I have angels. I know I do. Well, OK, I think I do. They have specific jobs. I think I have one who really likes to cook, because he/she whispers things like "You need sage" to me when I am pushing my shopping cart past the spices. "No I don't", I whisper through my mask as I move down the aisle. Sure enough, right when I am in the middle of making Thanksgiving stuffing I reach for the sage and lo and behold the jar is empty.
My cooking angel has a particular connection with bananas and reminds me when I’m out, or the ones I have are past their prime. I am learning to trust the nudges I get from my cooking angel.
I think I might also have an art angel. Well, at least a music angel. Maybe it’s a writing angel. Anyway, that one makes me feel uncomfortable with stuff when it’s not quite right. Like that girl who always ran over to the teeter totter on the playground and hopped on the other end when I was waiting for my sister, I don’t particularly like to play with this one. I guess I don’t give my music angel credit for the good feelings I get when something feels right. I need to rethink our relationship. I just feel like she is a downer all the time and just tells me when something I write isn’t right, which is literally about 85% of the time.
Then there’s the big one, the head angel we call the Holy Ghost. I really like that one. Probably cuz he/she has perfected the job and knows all the tricks. HG knows my love language. He knows my intent, probably better than I know it myself. And he’s generally really gentle and loving and kind, unless I’m about to turn into oncoming traffic, then he slaps me in the figurative face. Whew!
I am more grateful than I can adequately express for the HG. Truly. Of all my friends who do not currently have a body, I feel like he/she is my best friend, and I sincerely thank God for this gift. Quite honestly, I feel like, after the gift of life and choice, the Holy Ghost is the greatest gift given to mankind. And so few people even know about it. And even fewer work on building the friendship.
I have felt all sorts of angel whispers raining down on me at various moments in my life. I feel my mom a lot. And the last few years I have had a yearning for her mom: Lizzy, the grandmother I never knew. I wonder if she jumps on board with me in my journey now and then.
One day, this past summer when Kate was home, I had an unexpected interchange with angels. Kate had been hunkered down in her house in upstate New York, once the order to stay put was decreed because of the pandemic. This was one year ago this week. Because Kate is comfortable in her own space and not socially needful (aka – introverted) she actually did fine being all alone with nowhere to go. She was fine… until she wasn’t. Lack of human touch gets to everyone at some point. There was a moment, after months of solitude, when her angels told her she needed to go home. So we were blessed to have her here for a few months last summer. Kate lives in NY while she is earning her doctoral degree at Brock University, just across the border into Canada. Gratefully, when the borders closed because of the pandemic, so did the doors to the university. Kate was able to teach and otherwise interact virtually, and that could be done from Utah as easily as its done from New York. So home she came. On top of teaching and grading, she was also working on a massively involved Comprehensive Exam, which is what they call one of the large research projects before the dissertation for a doctoral degree at Brock. This gathering and analysis of data is intended to be published. The subject matter was way over my head, and I couldn’t really tell you what it involved, only that Kate spent most of every day in her spot at the kitchen table working on it. It involved statistics, and mathematics, and other stuff that is not naturally up Kate’s alley. One of the problems, as I perceived it, was that Kate was having to analyze things she didn’t completely understand. Sort of a math thing. I prayed mightily for my angels to have a little talk with her angels and see what they could do to help out. Then, one night, when I was being especially serious about it, and ponderingly prayerful, I had the distinct impression I should specifically ask for Kate’s grandpas to help out. You’d have to understand our history to get the weirdness of this impression. My dad was one of those that left his family and never said goodbye, and never paid child support. I think they call them dead beat dads. And the fact is that now he is, literally, dead. So is Dave’s dad, whom Kate knew and loved. So it took some trust and humility, a bit of let-go-and-let-God, for me to actually act on that impression.
It was a memorable and pivotal thing. I sat on the edge of my bed, because my post-Guillain Barre feet and knees do not do well kneeling. I bowed my head. I spoke the prayer aloud. Sometimes I think my prayers, but I felt this one needed voicing.
“Lord, would you mind asking Kate's grandfathers to come to her and help her with her work?”
Both my father and Dave’s father were brilliant thinkers. My dad was a mathematician for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Dave’s dad had a Doctorate in Nuclear Physics, as well as a Juris Doctorate. They both knew how to analyze data. They both knew each other through their work in the field of nuclear power. And I knew that if they knew their granddaughter needed help, they would give it.
It’s kind of a big deal for me to think that my dad would help my daughter. He’s never met her. And he was not there to help me or my siblings through our math and science studies. But somehow I had a feeling that he might be willing to help Kate, with his new broader next-level understanding, And I felt like he might be, I don’t know, maybe touched that his daughter would think to ask. Anyway, I did ask. And I told Kate about it, because I thought she needed to be open to receiving. We both wept.
I am not sure how much help was given. I’m not sure about much of anything. But I have had little tiny witnesses in the grocery store, and sitting with my guitar in the midst of half written songs, and I believe I have angels. The big one, common to all of us, and other ones particular to me. I am not supposed to see them. Why would we need faith, otherwise? But I’m pretty sure they are there. I’m not certain how Kate’s grandfathers helped her, but I’ll bet they felt good about being asked. And frankly, I’ll betcha they had a good time together.
I don’t pray to my angels, though I am grateful for them. I pray to my God, through my advocate, Jesus Christ. But each prayer, I suspect, has a cc that goes to my angels.
I think about this often—how the night after Dad gave me a blessing and you invited me to be open to some angelic intervention from my grandfathers, I stayed up working on that project through the night and concepts and ideas that had previously sent me down spirals of confusion started shifting bit by bit toward greater clarity. It was genuinely a turning point in my progress on that project. I also think it’s been a bit healing for me to think of accepting help from your dad. Even though he didn’t hurt me, he hurt people I love and I’ve always harbored some resentment against him for it. Maybe I still do a little, but less than before, and it’s better mixed with compassion now. That was a gift to me. Thank you for that gift.
As it happens, this very morning I presented the analyses and findings from that project to the genetics lab folks at Yale that we collaborate with (the ones who collected the data on the first place). It was really well-received. I’d like to think that maybe my grandfather’s felt a bit proud about that.
