Post 7: The Answer in My Own Voice

Months into the financial process, I hit a wall.

I had notes stapled together by account, organized as carefully as I could manage. I had made calls, taken more notes, thought I had a handle on things— and then something would go wrong, and I'd be back at the beginning. 

I am fairly intelligent and organized. I could not understand why this was so hard.

One morning I prayed for a marvelous manifestation. 

I had read stories of people who had seen loved ones after they passed — a brief visit, a clear presence, an answer to an impossible question. I needed Rex to appear so I could ask him a handful of basic questions. I could not see another way to move forward.

I finished the prayer and waited. 

I could tell before I even opened my eyes that there was going to be no marvelous manifestation. 

I was disappointed, but not surprised. 

So I went back to the kitchen and picked up the phone.

It was one of those practical, hopeful accounts — money saved for the healthy, happy retirement years we assumed we would have together.

Now I had already done the strange, sorrowful work of changing something that had belonged to both of us into something that belonged only to me.

And still, the woman who answered could not find any account under my name.

Normally that would have been enough to undo me. 

I knew the sequence by then: dread first, then fear coursing through my veins, followed by helplessness - the sense that something important was slipping out of reach and I didn’t know how to hold onto it. 

But that isn’t what happened.

Instead, I heard myself respond in a voice I barely recognized. 

“Oh, it's there. I know exactly the amount, and it's there. I spoke with Stephanie the last time I called, on such-and-such a date.”

I wasn’t sharp. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t forcing myself to sound brave.

I sounded calm, confident, and certain.

The very things I had been praying for several times a day had somehow shown up in my own voice.

The representative promised to keep looking and call back. The next morning she called to apologize. She had found it and confirmed the exact amount I knew it held.

But by then the account balance was no longer the only thing that had been confirmed.

That same week I had been preparing a Come, Follow Me lesson on revelation. I had studied carefully and prepared slides for our discussion. I understood the principles well enough to teach them - the still small voice, the gradual unfolding, the answer that comes in a different shape than expected. 

I had prepared to teach revelation to others.

I didn't recognize it in my own kitchen.

Because the answer I had prayed for was so clear to me — Rex, present, answering my questions — that when something quieter arrived instead, I couldn’t see it yet.

The disappointment was too loud.

For weeks, maybe months, I had been praying several times a day to feel calm, confident, and certain. I had not chosen those words because they sounded spiritual or polished, but because I needed them and could not produce them on my own.

And then, without planning it, without preparing a speech, without bracing myself to be brave, I heard those very things come out of my own mouth.

Calm.

Confident.

Certain.

The marvelous manifestation I had wanted had been given to me in a different form.

Not Rex standing in the kitchen with the answers I thought I needed. Something quieter, and in some ways more sustaining: the ability to handle my own affairs, one phone call at a time.

That evening, before I understood any of this clearly, I felt impressed to write in my journal that my prayers hadn’t been answered — but that I still felt peace.

I wanted to be honest. I had been keeping a careful record of the miracles, writing them down exactly as they happened, not softening or embellishing. It felt important to record the letdown with the same honesty.

So I wrote it down and went to bed.

The next morning, I listened to an interview with the cellist, Steven Sharp Nelson, from The Piano Guys. He played some of his music and spoke about losing his mother and the power of music to hold what words can’t.

Music had always been woven through our family. Rex played cello. Both of my older sons play. That morning, the cello music helped me sit with what I was beginning to understand.

The impression to write in my journal the night before had been preparation. The honest, carefully recorded letdown made the joy of recognition possible. If I hadn’t written it down, I might have just felt relief about the account.

Instead, I felt the miracle.

I had been looking for Rex to come with the answers. But I began to see that God had been preparing me to keep going. 

Somewhere in those months of one foot in the darkness — praying whenever I felt overwhelmed, keeping the TV off, making the next phone call — something had been quietly building.

I hadn’t noticed until it showed up in my voice.

Not in a moment of triumph. Not in a sudden surge of strength. Just in a phone call where I didn’t fall apart — and in the slow morning realization of what that meant.

I am still becoming. The work isn’t finished, and I don’t expect it to be. But I know something now that I couldn’t have known in those early months.

I can handle the next thing.

Not because I’m fearless. Not because I’m strong.

But because I’ve handled the last thing — and the one before that — and somewhere in all that choosing forward, I began to trust the voice I heard on the phone that day.