My Guardian Angels

There was once a time that I didn't believe in angels at all. As anyone who has read my profile or other spirituality hubs that I have written knows, I was a pagan for quite a long time. I believed in everything it seemed: Everything except good and evil, that is. Angels weren't part of my world for a long time. I didn't see how they could exist an dI couldn't rationalize them at all. I believed in ghosts, of that much I was sure. I had seen and heard so many strange things that I had no room to not believe in ghosts during that period of my life.

It never occurred to me that something I could see but others couldn't either didn't exist or was something different entirely. I didn't think much about halicinations, as I have been "diagnosed" as "sane" by many psychiatrists and for some reason, "ghosts" seemed like the most reasonable explanation to me.

The strangest case, however, was an occasion when I didn't realize, until recently, that I was the only person who saw two individuals who might have literally saved my life.

When I was seven years old, I finally learned how to ride a two-wheel bike without training wheels. My sister had been adopted the previous year and she was already getting close to riding at the age of five. I was embarrassed and wasn't going to be shown up by my younger sister, but my father was struggling to teach me how to ride. I kept falling, and falling made me nervous. I stopped trying after a time.

Luckily for me and my ego, a friend managed to teach me how to ride properly. She lived on a long cul-du-sac and I therefore had an area where I could ride in relative safety. If it had not been for her and her road, I probably would have given up on learning to ride!

But knowing how to ride, and even for a while being quite proficient at it, didn't make me an intelligent rider. This was in the days before helmet laws and because my family also lived on a cul-du-sac, my parents didn't think there was any risk of allowing me to ride up and down our own street. They were wrong.

Three years later, when I was ten years old, I took my sister's bike. For whatever reason I liked it better than my own. Perhaps this was because it was pink and purple (and looked just like a friend's bike!) or it might have just been because it was hers (sibling rivalry and all that).

I rode that bike up and down our street for quite some time. It was summer, and it was growing dark, but still I rode!

The bike wasn't big enough for me. I was a tall child and riding my sister's juvenile bike wasn't a wise idea at all. My leg caught on the handlebars and I went down. I went down hard. I realize, looking back now, that this is part of the reason that bicycle helmets are recommended and even required for children in some areas.

When I fell, I became dazed. I ripped a huge wound into my chin where I fell and for a long time it felt as though the bone had broken. I still experience occasional pain in this area, some twenty years later!

I was alone immediately after my accident, and I was frightened. It was twilight, but I knew that my parents wouldn't be coming looking for me. In fact, they were more apt to expect me to come home without them having to call for me. After all, I was a responsible child! Instead of going home, however, I was laying in the middle of the road, frightened and too dazed to stand up on my own. I had fallen right at the end of the cul-du-sac, where it intersected with the busier road. This put me at risk of being struck by a car.

Then, clearly out of absolutely nowhere, two older girls arrived on the scene. They appeared to be fourteen or fifteen years old and I didn't reocognize them in a neighborhood where everyone knew everyone else. They didn't belong there, and where I grew up, that was unusual, in particular after dark.

One of those young ladies picked me up off the ground and the other grabbed my sister's bike. Together they led me home and knocked on the door. At the time it didn't occur to me that it might be strange that they knew where I lived and knew my name, as I didn't know them. Nothing particularly seemed out of the ordinary at the time.

Many years later, however, I brought the subject up with my mother about the two girls who had walked me home after the accident. She informed me that there had been no such two girls.

Was I hallucinating? I know that it was possible. But I choose to believe that there are angels among us, watching over us and guiding us when we get ourselves into trouble. I believe that there are angels who protect us from the various trials that we face every day.

Yes, for me, I believe in angels!