“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.” --Exodus 23:20
I had never been particularly interested in angels. As a matter of fact, I was annoyed with people who seemed to have an obsession with them. You know who I mean, the ones who wear all kinds of angel jewelry and have angel figurines and all kinds of angel paraphernalia in every nook and cranny of their homes and cars. It seemed to me that some were getting dangerously close to forgetting about the biblical relationship between angels and God and were verging on angel worship. But suddenly I found myself with an almost insatiable need to read anything I considered to be a genuine angel story.
My husband was only weeks away from losing the battle with cancer. The Veterans hospital, where we both spent most of our time, had free Guidepost magazines in the chapel. Throughout my husband’s illness I had read every inspirational issue I could get my hands on. The stories gave me hope and encouragement. They reassured me that, despite our bleak circumstances, I could count on the fact that there was a God who cared about and was active in what was happening in people’s lives. I wasn’t expecting a last minute cure, but I needed to hear how he had made himself known in amazing and miraculous ways to people in all kinds of situations.
Many of the stories I found most encouraging were about angel appearances. Stories where, just when things seemed hopeless, someone would appear and have exactly what was needed. Then, when the rescued person turned around to say thank you, no one was there. Guideposts had just started a sister magazine, Angels on Earth, so I subscribed. Billy Graham wrote a book called, Angels: God’s secret agents. I bought it. I went to the library and found other books of stories about angels, written from a Christian perspective, and checked them all out. I was intentionally fortifying myself with concrete evidence of God’s personal concern regarding the needs, large and small, of his children.
As I read, I began to notice what I felt were common themes in these stories. As I write about it now, it occurs to me that maybe what stood out to me weren’t necessarily “common themes”, but were simply what God wanted me to notice, so they stuck in my mind. Regardless, it seemed to me that frequently these angels were beautiful and were often dressed all in white. Many times they did not speak, but when they looked at someone it was as if they were able to look inside of you.
Several days before my husband’s death, I walked into his room and he told me about a new woman doctor that had been making rounds with his regular doctors for the last few days. He said he thought she must be an important visiting physician and he had tried to find out who she was, but no one seemed to know who he was talking about. I asked him to tell me what she looked like because I thought maybe I could do a little detective work for him and find out. I was curious as to the reason he was so interested in finding her. Then he described her to me. She was very beautiful, he said, with dark shoulder length hair. She was dressed all in white, but she wasn’t wearing a white coat like the other doctors, she had a beautiful white suit. She stood at the end of the semi-circle of the entourage and never said a word, but he said he could tell she was very intelligent, by her face. She listened raptly to what the doctors were saying, but when she turned to look at my husband, he said, it was as if she was looking into his very soul. She had the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.
As the hairs stood up on my arms, I knew with absolute certainty that he was describing an angel. I did ask the nurses if they knew of anyone matching this description that had been on rounds in the past few days, but of course they did not. My husband had not been reading angel stories. We hadn’t even discussed my sudden interest in angels. He hadn’t recently become aware of the fact that angels frequently matched the description he had just given me, and for some reason I didn’t feel a need to tell him. I just stored up that treasure in my heart.
The night my husband died, as I was standing beside him, still holding his hand, I had a sudden picture in my mind of this same angel coming to him at the moment of death. I imagined the surprise of recognition and then understanding he must have felt as he realized why she had been there before and was there now. I imagined him walking away with her, unafraid. Even in that heart-wrenching moment, I smiled with wonder at that picture and was grateful to a God who had prepared me and provided exactly what was needed for us both.
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