It had been about 2 months since Kim passed and I was all over the place. When you suffer such a loss, your brain goes into a protection mode. It wants to protect you from the pain, the trauma, so what it does is starts diverting your emotions and attentions to other things if you allow it to. Wow, was I getting diverted. I was already planning Ava’s birthday party for April in November, I was done holiday shoping before December 1st, I had learned how to make gluten free goldfish crackers, was baking, hemming pants, and…well, yeah. This was all great during the day.

When night time rolled in and Ava went to bed, I would lay on my bed and be on my phone reading. Googling. Thinking. Wondering. I spent a lot of time asking Kim to come to me in a dream, send me a sign, something. When my dad died, I remember looking up info on mediumship. Was there REALLY a way to get a message from the other side? I remember reading into it and finding out that this type of “divination” was strictly against the catholic beliefs, so I stopped. 

Not long after that, I started getting signs that I knew was from my dad. Hearing “Here comes the sun” on the radio the day of the funeral wa sbig. What really stood out though were the brown and orange butterflies I saw everywhere. No matter what. Even when we were picking out a tombstone, one was on the grass by the stone we chose. I wont forget, I was working in his garden and tooka  ride on my motorcycle to get a drink up the street. While I was sitting on my bike, a brown and orange butterfly landed on my hand. Seriously. It was like aDisney movie and I was Snow White. Not a dream of mine, I swear! As I was writing about that incident one night, something hit me. I typer Brown and Orange Butterfly and saw that the first letter of each word, B-O-B was also my dad’s name. To this day about a decade later, I still remember that.

Now I was at a point though where I knew I could force myself to believe, but I wanted to KNOW. I wanted answers. I had spoken to religious leaders, family, friends, and read and read. One day, when I couldnt take it anymore, I broke. Here is a post from back then:

“So, I’m going to fess up and say something here. I’ve held this in because I didn’t want to hear the criticism but last night, I read an awesome quote…from Dr Seuss: “People that mind don’t matter and people that matter don’t mind”. That said, here we go. I went to a medium the other night and it was wild. I went in highly doubting, came out a believer, and a few days later started being skeptical again. It was a great reading but it was a huge group setting of 45 people so the problem is that I didn’t know if maybe, just MAYBE the medium got lucky mentioning things to the crowd and suddenly a bunch resonated with me. Oh, this is a good spot for me to say, save your criticism. I don’t want to get into an argument about shams, religion, etc. Trust me, I didn’t come to that decision easy, it was tough, but I needed something to help me heal. Everyone telling me “It’ll get easier” or to “take it one day at a time” or even “she will always be with me” wasn’t cutting it. No offense, I love people trying to help, but this has been tough and I’m having to make tough decisions.

So, yeah, I have a few more appts booked to see if I can validate what to believe. Different mediums, and some solo sessions. Look, I’m still going to counseling, I’m still going to church, I’m not selling the farm and putting all my eggs in one basket. I’m just broadening my mind. What’s wrong with that? I wish I had been curious to seek answers more my whole life instead of accepting.””

Now, a lot of my firends and family know this and some may not, but this was what I needed to do for me. At the time, it made me feel better. At least, for a few days, until I realized I had the same doubts and fears about the messages I was getting their as I did from the ones I got at church. Why could’t anyone give me the answers and proof I needed? Well, it was simple.

I was the only one that could supply those answers. They needed to come from within me, not from someone else. It is something I still find myself questioning at times, but not in a way I consider unhealthy. What do I believe? Well, I believe we are all put here by a higher power. I call that power God. God to me is not a person with a white beard. God is the energy and essence behind everything. I think one of the struggles for me with my catholic faith not being as strong as I needed it to be was not that I didnt attend church enough, It was that I bought into the symbolism too much and that clouded my view of what I now feel is the point I need to focus myself on. I understand that there are people reading this who may be devout catholics, Muslims, Budhists, Jewish, even Aetheists. For me, I believe that we came from somewhere, and it was not an accident. I believe we are here for purpouse, not by accident. After reading and learning about so many various religions and cultures, the basis of most religions comes down to love. So let me ask, whats wrong with love? One of the questions I had for the priests was, if the Catholic religion is the right religion, does that mean every person who is raised not catholic automatically is punished? What if you were raised in a tribe in a jungle, does that make you a bad person because you were not taught the catholic beliefs? It cannot be so black and white, when every religion is stemming from love. 

I do not want to use this as a platform to promote any one type of religion or spiritual beliefs, but I want you to understand ME so you know what gears are going when I tell you a story about a path I was on or a choice I made. I have been to more mediums since that first visit, and found one I think was very intriguing. I also have been to church too. Believe it or not, I even pray EVERY night with Ava and again by myself in bed. I believe in Jesus, and God, but I also believe that Kim is here with me and Ava, watching over us. If I wanted to write a blog about signs and events, i could write many posts of things that have happened in the last few years to make me feel she is here. At the end of the day, my beliefs have changed many times since Kim passed, and probably will always continue to shift and slide in some aspect. If you know me and you read that thinking, “No Bob No! Don’t go believing ANYTHING outside of what they say at church!” I would say to you, be happy that I have shifted beliefs, because it allowed me to have a better relationship with God than I ever did. As I taught Ava when we pray, we dont start by asking God to protect us and our families and friends. We START by THANKING God. Yes, the same guy who refused to let a priest within a mile of me the night Kim passed thanks God every day, multiple times a day. I will thank God now, for allowing me to have this day to type this. As we saw in Miami, people sitting in their homes lost their loves when a building they lived in just collapsed. None of us are promised anything, so we should be thankful. That is what I believe