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I recently read a sample of Visions of GloryAt the time of my birth, my parents were recently separated but not yet divorced. Mother had gotten pregnant just prior to the separation in a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage. The divorce had turned nasty and verbally abusive. My father left and refused to support her or my older siblings. When she realized she was pregnant, she was at first angry, then furious, then depressed and resentful of her circumstances and of the little life inside her…Spencer had a near-death experience:
“I must be dead,” I remember thinking. I had to think this process over a few times before it really sunk in…At this moment, I began to see a vision of my whole life. Because I had this new ability to comprehend so many things at once, the vision was all absorbing and important and curious to me…
The first thing I saw was my mother carrying me in her womb. I didn’t just see her, I completely comprehended her, her whole life, her pain and sorrows, every thought she had had, every decision she had made, every emotion she had felt. I realized that in all my life, I actually did not know my mother at all. I had always looked at her from a child’s perspective, and I had never been able to excuse her entirely for not wanting me…
I saw and felt my mother’s decision process in concluding to keep me. It was as if she had gone through this process so many times that she could see the outcomes from this choice and how it would impact her and me for the rest of our lives. She felt so alone and rejected. She felt like a failure, and that she simply was not able to raise another child…
I realized also that I had been involved in my mother’s life before I was born. I had, in a sense, been a ministering angel to her, watching and protecting her through the hard times leading up to my birth. It was a validating and peaceful insight for me. I wanted to be born to her, even in these trying circumstances, and she had made the difficult decision to keep me. I experienced the love I had had for her before I was born, and it has remained with me ever since…
I saw all of the events of her life leading up to her going to the hospital to deliver me. I felt her fear and anger every step of the way. She was not healthy either physically or emotionally…
My mother felt so alone. Her main emotion was of abandonment and sadness…
When I saw my biological father’s perspective on these events, and his leaving and divorcing my mother, I learned that it was not all selfishness, not all narcissism, as I had supposed all of my life. When he realized my mom was pregnant, he knew, or thought he knew, that I would be better off without him. That may not have been true, but that was his perception. He knew his life choices would only damage me. He did not leave me because of selfishness or because of alcoholism alone, as I had been taught. He truly thought that I would be better off without him.
I understood his pain, his childhood, his conflicts with his parents, and his relationship with his father. I understood those things perfectly, which no mortal can understand while yet mortal; not even my father understood it this way. I understood for the first time that my father actually loved my mother very much. His weakness and history handicapped his ability to let love triumph in his decisions. I also saw Christ’s love and Heavenly Father’s love for him, no matter what mistakes he had made.
This served to completely change my judgment of my mother and father and my assumptions of why they had done what they had done. This new perspective created great conflict in me because it changed almost every judgment and conclusion I had made during my life. It was all swept away a split second in this non-mortal time frame. I had seen things which now forced me to abandon my anger and resentment.
Wow Shawn! Thank you for sharing. This feels right to me.
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