One of the lessons I’ve learned over and over in my work is to never take anyone’s life for granted. Unfortunately, we do this all the time. We settle into our routines, we’re busy, and for some odd reason we think that life will never change and the people we care about will be around forever. But that’s not why we’ve come here. Our soul chose this life on earth to have some very specific experiences, and when we’ve accomplished those, our soul goes back home. Our time here isn’t infinite, and neither is that of the other people in our lives.
Often when a child dies, someone says, “A parent should never have to bury their child.” This always gives me pause. I’ve never once seen a child be born with a long-lifetime guarantee. Yes, it would be ideal if no parent had to bury a child, but that’s just not how life here works.
I wanted to write a chapter about the death of children for two reasons. First, I want to impress upon people that when you give birth to a child, the child comes in with a life plan, a blueprint of the things they want and need to experience. They chose you as the parents and family in which to learn and have their life experiences. This does not mean they have a long life planned.
I’ve heard parents say, “She’ll never go to prom or walk down the aisle.” But I can assure you that if those experiences were important to that child’s soul, the child would have stayed and had them. The same holds true for sons or daughters killed in the military. As hard as it may be for us to accept, dying in combat was part of their plan. They wanted to experience the military and learn as much as they could from it, and then they were done.
This all may sound cold and uncaring, and I don’t mean it to at all. I have to remind myself from time to time when I hear of a child’s death that this is part of their life plan, and those of their family members. Recently I saw a story on the news of a fifteen-year-old girl who was sitting in the park with her boyfriend waiting for the bus, when a man lost control of his legs and sped his car across the park and killed her. I thought about that poor family for days afterward. It’s just plain horrible when these tragedies happen.
In the past month here in the Twin Cities, two little boys, ages three and five, were killed in separate gang-related incidents. One of the reasons a soul may choose to live a short life and then die by this kind of violence is to wake up the community and make change happen. On a similar note, three children drowned last summer. This kind of accident always makes me wonder what the souls hoped to accomplish from their short lives and death. I come back to the fact that it is not unusual for seemingly senseless deaths to have been chosen by a soul to somehow positively impact a community.
In chapter 6, I mentioned the twelve-year-old boy who died while skiing, but I didn’t tell you about the year leading up to his death. Shortly after his eleventh birthday, his mom, my friend Melody Beattie, told me she had a strong sense that she should spend as much time with her son as possible, and we both figured it was because she had been traveling a lot for work. The whole following year was magical for both of them. She stuck to her commitment in spite of work-related demands and spent a lot of time doing all the things her son wanted to do. For his twelfth birthday he asked her for a very special knife set. I remember her saying it seemed crazy to buy a twelve-year-old such an expensive gift, but her gut was telling her to go ahead. So she bought it for him, and he was thrilled beyond words.
Three days after his birthday, his sister took him skiing, and he died on the slopes. As incredibly tragic as his death was, good eventually came out of it, but it took a while for the family to see it. Melody is a successful author, and after she got through the first year of horrendous grief, she wrote a book called The Lessons of Love that has helped millions of people who have lost a child.
Six years after this boy’s death, his father lost his fight with alcohol and drug addiction, and I could tell how important it was for him to see his son as soon as he went over to the other side. It was a blessed family reunion for those on the other side, though it was a tremendously difficult time for us on this side.
My second reason for writing this chapter is to let you know that sometimes the children we lose come back to us at a later birth. For example, about a year ago, a couple from India emailed me about the loss of their son, who had died shortly after he was born. They were extremely distraught over his death because they had tried for years to have a child and all the woman’s earlier pregnancies had ended in miscarriages. I opened up psychically and asked if the soul of the boy would talk to me. Within seconds, his soul came and told me that he would be coming back to his parents shortly. He said the body he had been born into had some physical problems, which the parents later confirmed, and he said he wanted a stronger, healthier body. He was quite calm about the whole experience, for he knew that it was just a matter of time before he’d be back. A month ago, the couple emailed me to say that they now have a very healthy baby boy, and I was very glad to hear he had been reborn.
This next tragic story had a happy ending as well. A few years ago a friend of mine was on her way to daycare to pick up her four-month-old daughter. The whole way there, she was following an ambulance and said a prayer for whoever might be inside. When the ambulance pulled into the parking lot at the daycare, her heart sank as her mind raced to all the children inside, wondering who might need help.
Unfortunately, it was her daughter — she had died and they were not able to revive her. When I got the call, I immediately checked in with the little girl’s soul to see what was going on. The soul was quite emphatic that she had been born too soon and wanted to wait and come at a better time, after her brother was born. I asked her how soon all that was going to happen, and she wasn’t clear on the exact timing but said that her mother would become pregnant with her brother within that year and then shortly after that, she would be back. Her soul felt bad about putting her parents through such grief; she said she had been in a hurry to get here but should not have jumped ahead of her brother. She also said that her mother would use the wisdom she had gained from this experience to help others. Sure enough, that’s what happened. My friend is a local radio personality, and she has since done a lot of work with mothers who have lost a child. An old psychic friend of mine used to say, “Turn your scars into stars” — and that’s exactly what she did.
A year later my friend gave birth to a little boy, and two years after that she gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl. She says that her second daughter’s personality is just like that of her first daughter, who died.
For those of you who have lost a child, I can guarantee you that your child’s soul was gently taken back home and is receiving as much loving care as possible. There are countless wonderful caregivers and angels on the other side who love nurturing whoever needs it. If anyone tells you that the death of your child occurred because God wanted him or her home with Him, please remember that that is a stupid thing that people say when they don’t know what else to say. God would never rip your child out of your arms so that He could selfishly have him or her to Himself. No. Death happens to all of us, and we should turn to God — rather than blame Him — to help us heal our grief.