Lynn Willoughby

It was 1:30 a.m., and she couldn’t sleep. Shannon switched on the light. The book on clairvoyance that she’d ordered from Amazon lay on the night table. She’d only half-heartedly ordered the book, more to support her friend, the author (yes, that would be me), than to learn how to develop her intuition. But with nothing better to do in the middle of the night, she decided to try the first exercise.

The directions said to imagine a plant, any plant, and she would later learn why. Shannon closed her eyes and imagined . . . a cactus? Yes, this life-long resident of Indianapolis saw with her mind’s eye a desert cactus. Surely she was doing something wrong because this plant was not in the least extraordinary, just a bland shade of green with some prickly parts.

The book directed her to look again and see if there was anything unusual about the plant. That’s when she noticed these whitish “bulbs” hanging on it. That was certainly unusual. She looked back at the book to read what question her intuition had been answering. The question was “How would your life be different if you followed your heart?”

Shannon scratched her weary head. How could this cactus be describing what her life would look like if she merely gave her heart more rein? Those white blobs were especially confounding, but she was too weary to pursue it. She closed the book and went back to sleep.

After she awoke for the second time that Saturday morning, Shannon went shopping for a Christmas present for her boss. With nothing particular in mind, she wandered into a gift shop, hoping that his gift would find her. A few minutes later, she noticed the glass cases holding the precious stones and crystals. One in particular caught her eye. Gray and sparkling and shaped like a cactus, this “South African cactus amethyst” was flecked with white facets. Ah ha! The cactus with the “white blobs” that she had seen with her mind’s eye in the intuition exercise flashed into her mind. Even though her head doubted that her supervisor would appreciate this odd-looking gem, she decided to follow her heart and buy it.

Crystals have been used for centuries because of their healing properties, and many believe they can induce positive changes for both the mind and body. Since different crystals are said to have different properties, she was eager to learn more. At home Shannon googled “cactus amethyst” and discovered this stone is also called “spirit quartz” because it quickens spiritual growth. She also read that the cactus amethyst is “useful in work environments, working in groups, as well as for . . . team-building activities.” Now she understood why this stone was the perfect gift for her boss. Reading further, Shannon also discovered that the cactus amethyst is known to be “extremely helpful in all areas of psychic awareness.”

The year was 1995. I was a history professor in South Carolina, and as a new scholastic year began, I became mysteriously ill. Day after day, I awoke with a burning fever that lasted until noon. My joints ached, and I was perpetually exhausted. It was a struggle just to get dressed and drive myself to work. After I taught my last class of the day, I fell back into bed until morning. A doctor ran a battery of tests, but she found nothing to explain my illness. Even though it was clear to me that the cause must be psychosomatic, my symptoms persisted, and I began to fear I would never get well. Then one morning as I sat in my pajamas at the kitchen table, I wrote in my journal of how I wished I didn’t have to go into teach that day but, instead, could stay home and write. I enjoyed the idea so much, I began to embellish this fantasy of an ideal day, spent wearing comfortable clothes and alternating between writing, taking long walks with my dog, and puttering in my garden.

Something amazing happened as I wrote out this fantasy. My wracked body suddenly came alive. A white-hot energy coursed through my veins and radiated out around me like a halo. This bubbly feeling of euphoria was so starkly different than the way I had been feeling of late that I looked down, half expecting to see my body popping out of my clothes like some great, green hulk. When I saw no physical transformation there, I ran to the bathroom mirror to see if something was happening to my face. Sure enough, my cheeks glowed like they were on fire, and my eyes shone like two blue lasers.

In that instant, I understood what my body had been trying to tell me. Teaching history was killing my spirit. My morning fevers were merely the physical manifestation of the anger I stuffed way down deep because I felt trapped in a profession that I had worked ten long years just to be qualified for. Leaving the university was not only what I wanted to do; it was what I had to do. Tears streamed down my face as I vowed to honor my heart. And with that promise, my illness dissipated.

There is a reason for all those clichés about intuition. We say, “I knew it in my bones,” or “I knew it in my heart.” We say, “I had a feeling this would happen.” Or we say, “I knew it in the very core of my being.” We even say, “My gut told me.”

It’s true. In our bones, in our heart, and in our gut, we really do know things that our brains don’t want to know. At any crossroad, great or small, when I rely for guidance on the tingles or tightness, the aches, or the goose bumps, I can always find my way home.

First thing that Monday morning as I stood with teacup in hand, my eyes focused on the tiny Christmas tree ornament I had set on top of the microwave a few nights before. The package I found lying on my front steps at dusk the previous Friday night was from Michael Queen, a recent intuition student. With it, he had scrawled a note on the back of his business card saying only that the ornament reminded him of me.

So much had happened in the intervening weekend that I had not had a moment to really appreciate it. But in the instant I spotted it that Monday morning, I knew that what Michael had seen in this particular figure, was much more than the trinket it appeared to be at first glance. When Michael gazed at this Christmas ornament, he was looking into my future.

I was already in a happy mood when I spotted Michael’s present that Friday night in the darkness. I had been out playing in the North Carolina woods all day with my new husband John and his grown son Wesley. The day had been a rare treat for two reasons. John and I had taken a rare day off from work, and we were spending it with Wes, whom I had spent little time with since I married his father.

We spent the weekend exploring the western North Carolina mountains and playing board games. When we awoke on Sunday morning, we were shocked to see the ground covered with an unusually early snowfall. By the time the snow had quit falling, five inches of it wrapped the November woods in soft, white scarf of silence. Wes, a native Georgian who had not seen much snow at that point in his life, was the most excited, but his bubbling enthusiasm was contagious. He insisted we build a snowman. John came out with us, but he was never really engaged in the project. Wes and I let the snow tell us what form our statue would take, and it became a Buddha, sitting in full lotus position. As I formed Buddha’s fat cheeks, an obviously western nose, and lopsided Asian eyes, Wes sculpted his arms and hands, which fell stiffly into Buddha’s chubby lap.

Feeling both silly and inspired, Wes and I became completely immersed in our creation. The snowman was ours–stepmother and stepson. That Sunday afternoon as Wes and I sculpted our statue, we also shaped a relationship of light-hearted camaraderie.

Not long after we finished the snowman, Wes hugged me goodbye. With so much going on over the weekend, I had not thought about the gift my intuition student had sent me since I set it down on top of the microwave that Friday night. But Monday morning when my eyes lit on the Christmas ornament that Michael sent, I knew that when he had associated me with this figure, his new-found intuition had zeroed in on more than just the maternal nature I showered on my students. Sitting atop the microwave was a tiny snowman. A snow woman, actually. A snow mother, to be more specific, hugging a little snow boy.