harder. I promise. I promise.”

I woke up the next morning not remembering any of this, but as I gradually woke up, thoughts of what had taken place started flooding back into my memory. I was in shock—in awe—and wondered why Jesus had appeared to me.

I didn’t dare tell anyone in my family for fear of what they would say, but I told Dara and swore her to secrecy. Several days later, I became a little more brazen and told two people I thought I could trust. They listened but had quizzical looks on their faces as if in disbelief, so I stopped telling others anything about what I was experiencing. I mulled the word “obedient” over and over in my mind. What was he saying to me? Evidently God was not happy with me, and I was doing something wrong. I had always been a people pleaser, and I thought I was doing better, but I guess I was wrong. A recurrent voice in my head had told me to stop smoking. Was that it? I didn’t know, but I had given up most everything else. Did I have to give up cigarettes too? Everybody has vices. Couldn’t I have at least one? After all, I didn’t smoke while I was praying or talking to God. I mean, come on. Was that it?

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I held my Bible now as not just another study book, but as the living, breathing words of God Almighty—period. It was settled in my heart; no one could tell me differently. I knew who I had seen. Death, eternity, and every question I had ever had about life hereafter were answered, but I had no clue what my future held or what to expect.

I was feeling the need to worship the God that I now knew was real, so one evening, I went down into my sanctuary, looked at my couch, and thought, Well, I’ll just spread out my Bible on my couch in front of me. I will sit in front of the couch, face the wall and sing.

I was a little shy and embarrassed, but there was no one watching me but God. I didn’t know what worship songs were so I just started to sing. I sang, “Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so.” Then I sang, “O Holy Night.” I sang any song I had learned in Vacation Bible School as a child that directly related to Jesus. I didn’t have anybody telling me what to do or how to do it. It was simple, yet I loved Jesus and wanted him to know.

Then I stood up and started thanking him for loving me and helping me. I went on and on from the bottom of my heart and kept singing out loud to Jesus. I had my eyes closed and my hands raised, and all of a sudden, I could almost feel Jesus standing in front of me. I got scared, and it startled me, so I stopped. Things were beginning to happen to me that started to blow my mind.

Any devotion to God had been in the form of going to church. I vividly recall when I was young, sitting in the pew right beside Mom falling asleep on her shoulder during the service. A collection plate would be passed around. The pastor would preach about seventeen minutes, and then we would hurry home to eat, and don’t forget the afternoon nap! I would always feel better about myself having gone, but I didn’t even know why. However, several months into my new life, I was feeling a draw to go again to church. I knew I was going to be obedient, so I attended a church my younger brother suggested. Most of my life I had been with someone else wherever I went, never wanting to go anywhere alone. I did this for a couple of reasons: sometimes because of fear of panic attacks, and sometimes I was afraid of what others would think of me as a single woman alone. Now I didn’t feel alone anymore, and a new feeling of self-confidence was arising within me, so I tried still another church all by myself. The more time I spent with God, the more self-confident I became. The feeling I started to have was empowering yet in a humble way. The fears I had lived with for years were beginning to subside, and it was truly liberating.

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Christmas Eve was upon us and Dara was going to be with her dad. I ate our traditional, huge dinner with my family and then announced I was going to church. When I felt convicted about doing something, I knew I had better follow through so I wouldn’t get in trouble with heaven. I attended a church I had just been to the previous Sunday but on this particular Christmas Eve, I felt like I was intruding on a close-knit family. I felt very unwelcomed, and I never went back to that church. I knew that if God wanted me in a church, regardless of location or the denomination or how I was feeling about it, he would somehow tell me. But for the moment, I would worship him in my little sanctuary staying focused on saturating myself in the Word.