He had become a new manager in the art department where I worked, and within several months had fallen in love with me (kept unspoken), but also had fired me with other part-timers. We spoke only twice over the next four years.
Then we met in a spiritual study group, where at first I didn’t recognize him. One night he confessed his love and I soon realized mine for him. In time we lived together, as he began a new career of workshops and touring.
Stephen’s spiritual work in the world brought him and therefore me to Florida where we went directly on tour from August until December. When on December twenty-third pain hospitalized him, immediate tests confirmed he had brain cancer. Yet knowing this, Stephen, as a principal singer, sang O Little Town of Bethlehem with joy and poignancy at his final Christmas church service. Nine months later I sat with him even beyond his final breath.
My healing came from the power of our spiritual beliefs. When I remembered that my love for Stephen was also my love for what he believed, my tears began to lessen. His lyrics became the arms of God carrying me, “Bodies come … bodies go … I will live forever.”
Three months later a spiritual teacher told me that I hadn’t yet done what I’d come to the planet to do. Moreover, there was an as yet unrevealed man in my life who would become my next helpmate. I felt instant trust in this teacher, a sensation that in the future I would identify as soul recognition. Four months later, the unknown man appeared.
One day, chancing to look at Stephen’s and my Florida phone numbers, along with that of this new man, I had an Ahhh ... of recognition. 454-3362 was Stephen’s. 454-3365 was mine. And 454-3368 was this new man’s: I was positioned between the last man in my life and the next. Stephen’s final assignment on my future behalf was to bring me to Florida.
My realization is, “An invisible plan guides us. When at times it is revealed by synchronicities, we have an opportunity to trust what otherwise is hard to believe.”