Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Category: Sacred Stories

Contains sacred stories

  • Select Lee

    She took an immediate deep breath and felt tangible support from spirit as she passed a van in the grocery store parking lot.


    Lee is the name of her beloved mentor, now in spirit. Lee had once commented to her on the fact that those who go before us can hear us and help us. She certainly could use his help as she was out of state providing support to her daughter and family following a complicated labor and delivery. There was now a frustrated two-year-old, and a needy newborn in the home. While her daughter was busy doing the work of recovering, she was left to do the rest.

    Key words from the SelectLee.com website point to the heart of his message:

    Successful Projects Start With Core Values

      Safety is paramount
      Quality is at the heart of everything we do
      Integrity defines our approach
      Success means achieving the best outcomes

    Thank you, Lee, for having been here in body and for now being here in spirit. You are seen, you and felt, you are so very dear, grateful to know you are still near….

  • Steps

    After her husband had passed, she purchased a place in a fifty-five-and-over community not far from where they had previously lived. As she was moving small loads in her car, she arrived at the new space to discover the steps sitting at an odd angle, rather than flush to the home as they had previously been.

    Curious, she asked the park manager. He knew nothing about the steps having been moved. Maybe the wind had blown them over a bit. (That did not seem likely.)

    Checking in with the previous owners, they also had no idea why/how/when/who someone might have done that. Nothing like that had ever happened when they lived there.

    Oh, well, she thought, she would just slide the steps back into place. But those steps were so heavy she could not get them to budge even a little bit.

    That is when it came to her! Her husband had worked in construction. He was always the one doing things around the house. Perhaps he had moved the steps to let her know he was still around and able to be of support to her….

      Note* An AI Overview of “How do spirits move things?”

      Spirits are said to move physical objects by manipulating energy, similar to telekinesis. This energy is concentrated and directed to exert force on objects, often for purposes like sending a message, playing, expressing anger, or seeking attention. The exact mechanism is not fully understood, but the ability to move items is considered a form of spirit communication or interaction with the physical world.

  • Heavens to Betsy

    Songs that offer messages from or about deceased loved ones are a common way to process grief, including classics like Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” and Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings”, as well as more recent options like Ed Sheeran’s “Supermarket Flowers” or Jackson Dean’s singing “Heavens to Betsy”.

    I don’t know if you can hear me
    Up here, you’re coming in clear as a bell
    Heavens to Betsy
    I finally quit the drinking
    ‘Cause I hate that my demons put you through hell

    Songs often provide comfort, hope, and a sense of connection to the person who has passed. The lyrics when straight to her heart. She could hear him loud and clear.

    Then I bet you’re just as surprised as I am
    They’d ever let a sinner like me in
    And I know I didn’t do
    Enough watching over you
    But I will until I see you again
    Now if you’ll let me

    Although Jackson Dean’s singing “Heavens to Betsy” was a father’s message to his daughter, it was her late husband’s message coming through to her.

    (When she saw the post, she sent back a text message saying, “Thank you sooo much — this made my day! By the way, this song has played three times today that I have heard, the last time just a few minutes before you texted this message! Now how can that be a coincidence 😂)

  • Smoke Detector

      People do leave their bodies, but they do not leave their loved ones.

      She wanted a smoke detector installed in the dining room of the house they had recently moved into. Her husband did not think it was necessary and when she purchased it anyway, he did not install it.

      She asked her husband’s brother to install it, but her husband said he would do it himself. He did. Even though he had not been in good health he climbed up on a chair and installed it. He only lived about five months after that.


      She was not at all comfortable staying alone at night. They had been married forever…. and it was only a few nights after he passed when that smoke detector went off in the middle of the night.

      She had purchased a ten-year smoke detector. She had her brother-in-law check it out. He found no reason why it would have gone off.

      She recognized the message from her husband letting her know she was not alone!

  • Dad is Calling

    Still recovering from a recent surgery, she was following in own her car on their way to one of the kid’s football game. They needed to make a stop to also pick up a friend — that was why she needed to drive separately. The place was rather notorious, having once been Al Capone’s house. Capone was a famous gangster. The property had underground tunnels to the river for eluding the police. She new this property. Considered haunted, it was a dare-destination during her youth, usually around Halloween.

    As she was leaving the former Capone property her phone rang. On the dashboard screen she could see, “Dad” is calling. Well, she knew that could not be, her dad had passed years back. His number was not even in her phone any more. She pushed the button on her steering wheel to end the call. The call continued to ring. She pushed several more times and then she also pushed the decline button on the screen multiple times before the call finally stopped.

    Over the rest of the drive to the game “Dad” called a total of five times! Each time it took multiple tries to get the connection to end. She realized clearly this was a visit from her dad.

    Curious about the phone number of those incoming calls, when she got home after the game she looked in her phone. Not one of those recent calls was listed! Not one….

    As she was telling a friend about the Dad is calling experience, she confessed, “I never went to that property when all the kids were going. I was a woose. I was not brave enough to go.”

    The friend thought it seemed like her dad’s message might be that she is not a woose, that she is brave, and the friend inquired as to how many surgeries she had undergone. “It seems like lots,” she answered with a laugh.

    The friend sent her a link to Jana Stanfield singing “If I Were Brave.”

      What would I do if I knew that I could not fail?
      If I believed, would the wind always fill up my sail?
      How far would I go?
      What could I achieve trusting the hero in me?
      If I were brave, I’d walk the razor’s edge (if I were brave)
      Where fools and dreamers dare to tread
      I’d never lose faith (never lose faith) even when losing my way


    She sent the friend a text message back saying, “Ya know, I was counting my surgeries and it feels like I’ve had so many but, yes, there were five!”

  • Divine Order

    For three years she had been struggling with the issue in of bleeding in her colon. The things that she had gone through — including transfusions to ease the horrific anemia exhaustion, hospitalization and IV antibiotics to fight infection, and weeks of daily sessions in that hyperbaric oxygen chamber (traumatic, with her claustrophobia) but nothing she had done had eradicated the risk of colon cancer.

    Telling his nurse her guts were hostile, the surgeon finally agreed to do surgery. Heroic efforts for preparation followed months of scheduling delays, but the operating room had been booked for the entire day.

    They made the early morning trip and she was as prepared as she thought she could be. Things did not go the way she expected. After administering the epidural, her hand went numb. The surgery was scrapped!

    The risk of a cerebrovascular accident (stroke) had her admitted to ER and waiting hours for an MRI rather than going into pre-op, OR, post-op and having the surgery in her rear view mirror.

    Three years of the stress. The following evening through a flood of tears she named the disappointment, worry, and fear to her good friend and wellness counselor. They had journeyed together for decades, and she finally broke down, saying, “I can’t go through this again. Maybe this is the time the Lord is going to take me. But I don’t want to leave my family.”

    “You won’t leave your family,” her friend assured her, “we all leave our bodies, but we do not leave our loved ones.”

    As they continued sharing her friend asked her at what age she had first been feeling disappointment, worry and fear. The light went on. She was six years old, and her mother was the patient — in that very hospital! She spoke with renewed faith in divine order, saying simply, “I couldn’t know what was happening. I couldn’t know what the future held. All I experienced was fear. Every time I walk in there I go back to her. Thank you so very much. I feel much better and hopeful.”

    Reading from the Daily Word the following morning:

    Trusting God I release attachments and rely on divine order.

      How many times have I realized in hindsight that my life is actually better because the situation didn’t work out the way I expected or I didn’t get what I thought I wanted?

      These memories remind me of the importance of patience as I wait for divine order to unfold. Even if I’m tempted, I don’t get attached to rigid time frames or specific outcomes.

      I get clear on my goals — healthy relationships, career satisfaction, more love in my life. I take these desires into prayer and spiritually surrender them. With a grateful heart, I release my desire for control, trusting the best outcome may be beyond my imagination.

      My mind may be limited, but divine mind is limitless. I relax, release and trust divine order.

      Psalm 119:18
      Open my eyes so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.

  • Mahogany Table

    My friends wanted a larger dining table. But it had to be one that could also be small enough for the four of us to play cards or dominoes, as we often do.

    I had put an item on Marketplace but the smaller items that had not sold went home with my daughter for her to list in a larger market. I thought I had pulled all of the listings and was surprised to get a message about the Bose sound system. Searching for my listing, I came across a dining room table and 4 chairs: “Beautiful mahogany table with claw feet. Antique table that goes from 4 feet to 7 feet.” It was less than 30 minutes away. And the price was very reasonable. I sent that listing to my friend.

    A few days later I received a text message from her, “Going to look at that table from Facebook Marketplace today at 5:30. Hoping it works!”

    I wrote back, “The craziest thing is that I saw the listing for the table when I was responding to a message about a listing I thought I had pulled.”

    She added, “Crazier yet is that I’ve been looking on FB Marketplace for a month or more now and never saw this one.”

    At 7:38 pm she sent a photo of their new beautiful antique mahogany table already set up in their dining room along with this message, “And three leaves so it will comfortably seat 12!”

  • August Wedding

    It was 1976. Their daughter was six years old. Cancer!

    It was only June but their daughter was sooooo excited about an upcoming family wedding. Her dress had already been chosen. The wedding was not until August.

    As the doctors listed off the side effects of the chemotherapy her mother began to pray, “Lord, please don’t let her hair fall out until after the wedding.”

    Their precious child went to that wedding with a full head of beautiful black hair.

    The morning after, her beautiful black hair fell out…. But her beautiful black hair grew back in. Praise God!


    And when this Sacred Story was posted in July, 2025, that “child” was a fifty-five-year-old mother-of-two and grandmother.

  • Hilma of Klint

    “She was well-educated,
    she had a mind of her own,
    and she painted like nobody else.”
    ~ opening words from the trailer of the Zeitgeist Films
    “Beyond the Visible: Hilma of Klint.”

    The jigsaw puzzle she had borrowed from the public library featured an image done by the artist Hilma of Klint, born in Sweden in 1862. Hilma was both an artist and a mystic. Her paintings are considered among the first major abstract works in Western art history. Hilma died in 1944.

    Leafing through the April/May 2025 edition of the Smithsonian Magazine she was surprised and delighted to see an article featuring Hilma of Klint! What are the odds of that??? She was awestruck to be seeing the article on the very day she was doing the puzzle of the Hilma piece….

    She does not subscribe to the Smithsonian magazine but a friend she seldom sees had sent this edition to her by mail because the cover story is about the Buddha and the friend said she didn’t know anyone else interested in the Buddha.

    The magazine arrived many days earlier, but as she had time to do a puzzle that day she thought she best also look at the free magazines which had collected. Among the pile was the Smithsonian. She felt she should check out the story of the Buddha and thank her friend for sending it.

    And there was Hilma waiting for her!

    She writes, “It was so out of my control. It was a great teaching for me that I do not have to control everything. TRUST Life. Things will unfold without your pushing them along.”

    Her sense of wonder amplified as she looked again at a drawing she herself had done during the pandemic. Perhaps she, too, was both an artist and a mystic. The urge to draw circles highlighting energy or essence that might otherwise be missed was palpable as she saw deeper meaning in her persistent inner calling to “Pick up the brushes….”

  • Positivity

    She received the following list of “Affirmations & Denials” from The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn in a text message from a friend.

      Affirmations & Denials

      (For Prosperity)
      God is my unfailing supply, and large sums of money come to me quickly, under grace, in perfect ways.

      (For Right Conditions)
      Every plan my Father in heaven has not planned, shall be dissolved and dissipated, and the Divine Idea now comes to pass.

      (For Right Conditions)
      Only that which is true of God is true of me, for I and the Father are ONE.

      (For Faith)
      As I am one with God, I am one with my good, for God is both the Giver and the Gift. I cannot separate the Giver from the gift.

      (For Right Conditions)
      Divine Love now dissolves and dissipates every wrong condition in my mind, body and affairs. Divine Love is the most powerful chemical in the universe, and dissolves everything which is not of itself!

      (For Health)
      Divine Love floods my consciousness with health, and every cell in my body is filled with light.

      (For the Eyesight)
      My eyes are God’s eyes, I see with the eyes of spirit. I see clearly the open way: there are no obstacles on my pathway. I see clearly the perfect plan.

      (For Guidance)
      I am divinely sensitive to my intuitive leads, and give instant obedience to Thy will.

      (For the Hearing)
      My ears are God’s ears, I hear with the ears of spirit. I am nonresistant and am willing to be led. I hear glad tidings of great joy.

      (For Right Work)
      I have a perfect work In a perfect way: I give a perfect service For perfect pay.

      (For Freedom from All Bondage)
      I cast this burden on the Christ within, and I go free!

    Moments later she read the Daily Word July 1, 2025:

    With positivity, I embrace all aspects of life. Positivity means living free of doubt, seeing clearly, and feeling secure. Even when my worldly fortunes shift, I maintain my positive outlook and believe the presence and power of God is in and through all things.

    I understand the ebb and flow that is part of everyone’s life. If I find myself in undesirable circumstances, I honor my feelings by witnessing my fleeting negative thoughts and feelings with self-compassion. When I feel ready, I release and let them go.

    I deny that negativity has any power over me. I use affirmations to realign myself with my positive nature. I accept the conditions of my life even as I strive to improve them. Positivity is my way forward. With gratitude, I affirm God is with me as I claim my highest good.

    Set your minds on things that are above,
    not on things that are on earth.
    ~ Colossians 3:2