Nothing is ever as it seems

It was one ordinary afternoon, and our daughter’s friend Kate came to visit us, as she usually did during the week. It was my daughter’s first friend she met when she came to the USA and turned out to be her best.
She was a very nice girl with beautiful blue eyes and attention getting freckles on her nose. Whenever she came to our house, she filled it with positive energy. She mainly liked to talk a lot and she was quite energetic. What I liked most is that she also enjoyed coming to talk to me. This was precisely the case this one afternoon when I was just finishing working on one of my true stories with the other side.
She came up behind my back, lurking over my work, reading what I had written when I suddenly felt a shift in her vibrations and some sort of sadness emitted from her. In that instant, I put down my pen and turned around to face her. She looked at me with big sad eyes and asked: “Do you really believe in God? Do you believe that a God exists?” I smiled at her and answered: “Of course I believe that God exists, and I also believe that he loves us unconditionally. Even during the hardships that my children and I are going through now due to my husband’s illness, I still feel that God is with us and he is always showing me the path I need to go. He is giving me strength and helping me to continue without giving up.” Kate’s face seemed to become more doubtful as she said: “My mom believed in God too you know. She went to church every Sunday and always prayed, well at least up until the point when my oldest brother reached the age of four. He was a happy and healthy baby until he got his shots and become seriously ill. He started having high fevers and after that day, he completely stopped speaking or communicating.” “A short time after that, he started having epileptic seizures and became a prisoner in his own body. He now needs 24-hour care and cannot express his emotions, what he needs, wants or doesn’t want, neither verbally nor by gestures. My mom said: “How could God let something like this happen? Jacob will never be able to experience first love or get married. He can’t even take care of himself.” And from that day, my mom stopped believing in God.”, Kate further explained. Her words caused a strong energy to pass through me, including an incredibly beautiful feeling which is hard to explain in words. This feeling usually comes to me when I feel God’s presence. Father; I use this name for God. He speaks to me at times to give me important messages and to help spread his mission. When this happens, I feel an overwhelming amount of love and my state of being becomes completely calm. I looked at Kate, grabbed her by the hand I said: “I will tell you a story my dear. This story happened in a time when even I wasn’t on this planet yet and far before you, your brother Jacob and your middle brother Jessie were born. You were still only little angels living in heaven. One day, God called to have a talk with you and your siblings: “Look down at the earth my children.” He opened the clouds to show them the happenings down on earth, particularly on one beautiful young woman. He continued to speak, his voice calm yet stern: “This will be your mom!” and smiled. The children eagerly peered down one by one, smiles wide, cheering aloud “Yayyyyy, our mom is so beautiful”! Just then, with a simple hand gesture, God silenced the children and continued on: “But there is something I must tell you. When Jacob will reach the age of four and Jessie the age of one, your mom will suffer a very serious car accident which will leave her paralyzed from the waist down.” The children’s faces became serious, not letting out one word. Kate was the first that dared to speak: “Father, but how will I be born? I want to be born. And how will she be able to take care of us? “In that moment, Jacob began to speak. He had a very serious and aged look on his face, something you would usually see on an adult. “Father, I would like to ask you for a favor. May I please take on this burden instead of our mother? I know she will be able to take the best care of me and she will be able to also take care of our younger siblings.” After hearing his offer, Jessie jumped into the conversation; “Why you Jacob? Why should it be you? I would rather it be me.” Jacob turned to Jessie and said in a serious voice: “No Jessie. In my last life, I was blessed to have had an amazing, loving wife and the best children and it would bring me joy if you could experience true love and a big family in your life too.” – God listened attentively to the young children’s conversation. After a few moments, he decided. “I will give it to you Jacob. I have given you and everyone free will and you have made a decision. Because you have such a gracious and pure soul, I will reward you with two gifts. The first gift will be: If you ever focus your vision into the unknown (blank space), as many people do, and smile, you will see us from the other side and your family will never understand it. The second gift to you will be if you should ever hurt yourself, break a bone or fall, you will not feel any pain.” Immediately after these words left my mouth Kate hung her arms around me, tears rolling down her soft face. With a shaky voice she whispered in my ear: “ My brother Jacob really doesn’t feel any pain. There is no way you could have known that “. She continued to explain a story about him breaking his collar-bone and how the family slowly found out. It took them a long time to discover the injury because Jacob didn’t show much emotion.

About three months after this happened, my family and I were preparing to make our move back to Slovakia. I couldn’t leave however, without saying goodbye to Kate and her family. I went to their house and knocked on their door. I thought about packing and everything else that comes with moving overseas. My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Lucie, Kate’s mom. She opened the door and gave me a big welcoming smile and warm hug, inviting me inside. We sat down in the living room and began to chat. “The first thing I want to say is thank you from the bottom of my heart Andrea for the story you told Kate. It brought me a completely different outlook on God and our whole situation.” Lucie wiped her tears as she finished the sentence. “Don’t thank me” I said, “Thank God – I simply delivered you the letter from him.” Lucie smiled at my words. Just then my focus turned to the movement in the room that was directly across the living room. I stood up and walked toward the room. Directly in my view was one half of a couch. The other half was blocked off by a wooden gate (something you would use to childproof a home) . This was Jacobs’s room. He was sitting on the bed with a blank, soulless look on his face, staring into space. I walked closer to the gate and said hi to him. When he registered an unknown voice I felt him become uneasy and a bit nervous. I tried to calm him by talking to him. I said: “Don’t worry Jacob. I’m just a friend of your mom and sister Kate. I just want to tell you that you can let me know anything you want even if it’s just a message to your mom. I also want you to know that I will understand you.” At this point, Jacob uneasiness heightened, and I thought I would give him space., I went to sit down on the couch. However, after a while Jacob stood up and came to the gate where he stayed still for a few moments until Lucie decided to let him into the living room to sit with us. At the same time I began to catch some information that Jacob was signaling to me and I started to describe them to Lucie: “Jacob says how much he loves being around kids. He showed me the facility he visits. He also loves to draw and paint.” Lucie looked at me surprisingly, stood up from the couch and brought me a picture of the American Flag that was hung on their fireplace. “Jacob painted this” – Lucie commented. “Jacob is also telling me how much he loves being outside in the sunshine”. By this point, Lucie’s face had become less surprised as she agreed: “Yes, he loves spending time outside, but we can only go out after the sun has set. The medications he takes are very sunlight sensitive and could expose him to possible seizures. His doctor recommends that he stay out of direct sunlight.” Jacob continued to ‘speak’ to me, only this time it was a direct message for his mom. “Mom, please don’t be sad. Please don’t worry about me. I’m okay. I want you to know that I chose this path and I don’t want you to spend endless amounts of money on treatments or experiments in order to help me. I really don’t need it.” Right after, he turned around and walked into the kitchen. Lucie, filled with emotion, couldn’t hold back her tears. She lost sight of Jacob however, fearing that he would fall or hurt himself. His body was stick thin and frail. His movement quite uneasy. Kate was sitting in the kitchen at the time, listening quietly to our conversation, when she saw her brother coming into the kitchen. She slowly got up to follow him. Jacob took an unexpected turn and headed toward the hallway that was behind the kitchen. The hallway led to the rest of the rooms in the house. Lucie stood there in shock. She couldn’t do anything but hold her face, with her mouth wide open. Kate had the same look on her face. At the time, I didn’t know what was happening until they later explained it to me. Lucie had told me that in his twenty five years of life, Jacob had never visited the back rooms in the house. This had been the first time he did anything like this. While I was surprised, I knew that this was his way of communicating that he understands me, just as I had understood him. It was a surprising and beautiful feeling, that everything is possible under God, and that our mind is limitless. Yet we humans always put limits to everything. For God, nothing is impossible and when we start to believe in it as well, God will gradually uncover other possibilities in our lives. The day I left Lucie’s home, I remember falling asleep with an unexplainably beautiful feeling of God’s presence and his miracles that hide themselves even in the smallest things. If you really want to find God, you have to look for him everywhere and in everything. Look for him in our life, in our surroundings, in different situations that may present themselves to us. Primarily find him in ourselves because God is everywhere and His name love….
Some years later after we moved from the United States. I found out another element about the story. Jessie, who was Jacob’s younger brother, had married a young girl that had twin boys from her previous marriage and later they had a baby girl together. In the end, he really got his big and happy family, the one that Jacob wished for him to have when they were still only angels in heaven.

(Names of the actual characters in the story were changed in order to protect their privacy and identity)

Source cover photo: pinterest.com