When I woke this morning I opened my eyes to see a little pink stone sitting on my bedside table. I don't know why I noticed it this morning. It has been sitting there a very long time. It is a piece of rose quartz and I have it there because Mac's ex-girlfriend told me it promotes love and harmony. She said I should keep a piece beside the bed to help strengthen a relationship.

So I bought some, went and picked out a piece that I felt spoke to me when I picked it up and I sat it on my bedside table and waited for my One to find me. Mac eventually did, of course. It's been there since before I became His and I keep it there now, always beside the bed.

Mac, with His two feet firmly planted on the ground thinks it is just a rock, a pretty rock, but all the same, just a rock. Maybe He is right, but then again, He thought fairies were just for children's stories and dragons only lived in the imagination of a child. I am not quite sure that He believes in them now, but I think He hopes that perhaps I am right about these things. So He humours me and never mentions the rose quartz at all. He has probably forgotten it is there.

And is it magic? Does it have some special power that brings love and harmony to our bedroom? Can it have any affect at all on our relationship? Whenever I start to toss questions like that about in my mind, I remember the magic penny my mother gave me when I was six.

My mother was at the end of her rope, you see. She had taken me to doctors and a specialist and they had performed test after test and could find nothing wrong with me. But most nights I suffered from night terrors when I was deeply asleep and while I didn't remember them, the rest of my family were suffering from my screams of terror through the night. For those that don't know, night terrors are different to nightmares. I would scream for up to ten minutes with my eyes wide open without waking at all. The doctors wanted to drug me and when my mother refused she was told to exhaust me completely everyday and not to let me read any books. The doctor said that my brain was overactive and that by exhausting me and not letting me stimulate my brain with reading, it would stop my brain from letting the visions occur.

After weeks of exhausting both of us completely, of putting up with tears and tantrums because I wanted my beloved books back, of suffering worse night terrors then ever before, my mum gave up on that. Instead she gave me a magic penny (which I later learned she had a dozen of in a jar) and she told me how very special this penny was. She told me I had to look after it, because it had very magic powers and it would take away anything bad that I saw in my sleep. She held it out to me and put it in the palm of my hand and closed my fingers over it.

She looked me very openly and solemnly. "Can you feel the magic in it, Sarah?" she asked.

And I swear to this day, that coin made my palm tingle. I felt the magic in it. We put it under my pillow before I went to sleep that night and every night for a long time after. Mum would get me to hold it every night and feel the magic in it again. I never had another night terror. I couldn't. The magic coin was there. It got lost a few times, but Mum always found it. I am sure her jar of pennies was three or four lighter by the time I didn't need it anymore.

When my niece started having night terrors, mum came to the rescue with a magic penny for her, telling her it was magic and would stop the bad things from finding her in the night. I will never forget how big her eyes were when she put the coin in my hand and asked me in a voice of total reverence "Can you feel the magic in it, Sarah?" It made my hand tingle and I answered her without a word of a lie that I could feel it too. Mum's cure worked for my niece as well.

So this sort of magic, perhaps it is just mind over matter. People have cured themselves on placebos. I guess that was what the magic coin was. Now I have the rose quartz sitting beside my bed and I have to admit, that I often come to the bedroom when I feel the need for calm. I see our bed as a peaceful place and I think that because I find peace there, Mac does too.

Even if the rock is only partially responsible for that because I believe it is, then I am keeping it right next to our bed.