Before continuing any further with respect to the question and God’s answer, a little perspective is needed; a perspective I did not have at the beginning of this experience and one that did not become clear to me until later.  In retrospect I now understand that God’s response was to bring, to permit, to allow into my life an experience; a very unpleasant experience whose purpose was to give me a strong incentive, a very strong incentive, to seek him.  In response, I sought God, found Him, and two years later God moved within me and I overcame the fear that accompanied this experience.  

So what did happen when I asked God for the answer?  It was immediate. No sooner was the question uttered in my mind when this thing approached me in my mind.  It was like a cloud, so black and so frightening.  I was paralyzed, I couldn’t move; I just wanted to run and and scream but couldn’t.  I remained there immobilized, frozen with fear, wanting dearly to run and all the while silently screaming, until finally it backed away from me. Never had anything like that in my life before.

It didn’t disappear, I could still see it; it had just backed off a way.  But I could begin to think rationally again and my first thought was: “Am I losing my mind?”  I thought about this for a few minutes and thought about going to my parents for help but decided this was not something they could do anything about.  I then decided that I wanted nothing to do with this; that I was going to put this whole thing out of my mind; that I was going to bury it so deep that it would never see the light of day again; that I was never going to remember it again.  But that was not to be.

As soon as I made that internal decision, this thing, this problem of fear, came towards me again.  I started crying (though at nineteen crying was not in my character), jumped out of bed and ran to my parent’s bedroom and pounded on the door.  That was the first step leading down the path to my discovery that God was real.

But the only thing I clearly understood at the time, while pounding on my parent’s door, was that this thing was connected to the question I asked God and that it was terrifying. My parent’s response was limited yet was the beginning of the answer to my question, “God, what is the answer?”.  Check out my parent’s response on the next page, “2 – God’s answer: the first step!”.