I was thinking today of what I have learned from my experiences of spirit since my loved ones died.....and I decided to write them here. I hope these things will be helpful, comforting, or perhaps just food for thought. I've decided to put them in bullet points to make them easier to read.

1. The Powers of Heaven: ( God, Jesus, our deceased loved ones, the collective consciousness, and/or our higher selves) know what is coming before we do....and we are given help and prepared beforehand. We will have preparatory thoughts, feelings, promptings and experiences that we will often remember later with a new perspective after we have been through the loss or hardship.

2. Our deceased loved ones (especially those recently departed who we grieve for most acutely) are with us in a very real sense. They help us by bringing peace and comfort when we need it the most. They prompt us to "know" or do things that are important. I felt prompted to take the life insurance money OUT of the stock market just before it fell in 2008. My recently deceased husband was still taking care of us! They help us remember the good times to give us hope. I have felt my husband or son's very real "right there" presence on many occasions...in the car, places we went together, the house; I have even felt my husband's presence next to me where he slept on our bed.

3. Our deceased loved one's personalities are intact! They are still the wonderful, funny, kind, goofy....whatever people they were in life! They miss us too....but because their perspective is very different where they are, they know how brief the missing really is.

4. They want more than anything for us to be happy...to get on with life, and to "focus on the living". The reason I put that phrase into quotation marks is because it is a phrase that came to me from my Son Jimmy in the weeks after he died. I was absolutely devastated at his death at 18, and spent a lot of that summer in my bed. I had a three year old and three other children in their teens who needed me. He prompted me to get up and take care of, and "focus" on the other children.

5. Our deceased loved ones have "lives" on the other side...at some point or another they will turn their attentions elsewhere. This does NOT mean they aren't still VERY close. They will be right at your side if and when you need them to be.

6. One of the hardest things I've come to realize since my loved ones have died...especially after having so many beautiful and sustaining experiences of spirit; is that the spiritual "visits" that are so brief, yet so transcendent; do not come just because I want them to. I cannot "will" them to come to comfort me or give me a sign. I can't pray them to me, beg them to me, or cajole or plead them to me. They come when they come. It is not under my control as far as I can tell. They come to fulfill a purpose...and this purpose is known only to the powers of heaven, and initiated by them. They KNOW what we need, how we feel and how much we are hurting.

7. They will not get in the way of our will. I have learned this one the hard way. I have felt "prompted" or warned about a couple of things but did not listen. Because I am hard-headed and headstrong; I sometimes have to do things my own way and pay the price.

8. This is the last one for now....but the MOST important. I have learned that LOVE is eternal, it is the "Tie that Binds" us together. Our relationships and love endure....they have always been, and will always be. It isn't our religious beliefs that determine where we end up; or who we end up with....its the quality of the love we show to one another.