Similar signs

Some readers may recall previous columns where I described inexplicable GodNod experiences linked to my wife Jeanetta.

One of those involved her prayer as she walked a residential street eight years ago in which she asked for any monetary sign to confirm her life should continue along a chosen path.

Less than 50 steps farther she happened across the shiniest face-up quarter she’d ever seen, positioned not where you’d expect to find wayward coins at the pavement’s edge where people exit their vehicles, but squarely in the middle of the street.

She says there is no question this coin was a GodNod to assure her at the time she’d made the correct decision.

Then a few years ago various items in the house, including her earring placed on a nightstand, a book of poems left on the kitchen table and an item that toppled from her dust pan, vanished.

Weeks later the earring would mysteriously reappear on the living room fireplace mantel three rooms away and the missing item from the dust pan showed up tucked behind the tightly inset kitchen stove. The book remains missing years later.

If anyone can, she certainly understands similar experiences by Thomas Niswonger.

Niswonger wrote the other day to share his similar experiences after losing his wife of 40 years. His story, along with Jeanetta’s, lead me to wonder how many others have had similar GodNods.

“After I moved into our new house,” he explained, “I kept a black, three-cell flashlight on the bedside table at night. One night it turned up gone and not to be found.

“A week or so later, I found a red two-cell flashlight to replace it. A few nights later, that red flashlight disappeared and the black flashlight appeared under the bed. So I set it up again. The next time I picked up the black flashlight, a brand-new penny sat face-up neatly beneath it.”

A few weeks ago, Thomas said, he was walking through a Kroger parking lot and looked down to spy a brand-new dime resting heads up on the centerline, facing the store. Almost five feet to the south, was another dime with the same date, face up and again facing Kroger.

“Then, five feet further south was yet another dime also with its face up with the same date, facing the store. In all I happened across three dimes with the same date, all positioned on the center line facing the same way.

“Not too long ago, I happened across three pennies in the same Kroger parking lot; each had been similarly scored with all three heads up and facing the building.”

There was one more GodNod, he said. While working with his daughter on the new house he’d purchased after his beloved wife of 40 years had passed, Thomas was busy testing the outlets, lights and switches. “I had set my tester down to check out something else. When I returned, I couldn’t find it.

“My full-grown daughter, who is an excellent finder, also couldn’t find it. So I gave up testing, and went back to painting and other work. After a while from the kitchen I heard the excited shout of ‘Dad!’ It was the weirdest sound I’d ever heard my daughter make.

“I walked into the kitchen and she just pointed. There, perfectly balanced and sitting straight on top on a ceramic John Deere Tractor knickknack jar, sat the missing tester.”

‘BLOW UP THE WORLD’

Most who choose to follow the two most popularly followed cable news channels have watched over the past two years as 81-year-old President Joe Biden has repeatedly stumbled. and fallen to the ground, as well as committing one embarrassing public gaffe after another in his speech.

It’s been a sad thing indeed to watch this lifelong politician continue his obvious decline. I have no problem with his age. My concern lies strictly with his unstable footing and demonstrated inability to reason correctly, especially under the pressure of unrehearsed answers to reporters’ questions.

Both are seriously worrisome for any U.S. president and leader of the free world in perilous times like these.

So you might imagine my reaction when Biden (who is always near to his so-called “football” device with the power to authorize nuclear strikes when away from a command center), while visiting with wind turbine workers at their plant in Colorado, suddenly blurted out (as though seemingly bragging) that he had the power to blow up the world.

An Internet video shows that after approaching three yellow-vested workers at the facility, one man appeared to ask the president an inaudible question.

Biden responded: “Now look, my, my Marine carries that. It has a code to blow up the world. That doesn’t, this is not … nuclear weapons, is it … alright, OK … you think I’m kidding.”

I wonder in light of all we’ve witnessed for three years whether it could be laughed off. Who knows what the next thing out of his mouth might be?

Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.