An Avenue for Truth...everyone has one...

It is some 50 years since I first experienced "the knowing."  I was in college and throughout the four years many things became my awareness before the evidence of their reality visited. Suddenly knowing that a suitemate was having a date with my boyfriend, for instance, while I was out of town.  Then, the same with happy things too...but just some sort of awareness would come to me of this or that, and it was just a mystery to me.  But it never bothered me and I never interjected it into my friendships...I just knew something those around me didn't know.  Simple as that.  (And I was a very quiet coed...no one noticed me anyway)

Everyone has an internal avenue for knowing truth...in their gift of compassion, generosity, exhortation, etc....all are ways of truth.  We just understand things better when exercising our gifts...it's like driving on the right side of the road for us.  You my have a gift or generosity, but though I am sometimes very generous, I do not reside there daily and would be like a car in the left lane going the wrong way if I tried to live life there.

Of course there were earlier experiences, but a 12 year old doesn't understand...I just recall this knowing of a presence in my life.  It was deep inside me and unexplainable....always some presence accompanying me everywhere.  Now, I know it was God, but not the God I was taught of...it was the creative/protective/empowering spirit of goodness that is born in little girls. Then with maturity the knowing needs to include all the awarenesses of growing up...not everything in life is pretty or nurturing or fair.  There are the things that are ugly, hurtful, and selfish.  It's all part of the knowing.

I must clarifly; I have never received a knowing for anyone outside the circle of the ones I love most.  I rarely feel danger or threat when out in public.  While working in a private academy, I did become aware of infidelity among the staff.  My husband was amazed because he worked with these people...I didn't!  Information dropped in my lap and two wives confided in me.  Now that was weird...because it was no business of mine. But my husband was pretty innocent by nature, and needed to become aware of what was going on around him.  We happened to be there during a difficult time in the institution's history, and I felt an overwhelming dread everytime I entered the front hallways.  

Also, to further clarify, I don't spend most of my relational time with people in battles over what I know...it comes in seasons when they are truly at risk and can't see it or can't yet accept it.

I am not clairvoyant; neither am I a fortune teller or a physic.  This is not some weird thing in my life.  Over the years I have learned to just accept it.  All women have strong intuitive understandings...but this goes beyond that. 

I recall during the Viet Nam era, when he was away at Navy training, I walked beside his packed clothing box being shipped to his home up north, and as I touched it, I suddenly knew he was not going to be mine very long...I felt the life drain out of me with that touch and a profound sadness overwhelmed me...much more than the sadness that he was away for weeks while in training. The transfer of fear from the touching the box brought a certainty to my heart that I would lose him sooner than later. This knowing became reality.  To this day, I hate the sight of a U-Haul hanging clothes box.

When in my early twenties, I married this wonderful young man...my college sweetheart. Quickly, in the middle of all the young 'in love' stuff and the hopes of making babies, and having wonderful careers, and building dream houses, and all the other things that belong to the period of "We can do anything", we were hit by some hard realities of chronic and life-threatening illness...unidentified for over 9 years.  The Knowing came again.  And often.  I awoke many times over 10 years and went to another room to cry as I'd just awakened from a recurring dream that I stood by his casket, always the exact same dream and I awoke at exactly the same scene.

Honestly, I would never have known how valuable the knowing was until 1983 when my husband became deathly ill.  To help us deal with the threat of death in the middle of a wonderful marriage about to reach its prime, we needed some help. The psychologist suggested the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.  Wow...what awesome knowledge we gained about each other!  What peace it brought as we now understood why I was in tears over the possibility of his impending death and he was cool as a cucumber because he just ignored the threat and kept going (His T (thinking) just ran off the page!)  And in my rather rare INFJ state of mind, the I (intuitive) preference score ran off the other side of the page!  We were certified opposites!  Good to know when facing death.  The death took months, even active months, so I finally understood why the knowing would be one of our greatest assets.

To get to my point quickly, I'll skip all the stories of miracles and heart-breaking stuff that goes with chronic illness.  I'll just say that long before he died, the doctors learned to listen to me because I had some awareness of my husband's condition that trumped their medical data...and they took note! 

Others took note also, and I was asked by one of his bosses just before he died, "Linda, why aren't you assuring us he's ok...you always know? I replied, "Because God isn't telling me this time."  And He wasn't; and I didn't know what was going to happen...I could only wait...without the knowing.  I felt somewhat abandoned without it.  I wanted the knowing that life was assurred, but it never came.

I found my place with God here.  I'm a receptacle for knowing. A behind the scenes person...I care about the people I'm behind...I want to have their backs...protect them from hurts that are seen by me as preventable...because I have the knowing. And the knowing is not an act of emotion (though it can be accompanied by strong emotion) but a simple, direct truth.  And it is private.

Several years later, when a new husband was expressing confusion about me to my minister, he said, "Let me tell you something about Linda."  And he relayed some instances when "even the doctors listen to her!"

All of that was said, now, to say this:  How in the world does one explain such a gift (?), experience (?), phenomenon (?), or sudden appearance of information to anyone else? 

I am thinking about this because I don't want to offend anyone. And how do I use what I KNOW when it is not welcomed?  When knowings that are warnings appear, how can I be at peace when I cannot use them to protect someone I love?  And am I obligated to pass the knowings on? Or do I just use them as urgent calls to intercessory prayer?  How can I explain what I don't, myself, understand?  I have said to people I love, "You can trust what I know...it's been tested many ways.  What I know is my truth."

I have found only one circumstance that messes with my knowing...and it is the withholding of honest and complete information.  Nothing is more painful to someone like me than the withholding of accurate information that would give respect to the knowing.  It is an agony.  

I have made a decision.  If the door opens for me to share, I will.  Otherwise, I'll just keep it to myself and be elated with the happiness I know, or just bleed silently with the pain of warnings of known hurts that will not be heeded.  And I will hope that my gift brings something good to those I love because what is it's value if it doesn't make someone's life better, safer, more beloved and cherished? 

We all have gifts; we all have to decide when and where to allow their use; we all have to be responsible for choosing to be accountable to others.  Generosity, caring, defending, confronting, encouraging...and more...all are legitimate, respect-deserving gifts.  We are all receptacles with the ability to give back what we've received...and for the betterment of those we love. It is necessary to interject here that I, too, accept the responsibility to accept the gifts of others who care about me...with respect for their ways of gifting.  I heed the cautions and encouragements of spiritual friends because I respect their origin…the Creator. 

When I look back over my 70 years, the only pain this gift ever brought into my life was not the knowing, no matter how light or heavy it was...it was the rejection of it that hurt.  Seems to me that this will be the case always.  So, let it be.  Let the shoe drop wherever it does.  Not in careless resolve, but in caring hope.  Set people free...they can reject what I know, and I can bleed for them and me.

And then I try not to forget, people are like little kids...as soon as I reprimanded a busy, fidgety little guy in my classroom because he wasn't listening, he would turn around and quote back to me every word I said!!!  So, maybe the folks I love are listening to my knowings and maybe it does make a difference for good.  I hope so.  And my prayer is that I never mistake my own selfish feelings with the God-gifted knowing.

May you be blessed this day with the satisfaction of exercising your spiritual gifts for the betterment of your corner of this beautiful Universe!  May you be without fear and accompanied by faith and honesty.

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