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CBN.com – It was fascination that drew Sheila Smith into the world of fortune telling and tarot cards. As a teenager, she started having dreams and visions. Sheila recalls, “I would see people on TV that were missing, and I would know whether they were alive or dead.”
Sheila believed that with her “gifts” she could help others and gain acceptance. Instead, she was called “witch” and “freak.” Sheila found approval with those in the occult. But it was her skewed view of God that pushed her away from the only One who could bring her the peace she wanted.
“I felt that God was a very angry God,” she says. “I was very depressed. I was very angry. I hated the world.”
Sheila married and divorced twice. Both husbands abused her.
Sheila says, “I’m being beat. I lost everything. I lost my house, my kids… I lost everything except the clothes on my back.”
Over time, the visions and dreams intensified.
“I worked the night shift. The visions and the dreams were so bad, I’d wake up screaming. The night terrified me.”
One night, she decided to end it all. She grabbed a bottle of pills and a memento given to her by her friend George.
“All I had left was a playing card, the Queen of Hearts, that George had given me. [It] said, ‘Sheila, you’re a queen.’ I thought that there’s somebody out there who still cares. So I won’t. And I put the pills away.”
But George had his own problems and his own way of dealing with them. “Crawl into a bottle, try to drink my way out,” he says. “I didn’t see no hope.”
The two eventually married. Even together they couldn’t erase their pain. Then Sheila remembered something. “I thought back to my childhood and how God felt then, and He was warm. He was safe, and there was a time when I was happy. I thought that I have made such a mess of my life, and maybe if I said ‘I’m sorry’ enough, maybe He’ll forgive me. Maybe He’ll take me back.”
Every morning, Sheila sat on her kitchen floor, praying and reading the Bible. She found hope for herself, but her husband wanted no part of it.
"I told her that if she wants to do that, fine, but don’t do it around me," George says.
Then one day outside of a grocery store, they met a homeless man in a wheelchair. He said he was hungry, so they bought him some food. In his gratitude, he said three words that penetrated George’s heart.
"He told me, 'God bless you.' Just thanked me so sincere and everything. After he said, 'God bless you,' God did."
So moved by those three words, George told Sheila to find them a good church. She did. That same week, they met with a pastor who told them about God’s grace and love. Both of them accepted Christ as their Savior.
"All of the 26 years of rage was gone," Sheila says. "It just left. I finally had peace."
George says, "I felt relieved. I felt like all the weight was lifted."
George never went back to the bottle, and Sheila’s dreams vanished. Now they know how God really sees them.
"He’s a forgiving and loving God," Sheila says. "He loves me more than anything. He died for me, because He loved me that much."
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