Saved by an Angel (13 page)

O
VERFLOWING WITH
J
OY
by Nancy Kimes

The year was 1980. It was an unusually hot day in the middle of the summer, a day I will never forget! I was very depressed. Nothing seemed to be going right in my life, including a relationship I was desperately hanging on to. My life had no plan, no direction. I was looking for a way out, so I asked God for help. I needed to know that I was here for a reason. I wanted to be able to help myself and others. At the time, that wish didn’t look very promising. I cried as I spoke to God, as if He were standing beside me.

Then there was a knock at my door.
Oh, who is that?
I thought.
Should I answer?
The knocks continued. I finally opened the door, with tearstains on my face. Before me stood a man around 30, handsome, with a bright smile and a clipboard under his arm. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and dark trousers. His sleeves were rolled up a few folds. He said he was sorry to bother me but wondered if he could have a glass of water. I couldn’t refuse him, as it was hot as blazes out there. I asked him if he would like some ice, also, and he said, “Yes, that would be fine.”

As I turned on the faucet, the heaviness I had felt seemed to be lightening. He finished his glass of water, and I asked him if he would like some more. He said yes, with much appreciation in his voice. So I poured him a second drink, again with ice. This time I started to feel like something was filling up inside of me. I noticed that my mood, my depression, was lifting. I was feeling better! The man finished his second drink, and I asked him if he would like another. He was still thirsty!

So, as before, I started to pour a third glass of water. I experienced an overflowing of joy, and spontaneously thought of a beautiful biblical scripture: “Those who thirst after righteousness … shall be filled.”

Who is this man, and why is he having this profoundly positive effect on me?
I suddenly wondered. He finished his water and seemed satisfied.

He thanked me warmly and left. As I shut the door, I felt a peaceful inner certainty that my answers would soon come, that I had a purpose and I wasn’t finished here. I dashed to the kitchen window to see which direction the man had gone, but he was nowhere to be seen. He could not have disappeared from my view that fast! Then within the deepest part of me, I knew that he was an angel in disguise.

My life changed that day. A whole new world opened up to me—one of love, forgiveness, listening to others, seeing myself through others’ eyes, and having the ability to help myself through helping others. Now that I think about it, whenever something happens and I find myself completely overwhelmed, I feel an unmistakable presence within or around me that gives me the strength and courage to face the challenge and move on, knowing that I will be fully protected.

H
EAVEN
H
ELPED
M
E
by Carol Pizzi

On September 14, 1995, while driving to work, I started to experience a tightening in my chest and pain that was going up in my throat. Having already passed right by the hospital, I decided to try to make it to the office and have someone take me to the emergency room. However, after driving a few more blocks, I started to feel very weak and had to pull the car into a deserted strip-mall parking lot. This was all happening at around 6:50
A.M.
, and none of the stores were open.

Just then, a man appeared, and I asked him to call an ambulance, as I was continuing to have chest pains and trouble breathing. I remember him going into one of the stores to make the call. The ambulance came and took me to the hospital, where they performed a cardiac cauterization. After they found a blocked artery, I underwent angioplasty.

After spending time at home recuperating, I returned to the strip mall, trying to locate and thank the gentleman who had called the ambulance. Since I had seen him go into one of the stores before their opening hours, I figured he must work at one of them. All of the store managers told me that no one would be there at that time of the morning and that no one of that description worked for them. I could not find my guardian angel, but I’m sure that’s who he was.

I
T
P
AYS TO
P
RAY
by Anonymous

It was an ordinary spring day, and my husband asked me to help move our older Pontiac Firebird out of the carport area, as it was blocked by a hedge and wasn’t accessible to the truck that would tow it to the shop. As my husband pushed, I was to steer it out of the spot. Well, as he was pushing and I was steering, I found that he was unable to handle the job as he’d thought. His back was strained, and I was trying to steer the car while seated inside. I felt that I created more weight, so I decided to get out of the car and help push, too. The only problem was that I couldn’t maneuver the vehicle and brake as well. This was an enormously unwieldy car—a 1976 Firebird has a lot of heavy metal—and we felt as if this was unbelievably hard to manage. Just as we would get the car to move, I would jump inside to brake before it hit my husband.

I started to pray in my heart, and I asked my angels to help me. While I was stating these requests inwardly, my husband was trying to push the car, which was going nowhere. Just as I was in the middle of my prayer, I looked up and saw the most interesting manifestation of my entire life. A man was running from what appeared to be the fence by my house. As I watched him come toward us, I noticed that he turned, almost as if he were feeling his way toward the car. When his loving eyes met mine, he nodded as if to say intuitively, “I am here!” He approached the car and started to help push it. My husband was totally shocked to see this man helping, but the two of them managed to push the car into place.

I hit the brakes and shifted into
PARK
. I noticed that the man—who had blond hair, blue eyes, and a beautiful golden-bronze tan all over—was shaking my husband’s hand and saying something to him that I couldn’t hear. That’s when I got out of the car and walked over, just in time to see him turn and leave, running in the same direction he’d come from and disappearing from our sight.

Focusing on my husband, I noticed that his eyes were watering, and I asked if he was all right. He couldn’t speak, but finally after a few seconds, he murmured that the love emanating from that man had been so incredible. I asked him what the man had said. My husband turned to look at me. “He said, ‘It pays to pray.’”

We never saw the man again, but we have never forgotten this amazing and wondrous occurrence.

Chapter 4

H
EALING
M
ESSAGES FROM
M
YSTERIOUS
S
TRANGERS

W
ILLIAM
W
HITE
by Dawn Elizabeth Allmandinger

In the 1980s, I was married to a man who physically abused me. We both worked at the same restaurant—I was a waitress, and he was a busboy. He would say mean things to me in front of my co-workers, and once I came into work with a black eye covered with heavy makeup.

One day, a man and woman whom I had never seen before entered the restaurant. The man started to ask me things about myself, and then he said that I was special. But at the time I didn’t think that was true because my ex-husband had always told me otherwise, as had my father.

He asked me what I thought my mission in life was. Without thinking, I said, “Well, I’m God’s helper.” The man told me that not many people know that about themselves. He asked me how I thought I helped others. I told him that I hugged people, and I could feel what was going on inside of them.

He told me that I was right, and that I should give the woman who was with him (his sister) a hug and tell them what I felt. I hugged her, and I told her I felt she wasn’t happy and that she was going through some kind of move that she was uneasy about. The woman confirmed that she
was
going through a move, wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, and wasn’t really happy about it. I couldn’t believe that I had gotten it right!

The man told me that he felt I was a healer, which I had been told twice before, but I hadn’t thought I was special enough. Now, these two people didn’t know me from Adam, and the man seemed to know things about me and my life that no one did. He told me that I wouldn’t be with my husband much longer, which at that time I didn’t believe. I really thought of marriage as a “till death do us part” commitment.

The man then asked me if I wanted his phone number, and I said yes. What’s strange about this is that the restaurant was really busy with the lunch rush, yet the only people seated in my section were the man and his sister. That gave me time to talk with them.

So, I opened my address book to a blank page, and he wrote: “William White, 758-6055.” Then he said, “Look at my name. See, it says ‘Will I Am’!” William asked me to call him so that I could join a group of helpers and healers.