God (for lack of a better word) Speaks

by Linda Fite

In your essay about your birthing experience, when you said you “heard” a “voice” that led you to make a decision, a life-saving decision, it really hit home because the way you described that was the closest (actually spot-on) thing to my own communication from some mysterious something I had ever read/heard.

My own communication? I think it was from God, though of course I have no idea what that means. But God seems like the very best word to summon up the Alpha-Omega, omnipotent, omnipresent, cosmic aspect of the entity that “spoke” to me. The Force is a good alternative, really, since once one uses the word “God” it is all too easy to think of the guy on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, reaching out and touching Adam.

Anyway. Here’s my story – two stories, actually, but the same Communicator in both cases, of that I’m sure.

The first time I got a message from the Divine/Force/Deity/Whatever, was in 1991. I was driving to work when I suddenly and without any previous maudlin thinking, as far as I recall, was overwhelmed with dread of my own mortality. I remember thinking, as I started to cry (!), something along the lines of “I don’t want to leave! I don’t want to leave the party!” (“The party” was clearly an intentional metaphor for my life and all its wonders.) As I drove along, I was feeling so bereft and scared. (Mind you, I had never felt this way about dying before. I didn’t much think of dying at all; I was 46 years old, married, three kids, nice job, excellent health, both parents alive, no recent deaths among family or friends.) Boy, was I sad!

And that’s when I “heard” the “voice.” It was weird because I heard it inside my head and body, wordlessly, and as got the message, I simultaneously translated it into English! And this was the message: “Don’t worry. You’re not going anywhere.” Remember, this was 1991, long before I had heard anything about quantum physics! But at that moment I knew exactly what the Force was telling me, something akin to but far beyond that scientific rule we learned in, what?, seventh grade? Matter cannot be created or destroyed. That one. And what I understood, at the most profound level, was that I had always existed and would always exist. That my ego wasn’t what counted, that my current identity as Linda Fite wasn’t what mattered. I was deeply comforted, and my sorrow and fear lifted immediately, with a whoosh! And I felt tremendous gratitude. And still do.

The second time I got a message from God/the Force was about 11 years ago, in 2005. Again, I was driving, this time heading back from my office, which was about an hour away from home. My husband of 33 years recently had told me he was having an affair, we had tried some couples counseling, but he was unwilling to give up the affair partner. The day before this drive home, a Sunday, when I asked him if they were still having sex, he looked at me with the coldest eyes I had ever seen in my life and said, “Every chance I get, Linda, every chance I get.” So. This day, this Monday, I was at work but could not get anything done because I was so devastated. I told my boss the briefest version of what was happening, asked to go home early, and took off.

I began sobbing as I drove home (thank heaven it was a four-lane divided highway). I mean, SOBBING, with tears squirting out of my eyes like a Popeye cartoon, squirt! squirt! I could barely see where I was going. I was crying loudly and began calling out, “Help me, God! Please help me!!” And then I heard it – that same voice that isn’t a voice, that same communication that was not in words but which I could immediately understand as words. And here’s what God (I did address my plea to God, right? So presumably God answered. See disclaimer above) said: “I am helping you, Linda. … I’m giving you a gift.” And – just like the first time, 14 years earlier, I knew immediately what that message meant. And the core message was that I was being given the gift of freedom. I won’t go into why that concept rang so true – lots of background to this story. But I knew without a doubt that it was true. And again, just as I did 14 years earlier, I immediately felt peace, the terror was lifted, the path was clear ahead.

It took years for me to deal with the trauma of the betrayal and the end of a long-term relationship that I treasured, but I never ever again felt alone in the difficult process or abandoned by my … God (for want of a better word).

Linda Fite has lived in the same house in New York’s Hudson Valley for 40 years, her long term there partly the result of an Air Force brat childhood involving lots of moving from place to place. After college, Fite moved to New York City and worked for Marvel Comics. She then worked as the art director for a trade magazine. (“I was the entire art department,” she says.) After she became a mother, she worked at home doing layouts and mechanicals for a scientific/scholarly publishing house until computers ate her job. After that, she worked (briefly) as a church secretary. Finally, she landed a job as a staff writer for a daily newspaper, the Times Herald-Record. She worked for the paper for 20 years, doing a lot of writing of all sorts, but mostly covering arts and entertainment. She retired in 2006, but she still works part-time as a copy editor for a local semi-monthly newspaper. She doesn’t do much writing, “but only because I’m lazy,” she says.

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