Nudgings from above

Shane Winter, new Afrikaans translator and promoter of Heavenletters™ in South Africa, wrote that he felt nudgings to translate Heavenletters into Afrikaans, and he kept feeling these nudgings until he finally had to sit down and write to us. Of course, we were so happy when he did!

Shane, how long was it before you first felt the nudging until you wrote to us so generously offering your services?

I have not always been sensitive to the fact that nudgings come. I used to think that the nudgings were all my idea. I believe I took credit for Heavenletters when they first twinkled in my heart! Of course, I've learned better since.

Even the idea to write this blog entry about nudgings --was it my impulse of thought or was it itself a nudging from above?

Sometimes I get little tiny seemingly insignificant nudgings.  I just had one. And sometimes, at first, some nudgings don't seem worth considering let alone talking about.

Earlier today -- the day I write this down -- I had a headache and took a couple of aspirin.  My head still felt a little foggy. I was in the kitchen and happened to notice the bottle of apple cider vinegar on top of my fridge. Then came that nudging out of the blue, an impulse of thought that said: "Take a whiff of that vinegar."

That idea seemed a little bizarre, but I complied. Why not? It took half a second.

I can't say this was an imperative from God. I can't say that taking the whiff of apple cider vinegar made my headache totally disappear. I can say, however, that probably I couldn't have resisted that impulse for very long if I had tried.  Something was twisting my arm to take a whiff of that vinegar!

It may be that my head felt a little brighter for having done so. And I am feeling another urge now to take a second whiff!

But before I leave the computer and grab that bottle of vinegar for the second time, I want to tell you a true story I once read.

It was late at night that a man was driving home. The urging he got was:  Go to the store and get some milk and then go to this street and this house number and knock on the door.

Crazy, wasn't it? After some resistance, the man followed the urging he had. He bought the milk and drove to the address he had heard. When he knocked on the door, a young woman with a crying baby answered the door. The man simply told her he had had the urging to bring the bottle of milk to this address, and he didn't know why.

It turned out that the woman's refrigerator was empty, and her baby was hungry. I don't remember why she couldn't get more milk and so forth, but, clearly, the man had heard or intuited a very specific urging.

Now, following this, my mind goes in another direction. From a medical study, I learned that children, given a table full of healthy food to choose from and no interference from adults, over time will choose the right foods that their individual body requires. Not at one meal, but over a week's time or so.

If we could return to that innocent state as young children, would we too also know what is right for us? Would we be drawn to whatever herb or exercise that is best for us?

This is what happened when I had broken my shoulder. I intuitively knew the exercises to do to restore a good range of motion. I also had been encouraged by a friend to follow my own natural inclinations.

The orthopedist I went to had wanted me to have physiotherapy. I didn't want to. And it turns out that I didn't have to.

Dr. Ivins, the orthopedist was frankly amazed at my progress. It was typical, after the injury I had, to have a  90-degree angle of restored motion.  When he had me move my arm this way and that, he said: “140, 140, 140, 120, 120, 140…” Wow, what per cent better is 140 than 90!

I attribute this significant improvement to my exercising the shoulder, not according to proscribed exercises, but according to the movements my body wanted to make. These were exercises that I wanted to do, and moving my body in sync in natural ways made me feel free and happy. Rather than strenuous or boring, these exercises were joyous.I suppose this would be called listening to our bodies and not having to listen to someone else tell us what is best for us.

If only I could listen all the time.