The Day I Heard God’s Voice

“I don’t want your boy, I want your worry.”

For most of my spiritual awakening, I never quite heard God’s voice.

I would get feelings, and signs, and sense things…

I would get visions, see words, thoughts and images in my mind…

I would be guided to people, places and things that felt divine…

… but I never actually audibly heard God’s voice…

The day I heard His message loud and clear

I was 7 months pregnant with our fourth child.

Read the full story here about why this journey was so different than our other pregnancies.

In short, we were in a place of uncertainty for four months of my pregnancy, not knowing clinically if our son was going to survive his birth and/or the month after or not.

On this particular evening, I was on a dinner date with my husband.

I felt terror, holding worrisome thoughts, managing it as usual.

We sat together at a local restaurant, moving back and forth between nervousness and gratitude.

Much like others who are met with situations in life that bring you to your knees, I leaned into a relationship with God.

Most of my moments were filled with prayer…. a lesson in surrender and being stripped of all previous thoughts and beliefs…. to a place of no bull shit…. a raw, vulnerable, deep place of surrender that is redeemed because with desperation comes peace, presence and gratitude.

I called out to God numerous times and asked Him to clearly reveal to me what I was supposed to do. I prayed for peace. I prayed for healing of my boy.

I prayed for peace and I prayed for clarity. I said to Him, “If my boy is not meant to make it, please provide me with peace…. please provide my family with peace… please bless this boy’s soul.”

Most of my pregnancy was filled with light baths, where I covered our son from head to toe with light. I did this for my own body and for his body. I covered everyone of his cells and his bones with light. Although I felt divine presence, my constant prayer was that we would receive peace.

“There were days when I couldn’t hear God’s voice at all… I couldn’t feel the presence of angels at all… all I could feel was fear… all I could hear were worst case scenarios… these times came and went but were important because they made me see that I would have them, but that I needed to step aside and allow for a better way… so I could hear my instruction… so I could hear the message… so I could feel His peace…

In my blog post, I go into detail about reality vs possibility.

There is a reality that your baby won’t survive, and if he does, he won’t lead a good life. There is a possibility that he will survive and that he will lead a great life.

There is no way to the outcome, just like there is no way to know any outcome in life… with any of our kids, with any of us.

I knew I was to prepare for an outcome where our son didn’t survive, and I also knew that I was to hold faith in an outcome where he survived…. some how.

I would get visions of him graduating from high school, standing tall, dark and handsome with his brother and sisters.

I would convince myself that these weren’t just optimistic ways of thinking, but hope that I was to allow myself to prepare for his glorious life.

Holding this simultaneous vision was my lesson.

Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait, and wait without anxiety ~A Course in Miracles

Peeling away the layers of my worry, I knew it all came down to fear. It was crippling.

I sensed that I would have to really put all my faith into God on this one… we like to hold onto certain things in life, some things are easy to surrender, and others are harder.

Fear becomes part of who we are and to part with it feels irresponsible and unreasonable.

In this case, I just knew that I would have to trust in God’s plan… in a greater purpose… in a greater meaning.

This baby was bigger than my fear. His purpose… his soul’s purpose was bigger than my fear.

So back to the date with my husband… it was in this restaurant bathroom that I heard God’s voice.

I kept praying over and over, asking for peace, asking for guidance… surrendering… willingness to see things differently.

I got the affirmation I had been praying for.

After going to the bathroom (which happens frequently at 7 months pregnant), I moved to the sink and distinctly heard a voice say,

“I don’t want your boy, I want your worry.”

The reason I validate this experience is because I turned around towards the voice behind me….

It caught my attention so loudly that I literally responded to it by giving it my physical attention and focus.

No question about it, I felt a strong presence of another.

It sounded like me, but was not me…. it wasn’t my intuition, it wasn’t my higher self… it was a different voice, within me, outside of me, all at the same time.

It was a voice that was telling me something I didn’t already know.

I answered this voice with a sigh of relief, a cry and a prayer.

As we finished dinner, I realized I was still the same person I was before I heard my proclamation of peace…

…. I was still worried.

But I noticed I was able to remind myself what God had said, and what He wanted from me.

I had my order in hand…. in heart, rather.

I knew what I had to do.

My assignment was to surrender my worry, release my fear to Him.

Trust that there was indeed a plan larger than me, and it wasn’t up to me to figure it out. It was only up to me to watch my stress and anxiety come…. and watch it go.

… it was allowed to come, but was not permitted to stay.

Just like I tried the two months before, I would continue the effort to relax for the next two months.

It wasn’t easy, and it even got worse before it got better.

…but signs still remained everywhere…

God kept his promise to me.

…. it doesn’t mean that I held him to it….

… it doesn’t mean that the outcome we received couldn’t have been easier or more “ideal”.

He delivered me my son…. alive and well… with a rare, random, currently un-curable condition that up until about 3 months ago would leave me breathless, with painful anxiety and fear that he wasn’t going to survive, even still….

We face trials and tribulations, and will continue to do so…

… some of which are because of our son’s condition, but many of them are because we are humans, in a committed marriage with four budding, fierce kids who challenge our every move.

Although I have the peace of God in my life… and in my heart,

… I still have fear.

But I know, even moreso now…

… that there will always be fear…

But with that, there will always be love.