An Angel

December 23rd, 2007

From Dec 23, 2007

Do you think that the angels who walk around parading as human would know that they are angels?

Once, long ago– seems like a million years ago– I had a close friend who suffered her extraordinarily traumatic experiences over and over again every night as she fell asleep. She was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and had vivid, horrific flashbacks, and I sat through them with her night after night for almost a year. She would tell me what she was seeing, sometimes in her own voice, and sometimes in a child’s voice, reenacting the wretched things she had experienced throughout her childhood. The things that fell from her lips were the worst things I had ever heard– and in spite of the horror they evoked within me, I would lie next to her, holding her hands, protecting her from her aggressors, whispering to her, “It’s not really happening again. These are just memories.” In time, she confided to me with her child-like voice, “Ash, you are my angel who stays with me through it all. You make the bad things not so bad because I know I don’t have to go through them alone any more.”

I met an angel once.

There was a snow storm– a pretty significant one–the one of 1996 here in Denver. One of the youth leaders and I were waiting for Sean, our other youth leader, to get to the church before we could lock up and leave. I think he may have been our ride home, if I remember correctly… We waited for hours, and Sean, without a cell phone, hadn’t called and hadn’t made contact with us. Tammy and I just sat around in the church office by the phones, waiting for him to show up. Tammy and I discussed whether or not we should call the police or start calling nearby hospitals. No one had seen him or heard from him, and he was three or four hours late. The roads were icy and getting worse by the minute. Shortly after I began looking through the phone book for which hospital I would call first, a man walked up to the church office. He had let himself into the church, and went directly to the office, as though he were looking for us. We were startled by him– no one really could’ve known we were in the church because the parking lot was empty and unplowed. This man wore a long gray wool trench coat and a handsome hat with thick stripes of maroon and gold in it. His thick gloves were the a deep brown, and lined with what looked like fur. He was in his late fifties, I had estimated, and he was comfortable as he approached us– not surprised at all to find us there, waiting by the phones. He shook his hat off as he addressed us, “Good evening, ladies.”

“Hi,” I said. “It’s awfully snowy out there.”

“Yes, it IS.” He smiled. I wasn’t nervous about our guest then. He just looked kind.

“You’re waiting for someone?” he inquired.

“Yeah, our ride is several hours late. We were just getting ready to start making phone calls to see if he was okay or not.”

“He’s fine. He’s just late, as usual.” Sean WAS always late, but never this late.

“Welp, you ladies have a good night. He’ll be here shortly.” The man turned on his heel and walked towards the front doors of the church.

Tammy and I sort of looked at each other, wondering who this guy was, and why he seemed to know so much about Sean.

“Should I follow this guy out?” I asked her.

“I guess so, I wonder who he is. I’ve never seen him here before.”

So, with Tammy right behind me, I jumped around the desk, ready to ask this guy if he wanted something warm to drink– really I just wanted to figure out who he was and why he had come into the church. As I trailed along the corner of the hallway, I noticed his wet footprints. A trail from the door and a trail back to the door. The one unlocked door at the entrance was squeaking closed. I ran up to the door to open it, and peeked outside into the blizzard. There were no footprints in the six inch drifts up against the front entrance to the church. The snow was untouched, soft, and glistening.

I stepped back inside the entryway, and looked at Tammy. She peeked out the glass doors, looking down at the ground– I was looking at it myself, puzzled.

“No footprints,” she gasped. We looked at each other. Both of us knew something strange had just happened. We stood there, speechless. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.

“That man was an angel.”

Moments later, headlights of Sean’s Volkswagen Fox turned into the parking lot.

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I’m sure I’ve seen other angels in my lifetime. Of course, to see angels, one must believe they exist.

Tonight, a very spiritual woman gave me a very special gift. Inside a coffee mug, decorated with angels, and behind a tiny doll that resembled an angel, a hand-written note that said, “Ash, this is for you because I really do think you’re an angel.”