A Mother's Redeeming Love Beyond the Veil

Excerpted from The Fragile Face of God: A True Story About Light, Darkness, and the Hope Beyond the Veil ©2013 by LeeAnn Taylor

I was loved and nurtured in my mother’s arms, a safe place for a little girl. Often after a long day’s work, she would take warm baths, lingering respites of repose. I frequently had the privilege of joining her in these divine little escapes. Silent and weightless in the water, we floated for hours like angels quietly adrift. I felt treasured in those moments as she peered into my eyes with that glimmer that was her love, that spark of infinite but unspoken truth. I felt as if we truly became one.     

Then, when I was six years old, my mother discovered a lump in her breast. Her doctor assured her that she had as much chance of winning the Irish Sweepstakes as she did of having cancer. She was twenty-nine and otherwise healthy at the time. However, a biopsy soon revealed that my mother indeed had breast cancer—progressive. Our lives were suddenly swept into a whirlwind. She immediately underwent a mastectomy and began witnessing the harsh effects of chemotherapy, a cruel intruder to our happy little home.

            After a devastating two-year battle, my mother passed away the day after Christmas, 1977. I was eight years old.

Nine years later, while sleeping on the night of December 9, 1986, I found myself in the midst of a bright and gentle light. The pervasive brightness that surrounded me had substance to it, as if particles of luminous energy suffused the air around me. Though I was asleep, I was fully lucid. And I soon realized I was outside my body in a place of profound calm.

About one foot away and facing me, I beheld a young woman. Her face was flawless and beautiful, reminiscent of a delicate china doll, with a deep luminosity that originated far beneath the surface. Light emanated from her, framing her face in a manner similar to a frosted silhouette one might see in an oval photograph, dissolving around the edges into the whiteness. Her hair was long and pulled back and she appeared to be about twenty years old, though there was a distinct agelessness to her.  

I was mesmerized by how much this girl looked like me—a reflection of me somehow—a mirror image almost. We faced each other for a long moment before I finally recognized her. Though it wasn’t so much a recognition as it was a realization of who she was. The last time I had seen her she was pale and sick and bald, unlike the radiantly perfect young woman before me now—a timeless angel encased in light. 

It was Carol, my mother. I was in her heavenly presence and she had a message for me.

She immediately began expressing her love for me and her joy for my self-discovery and newfound spirituality. This love washed over me fully, infusing me from head-to-toe with its encompassing power. Unlike an exchange of words, these were feelings and concepts communicated directly to my spirit, instantaneous and all-expansive. With an ability that came instinctively to me, I simultaneously shared my joy and longing for her in this same manner—directly to her spirit. Mere words could never have accomplished such a sweeping expression. Also radiating through me was a deep certainty that God loved me and was elated for my progress. All of this was given as though my entire body was a conduit of love. Multiple layers of meanings and understandings were overlapping in a graceful flow of sacred expression and it literally swept through my entire being, completely redefining for me what love is.    

At the same time, I was able to perceive the experience from above and from the sides, moving around my mother and me in a panoramic view that revealed every detail of our encounter in perfect clarity. At first I didn’t understand how it was possible for me to see with such scope. However, I was given to understand that the eyes of the spirit see all dimensions from every angle simultaneously.

My mother then looked deeply into my eyes, drawing me in, locking me in her penetrating gaze. She held me there firmly for a long, spellbinding moment. And then I saw it—that same glimmer that had been there when I was a young girl, the same spark that spoke volumes from her eyes before the cancer had snuffed it out. It took hold of me, piercing me to the very core.

After nine long years, my mother and I were one again.  

She then expressed one specific word to my soul, “Farewell.”

I immediately awoke.

I sat up in bed, overcome by the penetrating love that still lingered. Tears began falling. I had been someplace else, an otherworldly realm of love and light. I had seen my mother—she had actually communicated with me. I now knew that she still loved me, that she was proud of me. And more importantly, somewhere, in some distant beautiful place, my mother still lived. 

Her guiding hand and luminous heart have been with me every day since, nurturing my life in the power of her redeeming love. She has taught me that a mother’s work does not end at death. Indeed, it is everlasting. And we—every one of us—are guided by loved ones and angels beyond the veil in every moment.