When you read the Elevator, the Spiritualist and the Rabbi, what comes to mind? Does this combination sound like the beginning of a joke? I see your point. Put these three things together and I can only imagine the punch line. If you are remembering my last two columns you know the Elevator, the Spiritualist and the Rabbi are not part of a joke.

  Three columns in to my Dad’s stay at Beth Israel Hospital’s Surgical Intensive Care Unit and I may have my head around how to write about the hospital’s elevator. Why do I want to tell you about the elevator? The elevator isn’t that special. What is special is how the elevator bypasses where I think I need to be to take me to where I actually need to go.

  Think back to July’s column and you might remember how getting off on the wrong floor brings me right to a woman who is back at Beth Israel almost one year to the day after her fiancé dies. Thanks to getting off on that floor she is able to tell me about him and how she is now there to sit with her friend who is recovering in the same room her fiancé left when he went to ICU for the last time. As different as this may sound she and I know she now has Merry Christmas From Heaven® because of her late fiancé and that elevator.

  To write this column I have to set aside how strange it feels to write about connections that take place because of things far more powerful than any human being. Be it love, faith, or a combination of the two plus so much more than I can explain I know that the Creator of All is with us and within us every moment of every day. Let go and let God is more than a saying, it is what carries me when all of my strength is gone.

  Even before I realize He is leading the way, God has a way of letting me know I need to follow. In the lobby of the Farr Building at Beth Israel Hospital while talking on the phone with my sister Jacqui, I come to a complete stop when I feel an energy pass right through me. I cannot tell you what it is because I do not have an explanation that makes sense. What I can say is for me, whatever that energy is it is divinely driven. After telling my sister about the strange feeling walking through my body I hang up and head straight for the elevator. No surprise, the elevator takes me to the perfect wrong floor.

  I get off the elevator and walk smack into the Hospital’s Spiritualist. I almost don’t believe the timing then I realize the timing isn’t mine and it isn’t hers. Somehow the energy downstairs in the lobby takes me onto the elevator to the perfect person to tell about my brush with the spirit of the hospital and she knows my Dad. We say a prayer and go our separate ways until I meet her again when they are transferring my Dad into the Surgical Intensive Care Unit.

  Now I know why that energy took me right to her. Thanks to our connection when she tells me she will hold the space in ICU while they are admitting my father I am able to go into the hall, sit on the floor, and connect with the Creator of All! In that moment in that hallway God holds my hand and holds me up. I know the energy is divinely driven. I just wish I could tell you about the Rabbi, The Cot, The Mother In-law and My Dad. Unfortunately I am way over the word limit for this column. Thankfully I can share their wisdom with you next month.