First, I must thank the brilliant Patricia for putting my thoughts on this subject into perspective, I would never have the grasp on it I do without her writing.

Now, for the meat.  There are many ways in which our bodies try to communicate with us.  Our stomachs growl when we’re hungry, we feel pain when we are hurt, we crave water, physical affection, any number of things.  We feel the “headiness” of emotion, and then there are the times when it seems like our guts are speaking to us in the most primal of ways.

Let me explain.

When I was seventeen I had my first major crush.  I felt lightheaded, I felt this rush of adrenaline, I felt this absolutely insane desire to feed off of his attraction to me.  And he pursued me, hotly.  Every time I was around him I felt like I was drowning and being revived over and over- I’m sure at least some of my readers know what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about romance novel material.  The can’t-breathe-without-you bunk.  Yet at the same time I was feeling the whole wilting-when-we-aren’t-holding-hands emotional cocktail, my gut was killing me.  I would feel nauseous, like I was dreading something, like somewhere inside of me something was dying.  And by some primal instinct I listened not to the chorus of angels singing songs of romance over us, by my gut screaming RUN AWAY RUN AWAY RUN AWAY.

Thank God I did.  Run away, that is.  And a few years later when I’m married and pregnant with my daughter, I find out that he’s got a baby but isn’t with the mother anymore.  And my first thought was, “that could’ve been me.”

Have you ever had one of those moments where you’re rushing to get something done and you think, “I should get the chicken out of the freezer”, or “I should call so-and-so” or “I should put in a load of laundry before I leave”, but you leave said thing undone?  Don’t you feel this momentary chill in your gut, as if your body is telling you to slow down and think about it?  Then, later in the day, you realize that you really did need the chicken defrosted and you forgot, or you were supposed to get together with so-and-so, or you needed your brown pants to wear to work the next day.

And yet we brush these instances off as coincidence, instead of the providence that they are.  If we learned to listen to our gut, to listen to that oh-so-quiet internal voice, we’d be better off.  I do believe in something like a sixth sense.  I think we have a higher side to us, a spiritual side, that is connected in some way to eternity.  I think that part of us can sense when we are putting ourselves in danger, compromising our integrity, neglecting tasks that need to be done.  I think that sense tries to talk to us as well as it can- and I suspect it’s located in our guts.

Listen to your body today.  See if it’s trying to tell you something.