When you were young, did you ever play the adaptation of the ‘I spy’ game with friends, where you would look at the clouds to see different shapes that reminded you of something? I remember finding Mickey Mouse once, likely an outcome of growing up in Orlando, FL at the time that “The Mouse” arrived! Well, I haven’t played that game in decades, so it has made it very unusual for me, even before Will passed but more frequently since, that I have received messages from God through clouds. Now I know you are likely thinking that I’ve totally lost my mind… and I have experienced a few challenges over the past 24 months that could lead to this expected outcome. I have muddled over whether or not to send this post out because I felt it needed to be authorized by God and not just by my own insights. But recently I have received many confirmations, one even this afternoon during my final proofing of this entry, that have encouraged me to share my “cloud”insights with you.
My fellow Floridians will vouch for the fact that we can experience many different types of clouds down here. Because Florida is a peninsula and I live just a few miles from the coast, cloud formations often pass over us rather quickly. In summer-time the cumulous clouds, the ones that build up high and fluffy, turn into those fierce afternoon thunderstorms that my home-state is well known for. I found it rather unusual that during Will’s cancer journey, I became aware of how God brought stratus, cirrus, and cumulous clouds into formations that not only spoke to me messages of hope, peace, joy, comfort, love, but now bring back powerful memories of our son.
God’s cloud messages to me started from photos at the beginning of Covid in 2020, which my dear friend, Jill Campbell, would send me every weekday. Jill (who has since moved to Charlottesville, VA) lived on the tip of the San Marco, Jacksonville neighborhood, maybe a mile from us, in a 22+ story condo building overlooking downtown on the edge of the St. John’s River. With very few exceptions, due to heavy rain or low temperatures, Jill would walk, pray, and take photos on the streets and bridges of the city. When she returned home from her walks, she would look over the various photos she took to choose the one to send out for the day’s “Morning Prayers.” I would wake up with anticipation to see what she captured for that day. Sometimes the mornings were bright and beautiful with yellows and oranges reflecting on the clouds and lighting up the sky… sometimes the sunrise was soft and muted… and other times the shots were dark and brooding, showing a swirl of storm clouds getting ready to blow in. Jill wouldn’t often write much with her photos. She didn’t need to. The text would usually only say “Morning Prayers”… but I would occasionally get a note like ’scaley skies’… ‘raining all over the world’…’morning glory’… “can you find the dolphin?”… or “rise and shine.”
Yes, her photos spoke so much, words really weren’t necessary. I would ‘read’ from the photos things like… “God is magnificent… or “It is a new day full of beauty so I can hope.”…or “What artistic skills God has!”… or “Thank you God that you are for me and that you send me friends to help me get through these rough waters”… or “Even though I struggled to get up today God, you didn’t. You showed up so I know you will help me do the same.”
It was quite a few months into Will’s cancer journey that I started to notice not just the amazing ability Jill had to capture the clouds reflecting perfectly off the river’s water, but also to notice images in the photo’s clouds.
Images in the clouds… flashback to childhood. My two favorites are first a sunrise cross reflected in the water and the reminder of God’s promise that He’d love me forever and second of a large arrow. When I saw the arrow, I heard “keep going forward.”
This “arrow” message happened to come at a time when Will was rapidly declining, and it had me motivated to search for a transplant option for him. The day before Will passed, I was trading phone messages with the Cleveland Clinic location here in Florida, where Will “just so happened” to have had sought a second opinion the year before, so he was considered an existing patient and therefore eligible to be considered… but we ran out of time and a transplant wasn’t meant to be.
After Will passed the cloud messages seem to intensify. I wasn’t too many days after Will passed and I was sitting at my desk in my home office, trying to do… I can’t image what… when I found myself staring out the window in my fog of grief. Suddenly, my eyes focused up in the sky and in front of me was the sky full of ‘ribs’. During Will’s Journey he had gotten so thin that he was literally little more than skin and bones. I would go to his room to have a chat, bring him beverages, ask what I could do to make him comfortable, give him back rubs, finish some work, read quietly…and a lot of times, just sit near his feet and watch him sleep. When I saw the sky that looked so much like Will’s cancer-ridden body, I snapped this photo with my phone and wept. It seemed like it was just a few minutes later that the clouds were gone, and I could ‘hear’ the message that “Will doesn’t look like that anymore. He is totally healed now.” That messaged helped to calm me. But the image still sucks the air out of my lungs.
In the following weeks and months, it seemed like every time I looked up in the sky there was a cloud formation…specifically a cloud with a hole in the middle of it… another message. I felt the formation reflected the hole that I felt in my heart… a part of me was missing… I am not complete without Will.
In the 24 months since Will’s passing, I have lost count of how many ‘holes’ the Lord has given me in the clouds. The message I have heard is that God knows me and feels the pain of my loss, right alongside me. There has been comfort in these sightings but also great sadness. Each time it draws me closer to Him and to Will and for that I have been thankful.
It wasn’t until after Bruce and I traveled last October to visit DeLand, FL friends, Keith, and Mary Napier, at their northern property, a lake house in Michigan, where the meaning of the hole in the middle of the clouds began to change for me.
We had been enjoying several days at the lake, visiting with them and their daughter, Dani, catching up on family news and thoroughly enjoying being together on the lake in kayaks and boating. We’ve known the Napier family (and our extended family as our children Will and Kate called Keith’s mom ‘Grandma Ruth’) for over 20 years. Will and Kate grew up with their children, Dani and Joe. Will even lived with their family in DeLand, FL while he completed a pediatric clinical rotation during medical school. Ten months before he passed. Will was able to attend Joe’s wedding.
So, during our fall visit, one evening down by the lake, we were relaxing on the dock, waiting for one of their award-winning sunsets (they love to taunt us throughout the year by texting us pictures of their amazing sunsets). It was just before the sun went down when a cloud formation appeared that looked to me like a set of huge angle wings running parallel to the top of the trees at the end of the lake.
Then to the left of them was a smaller cloud formation that look like a set of mini wings running vertical the lake…and these wings were followed further to the left by a formation that looked like God’s hand holding the moon.
Look below for the zoom shot of the moon in the hand. Can you see the sliver of the moon 1/4 of the way from the tips of His fingers?
Okay, so you might think I am a bit crazy, but let me tell you, there was such a sense of peace that washed over me. A ‘word’ of promise that God knew about the hole in my heart and despite it He was there to help me heal… to hold me up in the palm of His hand, like He holds the universe. I felt the peace and assurance that God had his angels watching over us as well as Will. Next came a beautiful sunset to top it all off.
Based upon these sightings, I was coming to believe that the “holes”, while a reminder of my pain, weren’t necessarily to just remind me about an emptiness. The holes let me know that God is in my life journey and this insight has brought me peace.
I recall the scripture that shares the Lord’s promise to us that He will provide us with a peace that is unlike any other that we can experience on our own.
Then scriptures say:
27 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
John 14:27
I feel like this extraordinary peace is the same peace and joy that I have when someone shares a special remembrance about Will, recounts a sweet story of him, reminds me of a funny moment with him, or shares the way one of Will’s books (that they chose at Will’s life celebration last summer) has impacted them.
While originally writing this entry a work colleague and friend, Susan, called and shared with me that every time she sees a heart hanging in a tree, which is apparently something that is a tradition in Cleveland, that she thinks of Will. In the past year, after Will passed away, Susan was walking among a number of trees where there were hearts hanging while she was thinking of Will, and one heart started to twirl and swing, when there was no wind or movement of the other hearts. She felt it was Will’s spirit sending a message that he was well. When I receive messages like this there is a special peace and joy that reminds me that because of God’s love, Will’s spirit lives on still, just in a different way. And I also hear from the message that God loves me and that my life is still here to be fully lived, just in a different way. This peace and joy has led to more hope for me.
Several months ago, I spent a few days in DeLand, FL. The plan for me was to once again stay with the Napiers (at their lovely southern property this time), to visit, shop for, cook meals, and drive to a chemo appointment for another friend, Bethanne, who is battling two types of Lymphoma.
To pass the time driving across the state, along dreaded Interstate 4, I rang up my friend Cathryn from Massachusetts. We caught up on each other lives and shared prayer concerns. I was feeling anxious about being with Bethanne, as I had only seen one other friend battling cancer since Will passed, and that one visit (with a gal named Pat) was really distressing for me. Within seconds of seeing Pat, I had so many ‘flashbacks’ of Will’s chemo challenges that it took my breath away.
So, I wrapped up my phone call with Cathryn and stopped to gas up my car to finish my drive to DeLand. As I began to pump the gas I gazed up in the sky and this is what I saw.
It looked like a hand… God’s hand, reaching out… And in my spirit, I could hear the scripture that was shared with me by my Spiritual Mom, Gloria… Gloria is the biological mom to Cathryn… yes, the same Cathryn who I had just spoken to asked her to pray for me. Her mom Gloria had passed away 364 days before:
“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”
Isaiah 41:10
The timing couldn’t be just a coincidence, could it?
I felt such confidence that both Cathryn and Gloria were helping to support me, to uphold me by praying me into God’s righteous right hand.
My time visitin’ (as we say here down south), with Bethanne, and several other long-time friends in DeLand was blessed. I felt so uplifted and encouraged by this time to serve and reconnect. Prayers were answered.
Right before I left town, I took a couple minutes to return a missed phone call to a friend in Iowa, Susan. We had plans to speak alongside of each other at a women’s retreat she was coordinating and we needed to cover some outstanding logistics. After talking about the retreat, I shared a bit about how God was using cloud formations to remind me of His presence with me and she mentioned that the continued ‘hole’ messages of His presence with my loss could possibly mean even more. She encouraged me to keep looking and listening for all that God has to say through the “holes”. And as she was speaking to me, I looked out my car window and there was, yet another hand, this one reaching toward me.
Okay, God… I’ll keep looking and listening.
When I returned home, I sat down to have my quiet time before I planned to continue writing this journal entry… remember that I started writing it months before. This is what I came across during my reading time from the book “God is My Hiding Place” the devotional by concentration camp survivor, Corrie Ten Boom:
“When we are at the center of God’s will, His grace keeps us. Each assignment releases His wisdom, favor, and protection. We must be careful not to hold on to what we have when God calls us to move on. Let us be sensitive to the leading of His Spirit and commit each day to Him.”
Page 84
I kept rereading the quote, “…at the center”… in the middle… of His will. It jumped off the page. Surrounded by God and being where He is calling me to be, which means to be aware of where He is calling me to go. A long-time favorite passage from scripture is Proverbs 3:5-6. My company’s name (Pathway Development Company) was influenced by this writing of King Solomon.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.[a]
Proverbs 3:5-6a
As daunting is it seems, Instead of focusing on “the holes” in the cloud formations reflecting a place of loss and emptiness, I felt called to focus on the holes representing a place where I am surrounded by the love of God. A place that reflects the call to walk in the center of His will. This could mean letting go of what I know and what I think I need and instead, embracing what He has next.
While this uncertainty feels unsettling, God promises us that His peace will replace the other clouds, storms and challenges that are present in my life and yours. I don’t know about you, but I know that I can’t consistently conjure up peace within myself. As much as I try, I can’t figure everything out in my own mind. I have never “done life” perfectly. However, He is making it clear that I need to continually seek Him and trust enough to walk in His will. By keeping my eyes and ears open to receive His messages I can walk a path parallel to God’s.
.
27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27
It’s raining here in Sarasota today… just like it did when another tropical storm passed through two years ago today… on the afternoon Will passed away. There were rainbows in the sky just a few hours after Will said “I love you, too” and walked into the Lords loving arms. I am praying again today for God’s strength to keep living without Will. And for His leading me with eyes to “see” more within the clouds and rainbows with the message that the joy will come in the morning.
On Parallel Paths 
Cindy, this is absolutely beautiful. God does speak to us, all the time, through His creation. The birds, the flowers, the clouds, the plants…He surrounds us with His love and presence. Just to “be still, and know He is God…”; to watch, listen, smell……..
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Cindy, what a great way you have of reminding us of Will when we see clouds, whatever shape they may have, and how God uses them to comfort you, and others in how close Will’s spirit is to you and all of us who loved him too.
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Cindy, I am weeping as a write this. You have such an amazing way with words. I see God in clouds sometimes as well! I was just remembering you coming to cook and minister to me in March. It was truly a blessing. I am so thankful you were able to be here and cook, and laugh, and cry. It meant and continues to mean so much to me.
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