I Believe in Angels

This story formed in my spirit and then on my laptop after reading Sheela’s story about angels entitled “Angel’s Among Us?” It is a true story.

This morning I was moved by the Holy Spirit to edit this piece that I submitted yesterday. The song that came to mind was the group Abba singing “I believe in angels.” As I watched this video I saw the belief in the eyes and hearts of the children. They had not yet had that belief smashed, broken into a thousand pieces like a glass menagerie. In their singing I saw that God was making a call to people then as He does now to believe in angels.

Part of the chorus says, “I beieve in angels. Something good in everything I see.” God’s creation and the way we look at people, our community and our world is seen in a more positive light. Belief in something more than ourselves, something filled with a spirit of love for all creation, draws our minds away from all the darkness of this world, even if for only a brief respite from the harsh realities of death and human misery.

Take a brief vacation from all the cares of your life and listen to Abba singing “I Have a Dream.”

But angels are more than a fantasy. They are real. See the belief in the eyes of precious children as they tell all of us to both the skeptic and the believer that they believe in angels.

Genesis 32:22-31 records the struggle Jacob had with an angel or some being for the blessing. All through that long night of struggle Jacob fought with this being even having it put Jacob’s hip out of joint. As morning came Jacob had won a victory. The struggle was worth it. He would have his name changed to Israel, because he had wrestled with the being and won.

There are those who could argue that this was some fantasy, a dream that Jacob had concocted. Why then was Jacob’s hip put out of joint? Whey then was it plain to those he would meet each day for that for the rest of his life like the apostle Paul he had a physical reality of the cost of that battle for the blessing? The mortal injury would be a living witness to others that angels do exist. They are as real as the air we breathe.

Some Christians I’ve found get prickly and stand back a few steps from me whenever I talk about how I firmly believe that angels were with me during some of my intubations. They were more in spirit form for me. I could feel them accompanying me to Heaven working on me while I was transported there in my spirit, while my body remained here to fight the battle between life and death

It took three days for the doctors in I.C.U. to wake me up. I had been ready to go home after an asthma attack as a result of an attendant’s cologne sending me to the ER. Then, a cleaning woman with very limited English came in using Virox, a chemical cleaner used in hospitals and ambulances. I have a life-threatening allergy to Virox.

My wife, Karen and I tried to tell the cleaner to leave. Karen shouted at her, “My husband is highly allergic to Virox!”There was a clearly posted sign on my door not to use Virox. The cleaner couldn’t even read the sign.She responded saying over and over again, “Me clean. Me clean.”

The doctor in charge of my care heard the commotion. He ran into the room. He waved his arms in the air repeatedly and said with assertiveness, “Stop cleaning now! This patient is highly allergic to Virox!”

Over the four hour period from exposure I kept getting worse. A nurse was assigned to watch me. She was shocked as my blood oxygen started to fall and my blood pressure and heart rate started to soar. Then, as I was fighting for each breath I went into involuntary shaking.I was now gasping for every breath. This is the stage before one goes into respiratory failure.

My doctor called a stat order for me to be taken to I.C.U. He didn’t wait for an orderly. My doctor rushed me down that long hallway that seemed like a thousand miles. I felt myself drifting into unconsciousness. My doctor kept saying to me over and over again, “Kevin, don’t go to sleep! Stay with me, Kevin! Stay with me!”

He reached out his hand and I held his as he said fighting against his own fear, “Hold on! Hold on! We’re almost there.”

I was ready to die. I had made my peace with God that when He said it was time, I would gladly go. It would mean an end to life’s struggles. No longer would I have to fight with the government for the many medications to be covered that I need for my very life. No longer would I have to play that game of Russian roulette every month of what medications we could afford for me and those I woud have to do without. No longer would I have to live in poverty. No longer would I need to fight that daily battle milions fight each moment, every second to escape from the death of hope’s dreams that can come with being poor. Death would have been the far greater mercy. I’m sure many who live in poverty say the prayer every day for God to be merciful. Belief in angels or anything is too painful when you know you will experience hunger’s pain, the dark forboding sorrow that mothers must feel as they look into the eyes of their children, praying that they would no longer see the decay that malnutrition causes as death comes calling , not quickly, but slowly, painfully as belief in anything erodes away, as hope is replaced with a gnawing despair that eats away at their souls.

Had my Lord called me home that day I would have rejoiced, but I saw that God wasn’t finished with me yet.

I was afraid I was going to die without saying to Karen the many things I wanted to say about how much I loved her and how God had given me such a gift in her. She has her imperfections as do I and all of us, but I knew she was the God match for me.

Karen would tell me how I was the sun in her day and the moon in her night. She was incomplete without me.

I would often say to her, Je t’aime, Karen. Je t’aime beaucoup or Sarong hayo , my darling, which is Korean for I love you.

I finally reached I.C. U. Just before I was put to sleep with propophol, which has come to be known as the Michael Jackson drug, I felt a peace beyond that which could be explained away, that it was just the medication. I knew that there were medical angels watching over me.

At one point during those three days that seemed like an eternity to Karen, my family and friends as well as many churches that were praying for us, a doctor from I.C.U. came to Karen saying, “Your husband’s heart is under a tremendous strain. The ventilator is breathing for him. If we don’t wake him up very soon, I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

Karen immediately informed two of our friends of the gravity of the situation. They listened as Karen poured out her terror that this time after multiple intubations for various allergic reactions to different foods, scented products and allergens in my environment, she would be saying a final good-bye to me.

During the three days I was asleep the medical angels worked on me on my way to Heaven and while I was there. I was given the blessing of seeing an entrance room to Heaven.

No words I could write could capture Heaven’s beauty. It would be like trying to describe why Bach’s “Jesus Joy of Man’s Desiring” is a composition of beauty and grace. What I do know is that Heaven’s beauty exponentially surpasses the wonder and awesomeness of God’s creation on this earth.

I could hear birds singing. The trees had a brightness to them that made them stand out. The sky was the colour of blue unlike I had ever seen.

It was like watching a 3-D movie with colour resolution, which far surpasses anything you have seen on this earth.

I got a brief glimpse of Heaven. Then, the medical angels transported my spirit back into my body.

I awoke. The tremendous pain of the ventilation tube reminded me I was alive.

Karen cried tears of joy when she saw my eyes open. I was back to the reality of life’s challenges, but came back profoundly changed. I would never be the same.

I noticed as time went on that abilities I possessed in singing as a trained tenor were improved. I could sing many more somgs across many genres of music with a greater ease than ever before. Complex songs became much easier to sing. I started writing songs. Writing ability kept improving, so much so that Dr. Will Rooen, who was my journalism professor, said it had gone from good writing to that which was very good and excellent.

I was also given the gift of being able to unravel people’s deepest problems, more than can be explained by the training in pastoral counseling I had received.

Karen says that when I sing I take people to Heaven with me. No one she has said this to has disagreed.

There are angels among us. My mom is an angel. She died three days before Christmas 1992 of a massive heart attack at age 57. In critical times in my life I have felt her presence. Karen has physically seen her. One time after the death of Karen’s friend’s mother, Karen says my mom was at the church funeral.

All I felt was a cool and peaceful breeze pass over me. Karen said mom was smiling, touching my shoulder. She was a young woman. As Karen saw the joy in my mom’s face it was her way of saying God had blessed me with a beautiful and loving woman. She approved of Karen. I can tell you that in my mom’s eyes no one was good enough for her son.

So, when you are told you are living in a dream world believing in angels, tell them my story. Tell them that Jacob wrestled with an angel or some kind of being, who had a physical form (Genesis 32:22-31)

Yes, there are angels among us as surely as there is the sun, moon and stars. The next time when what appears to be a human-being just happens to be there in your time of crisis and disappears when the danger has passed, don’t dismiss that this person might have been an angel.

Let the Lord speak to your heart as you ask the question for yourself, Do I believe in angels?

You can read more of my blogs at:

http://www.osborne2029.wordpress.com