How Angels Work
It was a late, rainy night. I needed a rescue.
“Oh no!” I thought to myself as my Miata careened across five lanes of the northbound 805 before merging with the I-5. I was just trying to pass up the 18-wheeler who drifted into the fast lane I was in. Turning the steering wheel to the right, to slide into the №2 lane, I began to hydroplane in the new rain landing on the slick highway. Instantaneously, so many thoughts came flooding.
“Uh, it’s not stopping despite the brakes and I have no control.”
“Damnit, I just got this out of the auto body shop today and she never looked better! Don’t crash into anyone!”
“I’m gonna be late getting home.”
At 75 mph, my headlights beamed at the right shoulder and I glimpsed there was no guardrail. Bam! I hit the curb hard and fast. I felt airborne — floating then falling. Ba-doom! Time went into slow motion as it does in the movies. Must be the adrenalin and hyperawareness speeding up my perception. Crunch! Blackness and the feeling of going end over end, the little convertible banging down a 30-foot ravine. Racing thoughts again.
“Oh God, this is really bad. I’m still not stopping.”
“I’m so glad I have the hard top on.”
Indeed images of my past come quick to the forebrain. Thud!
As I keep flipping, “Jesus, don’t let me suffer — just take me quickly. I’m ready to go.”
I don’t know how angels work. They are always pictured as winged heavenly bodies.
I felt the hold on my shoulder from the seat belt as the car finally came to rest. I was hanging upside down. It was so dark and I could only see the dashboard lights and my cell phone light on the ground that was now the inside of the roof. The music on the radio was still playing though I can’t remember what song it was. I could hear the rain pouring down harder now. I prayed for an intervener of mercy. Even though I smelled gasoline and my legs were in some water or liquid, I felt intact and reached for my phone to call 9–1–1.
With the amazing help of the San Diego firefighters and paramedics — even the trucker I passed who called it in watching me go off the freeway, I survived the crash with only a scratch on my shin. The mechanics at the shop where they towed my cherished Miata thought they were seeing a ghost when I came to look at it. As they showed me the convertible, like a crushed soda can, they said when wrecks like this come in they assume the driver is DOA. There was only a small void in the driver compartment, where I was suspended. If I had a passenger, they wouldn’t have survived.
Others were astonished how calm I was; how I wasn’t in shock. Yet, the notion had always been there, of someone watching over me. This wasn’t the only time death was at my side nor would it be the last close call.
How do angels work? Annotations from the Old Testament show these agents of God created before mankind are like an army to watch over us or keep the world in order yet the lowest order of the celestial hierarchy. More intimately in the New Testament they’ve been illustrated as messengers.
How I’ve felt them in my life are as attendant spirits. It’s difficult to make the coherent from the mellifluous and incoherent. For me, an angel is a presence which is intangible yet the effects inexplicable and concrete. Messages, the important ones demanding attention, are given as whispers in the ear, soft and indistinguishable from the ambient noise. The visage is a flickering and brief movement catching our animal eyes, like fluttering of wings or the flash of radiating light beams.
They are always there, not coming and going only when we need them. Only our limited senses pick up on them in certain times of need or distress. I need finer tuning and radical presence to connect; a more accurate antenna to listen to those messages that may always be broadcasting to me. What if angels are the leading edge of a dimension greater than us and outside our material possession?
Believe me there is nothing more poignant than your life on edge, to feel the present moment, reach out with your being and mind to connect with the ever-present and attendant angel. To catch one in the corner of the eye and feel them in the corner of the mind is a confirmation of their enveloping protection. That sense of feeling is a knowing, a grace that all is fine. That in that moment tumbling in my car, I knew I was not alone but where I needed to be and in my true reality. While it was not my time to die, I was among angels again as it was meant to be.