When I say Trust Spirit Now, that’s exactly what I mean: NOW—not in a little while, when things get a little quieter, or when you can find a place alone to think. At the first realization that your life feels less than joyful, the time is now to go to spirit for help. That means stop everything, and at least be willing to ask, even experiment, as I did in a most interesting way.

It was about 1998, and I was listening to one of my favorite spiritual mentors, rewinding my car’s tape player, over and over, as I tried to understand the deep spiritual concepts she was sharing. My teacher was explaining that spirit was ready and waiting to talk to me, right then, wherever I was, to give me the guidance I was in need of, in that very moment. She challenged me to test her theories.

Ask for anything that’s on your mind, anything you need in this very moment, and then pay attention to the first thing that speaks to you. My mentor was suggesting I should expect some spiritual feedback within moments.

At the time, I had the road to myself, driving across I-84 in Idaho, with so much wide-open space and little traffic that I could have read a magazine and driven at the same time. There was not much out there I thought could answer the questions on my mind, but I was willing to give her suggestion a try.

It was a time of seemingly unquenchable thirst for truth, as I was healing from a quarter-century of trying to make my life work in a dysfunctional marriage. While I was well advised to stop trying to figure it out and to get on with creating a new life, my rational mind demanded more answers, and my heart wanted some much-deserved peace. So that’s what I asked for—peace. As I tested this spiritual teacher’s challenge, I immediately heard some numbers whispered in my mind.

Moments later a billboard stretched across the fields in front of me, with a large advertisement painted on it, including the very numbers I had just heard in my mind. My first reaction was to discount the possibility that I had actually heard or seen anything, or that either had a message for me. But I quieted that doubting voice, and decided to just see this test through.

I acknowledged and received the reality that both the whispered numbers and the billboard numbers might suggest a message. I ignored all suspicious thinking, and noticed that the very same numbers matched an upcoming exit number. I questioned that for a moment as well, but then turned off the freeway a few miles ahead at the exit.

There was only one way to turn, so I traveled in that direction for a while, watching but seeing nothing that would suggest a spiritual gift. When I finally saw any civilization, I had a flashback to another time when I had been at the exact same place.

Some years before, our family had stopped there for lunch, but that memory did not immediately give me any clues as to why I was being guided there again. I continued to ask for direction, wondering if possibly I was at this exact location to meet someone, to serve someone else, or if someone would show up with my much needed gift of peace.

But none of that happened. I sat there in the exact spot where I had been a few years prior, recalling the day when I had lunch with my family. As I allowed myself to think on that day for a few more instants, I immediately remembered the emotions I had at that previous visit.

Because I was a vegetarian at the time, and because there were few choices to eat vegetarian in the area where we were traveling, my husband had willingly driven about five miles out of his way to appease my food needs at this exact restaurant.

It was interesting to me that I had forgotten all about that little gift, until I returned to the location, even several years later. The memory of that previous visit brought with it some good vibes, reminding me of how sweet it was of him to oblige me without a word of argument, which had pleasantly surprised me. Remembering that about him, I heard a voice whispering, he did the best he could.

In that moment, my distraught emotions about being a single mom lifted, and peace entered my heart. So the spirit guided me miles off the freeway and into the parking lot of a restaurant in a little town in the middle of nowhere—to remind me that I did feel loved once. Wow.

It was as if the good things that happened there, many years before, were somehow still there, like a hologram of me and of that day, vibrating in the spirit space as if it was in present time. I literally drove all that way and into that energy field (the vibrations of my experience there) to find the love that was still there, to bless me as I had asked.

The requested peace came so simply. How had it worked? I trusted, I asked, and I paid attention to what showed up, then listened for the deeper messages of the apparent.

I could have discounted the numbers that voiced in my mind, the billboard that repeated them, and the coincidence of remembering a long ago day in that exact location. But I didn’t. I dismissed all doubt, and later these choices allowed my desired gift of peace to manifest.

That’s how easily messages from loving spirit communicate with us to bless us, by meeting our needs, exactly as we ask at any given moment in time. It is our intended nature to live with God’s spirit as our constant guide.

So you must know that the voice of spirit is here with you too, right now, ready to share with you all the answers to your life’s questions and needs. You can count on this! Spirit speaks in whatever voice you can receive, and especially if you are fine-tuned to your spiritual gifts.

The reality of spirit as a tangible presence is actually more real than those highways, billboards, buildings and crossroads I connected with in Idaho, so many years ago. While the buildings and roads will someday crumble and disappear, what happened to me will not.

In reality, every breath of my life, every interaction, every thought I’ve ever had, still exists—out there in all the places I have been, and in me, within my psyche. All those holograms that paint the picture of my life are still vibrating with energetic life, somewhere just beyond my physical senses, in the paradigm of a spiritual world.

The reality of spirit, again, is that all the abundance of the entire universe is simply waiting for you to ask. So do it, right now, and get ready to receive!

Original painting by Skye Judd.