How God Shows Up

Something is Lost. Someone has suddenly disappeared. The lost person is my daughter. Her body died and I don’t know where to find her. I spent years of asking and searching for her; sometimes out loud, sometimes in my writing and always within. “What happened?” I asked. “How did I let this occur to my sweet daughter? How did I miss not taking care of her when she needed me?” I ask myself and my God — whoever is listening in there, “Emily, where are you?” I hear, “God only knows”… that feels like a bit of sarcasm from my childhood. I heard that phrase many times from my family as I grew up. It showed up when something being questioned seemed unanswerable. “God Only Knows” would be spoken as one gave up a quest for answers. But now I say, “OK God, since you are the One who knows, please show me.” I say, “I need you to take me to her. I need to see her one more time.” Silence. There is only Silence. I get louder, “Where is she God? I’m her Mom! It’s my job to take care of her. You gave me this job and I love having it. You brought her to me, Lord, and gave me all this loving and joy with the gift and miracle of her life. What Now? Now, What? !! What is this God? What more do you want from me?” I felt broken and lost. I lost my favorite job: employed by God. The rug that held my feet had just been pulled out from under me. How do I stand up when I feel so taken apart? Where do I turn? How do I see and find my way? My mind and body are filled with confusion and a numbness renders me dysfunctional. From unspoken fears and guilt, the tears roll unceasingly! My searching began in the despairing silence of God’s voice. Yes, my story is waiting to be told. The healing and writing it down has now taken years. Many times it was initiated and spoken of, but I have come to a place now that I can embrace my experience with gratitude for my own life that continued after the sudden death of my daughter, Emily. I can now write the story, knowing that I want to share it with the purpose of expanding my gratitude for all of the ways a Loving Spirit ultimately shows up and offers support and caring to all those who have gone or need to go through that valley of death of a child. Death is a treacherous conviction with an irreversible ending, but I refused to accept the unviable sentence of it, particularly with regards to my beautiful and gifted daughter who brought so much joy and loving to this planet and to my life. Besides the fact that her life was so very beautiful in so many ways and I was unwilling to give it up, I had to deal with the huge gap of reality that she was no longer with me. I was raised, had studied, and chose to believe that life given by God is eternal. I needed to find out how the truth of that actually existed. I am ready to share with you the ways of that realization and how I came to find it. I have received the experience of it in many ways that will be forthcoming, including that writing it down revealed places in me that had not fully accepted my loss and needed healing along the way. Writing the story was like reliving it all over again and visions of lack and loss would come from within to face again. At times, I had to release pain and face loss and fear to regain stability before I could once again look at the paper. So now, herein are my writings of finding and knowing, from my own experience, that my daughter lives as I live though not physically in this body, she has shown up as very real and alive within me. She came as my teacher as we all are to each other, but I knew she was a particular teacher for me when her sweet spirit came in on the day of her birth June 1, 1972. Yes, my story is waiting to be told. In fact, you are the witness of my process and for that I am grateful. I ask for this witness from you and from all those Souls and beings from the other side of this physical life to assist me and be with me on this journey. For that I am also in deep gratitude. I am grate-full for finding the presence of my Soul’s journey, that I might also be more awake and fully aware of how this presence within me and within all of us is truly the place for finding this eternal life. Saying and reading the scriptures to believe is one thing, but practicing the knowing of it and the practical living of it as a life-giving entity with all of its dimensions is another.