A faith experience

It is exciting to be expecting our first grandchild and this week we found out that it is a boy. A grandson. It makes the experience so real to find out the gender of the child and I would have cried either way! 

I have a little story to share that happened back in May when we were hoping that a grandchild would be in our future. 

 My husband and I were out to dinner for our anniversary in our home town and on the way home I had an urge to stop at my old church and light a candle for my daughter in law. We were hoping that we would be getting some good news soon as we knew my son and his wife were wanting to start a family. My hometown church is the only church I knew of in our immediate area that still has real candles to light. 

As we were drivng over to the church, my husband wondered out loud if the church would even be open as it was now about 7:30 P.M. and most churches lock their doors these days when evening is falling. We decided to try anyway. We drove into the parking lot and noticed there were no other cars around. 

We went up to the doors and they were unlocked! As we walked inside the church we heard singing filling up the church and I assumed that choir practice was going on. I went to the left to the back of the church under the choir loft where all the candles are set up and my husband went right and walked into the main part of the church. I found an unlit 5 day candle and lit it then walked over to the kneeler to say a prayer.

While I was kneeling there praying, I was thinking to myself that I was so glad I was at the church on choir practice night. The singing was just beautiful and I was getting the chills from it. As I began to listen more closely, I thought that it wasn't really singing I was hearing, but more like a chanting. It certainly wasn't anything I recognized and nothing I have ever heard in a Catholic church before. I became very still and listened and  felt something like an electrical charge go through me. It is very hard to put into words, but it started in my chest, not a pain or anything, just a feeling. In that moment I thought that maybe the choir chanting was a sign that something good was going to happen. 

I was excited now and I stood up and my husband came over to me. I mentioned the chanting and he said that he thought it sounded like a Gregorian chant. "I am so glad we came on choir practice night, I think this chanting is a sign." I exclaimed to him.

Then very seriously my husband looked at me and said, "Lena, there is NO ONE in the choir loft. Look, it is dark and empty."  He continued on, " I even went up to the speakers at the front of the church and put my hand to them. NO SOUND is coming out. I put my EAR to them. Nothing is coming out of those speakers." 

In that moment, I KNEW this was all a sign that my daughter in law was pregnant and I was so excited! We tried to think of where the chanting could be coming from but there was no explanation. The sound was filling up the entire sanctuary and NO ONE was there but me and my husband. 

The very next day, my son called us to tell us that they were expecting a child! We were very thrilled to say the least, but told my son that we knew the night before.