“I picked you Mommy”. My then three-year-old daughter blurted out of the blue as we sat on the floor working on a puzzle.  ”What do you mean you picked me?”  “You picked me to play with you?”  She looked directly into my eyes and responded matter-of-factly: “No silly, I picked you to be my Mommy. When I was still with God, before I was in your tummy. He lets us do that.” I was speechless as I tried to wrap my mind around her words.

A few months later my daughter started saying other random things like “Mother Mary really likes you Mommy and wants you to know she is with you”. “Please don’t be upset but I love God more than I love you and Daddy. But I still love you so much”. “Mommy, your angels think you are so funny!”  At first I wondered if maybe a TV show or a friend at daycare was influencing her.  But she wasn’t hearing about heavenly beings on the playground, there was no mention of ‘angels’ on Sesame Street and we were not attending any church at that time.  And I’m not even Catholic – so how did Mother Mary fit into all of this?!

One night, as I tucked her into bed, she whispered to me,  “Mommy…. Mother Mary is here”. She pointed to the corner of the room and said, “ She is right there wearing a long dress and a blue hoodie! ” I cautiously turned my head but I only saw her Barbie townhouse glowing in front of the nightlight in the corner.  “She is RIGHT THERE MOMMY!” , my daughter insisted.  “Is my child hallucinating or what?” I thought to myself, as I made a mental note to call the pediatrician in the morning. “She is waiting to say goodnight to me Mom”. I saw no evidence of anyone else in the room but the hair rose on the back of my neck.

When she started first grade, her messages about otherworldly things became even more detailed and my “wrap your mind around this” meter could no longer discern fact from fiction. 

My daughter claimed that our elderly friend Dan, who had unexpectedly passed away from an aneurysm, had come to visit as she played Princess in her room. She said “Mommy! Uncle Dan came to see me! He was wearing a big hat made out of straw! “He told me to tell Joyce that he is ok and young again!’ “Ok, now this is really getting weird! ” I thought to myself.   I stood silent wondering how (or if) to share this with Dan’s wife, Joyce, who we were having dinner with later that week. 

A few days later I decided that a ‘wait and see’ approach was better than just blurting out ‘My child says she saw your dead husband” over linguini with red sauce. After dinner, Joyce invited her to look at a scrapbook of old pictures on the couch.  She started clapping her hands excitedly when she noticed one particular decades old black and white photograph. It was of Dan, in his early 20’s, wearing a big straw sombrero on the beach.   “THERE’S DAN – IN HIS SILLY HAT – JUST LIKE HE HAD ON THE OTHER DAY! HE LOOKED JUST LIKE THIS AND HE TOLD ME WHEN YOU GET TO HEAVEN YOU’LL BE YOUNG AGAIN TOO AUNT JOYCE”    “He always loved wearing that hat”, said Joyce, with a look of amazement on her face. I swallowed the lump in my throat and resolved to walk into the Twilight Zone with a more open mind the next time my child shared about things I could not see.   

Some weeks later, my husband Jeff got a call from his sister Kelly in Atlanta. “Dad probably won’t make it through the night. You need to come now.”  My father in law was in a coma with only hours to live. We did our best to prepare our daughter and told her that Grandpa was very sick and may not get better. She replied, “I know Mom. Mother Mary told me that Grandpa’s dog Harley is in heaven waiting for him and Grandpa will be so happy to see him when he gets there”. She had no way of knowing that Harley the 16 year old dachshund had died just a few days earlier… we had only found out ourselves!”

After an emotional day at the hospital, we decided to go pick up Kelly and have dinner at Fellini’s pizza.  Dusk was approaching and we were having trouble finding her brownstone apartment on busy Peachtree Road.  All of sudden, my child shouted and pointed, “There’s Aunt Kelly – with Mother Mary! Turn here Daddy! ” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry because Kelly was indeed standing on the sidewalk holding a modern painting of The Holy Mother. 

As Kelly approached the car she said, “Uncle Mike asked me to clean out Dad’s apartment and take any special books or other items we might like to have. I just wondered if you would like to have this painting of Mother Mary that was hanging by Dad’s bed?” We had, up until that moment, remained silent about our daughter's stories of divine encounters, out of fear of not being believed. But I determined to catalogue this moment in the “You can’t make this stuff up file”. The painting of Mary, and “Mary herself” according to my child, have been with us ever since.

You can read more remarkable stories of psychic children in the fascinating book 'Babies Are Cosmic' by Elizabeth Carman & Neal Carman, PhD.  available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.