Whispers to the Willing
:: how God shows up ::
I want to welcome several new subscribers who joined us this week. Glad to have you here! And thank you to a special subscriber who decided to support me through a paid subscription. I appreciate all of you!1
The last two weeks I’ve brought you my experience as a stem cell donor, but this week I’m taking a little break before continuing the story. If you read Part 2 then you understand I’ve just completed the donation process. My brain needed a break, but I promise more is coming!
Walking through some tough stuff during the last couple of months, I’ve found myself sharing with others the extraordinary ways God has been showing up to let me know He’s with me. In turn, I’ve also been tuned in to how others are experiencing Him on their own paths. Sometimes, quite literally.
Snail Mail
Recently my daughter messaged me about some progress she’s making in a certain area of her life. I responded with encouragement that she was moving in the right direction, and she said that taking the first step seemed to be the hardest part.
Twenty minutes later she sent a photo from her morning walk.
FM Radio and Pennies
Another person who’s been talking about God’s breadcrumbs on his path is Randall over at Thanks for Letting Me Share.2 I initially began following Randall’s “Daily Gratitude” posts to understand the perspective of someone in recovery (and, subsequently, be a better support for my son). I’ve become a regular reader/listener because I’ve found so many treasures in that space—including one of his Breakfast with an Alcoholic podcast episodes where he talks about “FM Radio, Pennies, and Listening for the Universe.”
You might be asking, What the heck do FM radio and pennies have to do with God showing up? In a follow-up note to the podcast in Daily Gratitude 7.18.22, Randall writes:
“As a kid, I came to believe that the Universe communicated to me via songs on the radio and later, much later, I came to see pennies I found on the street as little way-finding beacons, breadcrumbs, if you’re old-fashioned.”
Give it a listen and read some of the follow-up Daily Gratitude posts. I think you’ll love how Randall connects with his Higher Power through the seemingly ordinary objects and activities in his world.
Signs and Whispers
Some might call such moments a sign. Others may say God is communicating with them. Or perhaps some occurrences seem to be a signal that everything’s going to be alright.
So precisely what makes something a sign from God?
“Maybe signs don’t require a ton of analysis or back-and-forth internal debate. But rather, an intuition or gut feeling that what you’ve experienced has come from God. And a leap of faith. Even if your sign doesn’t seem like a sign to anyone but you.”3
When you know, you know.
I call these moments “whispers from God.”
I forget where I first heard the phrase, but I do remember the first time I used it. I was in the car with my angsty adolescents. We had just fueled up and were heading to the city for a day of fun, and I was completely done with their bickering. Images of my parents popped in my head: “I’m warning you–don’t make me pull this car over!” or a long arm swatting at us from the driver’s seat were pretty standard scare tactics.
I decided to try a different strategy (my arms are short).
“Listen, y’all4—the Bible says we should use our words to encourage each other, not to be ugly. If you can’t stop fighting, we’re not going. I’m not listening to this all day.”
Everyone got quiet because I used my I-mean-business voice, I threw some Jesus in there, and they knew I didn’t dish out idle threats.
I flipped on the radio as a song was ending, and the DJ announced, “And that was Building 429, who got their name from Ephesians 4:29, which says we should use our words to build one another up instead of tearing each other down.”
“Mama! You just said that!” Mouths hung open and eyes were wide with the realization that Jesus and Mama were on the same team.
“That’s a whisper from God,” I told them.
The thing about whispers is that there’s no screaming. There’s no marquee flashing, Hey, yo–it’s God here. Got a message for you!
They happen in a brief moment and leave you with a feeling that what you’ve experienced came from God. If you’re not paying attention, not listening, not open to the possibility that the God of the Universe might show up in some unexpected way in your life, you’ll miss it.
Rainbows
At 32, I found myself finally closing the door on a tumultuous marriage that had been one long unraveling ball of chaos and stress. A mama of two young sons, I was tired and lonely and disillusioned with life.
I desperately wanted a life partner—someone to love and who would love me in return, someone to share adventures—but that dream seemed hopeless. I had long believed if you just put in the effort, it’d all work out in the end. But I had turned cynical—the love portrayed in fairytales didn’t exist, the good guys did not always win, and there certainly was no happily ever after.
One morning during my commute to work, I grew despondent as I considered the unlikelihood of a lasting relationship. Tears running down my face, I asked God, “Who is going to want me–used goods, divorced, and over 30 with kids??”
If I met someone, there would be all these questions I’d have to consider: Why wasn’t he married? Was he divorced? Was there an ex-wife? Kids? And if not, why hadn’t he ever been married? Did he live in his mother’s basement? What baggage did he carry around? I was overwhelmed with the impossibility of it all.
As I turned the corner, I looked above the stadium (I worked for a university at the time). The sky was a thick, grey mist. At that moment it was as though someone took a knife and punched through the fabric that hung in the air and slit it open the tiniest bit. Invisible fingers pulled at the hole, and beyond the covering of grey I saw a piece of a rainbow.
In that moment, I felt God’s presence and protection like never before, and I was instantly at peace. “Thank you, Father. I know You are good and Your promises are true. I will wait for Your plan, for Your timing, but Lord, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. Please send me someone to serve You alongside me.”
And He did. But that’s a story for another day.
God seems to whisper to me a lot via rainbows. In fact, on the day I took my brother to his oncology appointments and got an email that I was a match for him as we sat in the waiting room5, a rainbow spanned the sky over I-630 as we left the Rockefeller Cancer Institute.
Three weeks ago when I went for my final physical to be cleared to donate my stem cells, God gave us another rainbow on the way home as well as the most glorious sunset I’d seen in a while.
I guess it’s all about perspective when it comes to nature, but I mostly get a rainbow from God when there’s something unsettling happening in my life. They remind me of His promises.
Willingness and Expectancy
So what’s the big deal?—rainbows and sunsets happen all the time.
Remember Mr. FM Radio and Pennies?6 Randall said of a certain season of his life: “I had lost the willingness to believe that I still lived under God’s care and protection.”
But he eventually found his way back to that willingness to believe in a power greater than himself and “to believe that there’s a message always about to come through.”
Sometimes you have to fight your way out of the doubt by just saying, Okay, God. I’m giving this prayer and listening thing a shot.
And when you are willing, you’ll hear the whispers. You’ll see the breadcrumbs. You’ll understand His communication in the most common things.
His Whispers to Me
I had quite a few of those whispers from God this week during stem cell donation. I walked in for Day 2 of injections to stimulate my cell count, and the nurse excitedly said, “Your white blood cell count is really high!”
“That’s what we wanted, right?”
“Yeah! But yours jumped from 6,000 to 40,000 after just one day!”
Apparently that was remarkable.
A whisper from God that this was going to work.
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On the day they collected my cells I waited for the call to see if they had gotten enough or if they would need to collect a second day.
“We were shooting for 5 million, and we got 5.6 million…so we have more than enough!”
A whisper from God that He was making sure this old(ish) body of mine was behaving like a young one.
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My last procedure before heading home was to have my line removed. The nurse’s name was Hollie, and she told me she had the same birthday.
A whisper from God that He knows everything about me—my name, the day I was born, and just what my body needs to heal.
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The day after returning home I fired up my laptop to catch up on some work. Our network went down an hour later, and the ISP estimated it would take 7-8 hours to restore. I was feeling a bit tired, so I decided to take a quick nap.
I slept 3.5 hours!
A whisper from God: Child, get in the BED.
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And on my brother’s transplant day, the nurse came in with a look of astonishment.
“Your sister’s cells are 100% viable. Normally we see about 98%—maybe 99%—but not 100%.”
Hello, God. I read you loud and clear.
A paid subscription to Release and Gather doesn’t get you anything extra (as of now), but it tells me you value the power of the written word—my written words.
Randall’s footnote game is FIRE.
https://www.guideposts.org/inspiration/miracles/gods-grace/how-to-read-god-s-signs
Speak this part in your head with a Southern American accent. But not highbrow Southern. Think Reese Witherspoon, not Delta Burke.
This was so encouraging and moving! Signed up to get more! I listened to a number of Breakfast with an alcoholic recently when unable to sleep one night. Randall is amazing and the stories of other’s lives so moving also. Today is my son’s birthday - he would have been 41 . He died by suicide after struggle with alcohol and drugs in 5 months prior to death. He had a son who was 8 at the time , now 13 and heartbreaking circumstances with many broken systems have alienated him from me since his mother once again abandoned him in Aug 2021. I share custody with her but her mother now has taken control and I have only seen him 3 times since May. Chaos reigns in their lives at his expense, truancy, just moved again this weekend - further away from me. I could go on and on but won’t. My God message today came in text from dear freeing reminding me God is still in control, encouraging words from friends at church this am and coming home and reading email that I won a devotional prayer book. Your post added to the Blessings- Thank you
Wow. I am so moved and so flattered. Thank you so much. I love reading what you write and it's so honest and open. Thank you for sharing all of this.