Afraid of the Dark? 

Deborah Hudson’s belief in angels began when she was three or four years of age, through the gift of a miracle. “I remember it almost as if it were yesterday, rather than 40 years ago,” she says today.  “I slept alone in my room, and, like many children that age, I was very afraid of the dark. Every night I would lie in my bed, frozen with fear, as my parents closed the door to my bedroom, surrounding me with total darkness.”

In little Deborah’s vivid imagination, there were all kinds of horrible goblins waiting under the bed for the lights to go out.  Night after night she begged her parents not to close the door, but it was necessary to close off all the doors to the hallway, so that the small heater located there could warm the bathroom for their evening baths.  

One difficult night, Deborah decided to pray about her dilemma.  She didn't know much about God yet “and I don't remember the exact words of my prayer, but I know that I was asking for deliverance from these nightly terrors,” she says. Suddenly, her eyes, which were usually tightly shut, were drawn open and she gasped as she stared at the back of the door. Almost the entire door, from floor to ceiling, was bathed in a soft, glowing light. Somehow, the light seemed to enter Deborah, bringing comfort, peace and yes, even joy.   Her fear suddenly vanished, and she knew, without knowing exactly HOW she knew, that it was a guardian angel sent by God to soothe her troubled soul.   

“The light was awe-inspiring, and it stayed there for a long time,” she recalls. Eventually Deborah fell peacefully asleep.

The light never came again.  “But every evening following that incident, when the door closed and the room turned dark, I felt the peaceful knowledge that God and his angels were protecting me from anything my little three-year-old mind could imagine.” The incident left Deborah with a life-long belief in angels.  Even better, it taught her about a God who loves each of us so much that He would take time to listen to the unfounded fears of a little child, and respond in such a loving, magnificent way.

Ó 2002 Joan Wester Anderson, www.joanwanderson.com