Cover image: “Like Unto A Child” by Yongsung Kim, https://havenlight.com.

Oh, how Jesus loves little children!  He seems to take especial delight in ministering to them in profound ways that only He can.  I have had so many of you comment or email me about this very fact.  Here are a few of your stories…

“Jesus Gave Me a Hug”

Ruth J shared a tender story ….

“When my daughter was about 3 years old, we had just finished an addition to our home. She would now have her own bedroom instead of sharing one with a sibling. Now in her own room, night after night she would wake up scared at now being alone. She would come into our room and wake me up saying, ‘Mommy I am scared!’ I would take her back into her room and say a prayer with her that she would feel safe and sleep well. This went on for weeks.

“Then one morning I realized that the night before she hadn’t woken up scared. I said, ‘Wow, you didn’t wake up last night. I am so proud of you staying in your room.’ She just casually responded, “I woke up and I was scared last night. I just said my own prayer and then Jesus came and gave me a hug. Jesus protected me and made me feel safe.’

“That gave me tingles. I knew that what she said was true. Jesus had come to her. He had given her a hug and made her feel safe. It touched my heart so much. Jesus loves his little ones so dearly that he will come to them to bring comfort.”[i]

That story melts our hearts.  So will this one…

“Jesus Hold Me and Talk to Me”

Cynthia shared,

“We had a sacred experience with our first-born child. He began talking at a very early age. By ten months there were several words he could say fairly clearly. When he was 19 months old, we had just moved into a new house and his nursery was at the end of the short hall. One night we were walking down the hall and he said, pointing, ‘Look! Spirits!’ (the word Spirits was not in his vocabulary). Then he shrugged his little shoulders and said, ‘Spirits gone. Spirits gone home.’ We both knelt down there right in the hall and asked him what the spirits looked like. He smiled at us and said one word. ‘Smoke.’ And then he continued walking into his room.

“That was on Saturday. On Monday we decided it was time to do a real Family Home Evening and so I had a photo of Jesus in a frame…the one we use in church with the red cloak. We started off by showing him the picture and said ‘Jonathan, this is Jesus.’  He smiled and patted Jesus’s picture and told us, ‘Jesus hold me and talk to me.’ We were so overcome, and we still take that experience as the closest thing we will ever have in this lifetime to sure knowledge that the Savior is real. Nineteen-month-old children are not capable of making up untruths and the spirit was so strong with us.”[ii]

I love Cynthia’s tender account.  I’m always so touched at the way Jesus makes every child feel so loved…

“Awakened by an Angel and Taken to Jesus”

Rachel Ann was a sickly child and was in and out of the hospital with one infection or another.  One morning when she was six, she woke up with a tremendous pain in her right leg.  The next morning, she had terrible pain in her left leg.  That 2nd night, her father, thinking that Rachel just had muscle cramps, made her run back and forth in the kitchen for over 5 minutes as painful tears ran down her face.  It was agonizing!

After this ordeal Rachel went to bed, and after saying her prayers she cried, “Jesus, it shouldn’t hurt to be a child!  Why am I in so much pain?” After that she sobbed herself to sleep.

Sometime later, Rachel was awakened by a translucent light being in her room at the end of her bed.  He took her to a large wood door and opened it.  After he opened the door and they entered, she saw a huge round table with many men sitting all around it.  She noted the way they looked; some bearded, some clean shaven, and many different styles of clothing.  It all seemed so curious to her.  Then she noticed Jesus.  He had been speaking to the men, but when he saw her, He stopped everything, made his chair turn sidewise and beckoned her to Him.  She ran to Him, and He picked her up and placed her on His lap.  He cupped His hands on her little face and wiped her tears away with His thumb.  She felt so powerfully loved!  She wanted to keep snuggling in His arms forever. It was so wonderful!

He called her by name saying, “Rachel, you’ll be fine.”  He repeated that two more times.  Rachel protested, “I want to stay here with you.”  But He said, “No, you need to go back.”

Next thing Rachel remembered was that she was back in her body, but this time she was without pain.   She had been healed!

[As a sidenote to the story, when Rachel was 12 years old, she was diagnosed with scoliosis and was sent the Scoliosis Institute in Pasadena, CA to be seen by specialists.  As he was looking at her feet the Dr. remarked, “You had polio as a child.”  When he said that, she remembered the experience with the angel and Jesus.  She knows that she had been healed from a very painful disease].[iii]

What a powerful healing experience for a 6-year-old girl.  She felt His great love through healing.  In this last account we will see another extraordinary miracle…

“Jesus Saved Me”

Donna Palmer writes,

“In 1990 when my son was 16 months old and practically nonverbal. We were visiting my sister in Tennessee. She had a pool and of course it was the center of all activities at her home.

“My son, Alex, 16 months, was a swimmer with water wings and really had no fear of the water, as he felt confident with his wings on. There were children in age ranging from 12 years down to 16 mos. My sister and I were in the living room that opened onto her pool deck. Just a few minutes before, Alex had come into the room and asked for his wings to be removed to play inside. I removed them and disengaged, as he went to play in another room.

“Suddenly, I heard a blood curdling scream I knew instantly what it meant. Hearing the scream of course sent my mind immediately to “Where is Alex?” Running to the deck my young niece was frantically attempting to push the baby up out of the water. She said she was playing dolphins with the older children and saw a shadow on the bottom and went to investigate. She saw him lifeless, lying curled up on the bottom in 8 ft of water. He was too heavy for her to get over the edge of the pool. She yelled ‘I found him on the bottom as we were playing dolphins.’

“My heart froze! I am a nurse and instantly saw the blue lifeless body and recognized hypoxia and to me, death. I had lost a baby in 1979 from birth trauma and my mind instantly went to the devastation and grief of that past time. I cried out verbally, “Please Heavenly Father, don’t take another one, I can’t bear it!”

“My son was purple and lifeless. We didn’t know how long he had been on the bottom but probably about 5 min, long enough for brain damage to ensue. I felt a prompting to turn him over and upside down to hit him between the shoulder blades.

“Unexpectedly my husband Bil came home from work, unannounced, out of character for him as it was before quitting time. I rushed the baby into the house, still not breathing and purple, and asked Bil to give him a priesthood blessing which he summarily did. As he pronounced the blessing my son came back to life and began to throw up the pool water as the color returned to his lifeless body. Not waiting for an ambulance, my sister and I raced to the car and began the drive to the ER, knowing that after drowning is just as dangerous as the initial drowning (near drowning). As I snuggled my beautiful little baby all pink and alive, he looked at me and in a very clear, distinct, perfectly executed voice said,

“Mama, Jesus saved me!”

(Not the niece that pulled him from the water, not Bil, not even me who also dove in to help pull him out, but Jesus, our Savior, who answered the prayer of a distraught mother. My son had never spoken that many words in his young life, never asked for food or toys or combined words to form a sentence but stated clearly and without prompting, “Jesus Saved Me!!”

“My son was dead and now he lived. He spoke what he had experienced, a miracle, a gift of life from the Savior, and I can never forget or question our miracle, for I was there and felt angels around us on that day.”[iv]

Could That Have Happened to Me?                                                                 

We don’t know why some children are singled out to be physically touched by Jesus.  In many of these types of stories the child forgets their contact with Christ, but the parents remember. Maybe that is the point!  How do we know that we all haven’t had such an experience, and it simply wasn’t recorded?  We don’t! After all, we are His children too…

You Can CONTACT me with your stories at an********@ho*****.com

[i] Ruth J., Comment from my article https://latterdaysaintmag.com/witnessing-christ-personal-accounts-of-children-with-jesus/

 

[ii] Cynthia Abbott, Comment from my article https://latterdaysaintmag.com/glimpses-of-pre-mortality/

[iii] Rachel Ann Horner, personal correspondence.  Used with permission.

[iv] Donna Palmer, personal correspondence, Used with permission.