Clara believes she can see the future. She has told me this several times. Usually she will be sitting quietly on her own and when I walk into the room she will slowly look up at me and say, “God just showed me the future.” She claims she is often anxious about what is going to happen in the future, so she asked God to tell her how things are going to turn out before they occur so that she doesn’t have to be scared of them. I typically just nod at her and smile.

I try to stay neutral. I honestly haven’t figured out yet what she is actually referring to. And as much as she comes off sounding like a little weirdo I’m pretty sure she is simply trying to describe her innate intuition, which she has in abundance. Or maybe she is trying to explain déjà vu. Or maybe she asked God for permission to see the future and God is actually letting her see the future. I truly do not know.

I often ask what she has seen in these visions, and sometimes she is vague and cryptic, but other times she is very specific. Occasionally the details are a bit bone chilling, to be completely honest.

Take for instance yesterday. Clara was sitting next to me at the table coloring a picture with a yellow pencil when she suddenly stopped, put the pencil down, and closed her eyes.

“What are you doing Clara?” I asked.

“God just showed me the future,” she said.

Then she opened her eyes and smiled softly. I waited patiently until she slowly turned to look me in the eyes.

“Oh? So, what did you see when God showed you the future?”

She smirked, “Well, I saw you sitting there next to me in this room at this table. And I was drawing, and then I turned and told you about how I saw the future.”

I waited for the rest of the prophecy, but after about five seconds I realized that this was all of it.

“That’s it?”

“Yes,” she said, and picked up her pencil and started coloring again. “And then it happened. Exactly like that. Exactly like God told me it would.”

I started to say something, and then caught myself. And then I started something else and caught myself again. I scratched my head behind my ear and took a deep breath. “I… uh… Okay, technically, yes. I guess so, but… that’s not the future, that was the present. That was just… I mean, you… it only happened because…”

She smirked again and winked at me mysteriously out the corner of her eye, as if she already knew I was going to say that.