For those of you working on listening to the voice of your intuition and trying to understand the information you get, this story is for you. Sometimes it can be difficult to trust your intuition or even understand what it’s trying to tell you. But if you give up on it too soon, it could cost you dearly.
Last Saturday Emily came running into my bedroom and said, “Mommy, we lost a turtle. We can’t find him. Help us!”
A little background. I got my kids each a red-eared slider baby turtle earlier this year. The kids adore playing with them and do a pretty good job of taking care of them. Emily diligently cleans their cage without me asking, and she makes sure they have food, drops, and minerals to keep them healthy. Sometimes when the turtles are roaming free of their tanks, the kids wander into another room for a minute and when they come back, they can’t find their turtles. I’ve admonished them about this many times, not to leave their turtles unattended. In every case we’ve found the turtles hunkered down in a dark corner of the room.
Not so on this fateful Saturday morning. I asked what happened. Emily said, “We were playing with them in your office and Kyle told me to come look at something in his room, so I did, and when we got back, we could only find Fortune Cookie, but not Smoothie.”
I got up to help them look, figuring it would be a piece of cake to find the turtle. Emily said they’d only been away for a few minutes. How far could a baby turtle get in a few minutes?
I spent the next 20 minutes pouring through every nook and cranny of my office. The closet, behind the desk, behind the credenza, inside boxes and bags. Hmm, no turtle. I was sort of stumped. I’d checked everywhere a turtle could reasonably crawl or climb, and I couldn’t find him. I started to worry a little.
“Emily, are you sure he was in this room?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure you were only gone for a few minutes? Like are we talking 2 or 8?”
“Maybe 5 minutes, Mommy.”
Shoot, in 5 minutes the turtle could easily make it to another room. We had to expand our search into the kids’ rooms. I assigned each child an area to search and they got busy. I searched my office again, from stem to stern, but still nothing.
We searched for about an hour and came up empty handed. I was worried he’d gotten past us all and might even be downstairs. Kyle had to go to a play date so I dropped him off really quick and then Emily and I spent literally the next 2 hours tearing up the house looking for our little guy. We couldn’t find him. I knew he must be somewhere, but I didn’t know where. Emily started to cry, blaming herself for losing the turtle. She asked what would happen to him if we didn’t find him. I told her if we didn’t find him soon, he would probably die from lack of food and water. She started sobbing after that. I was pretty sad myself, and quite distraught.
I didn’t know what to do. I had exhausted all of my ideas. Emily came to me a little while later and said, “You’re psychic, can’t you just find him?” Smart kid! In fact, I’d written an article called How To Find Lost Items Using Psychic Abilities. Finding lost items has never been a strong suit for me, though, and when people ask me to help them find lost items psychically I usually have to refer them to someone else. I can find the lost threads of a career, but when it comes to finding physical objects I’m nearly blind. But I decided to give it a shot.
I tuned in clairvoyantly and asked my guides where the turtle was. I saw an image of my big, heavy credenza in my office. And I saw an image of the turtle huddled back there in the dark.
I went back to the credenza in my office and looked behind it. I had to use a flashlight to see back there. There were a lot of plugs and phone wires. I couldn’t move the credenza as it weighs hundreds of pounds, so I shone the flashlight every which way I could in order to see every nook and cranny back there. I didn’t see the turtle. I was frustrated and sad. I considered moving the credenza but that would involve me taking everything off it and I still wasn’t sure I could move it myself. I was reasonably certain the turtle wasn’t back there because I couldn’t see him.
We gave up looking. I put a bowl of food and water near the credenza because of all the places I thought he would be, I still somehow felt he was there or near there. And we went on about our day, always looking at the floor for the turtle.
Saturday passed and we all went to bed sad.
On Sunday we made another search. I had read online that they might be able to survive up to a week without food and water. The pet store had told me not to keep him out of the water for more than 2 hours so I thought he was a goner for sure. Sunday night we went to sleep, beginning to accept we would never find him.
On Monday, the housekeeper came to clean and I told her to be on the lookout for the turtle, and not to suck him up in the vacuum. She knew how much we loved our turtles and she was sad right there with us. Every time I tuned in to the turtle’s energy I saw the credenza in my mind. But I had checked the entire credenza, front and back, and even in the cupboards, but he wasn’t there. I assumed my intuition was on the fritz.
On Monday afternoon, I picked Steve up from the airport. I told him about our turtle and he started asking me about my search pattern. When I told him that I felt he was behind the credenza but upon examination saw that he was not, Steve said, “Well could he be UNDER the credenza?”
I said, “There is no under. It’s flush against the carpet.”
He said, “In the front, sure, but often with that type of furniture it’s raised in the back and even hollow underneath so you can get wires through there.”
“What?!?! Oh my God! I didn’t know that!! He’s probably under the credenza then! That’s got to be it. It would make perfect sense!”
He said, “You’re welcome!”
I raced to get the kids from school and as soon as we got home I put my hand behind the credenza and could feel that the back was indeed raised and hollow! I commanded the children to start getting everything off the credenza. Books, papers, CDs, and office supplies were flying off the shelves.
Once it was empty I tried moving the credenza, but it was too heavy still and wouldn’t budge. Emily offered to help me but I was worried she would be crushed. I called upon every bit of strength I could muster and was able to move the credenza… a millimeter. Emily wedged herself behind the credenza and pushed with all her might. I’ll be damned, that credenza started moving! Strong little child (or I’m exceptionally weak!). With both of us working at it, we were able to swing one side out from the wall. Emily got her face down on the carpet and looked underneath the credenza with her flashlight. “There he is Mommy! He’s right there! I can’t reach him, but he’s there!”
I said, “Does he look like he’s moving?” She said, “No.” I silently prayed, “Please don’t let us have come this far only to pull out a dry dessicated husk of turtle!”
I moved in, looked under the furniture and saw him, huddled, not moving. My arm couldn’t fit under the furniture so I told the kids to find me a stick or something I could use to pull him out. We ended up with a hanger. I used the hanger to hook him and pull gently towards me. He wasn’t trying to get away or move and I feared the worst.
When I got him all the way out his head was pretty huddled in his shell, but after a few seconds he started wiping his head with his paw. He was alive! We immediately put him in some water and got him some food. We were extremely relieved and happy to have found him alive. And Emily spent the rest of the day nursing him back to health and hovering like a worried mother. We discussed why you never leave turtles unattended.
In looking back on the incident, I realized that my intuition had accurately shown me where he was, I just didn’t investigate far enough. I discounted my intuition because I couldn’t see how it was logically possible.
Do you ever do that? Receive intuitive information that doesn’t make logical sense so you discount it as false or a flight of fancy? How many times have I done this myself? Believe me, I’m not immune to the intuition/logic dilemma. Steve took my intuition and figured out how it could make sense. It was through a combination of intuition and logic that we found our turtle.
Intuition is a really powerful tool. Logic has its place as well. Without logic, in this case, I never would have found our turtle until it was too late. Use your intuition to gather and receive information and then use your logic to take appropriate and wise action. Maybe your intuition will someday save a life.
