Our church recently hosted a special healing event where several alternative wellness practitioners and healers shared their skills and wisdom with curious would-be clients. Healers offered services such as Reiki, SRT, or Yoga Nidra. One gentleman offered his intuitive skills through reading Tarot cards for folks. I was one of them and the last person to sit at his table.
As it was the end of the day and nearly time to start packing up the event, the reading needed to be shortened in some way. I asked him to do just one card. He shuffled the cards. I cut the deck. He fanned the cards across the table and waited for my selection. I used my own intuitive nature to select the perfect card – the 5 of Swords – and with no verbal input from me to offer any clues (I thought), his interpretation began.
This card, in general terms, is about the fear of loss, of losing control…an illusion of its own. With his eyes focused downward to the card on the table, he talked of how I was going through or may soon be going through some sort of loss. His eyes questioned my face as I remained silent and unaware of anything about which I may have felt a sense of loss. My mind was blank…open.
He continued this line of explanation and then reassured me that, while I may be saddened for a time over the loss, this void would open my life to greater expression and possibilities. His commentary and the session came to a close. We all packed up the event. I put the experience aside as something that was fun and interesting. I could think about it later.
Later came sooner than I expected.
Two days following, my husband and I agreed on a new wall-hanging/headboard idea for our bedroom… one that would utilize an embroidered duvet cover I had painstakingly created about 20 years prior and that had become our bed’s covering in the early years of our marriage. As our bed size had changed, and to preserve the memories associated with the piece, we no longer used the coverlet but had stored it away.
The detailed needlework designs on the queen-sized muslin coverlet had taken me two years to complete, with subtle, hand embroidery work that filled the center and ruffled sides. The angelic design symbolized our Divine introduction and enduring Love. It was the largest and most complicated fabric art I had ever done. I knew I could reconstruct the coverlet into a beautiful wall-hanging, a visible reminder of how we met and how our love had matured. I couldn’t wait to get started! I fell asleep with great anticipation for the project.
The next morning I went to the linen closet to fetch the coverlet from the plastic storage bag. It wasn’t there. Each shelf I searched revealed only towels and sheets, but not the embroidered masterpiece. I expanded my search to the craft closet, sewing bins, guest room, dining hutch, boxes of holiday decorations, and the garage. While I located many items that were no longer useful and could be given or thrown away, the coverlet was not among the finds.
Besides my own prayers of resolution and peace, a friend offered prayers to Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. I called a couple of my children to see if it was accidentally packed among their belongings during previous extended visits. I changed my affirmation from “I can’t find it!” to “It’s somewhere in this house and it’s ready for me to see it!” I cried at my loss. The words of the Tarot reader came back with haunting clarity.
I fully realize my sense of attachment to this artwork and the memories I have threaded into the design. Still unwilling to face the loss of this treasure, I’m continuing the systematic search box by box, closet by closet, corner by corner, and drawer by drawer…until I know with absolute clarity what I truly do have as my earthly possessions and if this one accomplishment is among them. I will do a thorough and complete investigation. In the process I will also “release” many other things, more clutter and unused possessions that no longer serve my new direction and the life I now express.
If by some accident the embroidered cherub truly has taken his trumpet and departed my realm, I will let go … by choice or otherwise … and open my consciousness and my interests to richer and fuller experiences. And so it is!