That Little Voice

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So, I’m washing dishes this afternoon. “La, la, la. This will make DH happy. I’ve been so busy, I’ve gotten lax on the housework. Let me wash the breakfast and lunch dishes, and that’ll be a nice thing to do.”

I grab a glass in the suds and start scrubbing it around the rim with my washcloth. That little voice inside of me is talking. “You know what would be really awful? Like, if you grabbed a glass, like the way you just grabbed that one, and you start scrubbing it around the rim with your washcloth, like the way you’re scrubbing this one, and you scrub it really hard, kind of like the way you’re doing, and you weren’t paying attention, and you didn’t realize that it was a broken glass, and you gashed your hand all over the rim, and can you imagine ALL THAT BLOOD?”

And I’m like, “Uh, you’re really a bit gruesome today, Inner Voice!”

I rinse the glass off and put it in the drainboard and search around in the suds for the next thing. I find something, but it’s not the right size or shape or weight as anything I remember having put in the sink to soak. I pull it out, and it’s this crescent of glass.

I dig around some more in the suds and pull out one of our new set of glasses that we had gotten just a few days ago. I don’t know what had caused it to shatter, but it was a jagged glass that was missing two major pieces! And if I hadn’t found that first little crescent and figured things out before I found the main broken part, I would have run a good chance of gashing my hand pretty deeply.

And then I realized what had happened. “Thanks!”

I’ve had a few other times when listening to that Voice really saved me a ton of danger or trouble, and other times when ignoring that Voice really landed me in an otherwise-avoidable situation. It’s a pity that the Voice sounds too much like my own thoughts for me to tell the difference, 99% of the time! 🙂

Does anyone else have a recent Little Voice story? 🙂
 
Why would a “little voice” tell you to be careful about cutting your hand, but no “little voice” ever informs anyone of anything really useful, like where and when a terrorist attack will occur?
 
“No voice” “ever” informs “anyone”? That’s a pretty broad statement. 😛

OK, so here’s another one.

I had an event I was going to that was about 250-300 miles from my home. The most direct route was these little 2-lane highways through random small towns and a whole lot of nothingness. I had my 2-yo with me, and I was pregnant with my second.

So, I’m driving. At night. By myself. And my voice says to myself, “Self! You know what you really want? You want a McDonald’s cherry pie.”

And I answer myself-- “What are you talking about? I’m not even hungry. And I don’t need to be eating junk food. I’m going to gain enough weight from being pregnant, without eating cherry pie!”

And I drive along through a few more towns. “Hey! There’s a McDonald’s in this town! You really ought to stop! Mmmmm! Pie!”

And I’m like, “Uh, no. I already had dinner. I might eat something if I was tired, but I’m perfectly awake, thank you.”

And I drive through some more towns. “Cherry p~i~i~i~e!”

“No tha~a~a~a~ank you!”

And I’m finally half an hour away from my destination. And the voice says, “You. Stop here. Pull over now. GO GET A CHERRY PIE.”

And I’m like, “Okay!”

So I pull into the drive through. I’m sitting in the drive through, and I haven’t even had a chance to give my order yet, when I see a high-speed chase blasting through town. It was a motorcycle with two police cars in hot pursuit, driving at high speeds down the highway in the exact direction I had been traveling. And if I hadn’t pulled over, me, my 2-yo, and my unborn baby would have been right in the middle of all of that. Maybe nothing bad would have happened. Who knows. But I was safe in the drive-thru. And McDonald’s didn’t carry cherry pie anymore, and I tried their peach pie or whatever it was, and it was nasty. But the point wasn’t the cherry pie-- the point was getting me off the road.

But the thing was, I could have stopped at any of those previous towns on my trip, and that would have delayed me enough to have missed the high-speed chase. But I never would have known it, had I not stopped at that particular McDonald’s, that allowed me to see the big picture from the safety of the drive-thru.

Until we’re able to see the big picture properly, I’m highly skeptical of anyone who paints with such a broad brush that says “God never works in anyone’s life ever” just because God doesn’t stop bad stuff from happening always.

We’re grateful for the gifts God gives us. 99 times out of 100, I’m sure I’m ignorant of everything he does for me. But that 1 time out of 100 that I do catch on-- I’m a bit slow! --I make sure I say thank you. And that makes it much easier to recognize it in the future, so that maybe someday, I can work up to noticing 2 or 3 times out of 100… 🙂
 
@midori I love these stories! Thanks for sharing…you are so funny, too! 😍
 
KevinK said:
Why would a “little voice” tell you to be careful about cutting your hand, but no “little voice” ever informs anyone of anything really useful, like where and when a terrorist attack will occur?
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Is that question anything like the one I always ask myself; “why don’t psychics win all the state lotteries?” Just askin.
 
I had one of those inner voice moments last week. I was really struggling with something, so I went to adoration and said a rosary for that intention. You know, one of those long and thoughtful 40-60 minute rosaries…

Fast-forward. I’m driving home from picking up my kids and a soft but assertive voice says love, Love, LOVE! Just like that. It was the answer to my prayer. Thanks be to God.
 
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I say this with no disrespect, but hearing that many specific voices might require some checking out.
 
Did you not catch the thing where I said that I can’t tell the difference between dialoguing with myself, versus something else going on?

That was the whole point of that second anecdote. I thought I was arguing with myself about self-control, and about not eating useless sugar when I didn’t need to. Everyone has those discussions in their own heads, every day. Do you cave in and eat the 1,500-calorie hamburger, or do you eat the carrot stick? Do you spend the $20 to eat out, or do you eat before you leave the house? Do you take a few hours to fill out our tax forms, or do you put it off until “later”? These are all discussions we have in our own minds every day as we make our ordinary decisions. And our ordinary everyday decisions are critical to living out our roles as the best people God created us to be.

But sometimes, you think something is one thing, but there’s an extra layer going on. A discussion with myself about “Wow, you know, this would be a great place for a speed trap. See how it’s 70 mph up to this point, but then it jumps down to 55, but the road doesn’t change, and most people keep on going 70 mph. I bet they catch a lot of people here…” and you say, “Yeah, I bet they do…” and you keep going 70 mph… and then a minute later, you see flashing lights in your rear mirror. Whoops! That’s $216 that I didn’t need to spend! 🙂 Or the thing about the glasses. Or the thing about the cherry pie.

Ooh. One of my favorites was when I was exhausted (from being pregnant), and my 2yo was playing quietly, and I ended up falling asleep unexpectedly, which I never do. Anyhow, I’m sleeping, and having ordinary, light dreams, and all of a sudden, a voice on an intercom cuts through my dream— “Paging Midori! Midori, to the kitchen!” And I promptly wake up and go straight to the kitchen, and there’s my 2yo stuck on a kitchen chair, trying to climb on top of the table, and not able to get down, but a few moments away from being in a much more dangerous situation. And I’m back on duty, and everthing’s hunky-dory again.

Those sorts of situations crop up every day, with millions of people. But you’re the one who’s going, “How come no little voice never says anything useful? Because, you know, terrorists.” And I’m the one who’s saying, "The little voice says all kinds of useful things. Like when it tries to spare me a $216 ticket. Or when it tries to spare me a cut hand. Or when it tries to spare my kid from falling off the kitchen table onto the tile floor. Or when it tries to spare me and my two kids getting in the middle of a 100+ mph police chase through a 30-mph stretch of highway. And then all you’ve got it, “Well, that’s too much, so you must be crazy.” Rather than doing what a normal person does when listening to a group of people who have experienced things that they may or may not have ever noticed, and wondering if perhaps maybe there isn’t some kernel of truth to what we’re discussing, and maybe there’s something to it that might apply to them as well. ❤️
 
I don’t think anything in life is chance, Cherry pie or not, how many times have you looked back and thanked God for what at the time seemed a random event or impulse? I certainly have, many times.
When I get stressed or anxious or even just impatient, I often hear the quiet word “Peace” in my deepest soul/self and it immediately changes my disposition. I am quite sure this is the grace of God.
 
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