Foundations in Faith

Childhood, truth, mystery, darkness, devotion and my work

At the time of starting this writing I am on a family trip to see my uncle and aunt in Owen Sound for a few nights and then my husband’s family in Midland for a few nights.

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Saturday Morning. We’re packing up our bags for the three hour drive up to Owen Sound, something that Fox has thankfully gotten used to having done 6 hour drives 4 times now to see my family in Ottawa… 3 hours is a breeze. I pause with the feeling of anxiety come over me. Definitely not from Uncle Andy and Aunt Tracey, they’re some of the best folk… but definitely for the lag of the trip in Owen Sound. Something is about to change, I feel it in the energy.

No time to entertain it further, I tuck it away in my back pocket and keep packing.

The drive up is pretty average, but we get to Orangeville and instantly, for one reason or another, I feel movement is on the horizon. Timothy and I have been in a sacred pause, an inner wintering of sorts, waiting for a sign to act and go. I start to feel it as vision of our future home dances in my mind for the rest of the drive and Timothy says a few things confirming he feels and sees it too.

At this point I’ve created my new ebook and I just have to create the five website pieces to launch it on Tuesday as scheduled. I bring my laptop up hoping to complete these minor things at night while Fox sleeps in Owen Sound. We arrive at my Aunt and Uncle’s country home to discover they have no internet because a storm took it down the night before, and they live in a location where there is no good service. No connection to the outside world, we just have the pleasure of enjoying their company. This also feels meant to be but we don’t know why yet.

We settle in and enjoy the time there along with my cousins and their baby who’s just a few months younger than Fox and we rest for the night.

I really wanted to ask my Uncle Andy two things: some more information about my paternal Grandmother. My Dad has always been very vague about my grandparents and who they were and how him and his brothers grew up. The only thing I ever knew about her was that she was Catholic and the one thing she’d ask everyone about is if they were Catholic. That and she loved curry and was also very direct. A quality I feel I inherited from her.

The other was about money. I’ve been in a season of healing my money story majorly and there are a lot of pockets of mystery around money in our family, especially on my father’s side. I wanted to know what the truth was there as my Dad was again very vague and I knew there was something deeper hiding under the shame he seems to carry at the mere mention of money.

The weekend progressed and I got to ask about Grandma Sheila. It turns out that she was belonging to a church that was presumed to be a cult. The institution she was a part of was eventually discovered to be big on brainwash and mind control. She became a part of this church early on in Guyana where she was born and she carried a lot of fear inside of her, as people who are brainwashed often do, that followed her throughout her life. Not ironically, one of the fears she had was of money. Growing up her father was very wealthy and they had “servants” (my grandmas words) but then when a huge recession hit Guyana he started giving away all his money to those who needed it in the community. Shortly after doing this he died and Sheila was left with her step mom who received the remaining money. Sheila started working and squirrelled away all her money from that point forward. The only time I ever saw her spend money was for the church when the Tithing basket came around. She never bought new clothes or ate out or did anything extra so that she could hold on to her money. Her fear of scarcity was massive. She did well for herself with this practice and had an estate she passed on but I feel these fears had a real impact on my Dad and his money story. I still remember seeing her putting in hundreds into the tithing envelopes she was taking to church.

You see, the biggest aspect of my money story I’ve been attempting to heal without budge is not being a bad saver or a bad spender (though I have been both of those things in the past to varying degrees) it is the mystery around money. Anytime I asked my Dad any questions about money at all growing up I was met with mystery.

I asked a whole range of questions like…

How do you manage your money?

How much money do you make every month?

What are our monthly expenses?

What should I do with my money?

Is X a good price?

Why does grandma put hundreds of dollars in the tithing envelope?

Why do you have to give money to the church?

What are taxes?

These questions were answered by my father with such enigma and shame that I wondered my entire life what the heart of money was and whether we were rich or poor, or if dad was good or bad with money and just didn’t trust me to know the truth.

Though I do remember having to “wait till payday” to get something I wanted or needed. I also remember my Dad saying things like “money is the root of all evil” and “money doesn’t grow on trees”—which naturally leads one to believe money is bad and essential unavailable to me when I want something.

This puzzling aspect of my money story stuck out like a sore thumb though. The elusive money story of my father would eventually come back to bite me when shortly after starting my first summer job at 13 and getting paid a few times my brother stole my debit card and spent it all. I went to pay for something that was $11 and the dreaded “insufficient funds” came up on the machine. I got home crying in horror that someone had stolen all my money—well over $500–and my brother heard my cries and owned up to it.

I asked for the money back but he didn’t have it and he was bad with money too then, always borrowing and owing, and likely never would. My parents also didn’t have it. I asked to be taken to the bank to change my pin and this is where the story stuck. I was made to feel small, even silly, for wanting to protect my bank account from my brother by changing my pin. My parents assured me it wouldn’t happen again and that I didn’t need to do that. I feel they were embarrassed to take me and they simply didn’t feel like putting the effort in to make me feel safe again.

The next day I got paid again. My purse sat on the chair next to the door of my bedroom, where it always lived, and I remember as I was falling asleep seeing my brother’s hand reach in, pull out my wallet, obviously take my card out, and place it back in my purse… Even after all that chaos of the day before. From that day on I did everything I could to spend my money as fast as possible. It didn’t feel safe sitting in an account attached to a card that was clearly compromised. I still get that same pang of betrayal every time I have fraudulent charges on my credit card. Sigh.

When I asked my Uncle Andy about my father’s money story what he revealed to me was quite riveting. For the sake of honouring my father’s privacy, I will just tell you the energetic signature of it: it is riddled with bad choices, poor trust in the wrong people, fear of never having enough, trying many different routes to make money rapidly, many people manipulating him and a religious cult. There’s more but that gives you the gist of it.

I was not shocked that my Dad repeated patterns from his mother or of the nature of my father who tries to see the best in everyone affecting his financial choices in the past.

What this brought up in me was intense relief at knowing the truth and peace in moving forward. I felt a sense of calm and joy with money. Thankfulness that I’m no longer in a cycle of repeating what my Dad and grandmother did. I’m not perfect but I’m on a steady train of progress.

Once I processed all this information about money what I ended up landing on was the faith piece. I watched my father struggle with his faith my entire life after the indoctrination that my Grandmother Sheila imposed on her three sons. She was so heavily influenced by the Catholic Church that all she cared about in her life was her faith—she actually hoped one of her sons would become a priest. I used to admire her faith but now I started to explore my feelings around this.

My Dad tried on many religions over the years when I was a child but I had no idea he was part of a cult. One of those where they ask you to pay to be a part of them! And now he has landed on A Course In Miracles group that he loves. Which is something I question as well—and even more so now that I know of his past history.

I might be painting an interesting picture of my Dad here, as a Daddy’s girl I feel compelled to share that my father has a regular problem with trusting people too much, and he often places his trust in the wrong people, but he is one of the sweetest and kindest men I have ever encountered.

Interestingly enough (but not really because God is fascinating like this) this all comes into my awareness with little to no effort on my part at a time in my life when I feel very grounded in my own faith.

I spent my entire life with a foundation of spirituality. Crystal shops, oracle cards, astrology, reiki, shamanism—I was exposed to it all as early as I could remember. My Dad’s soul searching ended up becoming my playground of self-discovery.

When I became a Reiki teacher I found a new way to help people that spoke to my compassionate heart and I allowed it to guide me into my career in massage and then out of that and into full time healing and teaching reiki in 2020.

From there I started to really try to root myself in my faith. To find a strong footing in what I believed to be true across the board. I believed in God - though I rarely referred to the Creator as God because it has always been such a charged word for people with trauma from religion - and I believed in gratitude, prayer, meditation, love and the understanding that God truly wants to bless you in your life. I never really had a name for my faith though or labelled myself belonging to a faith.

In the years of my healing practice since 2009 I’ve been told and asked by many people if I am a healer, to which I always said yes I am! but what people wanted to know is if I was a healer with faith grounded in Christianity or Catholicism because they would often remark either seeing Jesus during their session, feeling him or dreaming of him afterwards. A few clients even said that they found their faith again after having worked with me. I just always told them that you receive exactly what you need. I had seen Jesus a few times in these sessions but I always assumed Jesus was there for them.

Until I conceived my son.

I wrote about this before here and I welcome you to read it, but when I conceived Fox Jesus came to me for the first time in a dream right after I conceived him to show me and bring me my baby. The baby in his arms looked exactly like Fox did when he was born.

The birth of Fox—which I’ve also written about here—was also heavy in Jesus’ presence. Him coming to me in his conception though is what truly allowed me to start asking questions and grounding myself in my faith.

Not surprisingly, the Doula who I hired to attend my birth and found through my best friend Jacquie ended up being a sort of helper in this exploratory moment of my life. I had just told Timothy that I wanted to attend church but had nowhere to begin looking at where (having no Christian friends) and when I met my doula I found out that she was a proud Christian and she went to a church nearby. We started attending Lakemount Worship and something lit up inside me. The worship, the words of Pastor Matt, the dedications of faith, the water baptisms, the ceremony, the gathering, the joy. It was all so beautiful and I cry every Sunday during church now.

Fox was born March 8th, right in the middle of my first conscious participation of Lent, at which time I chose to give up swearing. I don’t drink or do drugs, I don’t eat much sugar, I don’t have many bad habits so I chose swearing to clean my vocabulary up prior to having my baby. I now rarely ever swear anymore. Maybe once a month and I have to be pretty angry or heated to do so.

Then after Fox was born, my time was eaten up—as all fresh mothers experience, and I found myself still attending church but no longer seeking more.

Until I turned 33.

My Jesus year. What a year to wake up to the living word, eh? I found myself reading the bible for the first time in my life and feeling so inspired by simple words from a simpler time. Seeing how God has truly shown up in the past and how God lays His hands over us, again and again.

At the same time I decided I wanted to really move on from the family trauma I had experienced in the past and I found myself ready to forgive them all for good so I could enjoy their visits and ultimately so that my experience with them would not impact Fox’s. I discovered Kabbalah (through my bestie Jodi) from David Ghiyam (which is based on the Torah) and it completely altered my relationship with my family in the best way. We went to see them in Ottawa two weeks ago and it was the best visit I’ve had with them in YEARS. I was beyond grateful.

My Christian heart has never felt so liberated and free.

A lot of people are curious about what happens with my work now that I myself am grounded in my Christian faith. I’m not going to lie, this has been challenging for me to explore, not because my work changes much at all but because of the labels, assumptions and triggers people carry with organized religion.

I know of the harm that has been done in history and even today under the name of Christianity. I know of the charge that people hold towards organized religion and maybe it’s my healing background or maybe it’s simply my compassionate heart but I always hold all perspectives and differences with love.

I struggle to even openly call myself a Christian, not because I have any shame around this but because to be completely honest with you most of the Christians I’ve met over the years have been very judgemental and closed-minded. They seem to have so much fear of anything outside of Jesus, and that is just not my perspective of my faith at all.

(Side note: I also know the the new age to Jesus is a common trend right now in the spiritual community and I think there’s a very good reason for this but I’ll say that nothing about my awakening to Jesus has been trendy or influenced. It has all come from actually experiencing Jesus’ presence in my life. I know without a doubt, He came and He called me to Him.)

I love Jesus and He has my heart and I also still firmly believe in energy healing, shamanism, animistic practices, journeying, meditation, cyclical living and so on because in my experience and understanding —this all comes from God and everything I’ve accomplished in the realm of these spiritual practices has only brought me infinitely closer to God. They only enhance my faith, they do not replace it. They bring me closer to God, not further away. I cannot discount them—ever, and I will continue to teach the sacred healing arts to whoever is sparked with interest by my work with whatever beliefs they have with the vast amount of knowledge I’ve acquired over the years about spiritual and whole-self healing because I believe this is how I accomplish “God’s work” in my lifetime. My work and offerings do not require a specific faith, but they do require that you believe in a singular Creator/God/Universal organizing intelligence.

So—what’s the category of Christian who loves Jesus but also believes in the original ways of healing with plants and energy and spirit allies and communing with the land and spiritual practices that are ancient and still wonderfully nourishing? I’m wild and free and grounded in Jesus. If you wanna give me a label - that’s the one.

I also want to share something about darkness here. In the time of being a healer and having been sensitive to spirits my entire life I’ve experienced dark forces of all kinds. I remember being a child and seeing people on the street who were outwardly normal with a shadow on their back that controlled them. I’ve had to remove entities from people during healing sessions, I’ve seen others possessed by demons doing things completely out of character, I’ve witnessed someone’s face change after stripping the darkness from their energetic spine and I’ve been attacked by dark forces that were attempting to penetrate my body. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING removes them or sends them out of the individual or space or self faster than bringing Jesus in and asking Jesus to banish them. I’ve tried other practices over the years but when I was attacked by a demon in 2012 I had a priest come in to bless my home and he told me to call upon Jesus to help me if I ever needed it. I’ll never forget the way he looked me in the eye when he told me this like he knew I really needed this information for more than just that moment. Since then I’ve brought Him in every time and the darkness hates Jesus’ light. Nothing banishes the darkness like Jesus.

Now here’s the point where I try to round up the end of my article and I felt so strongly to arrive at the finish line of this long piece with devotion.

My heart is so eternally devoted to God. To the love, healing, joy and peace of every individual I have the privilege of affecting in any way.

I try to live my life in such a way that I love thy neighbour and I forgive easily (but I’m not a doormat).

I wake up talking to God and I go to bed talking to God. This has always been true and will never change.

If you need me to or not, I will gladly pray for you as I believe so fiercely in the power of prayer.

I believe that every person is truly doing their best, and I honour them for that.

I fiercely love what God gives me—especially my son and my husband (I always have said that God must love me because I have them), and I am infinitely grateful every day for all the blessings I have.

These things have always been true for me. They haven’t changed at all. I haven’t changed much at all to be honest. But the presence of Jesus is a sweet joy in my heart and in my life now. I’m so grateful!

May love, peace and joy find you.
May the light of your soul guide you.
May you awaken to the gentle whispers of your heart.

In devotion,
Emily