Monica Cane had been in a deep sleep on a warm July night in 1997 when she awoke from a peculiar dream. In her dream, she had smelled a distinct foul odor in the air. The smell was so intense that it startled her awake. At first, she wasn't even sure whether the smell had been real or if it was just in her dream.
"an uneasiness crept over me," she says. "I crawled out from beneath the covers and decided to check on the children. I peeked into their room and they looked like perfect little lambs tucked under their covers."
Monica went through every room in the quite, dark house. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she headed back to bed. Yet the sense of uneasiness intensified and the memory of the foul smell flooded her senses. She went through the house again.
"I walked into the living room, the center of our little house, and scanned in every direction. I sniffed the air repeatedly trying to detect something. There was nothing unusual in the air."
Still, she was increasingly troubled in her spirit, and the sense of the odor would not leave her. Quitely, in the middle of her sleeping home, Monica prayed, "What is it God? show me the smell." The answer came swiftly.
"I felt overwhelmingly drawn back to the kids' room. When i walked in, they looked just as peaceful as they had before. My four-year-old daughter Kalaya, was snuggled up in a ball under her covers. My nine-year-old daughter, Krystal, was clinging to her favorite blue teddy bear. I didn't see or smell anything alarming but i felt an almost magnetic pull toward Krystal and her blue bear."
Monica removed the teddy bear from her daughter's hands. She was shocked to discover that it was actually smoldering on the inside. The bear had been propped up against a nightlight and the heat from the light caused the bear's fabric to smolder.
The teddy bear surely would have eventually burst into flames in the hands of the little girl.
"God used my dream to warn me of the potential danger. And when I prayed for guidance as to the danger, He showed me exactly where it was," says Monica. "We no longer use the same type of nightlights, and we no longer have the blue teddy bear. But we have the testimony of God's miracle keeping our family safe in the midst of unseen danger."