Angels and Babies (Part Two)

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November 27, 2008

For example, Nita Hannie, of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wrote me of a difficult time when her just-turned-two-year-old son, Patrick, was receiving chemotherapy at St. Jude’s Hospital as an outpatient. Patrick developed a low-grade fever, but instead of admitting him to the hospital, the emergency room physician prescribed Tylenol. That evening at the hotel, Patrick’s temperature rose. “I put him in bed with me, turned out the light and prayed about what to do,” Nita recalls. “After about fifteen minutes of silence, Patrick suddenly sat up. Staring at a corner of the room, he said, ‘Hi, angel!’”

“Patrick?” Nita whispered in the dark. “What are you seeing?”

Patrick wouldn’t respond to her. “Hi, angel!” he repeated.

“He spoke with a comfort and familiarity usually saved for family,” Nita says. “He talked for about a minute in his own baby jabber, punctuated clearly with the word, ‘angel,’ then lay down, smiled at me and turned over to sleep.” A half hour later, Nita checked his temperature. Patrick was fever-free.

“Although Patrick has been back in the hospital since then, he continues to be in remission, and is doing very well,” Nita says. “I believe that an angel was in that hotel room with us, bringing healing and comfort, and Patrick saw it.”

Patrick knew the word for “angel.” Some children did not—yet their experiences were remarkably similar. When three-year-old Danny Agnese of Bethpage, New York ran across the living room and tripped, his mother Laura watched in fear as he fell toward a sharp corner of a table. Suddenly Danny stopped in mid-air, righted himself and ran on, uninjured.

Laura was mystified. How could the law of gravity be defied? The next day Danny told her that he had seen “a pretty lady” in his room. “She caught me yesterday so I wouldn’t hit my head against the table,” he explained. “She said she would take care of me.”

Danny had no formal knowledge of spiritual things. He had seemed too young to learn. But although Laura showed him various pictures of pretty ladies, none interested him—until he saw a painting of an angel. Danny’s eyes lit up. “That’s her!” he exclaimed. “That’s the lady!”

Danny’s story was not unusual. “It’s as if he’s seeing something right in front of him—he points to it and laughs,” one mother told me, reporting on her six-month-old’s behavior.

A young father, making a sandwich in the kitchen, watched his toddler coming towards him down the hall. “She wasn’t looking at me,” he explained. “She seemed absorbed with something next to her; her arms were outstretched, and she kept saying “’Up, up!’” When the little girl reached the kitchen, however, she wore a puzzled look. “Where did the man go?” she asked her father.