I’m still seeing the angel after all these years

By Rebecca Drake
Editor

Perhaps I was dreaming but, when I was 3 or 4 years old, I saw an angel. The vision remains with me to this day.

My parents and I had been visiting neighbors who lived just down the street from us. Knowing it might be a long evening, my mother had dressed me in my pajamas and, after hours of playing with the other children, I did indeed fall asleep. So my father picked me up and carried me down the stairs and to the front door of our neighbors’ house. Through the arched window in the large white door I saw her: a tiny angel suspended in the air, looking at me through the glass. She had long brown hair and wore a light pink robe and, of course, had feathery white wings. Her mouth was open and I thought she was singing or talking to me.

The incident became a legend and, more often than not, a source of amusement in our family history. No doubt I had seen pictures of angels and had heard the Advent and Christmas Scriptures in which, as my pastor, Father Jeddie Brooks, has said, “angels were flying around everywhere.” Surely, I was not the only child who dreamed of these heavenly beings sent by God to bring messages of miracles to unsuspecting human beings.

However, some years later, one of my aunts bought me a ceramic angel closely fitting the description of the one I saw that night in the late 1950s. This angel, who still sits on my bedroom bureau, has the pink robe and white wings, but her hair is red and worn in braids, as my hair was throughout my early childhood.

I have not seen or dreamed of an angel since that moment, but I cherish the memory and the ceramic keepsake. Much has happened in the last 50 years to diminish, and damage, the innocence that let me glimpse, in mind and heart, at least, a being of spiritual beauty and purity.

I long ago left the safety and security of my father’s strong arms and my mother’s loving care, and, in the strange, twisted path of my life’s journey, have spent many years caring for both of my parents as they suffered through major diseases and disabilities. And after witnessing more than a half-century of history on this planet – the unceasing wars, violence, poverty and injustices – I find I am just as certain now that angels exist, and that they are still heralding the birth of Jesus.

I know this because the good people of this diocese, and many others, continue to lay gifts beneath Advent giving trees and donate to food pantries and shelters; because the music of Christmas, angels and all, is still being sung; and because knees still bend before the Savior.

And I believe in the birth of Christ because the gifts of hope, forgiveness and love have been abundant in my life. I can still see the angel.