We all have it inside of us. Some call it the Still, Small Voice. For others, it is the Inner Voice, or the whispers of a spirit guide. We may not even know that what we “hear”is from a spirit guide. It may come as just a knowing. The trick is to be able to hear it. To be impressed by it. It is a real gift, when we can accept it.

Some people seem to hear this voice without effort, some do not wish to hear it. I want to hear it, but I have to work hard to open the channel through which it flows. It doesn’t come easy to me. Most of the time, this Inner Voice is trying to tell me one simple truth, and it may best be expressed in that old spiritual: He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.

For three years, I tried to sell my house. I tried everything. I hired a different real estate agent each year. I painted the kitchen a different color (one agent told me that a man wouldn’t go for my pink kitchen – another told me to paint the front door gray). I redid the bathrooms. I got up every morning with a new scheme to draw the buyer to my house. I reinforced beams. I made the garden as pleasant and welcoming as I possibly could. I put new windows in the front of the house. I had it power washed every few months. I pulled weeds out of the driveway until I was dizzy.

I had two offers that didn’t go to settlement. Sedona was calling me and I couldn’t get here. My friends kept telling me that it would all happen in exactly the right time. I knew they were right, and still, I couldn’t let go of the...effort. I kept trying to make it happen, and the harder I tried with no results, the more frustrated and depressed I became. I should have known then that how I felt was the sign that that devilish little monster, my ego, was in control. The sure sign that I am in its throes is when I am a mess. Because it drowns out the Still, Small Voice.

But the Universe is merciful. It makes you tired. I got tired of hoping, tired of trying, and I gave up. That was the day the buyer walked into my house. I remember sitting at the end of my lane, in my car, waiting for the husband of the couple to show up. He was late. I’d driven around for a while, and then parked where I could see the house. I’d been waiting for over an hour. I was always out of the house when the “lookers” came.  I think it was then that the Still Small Voice told me to give up the struggle. That was also the moment I experienced something like relief for the first time since I’d put the house on the market. It’s a grand feeling when that happens, believe me. The wife walked down the lane and chatted with me (she recognized my little red Mustang), and I didn’t try to sell her the house. We talked about how pretty the river was. She asked me about the trees and if they were strong enough to withstand storms. I told her they had sheltered me safely for 13 years – and that was all. Then, her husband came and I sat there, waiting for them to leave. As strange as it sounds, I was no longer invested in selling the house. Something from that deep well of wisdom within had finally clicked in. I had done everything I could. Now it was time to let a Greater Power look after me.

Of all the things I had tried, I had never considered the thing that finally sold the house – the art that was hanging on my walls. At settlement, the buyers were a delight, and the “ceremony” went smoothly. Afterwards, out on the sidewalk, the man told me why he wanted the house. “Your paintings,” he said. “They made an aura about the house that drew me to it.” In particular, a portrait of me done by an artist who had taught my brother and my daughter, was hanging in the stairwell, unlit, unnoticed by most people who came into the house. This man recognized the artist as his own professor, at the Philadelphia College of Art. The right buyer had come into the house and I had had nothing to do with it.

And then, of course, everything fell into place. When I came out to Sedona, the right place was waiting for me. The Universe was in order, and I was in order with it.

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Read The Messenger: The Improbable Story of a Grieving Mother and a Spirit Guide by Helen Delaney. Find it at www.amazon.com and for a signed copy, go to www.themessenger.space.