FOUR LEAF CLOVERS, ANGEL NUMBERS AND LIVING WITH FEAR.
When I was growing up my mother collected Four leaf clovers. She would walk looking down and pick them up believing that they would bring her luck. She kept them pressed in her diaries which always had impossible calculations in her mathematics. The only time I have ever seen four leaf clovers was in my mothers pocket diaries.
My mother was a single mum with 4 children desperately trying to make ends meet at a time when life was not kind to single women. And today i often wonder why four leafed clovers. With the internet (yay for the internet!) I found that four leaf clovers were considered lucky by the Irish who believed that 3 cloves had one for God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. A fourth leaf was thought to be lucky since it had Gods Grace. I found many reasons but this is what she probably thought about when she collected them, after all she had been taught by nuns quite a few must have been Irish.
But why the cloves? It wasn’t until I was raising my own two kids alone and things got really tough and I understood. I was scared. I was scared of not having a place to stay, not having enough food, being a failure, letting my kids down and the fear became this huge monster that bought prime real estate in my psyche and wouldn’t leave.
Fear is a very powerful force in our lives. Biologically fear prepares us to react to danger, helps us survive dangerous situations like a fire or an animal attack. However living under constant fear affects your body, compromising your immune system and it can affect your mind physically making you anxious while chronic fear can lead to depression fatigue and even premature death.
I couldn’t work, I couldn’t leave my house at all on some days, and my situation got worse and then on the internet (this of course was my Irish Nun) and a friend introduced me to Angel Numbers. The theory of Angel Numbers was made popular by author Doreen Virtue. The theory is based on Angel Therapy which according to her website is a non-denominational spiritual healing method that involves working with a person’s guardian angels and archangels, to heal and harmonize every aspect of life. Angel Therapy also helps you to more clearly receive Divine Guidance from the Creator and angels. And they communicate using numbers on clocks, digital displays, license plates.
I had found my four leaf clovers. I was unstoppable, I was looking at clock dials, license plates anything to know what my guardian angels were telling me, and frantically trying to translate them (thank God there’s a manual). It was hope. It was something when the anxiety became too much because at least my angels were still looking out for me.
But it wasn’t until an old friend mentioned to me how much fear I was living in (he was worried my love for horror movies fed into my fears compounding the fear state he felt I lived in, and the Raja Yoga course I started in that I realized what was driving my life. Fear.
I had seen the worry of my mother growing up and I begun to worry with her and fear right along with her. I was diagnosed with clinical depression in my early twenties and even that scared me, because I was afraid I would hurt myself. The Fear just went right on and brought its extended family to stay.
My angel numbers and my mothers four leaf clovers were born as a reaction to this fear. They gave me something to shine the light under the bed of my psyche where my fear monster lived and banish it, giving me time to try out new solutions, to work at changing my situations until I could identify it, and work at banishing it completely.
Where am I now? Still working at banishing my fear (and trying to banish the thought as I write this that I won’t be able to) or at least reduce its real estate in my mind. I have learned that the fear my mother felt and the fear I now feel are similar, but that I do not want to pass that fear on to my children. I am willing to work at facing my fears and my Fear and come up on top.And I will use whatever tools I can to help me do that. Wait is that a 999…
