There are some stories I've only ever shared with a handful of people...
This was one of them. 🕊️🩶
One of the very first people I called after it happened, when I came back from the other side, was my Daddy James Mueller. I needed him to hear it from me — through tears, through awe — that what we'd been praying for had been heard. 🙏🏼💔
My Daddy was a long-standing member of Oak Park Christian Center (Assemblies of God). He wasn't just a man of faith — he lived it out loud. He served as a youth leader, a worship leader, a men's group leader — and more than anything, he was my spiritual anchor. 💒🎶👨👧
When I told him what happened in that hospital room, he cried with me. Then he told me something I'll never forget:
"You had a whole army calling your name." 🫶🏼🌎
He had added me not just to his church's prayer list — but to prayer circles all across the world. People I'd never met had been lifting me up. And in that moment, both of us knew... our prayers hadn't just been heard. They had been answered. 🙌🏼🕯️🩺
This piece — this moment — this miracle... I dedicate it to him.
To the man who taught me how to pray. 🙇🏼♀️
To the man who reminded me that when you call out to Heaven...
Heaven shows up. Sometimes in scrubs. Sometimes with a name tag. And always, right on time. ⏱️✨
I didn't expect to find faith in an ICU room — or to pray so hard that a man named Jesus would actually walk in. But that's what happened. And it wasn't the only time the veil between here and beyond felt paper-thin. From lilac mist and heavenly valleys to answered prayers with name tags and oxygen tanks, this is the story of how I found faith again — not in a church, but in the middle of my survival.
🤍Faith didn't whisper. He showed up in scrubs. ✝️
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I didn't come into that hospital wrapped in faith. I came in wrapped in symptoms, pain, and a history that made even the bravest nurses tune me out.
When they wheeled me in for that CT scan, I was scared but practical—handing over a list of what I'd been feeling, desperate for someone to connect the dots. But people don't always listen when the story is layered. Trauma sounds disjointed. Pain doesn't always come in a straight line.
It wasn't until I was back in the ER bay that the nurse — a big man who'd barely made eye contact earlier — came back and said something I'll never forget:
"I wasn't listening to you. It seemed like a lot. But your CT scan came back bad. You're being moved to the step-down ICU now. I'm sorry."
I should've panicked. But something shifted. Something ancient. The part of me that belonged to my Daddy — the one who raised me in prayer, who taught me how to call on Jesus even when the world refused to call me by name — that part of me rose up. 🙏🏼
I began to pray out loud. No shame, no filter.
"Walk with me, Jesus. Please. I need you now. Walk with me, Jesus."
I said it over and over.
And then He walked in.
No halo. No choir. Just a man in transport scrubs. 🚶🏻♂️🩺
His name tag said: Jesus.
I laughed. I cried. I couldn't breathe for a second. 😭
"I was just praying for Jesus to walk with me," I told him, my voice all tears and disbelief.
He smiled, kind and calm. "Then here I am."
And when I asked — half-joking, fully trembling — if his family pronounced it hay-soos, he shook his head.
"No," he said. "They call me Jesus."
He stayed with me the whole ride, talked to me the whole way to the unit, and before he left, he told me I'd be in his prayers. And I knew he meant it. 🕊️
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Weeks passed. Life support. Diagnosis. Publicly revealing my HIV status to the world through haze and heartbreak. I began physical therapy to relearn how to move, how to speak clearly, how to live in a body that had nearly given up. 💉🧠
And just when I thought I was finally going home—another pause. No release. No oxygen approval. The system was dragging its feet and I was unraveling.
I cried. Loud. Messy. Desperate. I began to pray again — this time in full breakdown, begging to go home, to just be done with this chapter. 😩🙏🏼
And right then, mid-prayer, someone walked into my room.
Not a nurse. Not a doctor.
A man from All Saints Medical Equipment. 😇
"I'm here with your oxygen. Got the approval. I'll be setting it up at your home next."
You can't tell me that wasn't divine timing. You can't tell me that wasn't God, again. ⏱️✨
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But that wasn't the only time I saw behind the veil. 🌫️
There are things I remember from when I was under, things that science might call hallucinations, but my soul knows better. I remember walking through a lilac fog — soft, sweet, dreamlike — past a massive old barn and up a hill of soft, endless green. 🌸🌾
At the top, a valley below. A paradise. A place beyond pain. 🌄
Down in the valley, they were waiting. Family. Friends. Even strangers I somehow knew were mine. We laughed. We talked. We belonged. 👨👩👧👦❤️
But I wasn't allowed to stay.
"It's not your time," they told me.
"You can't come down with us."
So I turned around and walked back through the mist. Alone. Back to my broken body. Back to this world. 💔🌫️
When I woke up, I didn't know time had passed. I didn't know I'd been on a ventilator. It felt like a blink. A breath.
But afterwards, little things would happen. Déjà vu. A phrase. A scent. A dream that echoed something from that valley.
And I knew. I remembered. 💭🌀
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For years, my faith and I had been estranged. Grief, trauma, shame — they all tried to write my spiritual story in permanent ink. But that hospital stay... that veil-thinning moment... those prayers answered in human form?
It rewrote everything. 🖋️📖
🙏✨🕊️✨🙏
💬 And If You're Still Reading...
I don't need anyone to believe exactly what I saw. You don't have to believe in foggy hills or men named Jesus. 🌫️🧔🏻♂️
But I know what I felt.
And I know that Faith found me when I wasn't looking.
In a hospital bed. In a breakdown. In a prayer said out loud when I had nothing else to offer.
And just when I needed it most...
Faith walked into the room.
With a name tag. With oxygen. With a message: "It's not your time."
I'm still here.
I'm still healing.
And yes — I still believe. ✨🖤🙏🏼
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This blog was originally posted on Wreckage & Rebirth
