As I board the plane on my way to teach somewhere in the world, I pray. After all the pre-trip arrangements and tasks involved in organizing such a trip, I am finally ready and able to ask the Creator of the World for one thing: the inspiration to bring strength to the renewal of the spirit of those dear people whom I will soon meet.

This time, a short prayer came to me: “God, use me!” my own version of the famous prayer of Francis of Assisi ” Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.”

This prayer got answered in an unexpected way.  Not only it gave me the accurate words to teach the in-person seminar “Gym for Life” in Europe, but it gave me a new experience as a teacher: the ability to channel a message from the soul of a deceased young man to his mother.

In a lecture hall in Luxembourg, right in front of me, sat a woman in her fifties who introduced herself with tears streaming down her face: “My name is Andy. I am from France, and I moved to Luxembourg about six months ago to start a new life. I recently got divorced and lost my son.”  And then she added in a broken voice: “My son committed suicide about a year ago.” Everyone at the seminar was touched by Andy’s pain.

At the end of the seminar, when the secret covenant between parents and children was revealed, each participant was asked to write a blessing to his child, knowing that the best way for this blessing to come true, is that the parent would live it.

 Andy blessed her deceased son. When she read her blessing out loud, all shed tears, and I knew I must meet her in person. After returning to the hotel, I wrote her an email, and we arranged to meet the day before I left for Barcelona.

We met in a cafe, and she started telling me the story of her life, in which the story of her son Saul was woven.

“A week before my wedding, my then soon-to-be-husband and now ex-husband threatened to strangle me. However, since I was very young, I thought that so many people had already bought a plane ticket to get to the wedding so it could not be canceled… So, I got married. And since I grew up in a very Catholic household, I did not dare to think about divorce, even though the house we built was saturated with violence from which Saul especially suffered.  His father abused him physically, but especially mentally.”  After Andy described an especially violent abusive incident, she stopped talking, and wiping her tears, she said, “But you know, in the New Testament it says, ‘What God has united, man must not separate,’ and I did not separate”.

I stopped her just for a moment to teach the true meaning of this statement, which has been distorted: “When Jesus said these words, he meant the connection between two spirits destined for one another according to a high, divine plan. When this occurs, a third person must not interfere and prevent separation between these two spirits. For example, parents must not interfere in the choice of their child’s spouse, when it is made out of pure love, because of economic motives or because the chosen spouse is not from the same religion, ethnicity, etc.”

I paused for a moment and looking at Andy’s amazed face, I continued: “The point is that many times the spiritual teachings of Jesus were interpreted in a material and intellectual way and thus, ‘what God united’ became equivalent to the earthly power of the church, and hence anyone who got married by one of its representatives, must not divorce.”

There was a long silence. It seemed that Andy was reflecting on this new understanding about marriage and divorce.  After a few moments, she went on telling me the rest of her story.

“I do not know what it is like in the culture you come from, but in my culture, you have to work hard and make a lot of money so that…” she smiled bitterly “it will be possible to go on prestigious vacations, send the children to prestigious schools, buy designer, expensive clothes, and continue slaving until we end up in a prestigious nursing home… Thus, my ex-husband and I worked non-stop in prestigious jobs, which required frequent relocation of our home. My other two children were able to endure and withstand these changes and the limited time I had to spend with them. However, Saul was different. He was a very sensitive child, an artist in his soul, and suffered not only from lack of attention and love at home but also from the social challenges stemming from the constant moving around. The children at the different schools harassed him, he could not adapt to new languages, and day by day he became more isolated and sadder. When we would meet sometimes late in the evening, he would hug me, ask me to stay with him and ask if there was a chance his father and I would get divorced one day. But I had to work, and work… .and I was not there for him.”

Could there be anything more painful in this life than to find out you weren’t there for your child, even though he explicitly asked for it, and now he is dead, and nothing can be done?

How is it possible to continue living with this understanding? With the guilt that haunts a mother’s soul day and night?

What words could I say that would transmit power to her spirit?

“God, please use me!” I silently prayed “Give me the words to comfort and strengthen this woman.”

Then suddenly, the words began to flow through me. These were not words that came from me, but words I recognized as the words of Saul’s soul, and these were his words:

“Don’t be sad mom! I came to teach you that the most important thing in life is the heart and the hug.”

Andy looked at me in astonishment.

“I cannot believe you are saying this Hagit! In Saul’s room, there was a large picture that he drew and hung on the wall showing all the internal organs of a human’s body with an enlarged red heart in the center, and above the picture was written: ‘The most important thing in life is the heart and the hug!’” she said.

Yes, it was his soul that spoke through me, and I went back to ready myself to get the message he wanted to convey to his mother:

“I came to teach the whole family, and especially you, mom, to love. To know that the most important thing is the heart. The hug. Unfortunately, I was not able to awaken you to this in my life, so my death is a desperate attempt to teach you this lesson. Mom, I cannot continue on my way. I’m attached to you until you learn to listen to your heart. Therefore, don’t grieve for me and don’t be sad for my passing, but open your heart so that an abundance of love can flow from you to the people who need it. If you do that, my death would not be in vain, and my soul could be free and happy.”

I tried to explain to a trembling Andy the meaning of her son’s words:

“Between children and parents there is a covenant of spirits. Do you know the difference between a contract and a covenant?”

She nodded no with her head.

“Once a contract has been signed between two people, any party to the contract can decide to get out of it, if the engagement no longer serves the party. In a covenant, we guarantee the happiness of the other and we are even willing to take on suffering, so that our covenant partner will awaken. In fact, the most sacred covenant is between children and their parents because the Laws of Creation, which also affect reincarnation, do not allow for any coincidences regarding the soul’s choice of its parents. Therefore, at the deepest level, when a child sees that his parents are not where they ought to be, he may subconsciously take on one difficulty or another, health, social or academic, in order to awaken them. In his difficulty, he serves as a mirror to the parents, and if they actually dare to see and grasp it, instead of treating or punishing the child, the child’s difficulty will dissipate by itself.

Andy was deeply moved by everything that was said.  She could not stop crying.

“Andy, I promise you that one day we will learn together why the spirit does not cease to exist after death. But right now, it’s important that you understand that Saul’s soul continues to be a mirror to you: the most important thing is the heart, which actually means your spirit! If you grieve, blame yourself and keep working like crazy to try to forget the pain, his death would be in vain. But if you accept his death as the greatest gift anyone could ever give to your spirit, to grow toward true love, then you will both be redeemed…”

“How?”

“Listen to your spirit. It will guide you as to where and how you need to open yourself to true love. Do you remember, for example, what happened at the end of the seminar?”

“Of course!” She immediately replied “I was sitting next to Khaled, the guy who fled Syria and who happened to be at the same age of Saul! And I thought to myself that he was there in Luxembourg without a mother and I was there without a son, and maybe I could help him… Maybe I did not sit next to him by chance…”

“Exactly Andy! Nothing is a coincidence! From now on, life will present you repeated opportunities to open yourself to true love. Do not miss them! Do not disappoint Saul!”

“I will not disappoint him!” She said “I Promise!”

“Excuse me…do you want to order dessert?” asked a waiter who approached us and felt a little uncomfortable interrupting.

“No, thank you” We answered together, and then Andy took a picture of Saul out of her purse and gave it to me. I looked at the young man, his eyes meeting mine.

“Hagit, I want to give you this picture… Maybe if you hear anything from him, you could write to me?”

I was speechless. My eyes filled with tears.

“You know,” she continued, “that on Saul’s last birthday, after his death, I decided to divorce his father. And the most amazing thing was the farewell letter I wrote to him. I felt like someone was dictating it to me. I wrote that I forgave him. That I did not want to live in resentment and that I wished each of our family members to find peace and love. Do you think it could have been Saul who helped me write this letter?”

I smiled.

Before we parted, she looked at me and said:

“I did not know why I chose to live in Luxembourg. I had no particular reason. I just listened to the heart… or Saul?” And she laughed. “But now I know why I came here. It was to meet you!”

And I thought, had I come to Luxembourg just for this meeting, it would have been more than enough for me since he who is able to help one spirit, it is as if he had helped a whole world.