How I Undoubtedly Know That God Directs Me Through My Gut Feeling, Dreams and His Quiet Voice.

I am aware as I start this article that there will be a lot of people out there who are thinking I am incredibly arrogant to say that I believe that God guides me full stop. I mean, how can I be certain that it was God and not just some other voice in my head? And, ‘hello’, we all get a gut feeling about things don’t we?

Well, let me explain as to why I hold this belief. I want to take you back to the first week of October 1994. I had had six weeks of phenomenally intense headaches. My dear GP had gone down every avenue, it seemed, to try and work out what was causing these headaches. She hadn’t done a brain scan due to the fact that I had absolutely no other symptoms, other than intense headaches, of a brain tumor.

Then on the Thursday the 29th of September, 1994 I dreamed that I had a brain tumor. On waking from that dream, this thought initially totally freaked me out and I rang my GP’s clinic immediately the next morning and got an appointment to see my GP on the Monday morning.

On that Monday morning, in the early hours, I had a dream that I was up the front of a hall of people telling them about how I had had (not have, that I had had — past tense) a brain tumor. Then just before I awoke that morning a quiet voice said to me in my head “you have a brain tumor but you are going to be fine”. Following this voice, I got up and told my dear parents what I had dreamed, and heard. This was an extremely freaky thing for them to hear and was not a reassuring thing to them as it was for me at all. It was essentially the worst possible scenario.

My GP, on the Monday, was immediately concerned and sent me for a CT scan. Quite strangely really, I had absolute peace during that scan. My mother and I were in the waiting room waiting for well over an hour after the scan, with

Mum extremely concerned that it was taking them so long to come back to us. However, I already knew that I had a brain tumor and that I was going to be fine and had complete peace and was thinking about something trivial, nothing to do with cancer!

It wasn’t the same man (the radiographer) who came back to get me, but was rather a radiologist (although that didn’t mean anything to me back then.) He sat us down and showed us the mostly black brain scans. The scan had these huge black sections in them and I remember being quite amazed by how thin my skull actually was. These hugely black sections were my blocked ventricles which are like the pipelines into, and out of the brain (for cerebral spinal fluid to flow). I had what is called hydrocephalus and it was severe. They wanted to immediately take me into surgery to relieve this, however, I had gotten so extremely hungry and had persuaded my mother to go and get me a scone from the café. Due to my having recently had this, I couldn’t go into surgery that day.

They estimated, from my CT scan, that I had had this tumor for around 7 years, due to how thin my skull was. The constant pressure in the brain had worn my skull down. They thought that I had probably had it from childhood. I have had to reassure my mother that if she had been asking the doctors for a brain scan when I had headaches as a child, they would have thought that she was a total hypochondriac.

The location of the tumor affected the function of my bowel, coordination, along with never having menstruated. Also, possibly to do with my height. I had grown extremely tall by 13 years old (185cm).

The first lot of neurosurgery I had was to insert what is called a shunt, like the inside of a small plastic pen, to serve as a fake ventricle and drain the fluid from the brain (to the stomach). The second lot of neurosurgery I had was a biopsy to diagnose what type of tumor I had. I am unsure whether anybody reading this will know cancer types but it was a `Juvenile Pylocytic Astrocytoma’ (for 19 years it was great to be able to claim that I had a juvenile in my brain!).

After the surgery we went on to see the patronizing and extremely old-school oncologist (which we assumed was the norm for people with such an important role) who tried to tell us that I was going to have radiotherapy in the following months. However, I had an extremely strong and absolute gut feeling that I did not want to have this unless my tumor had grown. This may not seem too big a deal, but trust me, we had never been in the medical world and to come back to this specialist saying that I disagreed with him was an extremely big thing to do. As you so easily do once in the medical world, I had lost sight of the fact that he was just a man and it was actually just his opinion that I should have radiotherapy.

However, I had an extremely strong gut feeling that I should not have this treatment. It wasn’t until I actually chose to have radiotherapy in 2002 (having felt complete peace about it this time) that I was told that it was extremely fortunate that I didn’t have it in 1994 as they had found that the type of radiotherapy they were using back then had caused my type of cancer to grow. It was then that I realized that God had guided me to not have that treatment, guiding me through the strong gut feeling that he had given me back in 1994.

From 2002–2013 I was extremely unwell. I had to have 6 lots of neurosurgery in 8 days in 2000. I then had had three lots of neurosurgery in 2004, then my final lot of neurosurgery in 2006. I was extremely unwell until around 2014. The extent of these surgeries’ impact on my brain was huge and took me so many years to recover from.

In 2012 I found my singing voice again (I had sung classically in my teens and moved into Jazz singing in 1998). I had absolutely no musicians to jam with and was 40 minutes from central Auckland. When my GP heard of this she mentioned it to one of her secretaries who knew of a young man who lived relatively close to me (40 minutes away). When I spoke to him, he started by giving me all the reasons that he couldn’t come. However, by the end of the call he absolutely and completely changed his perspective and said that he’d come to jam whenever he had to hand a paper in for his Masters Degree in performance jazz. He later told me that while we were talking that day God said to him “Go to her”. We jammed solidly every week for a year and ended up recording our album, entitled ‘Just This Once’, in 2013. I named it that as we were going to have a bass player that I had never played with, along with a drummer we had never played with, all jam together that day of the recording and it would all be recorded. Quite incredibly, we also had a world renowned saxophonist play with us.

Recording that album was a lifetime highlight for me, as were the album release party and career that followed. And it all came from God saying quietly to the pianist “Go to her” when we spoke that first time, and his obeying that voice.

I had experienced this before but have always been quite amazed when God leads me through his quiet, still voice in my head. In the Bible it actually talks about how God can be heard this way. In (1 Kings 18) when speaking to Elijah in the Bible it talks about how God sent an earthquake and a fire but God didn’t speak through them. However, he spoke to Elijah through a quiet still voice, or gentle whisper.

Roll on to January 18, 2015 when I met my now-husband Daniel. Prior to going to a personal development seminar (with a dinner after it), I nearly ruled out going due to the cost. It was $175 but that included morning and afternoon tea, lunch and dinner out). I was on a benefit and didn’t know how I could ever afford it. Then a girlfriend from my church arranged for us to 6have a coffee where she gave me an envelope with cash in it. She told me that God had told her to give it to me to attend some seminar. It was $150. My problem with attending that course was now over — I could now afford to go.

I had a wonderful day and learned so much. Then to help people get to know more people they got people to change seats after every course at the dinner. It was finally my turn to get up for the dessert course and I sat down beside this small Chinese man.

My health situation was extremely complicated, I had had cancer but no longer had cancer. However, I lived with chronic pain throughout my body. As it turned out, this man was one of the leading scientists and owners at a laboratory that looked at the genetic component of cancer. Within that first 5 minutes of talking he knew the type of tumor I had had and found it amazing I was still alive and well. After learning that we moved on to the next topic. I had such a strong gut feeling that he was going to be the man I married. I somehow just knew. It just took him two years more for him to decide that himself!

I had written a list of the things that I wanted in a man. It had been extremely important to me that a man be at least my height. I am 185cm (1cm until 6 ft 1” to confusingly use two measuring systems!). I can’t tell you how completely astounded I was when at the end of the dessert course where we met, we both stood up at the end of the course and I saw the height difference between us.

There were deal-breakers I had written down in a list. It was an absolutely imperative thing to me that any man I dated had to be at least my height. In my mind I formulated a ‘syndrome’ called ‘shorter than me male syndrome’. This was based on experiences I had had at school and university where men who were shorter than me felt they had to continually put me down in order to make themselves feel bigger! What I was too insecure to see myself was that these men were threatened by it. However, this man, Daniel, wasn’t remotely threatened by our height difference but rather, loved it instead! Maybe the gut feeling I had at the beginning was right? I wondered whether this man really was the right man for me?

On our first actual date I gently asked Daniel how tall he actually was. When he replied that he was 164cm I swallowed deeply! This was the height I had been at the age of 11! However, over the years we dated, especially the first year, it was only me that had to work through issues with it. Society promotes, through movies and models, that the man should be taller. However, in our first few months I began to learn that this man had a heart similar to a giant’s. And I kept coming back to remind myself of what I knew (through my gut feeling), that Daniel was the man for me. I had learned to absolutely learn that God guided me through my gut feeling and to go with it.

Ironically, the week before I met Daniel, God had prompted me, with his quiet calm voice (in my head), to look up 1 Samuel 16 verse 7. This confused me a little as it had said “do not consider his appearance or height. The Lord does not look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” This seemed of no relevance at the time, but I believe that the Lord spoke to me through it and advised me what to do a week later.

Now you may say that these experiences I have listed are small or insignificant, but to me they have been huge.

From my brain tumor diagnosis, God guiding me through a dream a week earlier, and my having complete peace from the start. To God giving me such a strong gut feeling not to have radiotherapy in 1994, and then to actually have it in 2002.

To God speaking to my pianist from my album, and advising he come and work with me when he had been thinking the opposite initially. To God speaking to my friend to give me $100 towards a personal growth seminar that I couldn’t afford to go to, where I met my husband. Then through God guiding me from our first meeting each other. I have learned to trust completely in God directing me through my gut feeling, a quiet voice in my head. They have all convinced me that that God guides me and directs me and I need to keep ‘listening out’ for his direction. Then I need to choose to follow whatever he has guided me to do.

It has, quite literally, saved my life from cancer. And through his guiding me to my husband he has brought more joy and love into my life than I could have ever imagined.

Sure, this is just my story, but perhaps it could also become yours too? All you need to do is to listen, to trust God’s direction and listen to your gut feelings.

It has changed my life and it could change yours.

#faith #Godspeaks #gutfeeling #Christianity#Godisreal