up’ if you like in my approach. I didn’t appreciate that when we laugh and experience joy we are closer than ever to our angels.
Perhaps because we’re dependent on gravity to keep us grounded on Earth we tend to become weighed down with the serious and heavy stuff, sometimes to the point of taking ourselves too seriously and becoming self-important. Angels are charged with important work–the spiritual tasks of responsibility, courage, dedication, truth, justice, commitment, patience and education–but they carry them out lightly, going about them with joy, celebration, spontaneity, wonder, freedom, openness and love. It’s often said that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. This doesn’t mean they don’t have gravitas, just that they complete serious tasks with a lightness of spirit that comes from complete trust in the power of love.
Staying light in spirit and young at heart is not always easy, especially when life weighs you down with obstacles, pain and heartache, but angels have also taught me that life is not easy and it wasn’t meant to be. If there were no problems, no setbacks and no heartaches, how would we learn and grow spiritually? But if we can face the challenges life throws at us with the open trusting heart of a child, angels will stand by us even in the darkest hours of our lives and give us the courage, optimism, energy and hope to pull through. The meaning of the word ‘angel’ is ‘messenger’, and the messages they bring are always ones of reassurance, love, comfort and the knowledge that we are never alone in this life or the next. For those who believe (and there are many of us who do), just the thought of their presence, the very idea of them, is somehow comforting and adds a sweetness and lightness to our lives.
The Mark of an Angel is Love
I hope you will be as comforted and inspired and deeply touched as I have been by the stories I’ve included in this book. I hope they will encourage you to reclaim your inner child and grow up again with your guardian angel by your side, guiding you and watching over you.
If you don’t know where to find your guardian angel, just remember the mark of an angel is love. Angels are everywhere and they are always trying to communicate with you. They manifest their presence in your life through every smile, every heart, every act of kindness, every good thought and unselfish desire and every warm spontaneous feeling. Wherever there is love, growth and optimism, angels will be there.
Maybe you’ve just been looking in the wrong places and have been too busy to see that your guardian angel has been there before your eyes and in your heart all the time.
Chapter 2
Angel Babies
‘The world begins anew with every birth.’
Sebastian Fawkes
You may have heard about or read incredible rescue stories involving babies or very tiny children where angelic intervention seems the only possible explanation. Here are some sensational stories that caught the headlines in recent years.
Saved by a Nappy
In August 2008 a baby fell 30 feet from his third-floor apartment building in the Brazilian city of Recife but was saved by a disposable nappy. Somehow the nappy snagged on a security spike embedded in the concrete wall around the building and broke his fall.
According to a police officer interviewed at the time, the boy dangled from the spike for a moment, then the nappy slowly opened and the baby fell to the ground at a much slower speed. ‘It was a miracle,’ said the officer. ‘He could also have been killed by one of the spikes.’
The child was treated for minor fractures at the Hospital Memorial São José. His father believed that it was God who had saved his son and many commented that it must have been his guardian angel.
Some of you may also recall the well-reported story of 13-month-old Liam Evans during the summer of 1998. It left everyone amazed and once again the newspaper headlines talked of miracles and guardian angels.
Staying Alive
For three days Liam survived on a mountainside, living off handfuls of soil, after a car driven by his grandfather plunged off the road. Liam landed uninjured in the soft undergrowth, but sadly his grandfather died instantly.
After three days and nights on his own, Liam was found by a young boy. The newspapers reported that he had survived because the thick bracken he had fallen into had protected him from the sun by day and the cold by night and the soil had provided enough moisture to keep him alive.
Another baby-related incident that got a lot of press coverage a few years back in 2005 was an amazing story from Africa.
Baby Angel
In a tale that could have been lifted from the pages of a children’s storybook, five-month-old baby Angel was left alone in a Nairobi forest for two days and was found and cared for by a five-year-old dog foraging for food.
Witness Stephen Tova told the independent Daily Nation newspaper that he saw a dog carrying a baby wrapped in a black dirty cloth crossing the road. He was shocked at first and was trying to get a closer look when the dog ran through a fence and disappeared along a dirt road. The baby was later discovered by two children when they heard the sound of a baby crying near their wood and corrugated-iron shack. They alerted some adults and the baby was found lying next to the dog and her own pup.
At the time many people talked about guardian angels taking steps to ensure this baby lived, but the implications of this miracle reached far wider than the child involved because it drew a lot of attention to the desperate problem of abandoned babies in poverty-stricken areas of Kenya.
Then there are incredible stories of babies inexplicably surviving car crashes.
A Miracle!
In 2006 a seven-month-old baby was thrown through the back window of a car and bounced nearly 250 yards in his car seat down the fast lane of a dual carriageway near Teignmouth, Devon. Cars travelling at high speeds avoided him and he emerged from the ordeal with only a small bump on his head. Later, his father said it was ‘a miracle’ his son had not been killed. ‘Someone must have been looking down on us,’ he added.
Another Miracle Baby
In December 2008, newspapers in Sweden also talked of a ‘miracle baby’. This child survived a horrific crash when a car somersaulted into a ditch alongside the E18 motorway near Stockholm on Christmas Day.
All these stories were picked up by the media, but similar ones have also been sent to me over the years. They include incredible stories of babies surviving car, plane and train crashes or runaway prams being returned to safety by unseen hands. The following three stories, the first sent to me all the way from Australia by John, the second e-mailed to me by Karen and the third sent in by Amelia, are fairly typical–if there is such a thing as typical–of miracle baby-rescue stories.
Caught by an Angel
I was carrying my son Jake in his car seat across the road when I was hit by a car. I was hurled into the air and so was Jake. He must have been thrown about ten feet or so. Incredibly, neither of us was seriously hurt. It’s a miracle we are alive and have no broken bones. All I can remember is hearing a loud noise and then being thrown. When I got up, my first thought was for Jake. Everyone says thank goodness he was well strapped into his car seat, but I say thank goodness our guardian angels were close by.
Like John, Karen is convinced that her baby has a guardian angel.
The Angel on the Escalator
This is one of the strangest things, if not the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, and my best friend’s sister said something similar happened to her as well, so there must be angels working on escalators. It happened when my daughter was five months old. I was out shopping with my sister, as I figured I needed a bit of a treat, but as any mum knows, shopping with a baby involves carrying a lot of stuff: nappies, pushchairs, wipes, bottles, a change of baby clothes and so on and on. The toughest task for me, though, was getting up and down the escalators with the pushchair. Normally I’d have taken the lift, but it was very crowded that day so I decided to take a risk and use the escalator instead.