Bright Angel

I had awakened one night, from a dream. As I lay there for a few seconds, thinking about the dream, I heard this loud noise. It was like somebody beating real hard on the side of the trailer. My first thought was that somebody was trying to break in. When I started to jump out of bed, the noise stopped. I opened my eyes and looked over towards the door of the trailer. I saw a figure.

It started about a foot and a half from the ceiling. It wasn’t touching the walls. The figure was about three or 4 feet tall. It just hung there, floating several feet off of the ground. I realized the figure was an angel.

It looked female, from the eyes and eyebrows. There was such a gentleness about her, in her eyes, in the smile. It was in the way she looked at me. She was wearing the most beautiful white gown. I remember that I could not see her feet, because the gown hung down, covering them. Her face was the most beautiful white. Her cheeks were high and swept back. Her features were perfect, exact. She hung there in a lovely glow. I remember the light. There was light about her.

For almost a minute, we just stared at each other. And then I thought came to me. My mind said, “Well, dummy, why don’t you reach out and try to touch it?”

I did. I reached out towards the bottom of her gown. I stretched my hand out and touched the light. When I did, the bottom of her gown, the place that I had touched, became like smoke. This continued all the way up to the top of her head. Little by little, she turned to smoke. As I watched, she just disappeared.

I sat there, thinking about what I just happened. At first, I was not scared. But then, I started having feelings, scared feelings. I wondered, “Is this the night that I am supposed to die? Is the angel some kind of message?” I just had all kinds of thoughts. Mostly, I was scared to go back to sleep. It took several hours before I did. I had to settle down some.

During this time, the scared feelings became mixed in with other emotions. I felt a warmth coming over me. It felt like I was being loved. I could feel the warmth of her loving me. Whether there was any message there, I didn’t know. it just felt warm and good. I felt loved. I felt excepted, like a child of God.

It took me about a week before I could mention this to anybody. First I told just one close friend. That went all right, so I got to be more brave about it. I told another. It was when I was talking to her about it that I got this feeling inside of me. It was just like that warmth that I had been receiving from the angel the night she appeared. As I talked to my friend, I just got this feeling inside of the angels want to be loved too. The message came to me that they want to be appreciated for what they do.

This was what I was thinking standing there with my friend. I had not mentioned this part to her, or to anybody. It had only just occurred to me. This was the thought that was going through my head, the angels want to be loved and appreciated for what they do. Right at the exact instant that I was thinking this, my friend came out and said it. Like out of nowhere, she just looked up and said the very same thing that I was thinking in my mind.

My two friends suggested that I get some books about angels, to see if I could find a picture of the one that visited me. One lady thought that she knew where she could find one. The whole time that this was going on, somehow I just knew the angel I saw was not from any book. I just kept thinking that this in my mind, “It is not going to be in a book.” Several days went by, but it turned out that she could not find anything. I just kept thinking to myself that I knew that I had seen the angel before somewhere. Deep down, I knew that I had.

A few days later I was entering the downstairs chapel at my church. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, just walking along. I cannot really explain how it happened but when I entered the chapel, I walked right straight to a poster of the angel which had visited me.

The poster has been hanging there in the church for a long time. I guess remembered having seen it up on the wall before. I had noticed it. I just never had paid any attention to it. Up until then, I had never looked at it enough to even see that it was a picture of an angel. As I stood there, I looked more closely at the poster. There was writing at the bottom, below the picture. It said that this is a picture of a guardian angel. The second I saw the poster, I knew that this was the angel, who appeared before me. There was no mistaking it.

Her features were exactly the same. She had the same lovely glow. I remember that about the angel. There was light about her. It will be easy to remember to send her love.

Billye Jones

Excerpt from Angel Power, Angel Love. Other books by Billye are The Essence of Loving and Women Pioneers in 12 Step Recovery.