You don’t have to forgive them before they die
Last weekend, as many of you may know, I attended a retreat with my mediumship mentor. I go every season and work on advanced mediumship skills with a group of about 10 other talented mediums.
Our mentor puts us through our paces. He has us connect with spirits under challenging circumstances that include loud distractions or long sessions; he has us connect with specific spirits he knows well and read for volunteers who intentionally ask us difficult questions. We work in front of large audiences of strangers and with each other who we know intimately.
It’s all in service of Spirit - we serve despite fatigue and distractions and bring through messages to support the spiritual evolution of our sitters.
Moat often, our sitters over these weekends are one another. So, our friends, lovers, family members, and acquaintances come through from Spirit over and over again. This means we all grow exponentially, if we are willing to work through the relationships with these spirit people who we once knew on earth.
Last weekend, a former boyfriend of mine came through about 5 times to different mediums.
He’d show different identifying details like motorcycle gloves or his long curly hair or his black boots or our trip to see penguins in New Zealand.
It was like a bad joke, “I’ll come back to haunt you! “ The whole class was laughing by the end of the weekend as he came through to haunt me again and again.
Every message he had for me was full of attitude, arrogant sexiness, and bad-boy jokes. But every time, he also had a message of peace - a dove, a thank you, or a compliment.
I asked him to go away but he didn’t.
So, on the final day of our retreat during the final exercise, I asked my partner to bring him through. I wanted to get to the bottom of all this - it was funny but at the same time uncomfortable because his visits had been bringing up feelings and memories I’d long forgotten.
The relationship between Phil and I had been very volatile. He had been 38 and I, 22. I had just returned from backpacking around the world when we met - an attempt to assert my independence from an abusive, controlling family unit - especially my father, who had been sexually inappropriate.
Phil was freshly separated from his wife, who was living on the other side of Australia from us.
As you can imagine, our issues smashed into one another hard.
I was pushing and pulling around sex. He was pushing and pulling around devotion. We were both drinking hard and trying to love one another hard, as well. He liked my dreadlocks and my body. I liked his motorbike and his sports car.
I tried to teach him compassion. He tried to teach me compromise. He wanted impulsivity. I wanted kindness.
He bore the brunt of my anguish as I began to face the beginning of healing from my familial abuse. We travelled through Central America for a few months and then I decided I was ready for NYC.
I got into a cab in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the driver said, “boyfriend? You’re leaving him?” I guess it was written all over us.
He showed up in NYC unexpectedly a few months later, asking me to marry him. It was too late - I was partying it up with my new acting friends and planning movie stardom.
The next time we met was after he had passed into Spirit. A medium described his boots to me. I had never heard from him after he had left our dinner table in NYC and I had no idea he had since passed over.
The next medium to bring him through was a few years later, she told me he had gone to sleep after drinking his usual scotch and taking his usual Valium and had not woken up.
And now here I was, another few years later, meeting him again.
I asked him why he kept coming through.
He told me, through my fellow medium, that he was here to help.
“OK”, I said, “can you help me connect to Spirit when I have a client?”
He said I didn’t need him for that.
“Could you help me meet my life partner?“
The medium told me that he laughed hard at that and said, “no way!”
“So what - then? Why are you here?”
He said, “I’m here to help you. You are bringing me through. If you want me to go away, I will.”
All at once I realized it was true - we do create all of our experiences. I was telling myself I didn’t want to hear from him, but my higher self knew the truth. I did want him to come through because I had unfinished business with him. In the instant that I accepted that I was creating this experience for myself, I was able to forgive him for hurting me back then, and then to be grateful for him showing me what I needed to heal to evolve spiritually into serenity.
As we say in Spiritualism: The door to reformation is never closed in the here or hereafter.
Phil had evolved on the other side and had come back with an open heart to allow me to forgive him and in so doing, to forgive myself for those shortcomings I was acting out at the time with him.
You don’t have to forgive anyone before they die. There’s always time; infinite time. You don’t need to feel guilty about not contacting abusive family members or former spouses. You don’t have to feel guilty about not being there when they die; you don’t have to feel guilty about anything. You don’t have to remain stuck in resentment or fear or anything else.
The Universe is at our service. Spirit is at our service.
Why not schedule a reading with me and see who Spirit brings to us? You may be provided the opportunity to dissolve some feelings and memories, clarify thoughts, and heal the past. It’s never too much, I promise; it’s always exactly right. And I will be there with you all the way.
With much love,
Reverend Steph