My Kids, a Sandwich and the Other Side

Full transcript of the My True Ghost Stories episode “My Kids, a Sandwich and the Other Side.” Listen to this episode.

An overwhelmed mom, an attentive daughter, and a peanut butter sandwich. How can these three things come together to show a connection to the other side? Welcome to Episode 59 of My True Ghost Stories. As you all know, if you've been listening to this podcast, I, Jennifer, am a medium, you know that I have faith and you know that I attend church, you know that I am often divinely guided and I am connected to the powers that be, and I have children. And while raising them, I was very open about all of that.

I was very open about having faith, being divinely guided sometimes, receiving messages from the other side. And apparently my children have faith are divinely guided sometimes and get messages from the other side too. I have mentioned my children many times in this podcast. I have three daughters. They are all grown now and they are my proudest achievement in this life.

And they are also my favorite things in the world. There are occasions every once in a while that all three of my grown daughters are home and I just love walking down the street with these three gorgeous, funny, clever women and I sort of walk a little bit behind them as they walk before me and I think to the world and everyone we see, I want to say, look what I made. Now I know that I didn't make them. I just feel that way when I'm walking down the street with them, I feel very proud of my accomplishment. So I take credit in those moments when I'm walking down the street with them, but I know that they are their own people and they are gifts from God.

So they are all grown and successful and tall and self-sufficient and when I look at these three adult women, it's hard for me to believe that just a short time ago, they were three little girls who, when they were three little girls, they were all grown and also my proudest achievement and my favorite things in the world. And these grown women are self-sufficient, they are responsible, they're independent, but when they were those three little girls in my house, I was 100% responsible for their well-being. Now I am grateful that I was able to share that responsibility with their teachers during the day and with their dad who had them on the weekends, definitely grateful for all of that. But psychically and practically, most of the time, I was 100% responsible for them. And this is the overwhelmed mom that was mentioned at the beginning of this episode.

So as you know, any of you who have children, what our day entailed was, you know, getting them out of the bed in the morning and getting them dressed and getting them fed and getting them to school every day on time, which being on time was a big priority for me as a mom and it does seem to be for them too, now that they are grown. So my focus on that paid off and after I would drop them off at school, then I would run to work. I taught dance classes during the day and I also taught these mommy and me type music classes and I did that every day while they were in school and then I would get out of there in time to grab some lunch and run back to the school and pick them up and then I would take them to the playground every day. I took them to the playground every single day. Pretty much no matter what the weather, especially the older two, I took them when it was like only drizzling rain when it was freezing cold when it was swelteringly hot.

I took them to that playground every day, which they still will complain about from time to time, even now as adults. But I was so exhausted at the end of the day. I had no imagination left of what I should do with the kids besides, you know, hang out with them. And also I was a better mom in public and I appreciated the other moms at the playground and we would all sort of help each other. It was a nice community there.

So I just kept it consistent and I picked them up every day from school and took them to the playground every day after school and then we would head home, have dinner and go to bed. But I will say from my kids going to the playground every day, they were in great shape from running around for a couple hours every day after school in that playground. Now my daughters are all three, obviously, shining gems who were meant to be on this earth and I am honored that I was entrusted by God with their care. And any mom of three knows that caring for three small children under the age of eight is a huge amount of work. I'm so grateful that I was able to do it.

But it wasn't that easy. And one of the reasons it was not that easy is because I, Jennifer, have a problem that it's pretty common problem. Some people might even call it a defect of character. And this defective character is that I try to do everything myself. I'm not sure why, but I won't ask for help.

It's very hard for me to ask for help. And possibly it's, you know, I'm the oldest of eight. So maybe, you know, I just grew up helping others and doing stuff for people. It could be that, you know, I have had some bad experiences of asking for help and the help was not that helpful. You know, you can imagine.

And there's also a level of shyness. I just, I don't want to bother people and I don't want to inconvenience people by asking them to do things that I could probably do myself. And a lot of times I just found it was easier to just do everything myself, especially on the times that I did ask. And then I had to ask over and over and over and over again until I just gave up and did it myself. Plus it was a bit of a boost to my ego when I managed to do everything myself with out any help from anybody else.

So there's many reasons why I guess I might not want to ask for help when I try to do everything myself. But this is a problem that I had raising my kids and I exhausted myself and I didn't need to because I could have asked for help and I could have asked my kids for help. Now the daily routine that I described to you in the beginning of this podcast with the taking them school and going to work and then taking them to the playground, that was obviously the routine that we had during the school year. But then there was the summers. Now the summers were obviously less stressful in the morning because I did not have to get them out of bed, get them dressed and get them out the door.

So they were able to sleep as long as they wanted. They definitely always woke up before me. So I didn't get to sleep as long as I wanted to. But there wasn't this, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, let's go get your shoes on, get your shoes on. We didn't have that.

But then what did happen is that we would have to go do something. So I, as I have mentioned, am a bit of a creature of habit and I tend to like to do the same things over and over again because I don't know. I guess I don't have a lot of imagination and if it works, I just want to keep doing that. So I found two things. I didn't find two things.

I found one thing. I found one new activity that we could do during those summer days. We kept going to that same playground and at the playground they had sprinklers and so we could go cool down there and I would have to make lunch for them. And then the other thing I found was the public pool and the public pool served lunch. They had free lunch for kids.

I was also on quite a tight budget in those single mom days. But my kids hated the lunch that they served so I had to kind of, you know, I would make them eat it anyway. But in general, they preferred the lunches that I would make which was pretty much 100% of the time peanut butter sandwiches. I didn't even bother with the jelly anymore. I just made peanut butter sandwiches every single day.

I went to the same place every single day. My kids have opinions about this. So today's story takes place on a playground day where we were not going to get the lunches that they hated. We were going to have our peanut butter sandwiches made by mom put into little baggies and then we were going to head down to the playground and go in the sprinklers and eat our sandwiches at the playground. But this also entailed a lot of work.

Going to the pool was a lot because we had to get the bathing suits and the sunblock. But this one, we also had to get the bathing suits and the sunblock because they were going to go into the sprinklers and we had to find their shoes and it was a lot of work. And it was taking forever on this day for me to get my three kids out the door and to the playground and get them eating those sandwiches before they crashed. And it started melting down. So it was this whole timing thing and it wasn't going well because there was a lot of crises happening with the three kids.

If you have kids, you know what kind of crises can happen as you're trying to get ready to leave. So I was in the kitchen and I was making a sandwich for myself also. So I had eight slices of bread set up in sandwich form and I had this huge tub of shop-right and peanut butter and I was trying to get it all ready and get the baggies prepared. And I was really stressed and they kept fighting in the other room and so I would have to, you know, go and try and break up the fight or yell, stop fighting. And I had to turn away from the sandwiches for a minute and I went to the door of the living room to address whatever chaos was going on in there.

And then I turned back around and I headed back over to the counter where the bread and the peanut butter was. And as I turned around, I see that my daughter, my oldest, has got the butter knife and she's got the tub of peanut butter and she is busily and quickly making the sandwiches and she was probably eight years old and she's making the sandwiches and then she folded them up and she starts putting them into the bag and by the time I got over there, I was able to finish the last sandwich and put it into a baggie and then start to put them into the bigger bag that we were going to put onto the stroller. And I thanked her and she just like walked out of the room and then she came back in like one minute later and she says, Mom, I said yes, just mom, isn't God great? And I said, yeah, God is great. Yeah.

And then I didn't know why she was saying this and I said, yes, God is great. What makes you say that? And she said, he told me to help you and I just couldn't even respond. So my daughter had been involved in all that chaos in the other room and then somehow had received some sort of message from our higher power who she chooses to call God at that point. She received some sort of message, remove herself from the chaos.

I wasn't even like I was in the kitchen yelling, somebody come help me, which I told you that's not something that I do. She removed herself from the chaos, came into the kitchen, picked up the butter knife while I was breaking up the chaos between her other sisters and she just started making the sandwiches and it was because God had told her to do this. I was in awe, I was in awe for the rest of the day that my daughter could be so connected and be able to hear a message like that. I think often children are more connected and they have less interference with what they should and shouldn't believe. And since she was raised to have faith in all sorts of things, she heard a message and she heated that message.

And I wish that we could all be like that. And I know the name of this podcast is My True Ghost Stories. But today I guess I've told you a My True God story. So I still take care of my daughters a little bit, I don't make them peanut butter sandwiches anymore. They certainly wouldn't want a peanut butter sandwich because God knows they had enough of them while growing up.

And so the care that I give for them is mostly on the telephone, but I hear from them almost every day and it is a beautiful relationship and I'm so grateful for it. Thank you for listening to today's episode of My True Ghost Stories. If you like my storytelling style, you can subscribe to the Patreon where I tell interesting stories from my daily life and the link to the Patreon is in the show notes. And if you have enjoyed this episode of My True Ghost Stories, please take a second to subscribe, review and share it with a friend to help this show grow. And that's all for today.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you think your house is haunted, want energy cleared from your space or need a custom spiritual ritual, I'm here to help. Don't forget to join me here every Tuesday for a new episode. Until next time.