I was about ten when I fell in love with the stories of Fatima. I learned the prayers, wore out my rosary beads, and slipped into Mass as often as I could. At night I’d lie very still, watching the shadows on my bedroom wall, certain that if I were faithful enough, quiet enough, devoted enough, Mary would come.

It wasn’t escapism. It was hope. Home was loud then—raised voices, doors closing a little too hard, the air always alert for the next ripple. I wasn’t expecting Jesus or God to arrive for me; that felt too grand for a child who preferred to go unnoticed. But Mary? Mary understood the ache of ordinary people. She could soften a room. She could make the air breathable again.

So I waited.

I rehearsed what I would say. I promised I’d be brave. I promised I’d tell no one if she asked. I promised I would listen. Sometimes I fell asleep mid-prayer, rosary tucked in my palm like a small anchor. Morning came, and the room was only a room. No radiance in the corner, no rustle of holy garments, no fragrance lingering in the air. It would be easy to call that silence a disappointment.

But something else was happening.

Waiting taught me to notice. I started to hear the room itself: the hush between radiator clicks, the barely-there flutter of the curtain, the difference between fear and intuition. I learned what my body did when truth walked in—and what it did when a lie passed by. The silence didn’t abandon me; it trained me.

Years later, in the early 70s, I began serious study of mediumship. I wasn’t sure whether spirits had been with me all along, or whether I had finally caught up with them. In circles and classes, the quiet signal I learned as a child returned—stronger, clearer, more nuanced. By the 80s, my relationship with my Spirit Guides felt familiar, like recognizing a face you’ve been sketching from memory for years. There was no drama to it, no burst of trumpets, just a steady presence that made the air breathable again.

Looking back, I see that night—those many nights—as a hinge. I went to sleep hoping for a visitation that would end my uncertainty. What I received was a vocation: to listen. To look at the world and ask it to reveal itself gently. To trust the guidance that comes without spectacle. Mary never stood at the foot of my bed, and yet Mary’s lesson arrived: not every miracle must be seen to be real, and not every rescue is a door flying open. Sometimes it’s an inner hand reaching for yours.

I think of that often when people ask how to begin a spiritual life. They want the bright certainty, the unmissable sign. I understand. But the beginning is often quieter than that. It’s the small promise you make at the edge of your own breath: I will be here. I will listen. I will not abandon myself. And then you keep that promise when the room is ordinary and the sky is gray and no one is watching.

If you, too, have waited for a sign that never arrived, consider this: perhaps your waiting has been teaching you to hear the subtle. Perhaps the silence has been strengthening your inner compass. Perhaps the mercy you wanted from the outside has been growing on the inside, one listening breath at a time.

I still light a candle some evenings. I still pray the way I did as a child—simple words, steady rhythm. I no longer ask Mary to appear. I ask to recognize what is already here: the guidance that whispers rather than shouts, the love that steadies rather than dazzles, the presence that does not leave.

And if you’re standing in your own quiet room tonight, wondering if anyone is coming, know this: the listening you’re doing is not empty. It is the meeting place. It is where Spirit finds you—exactly as you are, without spectacle, without noise, and with more gentleness than you thought possible.

Sharon Downie, Conservative Mystic

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