the impact of a lifetime... by RaNelle Wallace, experiencer/author, "The Burning Within"

     The voices stopped and a brief scene flashed before me.  A series of pictures, words, ideas, understanding.  It was a scene from my life.  It flashed before me with incredible rapidity, and I understood it completely and learned from it. 

     Another scene came, and another, and another, and I was seeing my entire life, every second of it.  And I didn’t just understand the events; I relived them.    I was that person again, doing those things to my mother, or saying those words to my father or brothers or sisters, and I knew why, for the first time, I had done them or said them. 

     Entirety does not describe the fullness of this review.   It included knowledge about myself, that all the books in the world couldn’t contain.  I understood every reason for everything I did in my life.  And I also understood the impact I had on others.

     A part of me began to anticipate certain events, things in my life I would dread seeing again.  But most of them didn’t show up, and I understood that I had taken responsibility for these actions and had repented of them.  I saw myself repenting of them, sincerely wanting God to remove the weight and guilt of those terrible actions.  And He had.

     I marveled at His sublime love and that my misdeeds could be forgiven and removed so easily.  But then I saw other scenes that I hadn’t anticipated, things that were just as awful.  I saw them in horrible detail and watched the impact they had on others.

     I saw that I had let many people down in my life.  I had made commitments to friends and family that I had just let ride until they were irreversibly unfulfilled.  People had depended on me, and I had said, I’m too busy or it’s not my problem, and just let it go.  My cavalier attitude had caused real pain and heartache in others, pain I had never known about.

     I was shown a friend who I knew had suffered terribly in her life.  She lived in a beautiful, spiritual world before she came to this life, and she had been confused and hesitant about coming here at all.  

     But she was given the promise of good parents, family members, and friends, and she agreed to come for the experience and growth this life would afford her.  I was shown that I was one of the key friends who had been given to her as a guide and help.  Then I saw my own personal follies and uncaring attitudes.  I saw how these had combined to mislead my friend and propel her into new mistakes and grief.

     I had messed up my own life, not really caring about the consequences, and in so doing had hurt her as well.  If I had followed through on my obligations to myself and others, she would have lived an easier and more productive life.  Until that moment I had never realized that ignoring responsibilities was a sin.

     What was happening?  Why was I seeing all this?  My mind spun with questions.

     Next, I saw a woman whom I had been asked by our local church leader to visit periodically.  I was just to check up on her and see if she needed any help.  I knew the woman quite well but was afraid of her constant pessimism and negativity.  She was locally renowned for her bitterness.  I didn’t think I could handle the depressing influence she would have on me, so I never went to see her.   Not once.

     I saw now that the opportunity to visit her had been orchestrated by Higher Powers, that I had been just the person she needed at that time.  She didn’t know it, and I didn’t know it, but I had let her down.  Now I lived her sadness and felt her disappointment and knew I was a cause of it. I had fallen through on a special mission to her, a responsibility that would have strengthened me over time.

     I had retreated from an opportunity for growth, both for me and for her, because I was not caring enough to fight through my petty fears and laziness.  But the reasons didn’t matter; I could see that, even now, she was living in sadness and bitterness, living through it just as I now experienced it, and there was nothing I could do to go back and help.

     I re-experienced myself doing good things, but they were fewer and less significant than I had thought.  Most of the great things I thought I had done were almost irrelevant. I had done them for myself.  I had served people when it served me to do so. I had founded my charity on conditions of repayment, even if the repayment was merely a stroke to my ego. 

     Some people had been helped, however, by my small acts of kindness, a smile, a kind word, little things I had long since forgotten.  I saw that people were happier because of my actions and in turn were kinder to others.  I saw that I had sent out waves of goodness and hope and love when I had only meant to smile or to help in a small way. 

     But I was disappointed at how few of these incidents there were.  I had not helped as many people as I thought.

     As the review of my life came to an end I was in agony.   I saw everything I had ever done in vivid, immediate detail - the bad things, haunting and terrifying in their finality, and the good things, ringing with greater reward and happiness than I had ever imagined.

     But in the end I was found wanting.  I found myself wanting.  Nobody was there to judge me.  Nobody had to be.  I wanted to melt in the agony of self-indictment.  The fires of remorse began to consume me, but there was nothing I could do.