Book of Hope

Chapter One: Rachael McAdams

you saved me from demon attacks from invading aliens from my own brain you saved me thank you lord (i still believe by hope hearken)

How can I trust that this rain is real, that these rainclouds are real?

How should we start this story? How do most stories begin, by someone telling you a truth or a lie? Well then call me Robin, if you like but that’s not my real name. You can call me Susan, if you prefer since that is my real name. And I choose to tell you a story of my own doing. What does that mean, you will find out soon enough.

One Wednesday afternoon, around 2pm, I found myself on the East side of town. I don’t normally come over to this part of town, simply because it’s too far away from my home in the south edge of town. Well, I had an errand to run, so I stopped at the nearby Jack’s Coffee Shack. While waiting in line for my coffee, the woman in front of me kept leaning her head to the left, as if her neck hurt or like she was trying to shake something out of her left ear. She was dressed casual in jeans unlike me, and she wasn’t wearing any make-up or a designer shirt. She didn’t even have any jewelry on, nor high heels. Her brown shoulder-length hair laid flat on her head without any hair spray. I never leave the house without my make-up and heels, nor my hair spray. Maybe she was just in a hurry, I thought.

But she kept leaning her head to the left, so I was forced to ask her what was wrong. I said to her, “are you alright?” And with that question, I started a friendship with a woman called Rachael McAdams, a woman who could see demons. She never answered my question that day, but she shared so much more with me through the course of our friendship. I am a believer, and Rachael was a newly-formed believer. She told me she became a believer in April of 2013, but before this time Rachael was on a quest. She was on a soul-journey to find meaning in her life.

In March 2013, Rachael developed a craving. Her craving was for the supernatural. She became obsessed with searching for aliens, UFOs, anything strange and bizarre. Rachael believed if she could prove the supernatural world existed, then she could prove God does not exist. She studied the 1961 abduction case of Betty and Barney Hill, believing it to be true. She studied the Mothman stories and the fatal Silver Bridge collapse in 1967, knowing the Mothman tore down that bridge. Rachael believed that she knew a secret that no one else knew. She believed there was a world beyond our world. She believed there was a level of reality that we can’t see, smell, or touch that interacts and mingles with our world. And she believed could find it. She became obsessed over this.

Rachael would not stop her obsession. She wanted to find a way into this other-world. She wanted to break through this reality and freely mingle with this other-reality. Rachael continued her search by watching the tv series, “Ancient Aliens” on the History channel over and over again as if it was a documentary of facts. She researched the different flood stories from Sumerian literature to the Bible, searching for connections. Rachael felt it. She felt she was getting closer to the truth she had been searching for, but even when she was searching for facts in the Bible she didn’t feel a pulling to search for God Himself.

In April 2013, early one weekday morning, Rachael returned home from dropping her son, Jack, off at school. Rachael laid down on the sofa and planned on taking a quick 15-minute nap. Well, she fell asleep for an hour and when she awoke abruptly, she was in a panic. She remembered what she was dreaming about during her nap, and with fire in her gut ran to the computer room. She immediately started searching for any and all possible meanings of the number 55. Because in the dream she had just woken up from, God told her to remember the number 55.

Rachael had only once before in her life had a dream about God. When she was 13, in the year 1988, and she was on a middle-school trip to Washington D.C. from her hometown in Cliff Ridge, South Carolina. Rachael’s class took a chartered bus up to the country’s capital for a tour around the city. While on the bus ride there, Rachael fell asleep. During her sleep, she dreamt about three individuals. She dreamt about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Jesus all together. Now, she never could tell me what this dream was about because everytime she tried she would break down crying. The only thing she would tell me was that when she woke up from this dream on the bus, she uttered the words “not real” referring to all three; Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Jesus. Rachael has told me often she regretted those words her entire life. For with that phrase you see, she had denied Jesus Christ coming into her life.