Show Me A Sign



In my mid-life crisis in the middle of summer it is hard to see progress in the condition of my failing body and fear filled mind.  There seem to be so many different voices and good intentions aimed at providing me support and a rescue plan.   But knowing in which to invest my diminishing financial, physical, and psychological resources is a trial.

A trial by error indeed, if only there was unlimited time and an abundance of faith.  Having neither, I got on my knees this morning, which was easy to do as I was already unable to stand up and now spend much of my time on the floor in a yogic crouch, and I prayed for a sign.

Perhaps I should explain the origins of this particular appeal to the Divine.

It had been at least two years now since I first heard the stirrings in my mind that I was not alone.  Indeed my husband and I were driving silently down Euclid Avenue and I could hear in the tympanic membrane of my mind the words –

You are not alone.
I am here with you
and I will show you
yellow signs of my omnipresence.

Just then I looked to the truck bed that was directly to my right at the stop light and saw a yellow ladder with a bright yellow corded rope attached.  From that moment on, yellow signs would flood my awareness and I began to believe in the power of my own co-creation with the universe.

It would be many months before I spoke about this to anyone else, for the obvious fear they would think that my charming eccentricity had turned into psychotic delusions.  But also there was the worry that if I spoke about this to anyone, that the magic would disappear.

However, as time passed and I became more aware of my connection to the Divine my courage and curiosity grew and I decided to speak about the yellow signs with my family and close friends.  From amused to amazed the reactions were varied and resonant.

One morning on the way in to work, I asked my husband what it would take for him to believe these were really signs from God.  Not one for hypothetical discourse, Richard shrugged his shoulders at the steering wheel and said probably nothing.  As we were both technology experts with a keen eye for statistical data, I pursued my probe and pointed to the occurrence of a significantly improbably event.  “What if”, I posed, “we see something so unexpected and implausible that was yellow on our way to work today … then would that convince you that these are signs of God? ”

No sooner had the words come out of my mouth did the car come to an abrupt stop as we turned left into campus.  Facing us, in our single lane of traffic, was a huge bright yellow cement truck that was blocking our passage.

“Now that’s statistically improbable!  Wouldn’t you say?”  I beamed.

“Yes, I suppose that is statistically improbable.”  he replied.

Though I realized the anomaly didn’t change the way that my husband looked upon the signs, it did seem to shift his awareness of how these symbols were truly gifts in my eyes.

Over the seasons since, I have come to enjoy the cosmic humor by way of unusual yellow offerings with impeccable timing.  From bi-planes, SUVs to overnight delivery trucks in the most unusual places I continue to be blessed with a deep understanding that my separate sense of self that I still cling to voraciously will one day fade away into the shimmering light.

So given my special relationship with the Golden One it was not strange for me to seek a sign that my healing was already at work from the inside and that I would soon know in sight that my health would return.  On this day I prayed for not only a yellow sign, but something so unusual, something that I had not seen before, something that I would know without a doubt had come from Source.

It was a day when my body was particularly fragile and instead of sitting downstairs or going for a drive with my therapist, I was able to only sit and weep on the floor of my bedroom when she arrived.  I begged for her not to give up on me and with a warm smile she told me a metaphor about Swiss cheese and trauma.

Little hope was able to penetrate my despair on this day, until… just as she stood up to leave I looked on the floor behind me and saw this tiny yellow ball with the same holes as in the Swiss cheese story of my life.

yellow-ball

I held the little wiffle ball in the palm of my hand as tears of joy ran silently down my cheeks.

True to form, I had never seen this ball before; certainly it had not been previously in my house.  I knew beyond a doubt it was a gift from God.

When my eldest came home from her work as a teacher at a camp for gifted students, she saw the ball beside me and said,

“Where did you get that?!”

I smiled and said matter-a-factly “It is a gift from God.”

“It’s from my kindergarten class,” she quipped.  “But how did it get here?”

Just then my youngest daughter came into the room with the question of the day.

“How did you get that!” she began.  “I stole it from Tricia’s classroom yesterday.”

From where I sit it is was clear that God comes to us every day and when need be takes into service a cherub to help deliver the plan.

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