Finding Peace In A Spiritual Connection

As I travel this road of healing, I have come across many people who travel this same route.  Some appear to have an easier time navigating it than others.  We all wish there were a Rand McNally that could guide us, but it just isn't there.    Some have encountered road closures, potholes, detours, and at times U-turns.  We all have different vehicles that transport us through grief.  While some appear to be on a locomotive running wide open, I feel to be on a snail.

I have learned through my connections I have made with other Angel parents that some cling to their religion, while others to hope, and yet others, well they are struggling every moment.  Grief makes us question our beliefs.  For me grief made me remember and it confirmed my beliefs.  It also opened a door to another universe.  For me it opened the door to communications with my son through signs and spiritual messages.

From a very young age Jared and I loved birds.  When we would leave early in the morning to head to daycare and work, he asked one day, what are the birds saying?  Thinking on my toes I responded, Good Morning Jared.  So from that moment on for several years, he would greet chirping birds with, Good Morning birds.  The two weeks following his death a bird sat outside my window day and night and chirped.  Of course, in those first couple of days it didn't register with me.  However, as I laid in bed awake most of the night, I realized this bird is chirping, at night, continuously.  I stepped out the bedroom door onto the balcony about 2am one morning and there he sat in the tree.  He wasn't afraid of me and didn't even try to fly away.  He just chirped and chirped.  I remember looking at him so intently and this is Jared talking to me like he always did when he would come home from school.  He is telling me all about heaven and what he is seeing and who he has met and what it is like.  If I could only speak bird!

As days passed other signs began to happen.  Birds and egrets would land in the yard near me.  As I went swimming, fish gathered around me.  I felt like I was in the movie Evan Almighty, the way animals were following me.  Even my husband began to look at me in a puzzled look trying to believe what he was seeing with his own eyes.  At one point while swimming, he said it was just a coincidence, had to be, right?  So we moved, and the fish followed us.  From that day on, I began really paying attention.  My little social butterfly on earth was in heaven being his social butterfly self.  I felt as though it was one of those elementary school moments of, hey are you Jared's Mom?  Several more of those happened in the months following his death.

I am just over a year into my grief journey and I consistently have three birds that are near me day and night.  It has now become something my friends look for when I am around.  In May, I spent the month in Nashville and several friends paid close attention and were amazed and have now told their friends about my connection with Jared through birds.

I also have a great connection through spirit with him.  I feel extremely blessed to have this.  I hear him talking to me.  He plays practical jokes on me through things you would do as a child and through technology.  I laugh at these things because I know it is to help me know he is close by.  I feel blessed because I believe God has work for us to do and yet Jared still makes sure he is with me.  I questioned that one night and got the response that you don't sleep in heaven so he can get a lot of work done while I am sleeping so he can be near me.

I recently had a friend of the family reach out to me from Holland.  He was crying and needed to share with me something.  He asked me not to think he was crazy, and I promised I would not.  He said he was at a train station and was getting ready to step in front of a train when Jared grabbed him and told him not to do it.  He asked me if I believed him and I told him I most certainly did.  He said Jared told him great things were in his future he just had to make it and it would all be ok.  He asked me what that meant.  I told him I had no idea but if that is what Jared said we both better listen.  He said Jared sat with him and talked to him for several minutes and he just couldn't believe what he had just experienced.  He asked me why Jared would do that.  I replied, it is simple he cares for you as a friend.  He was puzzled because Jared had only spent a week with him on a vacation we had taken where we met him and yet Jared was watching out for him.  I told him, this should prove we make bigger impacts on people than we realize.  Just a couple weeks ago I got another frantic message from our friend.  This time it was to tell me that his best friend, a female, had returned from a long trip to another country and found that she loved him as more than just friends.  He was so excited to share this news.  He said he shared his story of Jared with her and she shared some spiritual encounters with him as well.  Not sure if that was Jared but I bet he had a hand in talking with her.

Sometimes I feel so very alone, even when there are people around.  I have come to find great comfort in this connection God has granted me with Jared in his Afterlife.  Until I am reunited with him I will continue to watch for his signs.

As I get ready to post this look what appears out my window....

3 egrets