Trusting My Intuition

When trusting my intuition saved my life:

As a high school student, I used to love walking to school. I lived out in the country and the school was only 1/2 mile away. If it was nice and I wasn’t carrying too much stuff, it was a quiet way to begin my hectic day.

I also love fog.

One spring day, it was foggy and the sun was doing it’s best to burn it off. Between the small town and our driveway, the paved road dipped into a gully with farmland on both sides. I could see a muddy cornfield to the left and a big hill on the right with a few trees with mud fields of dried corn stalks beyond if you knew they existed.

For about an 8th of a mile, along the road was a wet shoulder that grew cattails. I remember many years prior that we had major flooding and that road became impassable. On this day, the gully held tight to the fog, still dense where the sun hadn’t peeked over the hill.

As I descended the hill, I was ready for the droplets of fog to sprinkle my face and settle on my fine hair. Instead, I became short of breath. I felt like my heart was being gripped by a large, spindly hand. With each step, it intensified.

I stopped in my tracks. Slowly, I began taking steps backward -ascending back up the hill. Fast. Then I turned and ran back to the house before the bus came. Down the quarter-mile driveway, I ran through the front door and yelled to my mother -who was still upstairs-that I decided not to walk but to take the bus instead; I felt compelled to tell her this.

Back up the long driveway I walked, hopping on the yellow school bus that arrived minutes later. It took the same path along the paved road where I walked -nearly hitting an abandoned car hidden deep within the dense fog.

I got the chills.

That evening, my dad came home from work (he worked 30 miles away) and brought in the evening paper. The front page included a photo of that same abandoned car with the headline that read something like, “Woman raped, murdered, abandoned in car in local village.”

My jaw dropped. My mother looked at me and I looked at my dad. I explained again what I did that morning and why. My mother understood and I think my dad was in complete disbelief.

Whenever I get ‘that feeling of a spindly hand wrapping itself around my heart’ I respect it. I stop. I back up, and then run.

That wasn’t the last time I felt that hand as I’m pretty sure that’s saved my life a few times.

How about you? Have you ever obeyed your intuition?