Hello From Heaven

In my June 8 post, Waving Goodbye on the Way to Heaven, I wrote about the sign I asked my mother to send me weeks before she died and my experience moments after her death. In this blog post, I will share pictures from other experiences I’ve had since then and the stories that go with them.

Angels and Saints

In 2015, we spent part of our summer vacation in Boston. Christy and I visited a few years earlier and wanted to share the history, culture and food we discovered on that trip with our daughter, Courtney. My mother passed on the history nerd gene to me which I passed onto Courtney and what better city to nerd out in than Boston!

We spent one evening walking around the North End. The North End is home to great Italian restaurants, the best pizza I’ve ever had at Regina Pizzeria and Mike’s Pastry where they make every cannoli flavor imaginable.

After a day of sightseeing and an evening of walking, Christy was winded and struggling a bit. We stopped walking so she could rest. As I admired the beautiful courtyard of the Catholic church we paused in front of I turned to my daughter and asked “Do you want to inside?” She looked at me with a smile and off we went.

As we took in the beautiful interior and made our way to an area along a wall where there were a few statues of saints and beneath their feet a tiered display of votive candles. One of the statues happened to be my mother’s favorite saint, Saint Theresa of Lisieux, also known as The Little Flower. A picture of St. Theresa sat on my mother’s nightstand for as long as I could remember. When she died, I took it with me and placed it on Christy’s nightstand where it sits today.

Growing up Catholic, I partook in the tradition of lighting prayer candles and praying to saints to intercede with God on my behalf. I explained this practice to Courtney, sharing her grandmother’s veneration for St. Theresa. I knelt in front of the bank of candles below St. Theresa’s feet, lit a candle and spoke aloud to her and my mother. I asked for healing for Christy.

We left the church and when we got to the sidewalk, Courtney walked over to Christy. I wanted a picture of the courtyard and walked in the opposite direction to frame my shot on my iPhone. As my iPhone adjusted to the lighting before activating the shutter, I saw a light come out of the church. It appeared to be racing toward me. It looked like the light a 4th of July sparkler when swirled around. CLICK. CLICK. I hurried over to Christy and Courtney marveling at the images on my phone screen of the white oval surround by a pinkish magenta shell.

Orbs: Spirits, Anomalies or Afterlife?

I had seen other orbs before the white oval surrounded by pink magenta came racing out of the Boston church, but that orb was my first experience with one I could relate to my own life.

There are various theories and beliefs as to what these orbs really are: spirits, angels, paranormal activity and the skeptic’s rationale that they are no more than particles of dust or lighting anomalies caught by the camera. I’ve included a link in this paragraph to a recent article that touches on the many theories. For the interested reader, there are books, websites and Facebook pages devoted to the topic.

Family Reunion

Christy and I owned our own homes when we met. Part of bringing our lives together was to have a home that was ours. In the beginning of 2011, our builder broke ground on our dream home that affectionately became known as The Resort. I drove the short 10 minutes from my house each week while our new home was under construction to take picture and document the transformation of a plot of land once overgrown with grass and weeds and untamed oaks and hickory trees. Christy hit the road in the spring for work and was gone for weeks at a time. I’d text her pictures each week. When she was home on infrequent breaks in the tournament schedule, a trip to the construction site was always on her list of “to dos”.

During one of our visit to check out the construction progress, my father, my aunt and uncle joined us. Christy took pictures while we toured the interior. Later, when we looked at them, we realized others joined us as well.

In the second photo taken from the opposite side of the room from the first photo, two orbs are more prominent than the other orbs. One is closer in frame with what appears to be some imagine inside of it. The other is suspended inside the wine bar. If these orbs represented loved ones, these two orbs must have been our mother’s who passed away within a month of each other. Both of our mother’s enjoyed a adult beverages, so we weren’t sure which one of them was visiting the bar!

Guardian Angels

A couple of months after seeing the two “Mom orbs” in the house under construction, I snapped a picture of Courtney while she danced in the family room of our home. Two orbs appear in this photo. Were these two orbs which appear similar in nature, the same orbs as the ones that showed up in the home we were building? Courtney believes her grandmother is her guardian angel and has had her experiences involving my mother.

Signs From the Other Side

This post is about experiences I had – past tense. I continue – present tense – to experience and see things that are either profound or purely coincidental. The Doubting Thomas believer in me grasps at the profound and the agnostic skeptic in me discounts things and explains away the coincidental. These two part of my being behave like magnets pushed together, resisting and spinning away from the other.

Am I projecting my hope that there is something beyond this life onto naturally occurring phenomenons? Am I receiving communication from the afterlife? Is God answering my prayers by orchestrating these signs? Whatever the answer, I hope these experiences continue and that I will – future tense – experience more of them because they bring me peace and comfort.

Has Christy sent any signs, you ask? Yes, I believe she has given me signs which I will share in a future post.

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