Happy Birthday From the Great Beyond

I often play a game called “challenge/opportunity” with my clients. They’ll come to me with a litany of things that have gone wrong. I work with them to see the opportunities that came with the challenges. That usually turns their attitude around.

And they invariably say to me “Why couldn’t I see that in the first place?”

The reason is simple: we make a habit of reacting, rather than responding. Something happens to us, and we immediately deal with the situation from the usual practice, from fight-or-flight mechanisms, or from fear.

If we take a moment to merely observe, and then ask ourselves questions about the situation we face, our response can be different from the knee-jerk reaction.

And that can open you up to miracles unexpected.

Being open to new responses can have miraculous results.

I’ve spoken in my article on relationships about my marriage (and divorce) from my former husband, Rich.

But now I’m going to tell you what happened afterward.

Rich — or as he was known in the SCA, Cai de Lyon.

When he decided he was done being married — he was moving to California and I was distinctly not invited — I spent three weeks playing the Wounded Wife, because that’s who I thought I was supposed to be.

When I stopped and asked myself what I truly wanted, it was to keep my friend. So I went from reaction to response, telling him that if that’s what he wanted, I wouldn’t stop him — but I wanted to keep my friendship with him no matter what happened.

From that point on, the divorce was amicable, with everything done above-board and honestly.

We did indeed stay friends. We always sent each other birthday cards.

And when he died unexpectedly fifteen years later, I received an unimaginable gift.

In an old Spiritualist church, I received a miraculous message.

Five months after his death, a week before my birthday, I was lecturing at a Spiritualist church in Rochester NY. It was “rookie day,” when people who were just learning to give messages were allowed to deliver what they were getting.

Spiritualist giving a message.

A woman stood up, clearly nervous, and said, “Reverend Corbie, may I come to you?” (That is the formal greeting when a Spiritualist has a message for someone.)

I nodded.

She closed her eyes and said in a rush, “I’m getting a big man, he kind of looks like Santa Claus but younger, and he’s in a red t-shirt and shorts and sandals and he has glasses and he’s holding a cat that looks like a Siamese only it’s long-haired and he’s making it wave at you and he’s blowing you kisses!”

By the end of her message she was in tears, clearly believing we’d all find her (and her message) nuts.

But not me. I laughed, and I nodded.

He even brought our first cat, Kaiser Wilhelm, to say hello.

That was most definitely Rich: the style of his hair and beard, the red t-shirt that I had given him, the shorts and sandals that were his everyday California uniform. The cat in his arms was our Himalayan boy, Kaiser Wilhelm, who was our first pet together. And the blowing of kisses was clearly his sending Happy Birthday wishes from the Great Beyond.

If I had stayed with the game of Wounded Wife, we would have long ago lost contact with each other. But because I knew to change my belief? I received a sweet miracle of a Happy-Birthday-from-Heaven that long-ago March afternoon.

Change your mindset by questioning your normal attitudes. Ask, learn to respond rather than react, and watch your world change.