Vintage Gibson Guitar to be Auctioned for Charity

I decided many months ago to donate my first guitar to my husband’s fund-raising company for pro-life charities. The proceeds will be sent to Virtue Media, Inc., who produce advertisements that help people make informed choices when faced with unwanted pregnancy. Click this link to see their advertisements and other good works: http://www.virtuemedia.org/television.htm. If you want to see the auction, go the http://www.edistribute.net/ and follow the links.

My godmother and great-aunt Marg, who passed away just eight days ago, purchased this guitar for me when I was 17, a year after I had aborted my child, while I was still grieving for something I didn’t yet recognize. I played the violin when I was a little girl, but the guitar was cool, and since my best friend played, I wanted to learn, too. One of Aunt Marg’s co-workers, a fellow teacher, had had this Gibson LGO ¾ neck “parlor guitar” since she was my age. Her father had purchased it new for her birthday.

I only paid $35 for it. I was disappointed to find that the tuning keys, which when original were plastic, were cracked from age, and I could not restring the guitar. I took it to a local music shop for repair. The owner was reluctant to replace the keys, or the bridge, which was also cracked. He told me they had only made a few hundred of this kind of guitar with the smaller neck, and that it would have collector’s value. What did I care? I was 17, and I wanted to play the guitar, not put it in a corner to collect dust. So he put a fine set of metal keys on it for me. Other than that, the guitar is in beautiful condition, and has a very sweet, light sound. Its small body and narrow neck made it perfect for my small hands.

Since then, I purchased a standard-sized guitar, because I love deeper tones. But I always kept my first guitar safe. I love that guitar. I found healing in making music, even if I will never be a true musician. It doesn’t matter. The music I make is for me and for my lost child. When my husband decided to form a company to raise funds by auction for pro-life charities, I immediately thought of selling my guitar in memory of the son I would have had with my husband if I had lived according to God’s plan for me.

How do I know that? Well, I don’t have any evidence. But I know what I feel, and just recently, I think we received a sign. It wasn’t anything supernatural, and we have explained it, but while we were taking photos of the instrument for the auction, one of them came back with some oddities. I’ve never been a believer in ghosts or apparitions. I’ve seen photos of “orbs,” and they look like light reflection from the lens to me. I’ve never taken a photo that had one in it, though, until now.

But this photo, which appears here, had something besides an orb. There is a profile in it. Surely this was also reflected light, I thought, but it resembles so closely something that I drew myself – it’s quite strange. We needed a logo for our work, and I knew exactly what I wanted. I am no artist, no more than I am a musician, but I can finger-paint with the rest of the five-year olds, you betchya. So I opened Paint, the most sophisticated graphics program I know how to run, and proceeded to try to draw what was in my mind. I already knew it would be a profile of an infant. I prayed before and during the drawing – I asked God to guide my hand to make the image a good one, considering my lack of skill. I also asked Him to do something else for me, if it was His will: I asked Him to make it look like my baby. I knew I would never have confirmation of that in this life, but in faith, I believed He would answer that prayer.

When I saw the odd profile on the wall in the photo I took (which was the only one of all of them that I personally shot), I immediately saw the resemblance between it and my drawing – but the one that showed in the photo looks like a grown-up version of that face. Check it out for yourself, and tell me if you see the resemblance. We didn’t immediately have the negative to look at, because the developers had forgotten to do the CD along with the prints. So we looked everywhere in that room for anything that could have caused a reflection. We found nothing. I started to wonder about ghost photographs. But mostly, I started wondering about signs. Why? I am not worthy of signs from God, so where did this come from, and why was it put in our path? Then I remembered that we don’t merit gifts. By definition, they come unasked and unearned.

We got the negative the next day, and while there is a perfectly rational and scientific explanation for how this mark came to be in the photo, it only adds to the mystery because it was not light, as the orb could be. Something actually splashed onto the negative, and that substance, when you look at the actual negative, looks even more like a real face than can be seen in the photograph. Two separate events had to happen to this one photo, out of all of them. There are no marks on any of the other negatives, and no orbs in any of the other photographs. What are the chances of this happening? I don’t know.

It is a mystery, but one I will cherish for the rest of my life. No, I don’t believe in ghosties, not really. But I do believe in God, and I do believe that we go on after this life. The anomalies appear in the photo I took of my husband, who is the love of my life, and my St. Bernard – my rescuers. It makes perfect sense to me that my child would choose my husband to be his personal champion, and one of the champions in the war to protect all of the unborn.