Occasionally, I am stopped by an incident in my life that motivates me to look back at all the synchronistic, coincidental, tragicformational happenings that had to have taken place for me to arrive right here at this moment. Every time I do this, I am blown away by the hand of God in my life. There is no other rational explanation.
Sometimes the incidents are simple. Someone needs information and I have the answers. Why would this person ask me the question? And WHY would I have the answers? Why was I there at that particular moment to answer the question?
Sometimes the incidents aren't so simple. Like when my late husband came home from a doctor appointment, telling me that the doctor wanted to run more tests. Showing me his palm he pointed to the muscles which had started to atrophy. Quietly, without fanfare, a symbol flashed through my head of a woman's hand. A woman I had known and learned to love; a woman who had died of Lou Gehrig’s disease. There was nothing similar about the way the hands looked. The disease manifested completely differently in this woman. It was a strange little vision.....but I knew exactly what it meant.
I looked into my husband’s eyes and said, "You have Lou Gehrig's disease." As I look back on it now, it was a crazy thing to blurt out to someone. Four months later, the doctors had ruled everything else out and uttered to him the acronym, ALS, for the first time.
In that four months, we were able to purchase life insurance. At the time, His sons, from his previous marriage were the beneficiaries of the policy he had in place. We had only been married 4 years when this incident took place and hadn't done any of the legal work for the second family.
He passed a physical with flying colors. He had never been a drinker, a smoker, never even had taken prescription medication. We purchased a policy that would pay if the policy owner lived three years. He lived three years and 4 months from the time the policy took effect.
I have started to listen to my guardian angel. She is never wrong. She may even be me as my Higher Self.
I remember one time during the deterioration of my husband’s healthy body, feeling as though I couldn't make it through it. I had raised three daughters alone with little financial help. I had to get creative. I created my own business. I got my older daughters working; my oldest as a model who did print work for one of the large department stores in Utah. My middle daughter had been doing local theater without pay for several years, even though she was cast in the leading roles. I found her an agent and she began to do commercials, TV movies and feature films. When she was 8 years old, she made more money than I did that year. Even with all of our creativity, we struggled financially. I gratefully don't think my daughters ever knew it.
I was tired. It is hard being both mother and father to children. It is a job that never provides a paid vacation. Once I re-married things had just started to feel like what I thought "normal" was supposed to feel like. Now this.
I had changed careers twice in my life. I had recently given up my business and was taking care of my husband full time. The thought of starting over again was just as paralyzing as the disease ravaging my husband's body. That was just the tip of the iceberg of my emotions. That was just in the periphery of the heartache that comes from watching your robust, healthy husband lose the use of one muscle group after the other. I couldn't do this, I wasn't strong enough. I had already done all of my struggling, hadn't I?
These were the thoughts on my mind as I parked my car on the street and crossed the parking strip to visit my mother in law. It was spring time, the sun was shining and the sky was a deep computer screen blue. There were three trees planted in the strip and they had just begun to bloom; white puffy blossoms of promise. I looked down at one of the tree trunks. At the very bottom of the trunk where the bark is the thickest, there they were; PINK blossoms poking their daring heads right up through the bark! These delicate, beautiful blossoms had found the strength to find the sun. And so could I. And I did.
There are many ways that the Universe speaks to us. It can be in the form of a meaningful image in our head, a voice in our head, a gut feeling that won’t let go or a simple object lesson, like brave blossoms showing us the way. We just have to stay clear and aware that messages are all around us if we have the eyes to see, the ears to hear and the heart to believe.
Life will continue to throw us a curve. We may have to start over many times in our life. Starting over gives us the opportunity to learn new lessons, explore new horizons and most of all, grow!!
Don't curse the recession, your job loss, the break up with a lover or a spouse. Life is all happening FOR you, not TO you. Always look under the surface of every situation or incident that seems to tear you apart; actually, they are putting you back together in a more complete way.
Our prayers are answered not when we are given what we ask but when we are challenged to learn deeper spiritual lessons that teach us to become the person we were born to be.
