I came in the door, and a loud beeping sound began. I was balancing multiple grocery bags and froze. I thought it was happening again.

My daughter came around the corner.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought it was the alarm.”

She laughed, went over to the air fryer, and shut it off. It was the appliance coming to the end of its cycle, but it had the same tone, just less intense than the one that had surprised me for two years.

“You really thought the house was armed?”

“Yes! I was trying to think how to stop it quickly, but I would have had to drop everything.”

This has happened so many times since 2019. I have lost count. We had gone years without a security system, and while my mom was in hospice, we had it installed. My thoughts were partially elsewhere as the guy walked around the house, showing me where he had placed the sensors.

“I look for vulnerable spots where most criminals will try a break-in. The cameras at the front and back of the house will pick up sound and anyone approaching. Each door has an alarm.”

He had put a small device with a screen on the counter that would allow us to get information from each window and door.

“I labeled them, so if a window is open at night and you don’t want it to be, you can just look on the screen and see which one it is.”

He went through all the instructions on how to arm the system at night or while we were away.

“You can do that from the keypad or use the app on your phone. Many people pull into their garage and disarm it from their car on their phone.”

That sounded easy.

“If you set the alarm off in the next five days, the police will not show up because we notify them that you are still getting used to it. But after that, they will come if you don’t get it to shut off in time. And they aren’t too pleasant after a lot of false alarm runs.”

I was trying really hard to concentrate, but my mind was having difficulty focusing. I had not been sleeping and was spending many hours at the hospital. My attention was split between what he said and wondering when my phone would ring.

“If you trip the alarm, you must type in your code to have it stop. You can do this at the keypad or on the app. But, if you don’t get it in time, the company will call you to verify that you need help. They will assume you want assistance, and you have to give them the secret word you picked.”

My daughter and I had chosen a numerical sequence and a word that would be easy to remember.

“If you say the password, they will assume you are not being held at gunpoint. People will purposely say the wrong one, so they will still send the police because they are in danger, but it doesn’t alert the intruder.”

He handed me a stack of paperwork.

“Read over all of that. It will help you recall what I just told you.”

After he left, I made the familiar trek back to the hospital.

During the day and into many evenings, I sat with my dad, who had difficulty realizing that my mom’s condition would not improve. She would sleep and wake up briefly. I had been given the ability to hear and see all that she was experiencing. If I shut my eyes, I could see her contemplating leaving earth as she stood at the beginning of a bridge that would lead to eternity.

This was new to me, but I wrote down everything I witnessed. I could also hear her voice telling me what was happening. I would write what she said, and she would slightly move in bed, look at me, and say exactly what I had just heard. I was being trained on how to hear and see the other side.

I realized she wasn’t one to leave a party early. She had to be sure that someone could communicate with her before leaving. I was chosen, and so was my daughter. I am still not sure why. But I never want it to go away. It helps make sense of everything.

Without my daughter’s confirmation, I would have thought I needed an intervention. I would have assumed grief was at the heart of these strange experiences, but with someone else having it happen too and getting the same messages, it helped me adjust.

It was determined that she would be discharged back to her home to receive hospice.

The day after we had the security system installed, I wrote in my journal that I could see her in a waiting room for the final transition. She had crossed the bridge, but this is what I saw and heard:

May 22, 2019, 8:30 AM
I see the waiting room filled with people praying. Mom’s head is bowed, and her lips are moving. Everyone looks like that. Absolute silence. No one sees me watching. Intense prayer. This seems to be a time of reverence. I’m getting the impression that the body created is such a sacred thing, and as it dies, heaven prays and worships the Creator.

10:30 AM
Mom has prayed for peace for the family. She doesn’t want us sad. She wants to hear us laugh. They continue to pray.

1:53 pm
“This is beautiful—the coming together of all these people to pray. We are praying for the family. We went to each child, each household and placed a blessing on them. I placed a drop of oil on your forehead to seal you into the kingdom of peace. My children will go ahead now without me and know that God is with them. The generations to come after you will know of His love. It may appear that the world can corrupt them, but the seal is placed now into the bloodlines. It’s a promise of God.”

When I write these things, I don’t know until later sometimes what they mean.

Because there was so much going on with my mom being moved to her home and spending all the time there, several days went by after I had jotted that down. But, proof of her visitation to my home showed up.

“I checked the security camera footage, and I think there is an orb. It looks like a bright ball of light,” my daughter said.

She pulled up the video, and I was shocked. On the camera at the back of the house, by the garage, a strange moving object appeared on screen and floated around and into the side of the wall. I watched it over and over.

“It looks like a flashlight, but it isn’t,” I said. This appeared the night before I had written what I did in my journal.

I did show other people, and only one had an adverse reaction. I understand it’s fear because I have gone into all of this reluctantly.

“Didn’t you write that she had visited us?” My daughter asked.

I went back through my notes and found that I had. We had lamps that would click on and off for a while, but this seemed more significant. One of the most strange things is that my daughter will smell the perfume my mom used to wear. She will pull her ponytail over to see if she is right.

“I smell her in my hair!”

My mom used to love to play with my daughter’s long hair and say how much she loved it.

Now she says, “My grandmother is in my hair!” This usually means that we need some problem solved. And the answer will come quickly when it happens.

Since then, we have had orbs show up on that camera many times. I have my grandma’s refrigerator on the other side of the wall where they travel.

“The refrigerator is probably a portal,” I said to my daughter jokingly.

I am sure some information is out there that claims this type of thing likes to travel through cold spaces and checks out the freezer for ice cream. I have no idea how it all works. It’s too bad we are dairy-free.

While this otherworldly experience is fun, the alarm going off due to us forgetting about it has been not.

Like the night I woke up to that sound you don’t want to hear at 3 am—a dog on the brink of throwing up all over your bed. If you haven’t had this happen, you are running toward the door before you are fully awake, and there is no thought of needing to shut off the night alarm. Your mind goes blank while formulating the numbers to get it to cease. The idea that you have to hurry doesn’t help either. Meanwhile, the dog throws up all over the kitchen floor.

Another time you might not consider the security system is when your daughter texts you from her bedroom in the basement saying she hears a weird sound outside her window. When you go half-asleep to see what is happening and open the window, the blaring noise reminds you that it is 2 am.

Or when you come back from somewhere, everyone forgets, and it screams when you barely go through the entry an inch.

So when I came in the door with my arms unavailable and heard a beeping sound, I was not being unreasonable for being alarm sensitive. I have been educated by trial and error on responding to the slightest sound. This is similar to my spiritual senses that have been activated and put on high alert.

So many signs have shown up, and circumstances have happened to me in the last two years that the uncertainty and doubt have evaporated. I don’t care if people believe me or not. I used to, but now I don’t. I don’t care if people agree with me either.

All of this, from ringing alarms, orbs, unexplained visitations, and visions, have made me more heavenly-minded. And, none of it would have happened without me dropping what I thought I knew and adopting a new mindset. I had to leave behind the rhetoric that is too familiar and comfortable for many believers.

I can easily say the buzzwords and make myself fit in when I have to, but I don’t do that as often.

I asked God to help me understand death better, and I am continually shown new things. But, not everyone is going to agree.

In John 17:16, we are told not to expect any of this to be ‘normal’:

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. (ESV)

Start paying attention to the subtle signs of heaven coming your way. It’s not that complicated, and sometimes they will come gently in like a whisper, a bird singing you a song or something spoken at just the right time.

In Isaiah 55:3 it says:

Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life. (NLT)

Your faith will grow exponentially once you decide to get quiet, hear, and let God speak.