All Kinds of Whispers ...

A precognitive message, intuition, or ... whisper ... doesn't have to always be a life-saving event, although those are the ones that we remember most vividly. Some are little things you just know. You don't know how you know, you just do.

Have you ever thought about someone you miss and the phone suddenly rings and it's them? Have you ever dialed a phone number, only to have that person already be on the line because they were calling you?

My friend, Ellen Silverthorn Howe, knows what I'm talking about. In her words, she has a lot of the little ones.

CJ,
Reading some of your blog posts has made me realize that we have to listen to those "whispers". I do plan on sharing more of mine.

My kids even listen to me. When mom says, "I have a really weird feeling about this...", they trust my feelings. My youngest daughter, Whitney, who by the way is only 19, says, "Mom's got that weird feeling again. We'd better listen."

Growing up, they could never figure out how I knew things about something they had done. It wasn't really that I knew exactly what they had done, but I knew. Maybe my heart just let me know.
~Ellen Silverthorn Howe

I have another friend, Jane, that I credit for saving my middle daughter's life, years ago, when my daughter was only two years old.

First, let me tell you a little about Jane. She's intelligent and witty, the mother of four, feet firmly planted on terra firma, and by her own admission, totally unaccustomed to these types of intuitions.

About thirty years ago, Jane and I were neighbors in Illinois. Our children often played together and Jane and I formed a fast friendship.

My youngest was an infant at the time, and she was taking her afternoon nap. Carrie, my four-year-old, was playing in the living room and I was sitting on the couch reading. I had just checked on Beth, my two-year-old. She was sitting on her bedroom floor building with Legos.

The phone rang and it was Jane. She said something like, "This is totally unlike me, but I have this really strange feeling. Where is Beth?"

I told her she was playing in her room. Jane said, "Go get her. Now!"

I started to ask Jane why, but she was so insistent that I went into Beth's bedroom, picked her up, and went back to the living room to the phone. I told Jane that Beth was in my lap and she was fine. I asked her to tell me more about this feeling.

Just then, I heard a loud crash. I put Beth down on the couch and ran down the hallway to see where the sound had come from. It had come from Beth's room. The ceiling light fixture, a large white glass globe, had shattered on the floor where Beth had been sitting. The shards of glass had sent the Lego pieces flying in all directions.

Stunned and shaking, I went back to the phone to thank Jane. She had saved Beth's life by trusting this "strange feeling" she'd had and by making the phone call to see it through.

Every time I visit Beth and her husband and those four wonderful grandchildren they've given me, I think of Jane. I hope she knows how indebted I am to her for the gift she gave me ...