Angel Encounter: A True Personal Story

Caught Me

My mind knew that standing on the top of the deck railing alone

behind the house

where no one would see me for QUITE a while if something went wrong

in order to stretch tip-toe

to remove a nail from the siding

was NOT

using the best judgment.

But You turned potential disaster

into

an introduction

and revelation.

My balance was lost,

of course.

I’m falling, but something isn’t right.

Relief! I’m falling towards the deck,

not the distant, hard ground.

But something so amazingly right is making it

not quite right.

I’m moving in slow-motion and I’m not afraid.

I’m falling slower than people fall and

I'm not panicked

Not holding my breath

No racing heartbeat

Not clenching anything –

Instead

every energy cell of me

is absolutely permeated with comfort

like being in snuggliest, warmest, flannel-wrapped bed,

and permeated with love

like the safest moments of toddlerdom with loving, hovering parents,

and permeated with

consuming Peace.

It makes NO sense.

I’m moving in a comfortable huggy glide

through the soft summer air.

You must have been invisibly next to me before I lost my footing.

Your strong arms carry me slowly down

without pressing on my skin.

I feel so safe –

safer than regular safe –

because you infuse me with heavenly peace.

That’s when I knew you existed.

YOU EXIST for ME!

Other people have guardian angels –

close enough for them to touch,

close enough to hear whispered warnings from thin air

or get gut feelings or go somewhere.

But those people are exceptions, not the rule.

I didn’t know that I have a guardian angel,

that I had you,

or that I had you SO CLOSE!

This free verse poem is based on an actual experience.

I had indeed determined to work on cleaning up part of the house siding near a newly installed window. I didn’t have an extending, telescoping ladder and the ladder I owned would not get me anywhere near my goal. There was a raised deck with railing four feet to the right of a hard-to-reach nail. Of course, I decided I would stand on the railing and reach to the left to complete my cleaning.

No one else was around to either scold me for such foolhardiness or to rescue me if I fell, so I was on my own.

Prior to this day, I believed angels are real but I thought that the “guardian angel watching over a person” happened in the Family Circus comic strip or just with some people.

I had read stories of young women walking alone being saved from harm because bad guys “saw” them being accompanied by a muscle man. That was their guardian angel. Also, I knew accounts of people receiving strong gut feelings to go home right away, or to refrain from entering a building, and following the gut avoided disaster.

However, neither I nor anyone I knew had anything like that happen. No angel contact stories in my family or circle of friends. Therefore, I assumed that intervention by a guardian angel happens to random people and rest of us are out of luck.

Them’s the breaks, I thought, and I didn’t think about it any further.

I lost my balance and fall.

However, it was an unimaginable experience.

First, I experienced it all in slow motion. No other slip and fall of my life has been that way.

Next, I was filled with an emotional high. Serenity. Peace. Otherworldy happiness filled me. Love filled me. It was good stuff, and no, I was not under the influence of ANY drug. I was floating down smoothly and securely as if I was being held by two arms behind my back and my knees.

This heavenly intervention ended with a resounding whomp! of my body onto the deck. Even as I lay there in a pile, I marveled that I had fallen towards the deck instead of a much farther and more dangerous cascade to the earth under the window. I easily could have broken my back or my neck if I had fallen directly down beneath the nail.

As I lay there, I just replayed the event over and over with full confidence that I had just interacted with my own Guardian Angel.

And, that felt grand!

Over the next weeks, whenever I viewed or felt the resulting grapefruit-sized bruise on my thigh, my primary reaction was how lucky am I. It made me accept a new paradigm: If I have a Guardian Angel, Everyone must!

Perhaps the angels do not always reveal themselves in a way we can perceive, but they most certainly are there for us. And that is very good.