A Very Special Mission

In the aftermath of Teghan Alyssa Skiba’s senseless death, people are shaking their heads. http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=7564831
Whenever a child dies, many wonder why such young lives are prematurely ripped away rather than given the opportunity to live out their full existence on this earth. Whether it is because of an accident, disease, or even murder as in the case of little Teghan, the death of someone young is always a hard one to accept. It is common to hear people discredit a Higher Power and think that if a God truly exists He would not allow people to suffer and children to die.

But what if this the short time they have lived was the entire amount of time a soul was allotted for this earthly trip? What if their mission was only one of support for other souls?

In my personal set of beliefs, I think that we are born with a specific purpose, which will help us learn some of the lessons our soul needs to master before evolving. Each soul may have fewer or more lessons to learn than others, and that – along with the time needed to produce the right situations – determines the length of our stay. Once we pass on, we review what we have learned, and the lessons we haven’t mastered will have to be repeated again. Some souls reach the point of having mastered all the fundamental lessons, and it is up to them if they want to remain within the realms of light or go back to be a support system for the souls that still have to learn more.

Most of the young people who pass away are usually described as extremely loving and peaceful, and their brief stay is an undeniable gift to those who have been fortunate enough to have them in their lives, if only for a short while. There is no telling what kind of lessons they are supporting, but their presence will always leave a strong mark. They are angels who take the time to come down, and mingle with us for a breath of time, to make sure that other souls can learn to fly a little bit higher.

The Window

(Painting by Pam Scarboro)


Someone sent me this by e-mail, and I just had to post it. Have a wonderful day, everybody.

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood.

The first morning in the new house, while she is eating breakfast with her husband, the young woman watches her neighbor hang the laundry outside to dry.

Pointing her finger at some visible stains on the freshly laundered garments, the woman tells her husband: “Perhaps she needs better laundry soap.”

Her husband looks on, but remains silent.

From that day on, every time she sees her neighbor hang her wash to dry, the young woman continues to make the same comments.

A month later, the woman is surprised to see sparkly clean sheets on the line, and says to her husband: “Look! She has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder what changed.”

The husband says: “I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows!”

And so it is with life: What we see when watching others depends on the purity of the window through which we look. Before we give any criticism, it might be a good idea to ask ourselves if we are ready to see the good, rather than look for something in the person we are about to judge.

The Devil's Drop

After promising our children that we would spend the day at a water park, my husband and I got up early and got everything together, only to find out upon calling that the water park we had planned to go to was no longer open. Not exactly excited at the thought of driving the hour and a half necessary to reach the one in Greensboro, but even more unwilling to listen to the kids complain the rest of the day, we decided to bite the bullet and face the long drive. Since everything was already prepared, and the kids were very excited from the moment we woke them up with news of the trip, we were on the road within thirty minutes.

When we arrived, we took one quick tour to identify the coolest attractions, and Morgan immediately had her heart set on a new 40-foot slide, completely vertical, called “The Devil’s Drop.” Just looking at it made me dizzy, and I was positive she would turn around the moment she got up to the top. Ha! I was in for a good surprise…Morgan went up, dad following right behind; she reached the top and stood up there like a star ready to receive a standing ovation. She grinned and lay down, and once the bar was lifted, flying down she went. I expected to see her upset by the time reached the bottom, but once again my assumption was wrong. When her little body finally came to a stop, she sat up and looked radiant. Dad, on the other hand, came down like a bullet shot by a beginner, and banged elbows and knees he didn’t even know he had; never mind the fact that his neck and back were also sore by the time he finally stopped at the bottom.

When we left the slide, I asked her what she thought of it and if she was scared. Her answer made me smile: “Well, I was a little bit scared when I first lay down, but when I began to speed, I just closed my eyes and pretended I was flying.” She went on to tell me how wonderful it felt to just be taken away, and how she just surrendered to the water and the speed with no care in the world. Dad, instead, admitted that when he took one look he could just imagine the pile his bones would make at the bottom of the drop, if something went wrong, and went down fearing the worst. Because of it, his body remained stiff, and the hard, unforgiving slide did the rest.

Much of what we experience is strongly related to the way we approach it. When fear gets in the way, we instinctually brace for the worst, and our ‘stiffness’ brings us more damage than we would encounter if we allowed ourselves to ride the wave and let it carry us to destination. Faith is a great remedy against fear – as long as we ‘know’ we are going to be alright, most likely we will be, for most of the damage along the ride is rarely caused by external sources, but rather by our own apprehension and hesitation.

In this case, Morgan knew the ride was safe, even if at first look it was easy to think otherwise; dad, instead, invested too much energy into worrying about the ‘ifs’ and the ‘maybes’ that COULD have occurred, even if the chance they would was extremely low. Worry, someone said, is interest paid on a loan you might never receive, but sometimes it is even worse: Afraid to get hurt, we might forfeit the chance to live life at its fullest.