If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years as a psychic reader, it’s that receiving guidance from the Universe is often not the direct path to immediate bliss. For one thing, we’re here to learn certain lessons. Getting the answers in advance is uncool, so it shouldn’t be surprising when we are sent straight into a dark swamp on our path to enlightenment. Many of us have managed to wedge ourselves into some very dark corners through years of less-than-optimal decision making, so while the guidance we receive will always be the best available, that doesn’t mean we won’t have to do a lot of work digging ourselves out.
Sometimes it seems as if our guides specialize in ambiguity. Cards will come up that can mean two completely opposite things. Desperately applying our intellect, we waffle over the signs and symbols or fail to see them at all. Insecurities, fears, denial, past experience, all color our conclusions and hinder our view of the best interpretation.
The story of Ron and Sarah’s (not their real names) wedding is a wonderful example of how ambiguous messages from the beyond can seem:
The year was 1981. Ron was my husband’s first hire at his new management job, and boy, did everyone love him! He was a hard worker, bright, handsome, and extremely personable.
Ron and his wife Sarah were young newlyweds living in her late grandmother’s 80-year-old house. Acutely psychic, Sarah was very aware of her grandmother’s presence. She was tortured by her psychic sensitivities, and was very fearful of her encounters with the other side. While visiting us, she nervously told us about the presence of a friendly spirit in our 100-year-old apartment who she said was watching out for us.
Noting our interest in such spiritual matters, Sarah and Ron then excitedly related the dramatic story of their wedding day. Both their mothers had passed away long before the young couple met, and the maternal absence was expected to be keenly felt at the wedding. Both bride and groom were very sad that their mothers would not be there to experience this all-important, life-altering event, and their absence was the subject of much sighing and regret.
The day of the wedding was predicted to be partly sunny with a chance of a late-day sprinkle, and as the hour of their nuptials approached, the sky was clear, blue and gorgeous. As the guests finished filing into the small church, a hint of clouds began to form on the horizon and the breeze stiffened – but nothing to explain what happened next.
The young couple met at the altar and began to recite their vows. Just as they began to say “I do,” the sky suddenly became utterly black. The mother of all storms spontaneously erupted overhead. A huge thunderclap drowned out their vows, a horrific downpour rattled everyone’s eardrums, and the wind became a howling monster, flinging the church doors open, tossing flowers about the room, even knocking the heavy altar cross to the floor.
Shocked and scrambling to grab errant skirts and veils, the wedding party collected themselves and the ceremony was eventually resumed. Even as the final benediction was being pronounced, the wind stopped, the sun began to shine brightly, and the sky was clear blue once again. (I should mention to those readers living in tornado country that this was in southern New York, where mild temperatures with light winds was then the norm, and where even today such freak storms are still virtually unknown.)
Everyone poured out of the church into the brilliant afternoon sunshine to discover several enormously heavy concrete barriers had been overturned, a remarkable sight in a place where winds over 40 mph were almost unheard of.
Ron and Sarah confessed themselves speechless with excitement over these events. The timing and the drama convinced them that this was no ordinary storm – they were 100% positive this was a message from their mothers, acknowledging their wedding vows.
As they reached this part of their tale, I became uneasy. A little voice in my head said, Gee, this doesn’t sound good at all. I wonder where they’re going with this?
They proudly explained that this was a sign from above indicating approval of their nuptials, their mothers expressing pleasure in the event and bringing them the comforting knowledge that they were present for the ceremony.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t think the events aligned with this interpretation. I kept my mouth shut anyway. What was I going to say – Hey guys, it sounds to me like they DISAPPROVE of your marriage? And who was I to tell anyone what their dead mom was saying, anyway? (Especially 30+ years ago, before I became a professional psychic medium.)
The years passed. Sarah gave birth to three, high-energy little boys less than 18 months apart. The youngest child was discovered to be deaf, and this disability added significantly to the financial and logistical burdens on their growing family. My husband reported that Ron was frequently to be seen in the company of a single female manager in the next department, and everyone was quite sure they were having an affair. This was the second suspected affair in as many years; Ron had been previously observed conducting a passionate interlude with a mutual friend’s wife.
Eventually, their marriage imploded. Ron moved in with his comfortably-off, childless amour, and Sarah was left alone to raise three boys under the age of six, one disabled, with little help and even less money. With no work history and no income other than the limited child support assessed on Ron’s middling earnings, her life was less than idyllic.
I ran into Sarah at the supermarket a year or so later. Quite a beauty when I first met her, she now looked exhausted, thin and unhappy. She shook her head with an embarrassed look, saying only, “He fooled all of us.” Just watching the three children climbing around the shopping cart exhausted me; I had two active boys of about the same age, and I could guess how hard her life must be.
I don’t know how Sarah’s story turned out; that was the last time I ever saw her. But I never forgot the dramatic and very public meltdown of her fairy-tale marriage, the three little boys caught up in the consequences, and the odd story of its portentous beginnings
The story of Ron and Sarah’s (not their real names) wedding is a wonderful example of how ambiguous messages from the beyond can seem:
The year was 1981. Ron was my husband’s first hire at his new management job, and boy, did everyone love him! He was a hard worker, bright, handsome, and extremely personable.
Ron and his wife Sarah were young newlyweds living in her late grandmother’s 80-year-old house. Acutely psychic, Sarah was very aware of her grandmother’s presence. She was tortured by her psychic sensitivities, and was very fearful of her encounters with the other side. While visiting us, she nervously told us about the presence of a friendly spirit in our 100-year-old apartment who she said was watching out for us.
Noting our interest in such spiritual matters, Sarah and Ron then excitedly related the dramatic story of their wedding day. Both their mothers had passed away long before the young couple met, and the maternal absence was expected to be keenly felt at the wedding. Both bride and groom were very sad that their mothers would not be there to experience this all-important, life-altering event, and their absence was the subject of much sighing and regret.
The day of the wedding was predicted to be partly sunny with a chance of a late-day sprinkle, and as the hour of their nuptials approached, the sky was clear, blue and gorgeous. As the guests finished filing into the small church, a hint of clouds began to form on the horizon and the breeze stiffened – but nothing to explain what happened next.
The young couple met at the altar and began to recite their vows. Just as they began to say “I do,” the sky suddenly became utterly black. The mother of all storms spontaneously erupted overhead. A huge thunderclap drowned out their vows, a horrific downpour rattled everyone’s eardrums, and the wind became a howling monster, flinging the church doors open, tossing flowers about the room, even knocking the heavy altar cross to the floor.
Shocked and scrambling to grab errant skirts and veils, the wedding party collected themselves and the ceremony was eventually resumed. Even as the final benediction was being pronounced, the wind stopped, the sun began to shine brightly, and the sky was clear blue once again. (I should mention to those readers living in tornado country that this was in southern New York, where mild temperatures with light winds was then the norm, and where even today such freak storms are still virtually unknown.)
Everyone poured out of the church into the brilliant afternoon sunshine to discover several enormously heavy concrete barriers had been overturned, a remarkable sight in a place where winds over 40 mph were almost unheard of.
Ron and Sarah confessed themselves speechless with excitement over these events. The timing and the drama convinced them that this was no ordinary storm – they were 100% positive this was a message from their mothers, acknowledging their wedding vows.
As they reached this part of their tale, I became uneasy. A little voice in my head said, Gee, this doesn’t sound good at all. I wonder where they’re going with this?
They proudly explained that this was a sign from above indicating approval of their nuptials, their mothers expressing pleasure in the event and bringing them the comforting knowledge that they were present for the ceremony.
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t think the events aligned with this interpretation. I kept my mouth shut anyway. What was I going to say – Hey guys, it sounds to me like they DISAPPROVE of your marriage? And who was I to tell anyone what their dead mom was saying, anyway? (Especially 30+ years ago, before I became a professional psychic medium.)
The years passed. Sarah gave birth to three, high-energy little boys less than 18 months apart. The youngest child was discovered to be deaf, and this disability added significantly to the financial and logistical burdens on their growing family. My husband reported that Ron was frequently to be seen in the company of a single female manager in the next department, and everyone was quite sure they were having an affair. This was the second suspected affair in as many years; Ron had been previously observed conducting a passionate interlude with a mutual friend’s wife.
Eventually, their marriage imploded. Ron moved in with his comfortably-off, childless amour, and Sarah was left alone to raise three boys under the age of six, one disabled, with little help and even less money. With no work history and no income other than the limited child support assessed on Ron’s middling earnings, her life was less than idyllic.
I ran into Sarah at the supermarket a year or so later. Quite a beauty when I first met her, she now looked exhausted, thin and unhappy. She shook her head with an embarrassed look, saying only, “He fooled all of us.” Just watching the three children climbing around the shopping cart exhausted me; I had two active boys of about the same age, and I could guess how hard her life must be.
I don’t know how Sarah’s story turned out; that was the last time I ever saw her. But I never forgot the dramatic and very public meltdown of her fairy-tale marriage, the three little boys caught up in the consequences, and the odd story of its portentous beginnings
It is, of course, easy for us to judge the situation in hindsight. After hearing the dramatic story of their wedding I felt uneasy, but the unhappy outcome I witnessed was still many years in the future. It is simple to say now, “Wow, someone was sure unhappy about that marriage!” But would any of us have chosen that interpretation of events in the middle of our wedding day?
Of course, the outcome I saw was not the totality of Sarah’s life. For all I know, the next week she met a lovely man with a great job who adored children and they lived happily ever after – or something!
Signs and symbols appear in all forms and can mean many things to many people. Ron and Sarah believed in their fairy-tale romance, so they saw what they wanted to see. It’s likely they had to see it that way, on that day of all days. I had no emotional investment in their marriage, so I saw something a little different. There is nothing to say that I was right and they were wrong. Many, many other interpretations could be offered – and of course, sometimes, just maybe, a storm is just a storm.
The sense of doom implied in that terrible storm may or may not be obvious in retrospect, but the drama of it makes me wonder how many smaller portents they both missed as they made their plans. Or maybe not. Perhaps they were supposed to experience exactly what they both experienced, and the storm was an early lesson in how to read portents. Or something less silly and far subtler than that.
Alternative possibilities abound, and perhaps they are all being played out in the infinite parallel universes implied by string theory. Our guides, our higher selves, our angels, our deceased loved ones, the entirety of the Universe, constantly feed us data, and like antennas we are constantly picking up on the signals. The only questions are: Do we take notice of the signals? And do we act on them once we perceive them? It’s ultimately pretty simple.
Postscript: As a tarot reader and a psychic medium, it is my job to try to help clients understand the messages their loved ones, angels and guides are trying to send them. As this story illustrates, it can be very hard to be objective about our own lives and choices. That is why hiring a psychic – me, or another reputable one – is sometimes the best way to interpret the signals we are receiving. Even then, the path is fraught with peril, since we often choose not to listen to any advice that contradicts what we want to hear. And that’s okay, because that’s exactly how we learn our life lessons!
Of course, the outcome I saw was not the totality of Sarah’s life. For all I know, the next week she met a lovely man with a great job who adored children and they lived happily ever after – or something!
Signs and symbols appear in all forms and can mean many things to many people. Ron and Sarah believed in their fairy-tale romance, so they saw what they wanted to see. It’s likely they had to see it that way, on that day of all days. I had no emotional investment in their marriage, so I saw something a little different. There is nothing to say that I was right and they were wrong. Many, many other interpretations could be offered – and of course, sometimes, just maybe, a storm is just a storm.
The sense of doom implied in that terrible storm may or may not be obvious in retrospect, but the drama of it makes me wonder how many smaller portents they both missed as they made their plans. Or maybe not. Perhaps they were supposed to experience exactly what they both experienced, and the storm was an early lesson in how to read portents. Or something less silly and far subtler than that.
Alternative possibilities abound, and perhaps they are all being played out in the infinite parallel universes implied by string theory. Our guides, our higher selves, our angels, our deceased loved ones, the entirety of the Universe, constantly feed us data, and like antennas we are constantly picking up on the signals. The only questions are: Do we take notice of the signals? And do we act on them once we perceive them? It’s ultimately pretty simple.
Postscript: As a tarot reader and a psychic medium, it is my job to try to help clients understand the messages their loved ones, angels and guides are trying to send them. As this story illustrates, it can be very hard to be objective about our own lives and choices. That is why hiring a psychic – me, or another reputable one – is sometimes the best way to interpret the signals we are receiving. Even then, the path is fraught with peril, since we often choose not to listen to any advice that contradicts what we want to hear. And that’s okay, because that’s exactly how we learn our life lessons!
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