“When we reached my stop, I got off the bus, and started walking down the hill toward my house,”  Rose says.  “I noticed an elderly couple walking slowly ahead of me.” Rose followed them.  All seemed perfectly normal.

“Then I heard a voice,” Rose says.  “Not audible, like your voice or mine.  It seemed to come from within and alongside me at the same time.”

“Reach into your pocket and take out your keys, but don’t jiggle them,” the voice said.

Rose was amazed.  Was it talking to her?  “I wasn’t frightened,” she says.  “The voice was kind and loving, as if I was walking alongside my mother.”

The voice gave more instructions.  “Hold the key in position with the notches up,” it said.

Rose’s family lived in a Victorian house with a heavy glass front door.  She realized that in this position, the key would slide smoothly into the keyhole with no delay.

By now the elderly couple—the only people left on the street—reached the corner and turned right.  Rose followed, straining to hear footsteps.  But she heard nothing, and the voice had not finished yet. “When you cross the street, don’t go down the right side of the street as you usually do,” it directed.  “Instead, go kitty-corner.”

Rose obeyed, walking at a normal pace.  What was it all about?  She was afraid to turn around, to see if anyone was behind her.  And yet a part of her still felt safe.  She approached her own block, went down the street, and then….

RUN! The voice told her. NOW!

Racing past the neighbor’s house, up the step, sliding the key smoothly into the lock, thrusting open the door and slamming it behind her..  She was in!  Rose turned back and looked through the heavy beveled glass door.

Looking back at her was a man, his hands up against the glass. She had missed him by inches.

Resisting the impulse to scream, Rose raced up the stairs.  It was dark on the second floor, since no one was home, but she raised a slat from the venetian blinds and peeked out. The man was crossing the street now, walking toward an apartment building.  Under the streetlight he turned back, and looked at Rose’s house.  Rose could see him clearly, but she had no idea who he was.  Slowly, head hanging, he walked down the hill, turned the corner and was gone. She was never to see him again.

“I wonder if he was puzzled that I got away, when I never heard his footsteps,” Rose says. He didn’t know that a very special guardian was at work.

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Shirley Miller of Pittsburgh had received a phone call from her brother in Phoenix, which had left her alarmed and upset.  “Our 96-year-old mother was in the hospital, and wasn’t expected to live much longer,” Shirley says. “The family was gathering, and I needed to fly out as soon as possible.”

Fortunately she was able to find a seat on a flight later that day.  A friend took her to the airport and dropped her in front of her airline checkpoint.  So far, so good.  But when she arrived at the security line, her heart sank.  Passengers were in two lines, each extending the length of the area, and moving slowly.  Shirley looked at her watch.  There was no way she could get through this line and reach her gate in time. She was going to miss her flight.

Shirley began to pray.  “Mom, wait for me,” she said in her heart. A moment later, Shirley saw a woman in a uniform coming towards her.  “Hello,” she said to Shirley, ignoring the other passengers.  “Do you see that line across the room?”

“Yes,” Shirley answered.  What now?  Was there a problem?

But no.  “If you go over and get into that line, you’ll make your flight easily,” the woman said to Shirley, and then walked past.  Relieved, Shirley wasted no time crossing the room, and got into the small line.  It was moving quickly, she noticed.  What a relief.

But.…she looked back.  The line she had left was still stuck.  And she saw no sign of the women in the uniform.  Why had she singled out Shirley from among all those passengers?  No one else had been told to do this.

“I made my flight and was able to kiss my Mother goodbye and to hold her hand until she went to be with Our Lord,” says Shirley.  “I’m convinced the woman in the uniform was my Guardian Angel. How beautiful is that?”

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Kaye visited her mom and took her for an early supper.  “Mom said she wouldn’t need her cane as she would not be doing much walking,” Kaye says, “so we left it home.”  (She won’t make that mistake again!) When they got back to the house, Kaye went around to the passenger side to help her mother.  But Mom had already gotten out.  “The ground was uneven and she twisted her ankle,” Kaye says. “She fell over backwards before I could grab her. I tried to help her up, but she was not cooperating and allowing me to take her weight.”  What should they do?

The farmhouse is set back from the highway. Vehicles were going past, and Kaye prayed that someone she knew would come by, and notice that they needed help.  But no one did.  Perhaps she should go into her mother’s house, and get the cane and a chair.  Maybe they could brace themselves and pull Mom to her feet.  She hated to leave her mother, but there was no other way.

“I had gone down the driveway and was in the house looking for the cane when I heard a man’s voice calling,” says Kaye. “A man I did not know was at the door, asking if I needed help. He said he was driving by and noticed my mom sitting on the ground up against the car, with the car door opened, and thought something must be wrong.”

He must be a friend of Mom’s, Kaye thought, and explained the situation.  “I don’t know you, but I’m certainly glad you came by,” she told him.

“You aren’t likely to know me,” the man answered.  “I’m a friend of one of your neighbors.” His attitude was so relaxed that Kaye didn’t give a thought for her own safety.  Instead, the man accompanied Kaye back to the car, lifted her mother up and onto her cane.  The three then slowly made their way back to the house.  “Once she was inside, I thanked him again and he left. I still had  no idea who he was but he was there when we needed him.”

Kaye got Mom settled, and she was feeling much better when she left.  When she got home, she called her mother again.  All was still well.  “I’m glad that man came by, whoever he was,” her mother told Kaye.  “He was a big help.”

“He said he was a friend of your neighbor,” Kaye said.  She was starting to get goosebumps.

“I never saw him before,” her mother told her. “I thought you knew him.”

But she had prayed, hadn’t she? Kate thought.  She had asked for help, and help was provided. “One never knows how God will get a message across or who he will send to deliver the message to us,” Kaye says. “One must remember that you only have to ask.”

By the time Alice left to return home, it was starting to get dark.  More confident now, she hopped on the first bus, and got off at the University where she had to transfer to the second one. She waited an hour-and-a-half, as snow started to fall, but the second bus never came. She didn’t know then that on Sundays, the last bus on that route came at 4 p.m. She had missed it completely.

“It was getting very windy, and drifts were making streets treacherous,” Alice says.  “Walking home was out of the question because it was too far. I went to the Education building behind me,and was glad to find that the front door was still open. Now I could warm up, and call my dad to come and get me.”

However, that was a problem too.  Alice’s dad didn’t always come to his children’s rescues. “you got yourself into this, so you can get yourself out,” he would tell them.  And he would probably be angry that she interrupted her parents’ afternoon get-together. She hated it when he got mad…  But what else could she do?

Cell phones were not available yet. Instead Alice searched in the deserted Education building for a pay phone. Her father had never been on the university campus—how was she going to direct him, if he agreed to come?  She didn’t even have the address of this building. And where was everyone?  She had walked down several corridors and heard no noise of any kind. She turned yet another corner—and there was a bank of pay phones!  Relieved, Alice started searching her pockets for change.  She couldn’t believe it!  She had NO coins, only a transfer ticket for the bus. Now what? “Fear gripped me,” Alice says.  “It was completely dark outside by now.  I broke out in a sweat and started to pray, begging God for his help.”  Would she have to spend the night in this building, huddled in a corner?  Her parents would be worried sick when she didn’t come home.  A dime!  That’s all she needed, but it seemed impossible.

Alice prayed again, and had just started to cry when out of nowhere—-”and I mean nowhere!” she says—a young handsome man approached her. He was dressed in jeans, a long sleeve shirt and woolen vest. No coat in this storm, no snow melting from his hair…  He looked right in Alice’s eyes and smiled. “You look like you could use a dime,” he told her.

Stunned, Alice nodded.  How did he know?  And where had he come from?  She watched in disbelief as he dropped a dime into her hand. “Oh, thank you!” she said, turning immediately to the phone right behind her.  How had he arrived without her hearing him?  She looked back to ask him.

But there was no one standing there, no one walking away or turning down the long hall in front of her. The young man had completely vanished.  How….?  She dropped the precious dime into the phone slot and dialed her new home phone number.  Thank heavens she had remembered it! “Dad answered and I explained my problem,” Alice says.  “All I could do was tell him to look for the Education building.” Dad hadn’t sounded mad, not yet anyway.  But Alice was too amazed over the sudden appearance of the young man to worry about anything.

It took about 30 minutes before Alice’s father drove up in front of the building where she was waiting to flag him down.  Even though visibility was very poor, he had found her!”I was so glad to get in the car and sit beside dad,” Alice recalls.  “He could barely see the street signs, but we arrived home safely.”  Furthurmore, Alice’s father. didn’t scold her at all, or even complain about the treacherous ride.  He was just grateful to have her home safely.

“I know without a doubt that the Lord sent me two angels that day,” Alice says. “The handsome young man probably was my personal guardian angel, and I hope he is still watching over me.” The other angel? The most important man in her life, her hero, her Valentine.  Whether your dad is still on earth or home in heaven, don’t forget to send him a special Valentine this year.  Like Alice’s dad, he may not have always told you how much he loved you.  But he showed you—and that’s what counts.

—I had the honor and privilege of being able to interview the last survivor of the World Trade Center bombing, whose story ultimately appeared in my book, IN THE ARMS OF ANGELS.  At the point when she was discovered, the rescue workers had given up on finding any survivors, and were absolutely astonished when they came across this young woman, bruised and broken but alive.  How had she survived those terrifying hours?  By holding on to the hand of a man named Paul, she insisted, a man who kept her spirits up and encouraged her to keep calling for help.  But there was no man anywhere in the pit where they finally found her—and no way for anyone to have gotten in or out.  I could re-tell her story.

—During subsequent days, people wrote to ask, “Where were the angels in this tragedy?”  And I was able to answer with conviction:  “Right there.  Right on the scene.”  I knew this only because those with angel experiences came forward to share.  A man who saw smoke breaking up as it ascended, and then saw each piece in the shape of an angel, carrying a human being home to heaven…a trumpeter playing at Ground Zero a few days later, attracting a curious crowd. And yet no one’s camera worked.  No one there was able to get a photo…..A man who was escorted out of the building via a nearby stairway that he had never seen before…  There are probably many stories like this.  I could research one or two.

—Or I could tell all of you how meaningful that day was to me personally.  The night before, at 11 p.m. our
daughter had given birth to our first grandson, and I was up practically the entire night thinking about him.  The following day, as my husband and I drove to the hospital, we heard the news of the crashes.  Of course, like everyone else, we did not know how far such horrors would spread.  Was this unbelievable happening the end of the world?
When we finally arrived at the hospital, it was on lock-down, and for a moment I thought that we would not see this precious child, not today, not ever.  But the reception room nurse took pity on us and let us in, one of so many kindnesses offered that day.  It was when I held that little bundle that an the answer occurred to me, in a quote I’d heard: “A baby is God’s promise that life shall go on.”  It was not the end of the world.  And yesterday, in the midst of painful memories, we celebrated an eight-year-old’s special day.  I could write about that.

But maybe, as we lower our flag to half-staff today, it’s enough to quote something from the angel book:  “The future holds exceitement and opportunity.  We may grow inwardly in new ways, emerge stronger, holier and more interested in ministering to the needs of others than to ourselves.  We may learn that the people in our lives are far more important than any personal achievement or possession.  Rabbi Harold Kushner once observed that all the complicated structuress we spend so much time and evergy creating are built on sand.  “Only our relationships to other people endure.  Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up.  When that happens, only the person who has someone’s hand to hold will be able to laugh.”

See you next time.

—The Cayces have received many school supplies thanks to all of you, and recently they reached their financial goal so they could put a new roof on the gym–where they store all the clothes and furniture that they give away.  It appears that the roof will be fixed before the rain and ice begin, and again, that’s a miracle you helped to make!

—Speaking of miracles, Loyola Press has just redone my 15-year-old book titled WHERE MIRACLES HAPPEN.  I have added some new stories and taken some out too, and am hoping that those who missed the book the first time around, can take some time to read the updated version.  You can always find my books at amazon.com.  And now an oldie but goodie:

If any of you have ever suffered from migraine headaches, you will sympathize with MaryAnne Rodrigues of Bombay, India, who experienced them frequently. “They usually started in the mornings at work,” she says. “I would have to leave the office immediately and come home, as I couldn’t bear light or noise, or concentrate on what I was doing.”

One morning MaryAnne felt the ominous warning signs of a headache.  Her boss assured her that she could go home as soon as her work was done.  But it was one of those hectic days, and not until three p.m. had MaryAnne finally worked her way through the piles.  By now her head was throbbing, and she was feeling sick to her stomach.  She left the building and walked into the hot mid-day sun to cross the busy main road.

“The STOP signal was on but as I stepped on to the road and took two steps forward, I suddenly felt light in my head and could feel myself falling,” MaryAnne says.  “My bag and the things I had in my arms went sprawling across the road.” The signal changed, and MaryAnne saw a taxi speeding from the side street, attempting to overtake the slow-moving cars at the signal.  The taxi was heading straight for her!

But seconds before she lost total consciousness, MaryAnne saw something amazing.  Standing about four feet away, in the middle of the road, was a tall figure in a full white gown.  “His arms were lifted up, signaling the oncoming traffic to stop,” she says.  Then she lost consciousness completely.

According to witnesses, a crowd immediately gathered around MaryAnne, and someone sprinkled water on her face.  She revived quickly.  “When I came around I saw people gathering my things together but the first thought on my mind was:  Where was the taxi?”   How could she have escaped those wheels, heading straight for her head?”

But no.  There was the taxi in the middle of the street, stopped exactly where the figure in the white gown had been standing.

No one else seemed to have seen anything unusual, and tears sprang to MaryAnne’s eyes.  Not only had her life been saved, she realized, but she had been given a brief glimpse of the unseen world, the angelic protection that is always around us, caring for us with silent strength.  And she gave thanks.

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In fact, Dennis believes that the first miracle he received during this time was a case of double pneumonia from standing guard duty out in the rain all night on the base in Oklahoma, and then working a 20-hour shift before finally going to the hospital.  “Spinal meningitis was going around then,” he says, “and although I didn’t get it, the pneumonia was probably the reason that I was not sent to Vietnam, but to Germany.”

He was a good soldier and moved up in rank.  “One day we received a call that bullets could be heard overhead,” Dennis says.  “My sergeant and I went out to investigate. Sure enough, we could hear the whiz of bullets flying thru the air.”  But who was shooting?  There was no war going on here.  The men finally figured out that the bullets were coming from a hill to their left.  There were vineyards on the hill, and a house on top of it. Carefully they climbed, then stopped again to listen.  “Suddenly a pair of hands with thumbs over my ears grabbed my head and yanked it back, just as a bullet passed,” Dennis says.  “I turned around to see who was there, and no one was. I can still see the face of my senior sergeant when those hands grabbed me.  His eyes widened as if he was seeing something that he just couldn’t talk about.”  A few minutes later police reached the house, and found the farmer drunk and shooting his rifle.

“Years later, when my angel came again, I was walking to a nearby fast food to get some lunch,” Dennis says. “I was approaching a corner when a growling dog came around it and headed straight for me.”
“Lord, have mercy!” Dennis prayed, then froze, knowing he was going to be attacked.  The dog never stopped, and it leaped for his throat. Then Dennis saw an arm in a white robe, similar to what Jesus is pictured wearing, and the arm pushed the dog away.  Almost immediately, the dog put its tail between its legs and, whining, ran back around the corner.

Stunned, Dennis saw a woman come out of the corner house and head for her car.  “Hey, your dog almost bit me!” Dennis called to her.
She shrugged.  “Not my dog…” and got in the car.
It was a time for a good argument.  But Dennis couldn’t do it.  Faced with what might have been, he simply closed his eyes, and thanked Jesus for sending an angel to protect him.

Dennis has never forgotten these close calls, and is grateful that his angel is on the job.  “We are all blessed,” he says, “and are given a choice to believe or not.”

These children are the poorest of the poor, and rarely have a chance to enjoy a party, and of course JoAnn has been the beneficiary of our angel group for many years.  If you’d like to get involved, just contact JoAnn at 403 South Second St., Thornton AR 71766.  Here’s the story:
 
Luke Baird, then fourteen, was running late to meet his best friend.  He was pedaling his bike at top speed on a fairly busy street (and, his mother Doreen says, at six feet tall, Luke could work up a pretty good head of steam).  As Luke approached an intersection, his bike chain slipped and jammed his back wheel, stopping the bike dead in the street.  Luke, however, tumbled over the front of the now stopped bike at a very high speed.  “He remembers rolling head to feet, over and over again, so fast that he actually rolled to his feet, only to crash to the street again,” says Doreen.  Luke finally came to rest in the middle of an intersection. A car had been approaching, but the driver was able to slam on her brakes in time.

“The driver, bless her, got out and helped him out of the street, and called our home because Luke was shaking so hard that he couldn’t hold her cell phone,” says Doreen. Luke’s older brother was the only one home, and he had just received his learner’s permit, but he jumped in the family car anyway, and drove to pick up his brother.

At the emergency room, doctors discovered that Luke, having caught his hand in a storm grate while tumbling, has broken several fingers.  His shoulders and knees were badly gouged, and he had some serious “road rash,” visible even a few years later. And since Luke had had back pain almost all of his life, it was assumed that some serious problems would show up there too.

But his head and face were completely protected, and he even still had his baseball cap on his head without any debris on it.  When Doreen finally saw him, she couldn’t help wondering if something or someone had cushioned his back too, for he was not having any pain.  As it turned out, he never did, and has had a normal life ever since.

How did Luke emerge almost unscathed from that spooky, fast potentially deadly fall?  Doreen thinks she knows.
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Hello, angel friends.  It’s time for another angel story.  But first the usual announcements:

—My friend, Barbara Brabec, who is the guru of home-based businesses, has been Getting Organized and has assembled a terrific private catalog of books, CDs and VHS tapes on a wide variety of topics, most of which are priced between $1 and $6 and are of gift-giving quality. (Her late husband was a collector.) So far, her buyers have been delighted with their orders.   See testimonials and order a free catalog by clicking here:  http://www.barbarabrabec.com/private-sale-of-books-tapes.htm    

—Be sure to keep Father Joe Whalen in your prayers.  Hes the 85-year-old priest who makes the St. Raphael healing oil for all of us.  He had back surgery yesterday, and came through with flying colors, astounding the doctors.  But please continue to pray.  His website is: http://www.straphaeloil.com, in case you need some oil.

—If any of you are on Twitter or Facebook, let me know.  I’m there too and maybe we can exchange meaningless chit-chat!  Also, I will not be able to sell books from my website for the next few weeks.  If you need any, please order from Amazon.  (Of course that eliminates autographed copies, but well all survive.)

—A word about the story.  I know I seem to use a lot of car stories here, but that’s because there ARE a lot of car stories!  If angels are with us wherever we go, then we shouldn’t be surprised that so many angel stories occur on highways and roads because that’s where WE are.  Like this one….

It was winter when Nancy Williamson, of North Muskegan, Michigan, answered the door and found a  friend, Barb, and her daughter, Anna, standing on the porch.  Happy to have company during the  overcast day, Nancy fixed coffee and the women talked of vacation wishes. “Someday I’d like to  take my daughters on a vacation to Prince Edward Island,” Nancy said.  “It was the home of Lucy  Maude Montgomery, the author of ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ and the girls have read several of her  books, and watched the television series.”

“Why don’t we go?” Barb asked. “I’d love to see that area–when it’s a little warmer, of course.  And the men could certainly fend for themselves.”  (These husbands and sons usually spent their  vacations hunting.)

Nancy was all for it.  They had plenty of time to save money, and plan a two-week trip.  She bought a tent to cut the cost of hotels.  She and Barb would take turns driving Nancy’s station wagon, and Barb would be in charge of directions and maps.

All too quickly the departure date loomed.  “My budget was tight but I figured we would have  enough money as long as nothing went wrong,” Nancy says.  “But two days before we left, I noticed  a grinding sound when I turned the steering wheel of the station wagon.”  Nancy had already had  the car checked out, and knew the noise was coming from a small steering fluid leak, which would  cost several hundred dollars to fix. “But,” Nancy says, “I figured that if there was enough fluid, there was nothing else wrong with the car.” So instead of cancelling the trip and fixing the power steering, she bought several bottles of steering fluid instead!  On a warm July morning, with the station wagon packed and fluid in the steering wheel, the women headed for Niagara Falls where they would spend their first night.

It was an adventure from the beginning.  “Every day we had to add a bottle of steering fluid,”  Nancy says.  “Wherever we parked the car, we left our mark—a puddle.”  But the journey  continued without a breakdown, and on the fourth day of driving, they reached their destination,  a campsite on Prince Edward Island.

The area was beautiful, and perfect for relaxing and enjoying the sights, including the home of their favorite author.  But the leak was getting worse every day.  “We were leaving bigger puddles of fluid,” Nancy remembers.  “We could watch it trickling from the car as we poured in more.”  Every day required a trip to a service station to buy additional containers.  Uneasily Nancy wondered how they were going to get home.  Were they going to break down at night? Or on a dangerous stretch of road?  Nancy knew that she had made a foolish decision about this trip.  But she would never forget what a wonderful time they had enjoyed.  “God,” she prayed.  “Please take care of us, even if we don’t deserve it.”

Their departure morning arrived, and Barb decided to drive the first lap.  The women stocked up on bottles of fluid, and headed for the ferry to return them to the mainland, New Brunswick, Canada.  Barb drove off the ferry and onto the road.  But almost immediately the women realized that she had made a wrong turn.  Barb pulled to the side of the road, and took out the map.

Just then the car behind them pulled up and a nondescript man got out and approached their station wagon.  He put his hand on back of it.  “God bless you,” he said.  “Can I help?”

Barb explained her confusion, and the man gave her directions.  As he turned to leave, he said again, “God bless you.”  It was perhaps a strange comment to make, but the women were simply glad they were now pointed in the right direction.

It was a four-day trip back to Michigan, and every time the women stopped the station wagon, they  checked the steering fluid.  “Not once after we left that man in New Brunswick did we have to put  a drop of steering fluid into the car,” Nancy said. Nor did they leave any puddles in parking lots.  They arrived home safely, thanks to an obviously-talented mechanic, who knew just what to do.

The next morning Nancy went outside and started the station wagon.  The grinding sound was back, and there was a large puddle of fluid under her car.  But a final miracle awaited her. “I had enough money left from vacation to pay the entire repair bill,” Nancy says.  The angels think of everything.

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Copyright 2009 by Joan Wester Anderson. Published by Joan Wester Anderson, P.O. Box 127, Prospect Heights, IL 60070. For more stories of God’s love, check the blog at http://www.joanwanderson.com.

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It had been a 4 ½ hour trip in the car, and Harriet wanted to stretch her legs. “Would anyone be interested in going for a walk?” she asked. There was plenty of time before other family members arrived and dinner was ready.

Everyone agreed except Harriet’s father-in-law, so the four went out. They had been walking and chatting for about twenty minutes when they approached a stoplight, which was red. “When the light turned green, we started across the street,” Harriet says. “Suddenly, an out of control car came careening toward us.” Everyone started to run across the street except Harriet. She simply froze.

Things seemed to happen in slow motion. Harriet felt a hand grab hers, and pull her along, just inches from the car as it whooshed by. Thank heavens Nora had been close enough to grab her! The four reached the other side safely, while the car—which had run the red light and had a flat tire—turned the corner and kept on going.

Everyone walked home, almost in a daze of shock, and thanksgiving. Later they related their near-miss to other members of the family. “If it hadn’t been for Nora,” Harriet pointed out, “I would have been run over by that car.”

“What do you mean?” Nora asked.

“You grabbed me by the hand and pulled me away from the car and across the street,” Harriet answered, puzzled. Had Nora forgotten her act of courage? Nora had a strange look on her face. “Harriet,” she said, “I never grabbed you. I was ahead of you by a few feet, and I saw you running behind us as we reached the other side.”

Harriet’s husband and daughter both nodded. “Gram was with dad and me,” Harriet’s daughter agreed. “We were all watching you as you made it across. There was no one with you.”

No one? Harriet wondered. “I can only believe that my guardian angel prevented me from being hit by that car,” she says. “And I was very thankful that Thanksgiving Day.”

(C) 2004 Joan Wester Anderson www.joanwanderson.com