Prebirth Experiences - Guest Post from Buscando La Luz

Last week I started digging through blogs looking for epidural, cesarean, and other stories we're short on. In my quest, I stumbled upon this blogpost by Sarah Hinze sharing two adoption "prebirth experiences" (PBEs).

In a typical prebirth experience (PBE), a parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, or grandparent, etc., receives communication from a child before she is born, or in many cases, before he was even conceived. These unborn children at times can warn, protect and enlighten us through the veil. However, they appear most often to announce it is their time to experience mortality--their time to be born on earth.

Sarah Hinze has been studying and gathering PBEs for two decades, has authored a book on the subject, and become an expert in the field. Discovering Sarah brought my mind back to some of the PBEs I've been privileged to experience--all of them in dreams.

Last summer, I enjoyed reading Barbara Bishop's Segullah piece, "Dreams as Gifts of the Spirit." When she said, "Unfortunately, many LDS Church members also show indifferent or suspicious attitudes toward the personal revelation that comes from dreams," I was thinking... Huh? Really? Doesn't everyone believe this stuff? I was quick to agree with Barbara Bishop perhaps because dreams have played such a prominent role in many of the most important relationships and decisions of my life. One of those dreams has blessed my life many-fold.

When oldest daughter was about 15 months old, I had an intense dream. I had just barely drifted off to sleep when I plunged immediately into the scene. I was chasing my daughter playfully and quickly turned around, clearly aware that someone was running up behind me, with my arms outstretched to a little blonde toddler boy who was smiling and laughing as he ran toward me. My eyes flew open immediately, and I said to myself, with a gasp, "Who the heck was that?!"

So we started thinking about welcoming another baby into our home, thinking that little boy was going to come to us. My second daughter came instead. Maybe she cut in line? Who knows? But the dream served the initial purpose of bringing my second daughter to us about 10 months later.

Then, when I had finally allowed myself to consider welcoming a third baby, I wondered whether that little blonde boy would be coming next. As I struggled with fears and worries about his upcoming home birth, I found peace in recalling my dream. A friend of mine, Linda, had posted a few weeks earlier about a dream she had about her own son (very similar to mine) which had given her peace. I'm grateful she posted about it because I think it prepared my mind to remember and have faith in my own prior dream. I knew that my baby boy and I would survive his birth because I had already seen us a few years older in my dream. Even when he came out with a head full of dark hair, I still knew it was him... as his ever-lightening hair attests.

Then, in January, I got thrown into the pit of despair--or the Emergency Room of a local hospital with a very miserable, possibly very sick baby boy. If you had seen my face then, you probably would have thought the world was ending, 'cause that's how I felt. My mom actually said she was suddenly overcome with a horrible, unexplainable feeling of dread and gloom just when I was feeling my worst. I had even allowed myself to entertain worries that his leg would have to be amputated. But two things (among many tender mercies) aided me through that time of fear and uncertainty--the priesthood blessings my husband had given us declaring that he "would be healed," and my years-ago dream. I knew he would live to be a running, laughing toddler because I had already "seen" it.

I had no idea all those years ago that a 10-second dream would play such a starring role over and over in the future. But it has. God knew then, as He always does, that I needed to see my son way back then--and not just as a baby but as a growing little boy. God is good.

I'm eager to dig further into the realm of PBEs and hopefully meet Sarah Hinze (she's not far from where I live). All of this has reaffirmed to me that each child was once a unique immortal spirit, eagerly awaiting birth into mortality. They are precious gifts. And they have probably loved us from the other side of the veil for far longer than we are aware.

In the second adoption PBE Sarah Hinze shares in her blogpost, the author ends with this stunning account:

Four years later, we had just moved to Germany, and were having our family dinner. John interrupted the conversation and loudly proclaimed: 'And Mommy, and Mommy, when I was upstairs, I saw you married!' All conversation stopped and I looked at John to respond to him, but before I could say anything, he blurted out 'And I said HURRY UP!' John had just turned four year old and still remembered his pre-earth life.

Have you experienced a PBE? Have dreams played a significant role in the important decisions of your life? Please share your stories.