(In honor of the Memorial of the Guardian Angels, I’m sharing an angel story today.)
I was folding laundry in the house one day a few years ago when I heard an enormous crash that sent me racing to the window. There was my husband Dan, standing beside his car which was parked near the woods at the edge of our driveway. He had his head in his hands and a bewildered look on his face. There, on top of the car, was an enormous tree trunk.
I ran outside and immediately saw that my husband was alright, but the car was not. The hood was dented and a spider-web-style fracture stretched from one end of the windshield to the other. Dan stood silently beside me.
Now every good wife knows when her husband needs a little time to himself, and I figured this was most definitely one of those times. Years of marriage have taught me that in times of calamity – especially those that involve cars and money – a man needs a little space to process what has happened. So, though I wanted to talk about what had happened and ask all kinds of annoying questions (“How did this happen?” “Did you know we had a giant dead tree in the woods just waiting to fall on one of our children?” and “Will our insurance cover this?”) I kept quiet.
It wasn’t until later that I heard the entire story. About how Dan had just finished parking the car there when he heard a creaking sound in the woods. About how he had just barely managed to get out of the way of the falling tree himself before it hit. About how some branches of the tree had broken off and hit our van (which was parked next to the car) as well.
Now here is where I begin to marvel at how my husband and I can have so very different perspectives of the same event. My immediate reaction upon hearing all of this was a prayer of thanksgiving that nothing worse had happened: Thank goodness Dan was not hurt! Thank goodness his guardian angel managed to get him out of the way before that heavy tree could crush him. Thank goodness it was only a car that was damaged!
But, as I was gushing on about the marvelous powers of his guardian angel, what Dan said was this: I just can’t figure out why God would throw that tree at me.
And he was only partly joking.
Here we have clear examples of two very different ways in which people tend to perceive life’s inevitable mishaps. God gives us angels, but just how involved are they in our day-to-day decision-making and events? Is God involved and on our side – intervening and preventing worse things from happening? Or is God looking to punish us for some bad thing we have done?
As usual, I think the truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes. God loves us and wants what is best for us in the long run. That means He won’t necessarily always be “on our side” in the short run. He gives us the freedom make decisions even when He knows we are going to choose badly. He lets us experience the consequences of our own decisions. He lets some prayers go seemingly unanswered.
But (and now here is the part that I like to focus on) He gives us the Church, the sacraments, the communion of saints, and our guardian angels to steer us in the right direction ... and out of the way of falling trees.
Angel sent by God to guide me,
Be my light and walk beside me.
Be my guardian and protect me,
On the paths of life direct me.
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I believe that we can see our guardian angels when we are infants and toddlers….and as we grow older and take on the skepticism of the world around us, we lose our ability to see our guardian angels.
Thank you Danielle for reminding your readers how to “see” our angels…through our eyes of FAITH. Our guardian angel is assigned to us from the moment of our existance and is always, always, always leading us and guiding us and protecting us. I’m glad your husband was protected that day by his guardian angels.
I LOVE the guardian angels! Thank you Lord for your wonderful gift of guardian angels!
Have a very blessed day!
I had gone to an all-night pharmacy around midnight to pick up medicine for a sick child. Returning home I had to stop at a major intersection. When I got a GREEN light, I started to take my foot off the brake when this voice said very clearly “Don STOP”. Right then a car traveling at a high rate of speed ran through the RED light. I’m glad my guardian angel was paying attention that night.
This seems like a rather silly thing for an angel to be involved in, but I dozed off in my dorm room between classes once in college and heard, clear as day, my roommate shouting my name into my ear to wake me up. I jumped with a start, but my roommate was nowhere to be found. He was already at class, class that would start in 3 minutes. I would’ve been late (and failed the course due to a third tardy) if I hadn’t been woken up. I always had a feeling my guardian angel woke me.
1)Someone I know slipped in the middle of a mostly quiet street in New York many years ago, it was dark and rainy. He was helped up by someone that left as soon as he arrived. He said the person almost vanished by the time he got up.
Seconds later, a speeding car came careening around the corner. My friend would have been hit, had he not been helped up seconds earlier.
2) When I was about 2 years old, I was trying to climb up inside a little home-made play house that was too high for me to reach in our back yard.
Someone with very large hands lifted me up and put me inside - but I couldn’t see anyone, after I was inside the little structure. I was sure it was my uncle, who was visiting us. But when I crawled over to the little screen door, which was still open, someone I’d never seen before stood in front of the door area, blocking it, keeping me from falling.
I can’t say if it was a man or a woman - it was someone I’d never seen before. Though I was startled, it didn’t scare me. Within seconds, my mother and my grandmother came looking for me, and whomever put me in the play house, where I had been struggling to climb up into, was gone.
My mother and grandmother were perplexed, wondering how I got up so high. There was no way I could reach it. At 2, I knew what happened, and I remember it clearly now. But couldn’t communicate what happened then.
Our guardian angels are rumored to protect us from harm, both spiritual (with whispered warnings) and physical (with various types of interventions). It is a comforting thought. But for every example of angelic intervention there is the counterpart experience of someone who died or was hurt because there was no one there to help. How is it that our angels intervene sometimes but not always? Is it like the miracles in the Gospels where Jesus cured a lot of people but not all the people, and the idea was to show that he was divine and worth believing in, that the healings were a sort of divine promise of future life with Him?
I was in a car accident a few months ago. I know my guardian angel was with me then because despite the major damage to the other vehicles, mine only had one place of major damage (still totaled it). I was saved from injury except for a rather severe concussion. About 2 months later I went to the doctor complaining of what I thought were symptoms of the concussion. Turns out I have MS. I would not have known about that condition otherwise. Sometimes things happen for a reason. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes our choices lead us to places where our angels can still protect us. Sometimes they simply can’t.
I think my angel was there in the Jeep with me after the accident. Could have been a passerby. I don’t really know. I do know that my guardian angel rocks though!
Susan, the angels (at least, those of the non-fallen variety) carry out God’s will. We could ask just as easily why God allows some to die at this time and others to live on. It is in His hands. In any event, what God does, He does so that everyone who would be saved may be saved. We must rest confident in His providence.
I was carrying my one-year old on my hip and my three year old was walking behind me as we walked towards our neighbor’s friendly goat who was tied to a tree. Her leash was wrapped around another skinny tree and when she became excited to see us, the skinny tree fell right at us. It literally landed on my shoulder…the space between my head and my one-year old’s head was exactly where this dead tree landed. There was not a single scratch on my daughter’s head (my neck was minimally scratched). There is no other explanation for that tree not landing on my daughter’s head or mine except that our guardian angels were there with us. I am returning to the Catholic faith after a bit of an absence and that was one of the confirming moments for me. Very powerful message.
Danielle,
When bad things happen, I remind myself and my family that this takes time off purgatory. With the world the way it is, none of us are even close to being the saints the common folks were before the modern era. Consider the sins we watch happen via TV and Internet daily. Our forefathers never had such temptation thrown in their faces. With that we also have lax catechesis.
Despite this, Jesus tells us to keep the oil for our candles for when the Bridegroom comes. And so, we are not excused for the dark world we live in, but were warned 2,000 years ago of this spiritual darkness that would pervade the world before His Coming and must work even harder to be holy than our ancestors.
Thankfully, God made each one of us for these very times and will help us if we reach out to Him, especially when He sends trees toppling upon us.
God love you and your family
The best thing we can do is to read about God’s character, and we find that in Scripture. Then we can KNOW we are always cared for, always loved, and that we will NEVER see His wrath, as God’s wrath is reserved only for those that are not submitted to Him.
That’s why end-times Scripture always has His prophets yelling, “Repent!” as did John the Baptist, when he announced that Jesus had first begun His ministry.
God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are the “Good Shepherd” that will never leave us or forsake us. That does not mean that bad things do not happen to good people. It does not mean that our guardian angels will help us out of each and every scrape we get ourselves into, or that happens to us, just because of a fallen world.
Sometimes bad things DO happen and it is not what we would consider a happy ending. But it ALL must be to the glory of God, and HE is Sovereign and in charge.
All-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, all-sufficient. A loving Father, and trustworthy. Read Hebrews Chapter 11 for the “Faith” Hall of Fame.
Our families and all of us can be comforted by a loving God, one that we KNOW personally, and who waits for us to talk WITH Him, by reading His Word.
It’s such a priviledge.
I love, love, love my daughter’s guardian angel. That angel saved my DD’s life—from me. I was life-threateningly sick while pg with her, and was very, very tempted to abort. I started praying to her guardian angel, and the temptation was relieved.
She is 4, my only DD (I also have 3 sons.)
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