Surrounded By Angels and the Peace They Bring

Sur­rounded by Angels and the Peace They Bring

This Week’s Prompt: Col­lec­tor Personality

Angels are around us every day, everywhere.

They are men­tioned many times in the Bible, per­haps most notably when an angel appeared to inform Mary that she was not only preg­nant, but would give birth to the Sav­ior, and again on Christ­mas Eve when they sang “Glo­ria” to sig­nal his arrival. My favorite Christ­mas car­ols have always been “Angels We Have Heard on High,” “Hark, the Her­ald Angels Sing,” and “It Came Upon a Mid­night Clear.”

Hebrews 13:2 reminds us to “enter­tain strangers, for by so doing some peo­ple have enter­tained angels with­out know­ing it.”

In addi­tion to being mes­sen­gers, angels are also res­cuers. Acts 12, for instance, describes how an angel was sent to release Peter from prison. After wak­ing him up and telling him to get dressed, the angel walked him right out of the prison, accom­pa­ny­ing him the full length of one street and assur­ing that he was safe before leav­ing him. After­ward, he said, “Now I know with­out a doubt that the Lord sent his angel and res­cued me . . ” so he went to the home of Mary, the mother of John (who was also called Mark), and told the peo­ple gath­ered there how he had escaped.

On April 29, 1976, my father under­went open heart surgery for the first time. He was 57 years old; I was 19 and about to receive my Asso­ciate of Arts degree from San Joaquin Delta Col­lege. I planned to trans­fer to a col­lege in Orange County in the fall of that year.

I remem­ber being incred­i­bly fright­ened because my father had, as far as I knew, been healthy until then. And fathers are sup­posed to be invin­ci­ble — strong providers for their fam­i­lies, espe­cially their daughters.

In real­ity, my father had been ignor­ing symp­toms of heart dis­ease for some time. The local physi­cian who treated him for many years described him once as “stoic” — an apt char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of a man who stub­bornly kept over­haul­ing Lin­coln trans­mis­sions, despite attacks of angina, because his youngest daugh­ter was set to head off to col­lege. Noth­ing was more impor­tant to my par­ents than see­ing their two daugh­ters grad­u­ate from col­lege, secure steady jobs and be self-sufficient.

So it was quite shock­ing when my father went to the hos­pi­tal to have surgery for a her­nia, but instead ended up com­ing home that same morn­ing with an appoint­ment to see a car­di­ol­o­gist in Sacra­mento the next day. At that moment, my world changed for­ever: It was the point in my life when I learned, as every child even­tu­ally does, that my par­ents were vul­ner­a­ble beings.

He ended up under­go­ing bypass surgery two days later. It was per­formed on an emer­gency basis fol­low­ing an angiogram. His pulse was 26, his blood pres­sure dan­ger­ously low, and the doc­tors almost oper­ated that very after­noon. But after intense con­sul­ta­tions and numer­ous tests, they con­cluded he could be sta­bi­lized until the morning.

I will never for­get com­ing back from the hos­pi­tal late that night, com­pletely exhausted, to get a few hours of sleep before return­ing extremely early the next morn­ing so that we could see him prior to the oper­a­tion. In 1976, open heart surgery was not yet a com­mon pro­ce­dure and I had never dealt with a fam­ily member’s seri­ous ill­ness or injury, so I was overwhelmed.

I remem­ber get­ting into my bed but being so tired and emo­tion­ally drained that I could not sleep.

Through­out this ordeal, my mother’s demeanor could best be described as serene. I thought that she was just putting on a brave face for her daugh­ters. That night, the light stayed on in my par­ents’ bed­room for what seemed like hours. I left her alone because I fig­ured that she was prob­a­bly doing exactly what I was doing, i.e., cry­ing, wor­ry­ing and try­ing with­out suc­cess to get some much-needed sleep. Even­tu­ally, I dozed off and it seemed like only a few min­utes had passed when she woke me to get dressed and head back to the hospital.

Again, I remem­ber think­ing to myself that she was quite an actress because I saw no sign of strain, worry or despair. At that point, my par­ents had been mar­ried for 35 years dur­ing which my mother had never worked out­side our home, so I was con­vinced that she had to be scared out of her wits about not only my father’s med­ical sit­u­a­tion, but what the future might hold for our fam­ily as a whole.

He came through the surgery spec­tac­u­larly, returned to work for another eight years, and would sur­vive an even more exten­sive and risky open heart surgery in 1989.

I remained at home for an extra year before head­ing off to col­lege because after that cri­sis, I sim­ply was not ready to leave the nest.

And it was not until after my father had con­va­lesced and resumed work that my mother finally explained why she had been so calm, assured and strong. It was not an act at all. She had been gen­uinely con­fi­dent of the future.

The night before his surgery, she had gone into their bed­room and remained awake, as I sus­pected. But she was not toss­ing and turn­ing due to worry and fear. In fact, she was not even in their bed.

Rather, she was along­side the bed. On her knees. Immersed in prayer.

Later, she described how she knelt beside the bed and began hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with the God she had known from the time she was bap­tized at the age of three months in the lit­tle white Lutheran church in South Dakota. She sim­ply explained to her higher power that if her hus­band could be healed, she would be for­ever grate­ful. And if he could return to work, that would be won­der­ful, but if not, she would fig­ure out a way, with his help, to put food on the table and send her daugh­ter to col­lege. Since she was never able to attend col­lege, given that she had the mis­for­tune of grad­u­at­ing from high school in 1934 when this coun­try was mired in the Depres­sion, she could self-identify only one mar­ketable skill. So she told God that she would “take in iron­ing if [she] had to” in order to “make ends meet.” She also reminded God that they owned their home — yes, the very house in which I write this — “free and clear” so if she needed money for med­ical expenses, she fig­ured God would help her mort­gage it.

She said it was then that she felt it. On her shoul­der. Firm and reas­sur­ing. And real. She described feel­ing that hand on her shoul­der so pow­er­fully that she turned around, expect­ing to see me stand­ing there, think­ing that she had not noticed me come into the room while she was pray­ing. But I was in my own room.

At that moment, she explained, she finally under­stood “the peace that passes under­stand­ing.” She felt calm, peace­ful, assured. She knew that my father would be fine, the med­ical bills paid, and nor­malcy restored to our daily lives.

That’s why she was able to reas­sure her daugh­ters, be a rock for us and model not just the abil­ity to be calm and delib­er­ate dur­ing a cri­sis, but, most impor­tantly, faith­ful­ness.

I have known from the moment more than 30 years ago when my mother told us that story that there was an angel in this house on that night. In my par­ents’ room. It was an angel whose hand she felt on her shoul­der. That angel was a mes­sen­ger sent by the God she knew so well to bring her com­fort and the inde­scrib­able peace that over­came her that night. And to empower her to be an exam­ple to us.

I do have a “col­lec­tor per­son­al­ity” — I col­lect and sur­round myself with rep­re­sen­ta­tions of angels in var­i­ous forms in my office (hid­den from vis­i­tors), car and, espe­cially, here at home. Among my prized pos­ses­sions are a pair of gold angel ear­rings that my clients gave me when we won the Supe­rior Court trial in Con­ser­va­tor­ship of Wend­land.

Angels serve as reminders to me not only of my father’s recov­ery and my mother’s stead­fast­ness through­out the 16 years he remained with us after that first med­ical cri­sis, but also of sev­eral per­sonal expe­ri­ences I have had with angels — and demons — in the ensu­ing years.

My angel col­lec­tion tan­gi­bly reaf­firms that we are never alone. There is a bat­tle wag­ing around us at all times that we can­not see or hear … but it is being fought on our behalf by the angels dis­patched to watch over and care for us. They bring mes­sages from time to time. They def­i­nitely res­cue us, even though we may not always know it.

Since tak­ing up the flute a few years ago, the focus of my col­lect­ing has been angels play­ing flutes. Two of my favorites are pic­tured here.

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