Appeared on Therese Borcher's beliefnet.com column, Beyond Blue
Category:
Inspiration and Prayer
In my previous post,
“Beliefnet’s Interview with Joan Wester Anderson,” I
mentioned that I would be interviewing Joan Wester Anderson the
Friday before Christmas to get my
Beyond Blue
readers in the mood for the nativity story.
Joan is one of my very favorite people because she’s so real
and generous and loving—always trying to spread hope of God’s
love to anyone she meets. As I mentioned earlier, she is like
the Dalai Lama of the angel world—with 15 books out, two of
which stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for over a
year, and all the radio and TV shows she’s been on. All of her
accolades warrant a big head. But she’s not that way at all.
She’s sweet and down to earth.
Joan and I connected awhile back, when I was thinking of
compiling “St. Therese” stories, much like her angel tales. The
editors of Loyola thought we would make a great team. Ultimately
we never did the project, which was best given that I had a
major breakdown a few months later. And Joan needed to focus on
her family. I’ll never forget what she said: “I’m trying to
concentrate on my grandkids now, because I’m trying to make up
for all those times I fed my kids cookies to keep them quiet as
I was on the phone doing a radio interview.” Whenever I get
frustrated by these two miniature people keeping me from work, I
remember her response.
Because we are only three days away from Christmas Eve, my
favorite night of the year, when I light all the candles in our
house and think about miracles and angels and holy stuff, in
general, I thought Joan would be a fitting interview for today.
1) Joan, I posted
the interview you did with Wendy Schuman of Beliefnet back in
2002, and the responses were interesting. I hate to throw
Beyond Blue
reader
Larry Parker at you, but I think he asks a good question
when he wrote this:
Her answer to "how do you get in touch with your guardian
angel" smacks a bit too much of the Prosperity Gospel. I mean,
really. Why should G-d intervene to let you get a parking
space ahead of someone else who misses it? Frankly, why should
G-d care?
How would you respond to such a question?
Why should God care, Larry? I don’t know. But He does,
because He told us so in countless comments in His Bible.
Nothing is too small for Him to notice or care about. And
remember that He wants us to approach Him as little children
would---joyful, confident and innocent---so obviously He
concerns himself with the little things in our lives. In other
words, he gets down to our level, like a Daddy would. (When
Jesus taught the people how to pray the Our Father, the Aramaic
word he used for “Father” was “Daddy.” This is apparently the
relationship he wants us to have with him.)
Now this relationship is hard for many people to believe or
sustain. Harder still is the idea that each of us possibly has
his/her own guardian angel, or at least has access to help from
the angels. So one way I suggest that people “test the spirits”
is to ask God or his angels to give us something---a little
sign, a comment from a stranger, yes, even a parking place
(especially if we’re running late!). This builds our faith,
opens our closed emotional doors, if only for a moment, and
shows us some possibilities. The parking place isn’t what’s
important; it’s the personal “hug from heaven” that hopefully
reassures us that’s there’s more going on around us than meets
the eye.
As far as the Prosperity Gospel is concerned, I’ve never
really understood it that well. Yes, I think we are meant to be
joyful here on earth no matter the circumstances, but bad things
do happen to good people, and a closeness to God is not an
exemption from trouble. I’m not real sure where the P.G. fits in
the question above.
2) Other responses of your interview were testimonies of
angel experiences, such as Barbara’s, which I’ll feature as
separate post coming up. Do these angel stories in some way
comfort you, especially in times of doubt or confusion, when you
can’t see God’s hand in anything?
The only thing I know for sure about life is that it is
constantly changing. So when I go through a period of doubt or
confusion, I know I just have to hang around for awhile, keep
busy and eventually things will look a little better. During
times like these, I sometimes do go back and read some of the
stories that I published a long time ago (my first angel book is
fifteen years old!) and have half-forgotten.
Sometimes just remembering the circumstances of how that
story reached me, or something in my notes triggers a good
memory, and I am reminded again that God was there then, and He
is here now. This is handy when I can’t summon His presence via
my feelings and I have to walk by faith instead.
3) When you were asked where the angels were on
September 11, you said this:
Right where they always are, with us. There are stories
already circulating about strangers guiding people down the
stairs of the WTC buildings, then disappearing. The question
really is: Why didn't the angels step in and save those
victims? I don’t know why--people have free will, it's out
greatest gift, and God will not thwart it. But He can also
bring good out of any kind of evil, and although we may not
see anything good yet, I am sure it will come.
Is that how you would answer the person who is severely
depressed and wants more than anything to end his life? When he
cries out to God and can’t hear anything in response, how does
he go on believing in miracles?
Truthfully, I would be scared to death to answer or attempt
to influence anyone who was contemplating suicide; the
responsibility, given that I’m an untrained non-professional,
would be enormous. Nor do I think that stories of miracles, no
matter how moving, would/could reach someone so deeply in pain.
When my five children went through the teen years, I worried
that one or more of them might one day become depressed and
think about suicide. I put all my fears on the table with all of
them, and I made them promise two things to me: one, that if
they ever thought about suicide, they would wait just one day
before taking any harmful actions. Just one day. I always kid
that I raised my children using “guilt therapy” so they OWED me
that one day. The second thing they would do would be to tell a
trustworthy adult how and what they were feeling. They all
promised, and none of them ever experienced more than the normal
emotional ups and downs.
So if I were dealing with someone who was deeply depressed, I
think I would acknowledge that this situation is beyond me, and
take that person for help. If I were talking with him, I would
simply ask him to hold on for another day, and ask if, in the
meantime, there is anything I could do to relieve his suffering.
Lame, I know, but the truth.
4) In an e-mail to me you asked me a question that I’ve
been stewing over for a few weeks now:
When you contemplated taking your life, how did you
rationalize what would happen afterwards, i.e. condemned to
hell? I'm talking about your spiritual life, not the impact it
would have on your kids.
This is what I wrote to you in response:
I guess I was in so much pain that I figured God would
understand why I wanted to be dead. And I felt pretty
abandoned by him, so burning in hell seemed like it would hurt
less than going on with life. Boy, I guess I was really low.
My therapist at the time tried to play up the whole
“damnation to hell” with suicide, partly because she knew I was
so Catholic, and if anything would keep me from doing it, that
would. But I guess that just tells you how sick someone is when
they are severely depressed … I didn’t really care if I was
going to hell, because I was convinced hell was better than what
I was feeling. For those who do commit suicide, what do you, as
a good but compassionate Catholic, believe happens to their
souls?
Years ago, the Catholic Church changed its official stance
that people who commit suicide are committing a mortal sin and
are thereby lost forever in hell. Now the belief is that,
although taking a life is a serious sin, people committing
suicide are not behaving rationally and thus cannot give full
consent to this sin. To me, this is much more humane—and
probably much closer to the truth---than the former stance.
This question comes up from time to time from my readers, and
I’m always interested in their experiences. One young man had
been mourning his sister who had taken her own life; not only
did he grieve her loss, he also worried that she might not be in
heaven. He told me that one night he had a strikingly-clear
dream that his sister was on her way to a banquet and invited
him to go along. He was struck by how beautiful and happy she
was, but when they got to where the banquet was being held, she
told him that she had to wait awhile until it was her turn to go
in. She was not concerned about this at all, and looked forward
to great happiness inside the banquet hall, but it just wasn’t
her turn yet.
Now, people can argue that dreams are just meaningless
fragments, but if we consider that God used dreams again and
again to communicate with His people in the Scriptures---and God
does nothing by chance---dreams may be a very accurate way of
perceiving the truth. This young man recognized that the banquet
was most certainly a symbol of heaven and that his sister, for
whatever reason, had to wait awhile to enter, but was calmed and
comforted by her obvious peacefulness. I have come across other
very similar stories, and I do believe that this take is more in
line with the compassion of Jesus.
5) Christmas Eve is the anniversary of the miracle
that inspired your work with angels. How do you celebrate it?
Any special rituals or traditions to remember that fateful
night?
It was my son’s “adventure” with an angel on Christmas Eve in
1983 that actually opened my eyes to their presence in our
lives. Of course I believed in angels because I was taught about
them, and they are mentioned in Scripture over 300 times. But
angels inserting themselves and their help into the ordinary
problems of human beings? It had never occurred to me.
But that event started me on my path of researching and writing
about angels, and brought me into a new career just when I had
decided to give up journalism. Looking back with the clear view
of hindsight, I realize now just how specifically God had
prepared me for the work I started in the 80’s, work I still do
today. So of course Christmas is a special time for our whole
family, because it is the anniversary of when my new work for
God began, and it’s also the anniversary of the best Christmas
we ever had.
Actually, Christmas vacation itself was difficult that year. It
was so cold that our cars wouldn’t start, parties were cancelled
and we all got rather sick of each other and were relieved when
it was time to go back to college or work. But later, when I
heard the story of Tim’s rescue and realized how close I had
come to losing my son, I realized that there was a diamond
buried in all that mess, and that Christmas of ’83 was by far
the most beautiful ever.
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