And they did.
I’ve never forgotten that dream and I never will, because the moment my son was born with his olive skin and chocolate eyes I knew beyond doubt he was the little boy in my dream. It touches me beyond belief to know that he reached out to me in my hour of need even before he was born.
‘Before I Was Born…’
From the moment my daughter was born, two years later, I got the feeling that she wasn’t new to all this. You’ve probably heard the term ‘old soul’ before and it is certainly true that many children appear wise beyond their years. Some, especially those below the age of five, also seem to have an awareness of a time before they were born. My daughter was one of them.
Like me, my daughter was not prone to fantasy or make-believe as a child. She was practical, pragmatic and had a firm sense of right or wrong, always reporting in detail the truth or facts of a situation. That’s why I couldn’t have been more shocked when she was about four and a half and started to tell me about her life as an angel before she was born. She used to tell me that she watched over me and picked me to be her mummy and my partner to be her daddy and her brother to be her brother. By then I’d learned not to discourage or feel confused and scared by this kind of talk, as Sophie’s mother had been. In fact I actively encouraged it. I told my daughter how lucky she was to have had such a special time and how glad I was that she had chosen me for her mother.
My daughter will be ten next year and no longer talks about her life before she was born. It all slipped away when she was about seven. At about the age of six, however, she shared a new revelation with me when she told that she had a guardian angel now and she often saw her standing in the garden with huge strong wings wrapped around the house. I trust that even though she doesn’t mention her anymore she’s still there and that there are yet more angels surrounding my daughter and my son, keeping them safe and lighting their way.
A Special Connection
Because of my experience with Sophie and with my own children I had to know if other children interacted with angels in the same way. I remembered that my brother used to chatter to me about his angels when we were growing up together but, being his sister, I never paid much attention to anything he said! Now I asked for his help in my research, though, as he had become a secondary school drama teacher. I myself had been a secondary school English teacher for several years, so between us and two primary school teachers we knew, we conducted a brief informal, anonymous and voluntary survey of children from schools in our areas. What we discovered was breathtaking.
I simply asked children between the ages of 4 and 18 to tell me about angels in as few or as many words as they felt comfortable with. I also asked them to draw pictures of what angels looked like to them, if they wanted to. As expected, children over the age of 12 were less forthcoming as far as drawing pictures was concerned, but when it came to submitting stories, the teenagers were as willing to contribute as the younger children. This surprised me a great deal, as I had expected the majority of my submissions to come from the under tens, but it became clear to me that a particularly close bond exists between angels and teenagers as well as between angels and young children. In taking the time to explore these stories, a cross-section of which you will read later in this book, I discovered that angels appear to young people in some vivid and nontraditional ways. They aren’t always white winged and wearing halos; they are as rich and varied as the children who experience them.
I wanted to talk to children with different lives outside my area, so I continued to gather stories from children across the country from a wide variety of backgrounds. All of them shared their stories with candour and conviction, and my desire to share their words and images with a wider audience grew stronger and stronger. In fact, finding out about children’s encounters with angels was a catalyst for me, because children are still connected to a world so many of us have forgotten. I truly hope that reading their stories in this book will encourage parents, carers, teachers and anyone who comes into contact with children to honour and nurture their spirituality.
But it is not just validating children’s spirituality that has become my passion. I’m just as passionate about validating spirituality in adults, but what working with children has shown me is that they can teach us so much more about spiritual growth than we can ever teach them. Perhaps this is all part of an angelic plan. Sometimes the best lessons are taught by those who don’t think they have all the answers, but do know how to live simply and to the full.
Growing Up Again and Again
Much of my childhood and early adult life was lost in worry and anxiety. Having children of my own has helped me rediscover and nurture the child inside me, the part of me through which angels speak, but something I also learned while gathering and researching angel stories is that it is not necessary to have children to grow spiritually. All of us, whether we are parents or not, can reclaim the unquestioning openness of a child that helps them see what adults often can’t. All of us can grow up time and time again by reconnecting to the little child that still lives in us.
So what can children, whether inner or outer, teach us? First and foremost is simply to be. Children are masters at just being, living in the now, something we all tend to find harder and harder as we get older and responsibilities pile up. They are also willing to let the past go and let grudges go with it. This is a happy way to live.
In addition, children have the divine ability to freely give their love–no matter what. For me, before I had my children, the idea of unconditional love was just that–an idea. But by giving them unconditional love and receiving it in return I finally felt worthy of being loved and of loving myself unconditionally. I also learned how to forgive myself for the mistakes I’d made. My children taught me that. They have also shown me the rich rewards of opening my mind and filling it with new things, thoughts and ideas every day, but above all they have reminded me to give life everything I have. No matter whether I succeed or fail at a particular task or project, it is all a learning experience. But if I put a lot of time and effort into something I love, I will always find success because I will know, deep down in my soul, that I gave it everything I could.
All these qualities–the ability simply to be, to love unconditionally, to have an open mind and to live every day with passion, enthusiasm and a spirit of adventure–nurture and sustain that special bond between angels and children. And if as adults we can rediscover these qualities within ourselves, we too can stay young in spirit and reclaim our special bond with heaven, a bond that is our birthright.
Tread Lightly
Children seem to accept angelic encounters with far more equanimity than adults, perhaps because they have not yet experienced a clear division between the two worlds and are therefore, for a little while, a part of each. Sadly, as they grow older and acquire greater knowledge, many lose their innate spirituality and become unwilling to take things at face value anymore. The acquisition of knowledge as we age is not necessarily a negative thing, but it can work against nurturing the childlike qualities of open-mindedness, enthusiasm, trust and emotional spontaneity that draw angels nearer to us. It is, however, possible to grow older in years without losing touch with the child in your heart.
One of the greatest spiritual leaders in the world is the Dalai Lama. A journalist friend of mine who spent a week with him told me that his booming laughter echoed from behind closed doors and down corridors. It was a genuine, bewitching, spontaneous laugh. My friend had expected this great man to be serious and intense, but he was exactly the opposite. There was a twinkle, a child in his eyes.
Years ago, when I regularly attended courses, lectures and conferences, all too often the heaviness and seriousness of everyone involved weighed me down both spiritually and physically. I used to feel the same when I attended religious services, especially when reciting prayers in school assemblies. Everyone would bow their heads and mumble the words, often without feeling or thought, even when the words were beautiful. On one yoga retreat I attended I don’t think I heard anyone laugh for the whole ten days. It felt somehow wrong to me and made me start to think that perhaps I too was guilty of approaching the subject of spiritual development with far too heavy a hand. My research on children has shown me that the angels are attracted to children because of their openness but also because of their laughter, enthusiasm and energy.