When Guardian Angels Collide

Originally published on Lance Wandering on 1st January 2014

I've often wondered if I have a Guardian Angel.

I think I do. I really do.

I’m not religious. Being brought up in a (admittedly awesome) Roman Catholic Convent school got me believing that God looked like my dad (but with long hair and a beard) and I’d see my goldfish again when I died and went to Heaven.

Got cynical as I got older and decided that Agnosticism was the best way forward. Some of the mongs that I met who’d preach religion made me realise I was better off on my own, drawing my own conclusions as to what was right and wrong in the Universe. **

However, religion aside I have felt for the last decade or so that there is definitely a being that walks behind me and is in a lot of ways looking after me.

It’s not something I can see. It’s not a messenger from Jesus. It’s not even an angel, but we’ll call it one for the sake of argument.

The closest I ever get to seeing this being is when I feel connected to it. I can sometimes sense that it’s there but it stands behind me, forever in my blind spot so it will never reveal itself. If I turn around, it’s gone.

Sometimes I see its hand. It’s always different, it’s basically how my mind would see the unseeable and is usually monstrous and much larger than my hand. Occasionally I hold out my hand and my Guardian Angel will clasp mine, reassuring me that he is there for me.

Sometimes it saves me from harm. Sometimes it shows me things I need to learn.

Tonight I watched this video

and felt the presence behind me again.

There have been several instances of the Angel walking in step with me. For one example there was this saga.

THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT AND THE RED JUMPER.

and later this one...

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO HMMM...

But the most awesome example of intervention from my Guardian Angel was when it got together with my brother Gary’s Guardian Angel and thrashed out a cunning plan.

Gary has often said he believes he has a Guardian Angel, mainly due to the fact that he’s survived a lot of potentially lethal situations. One example would be that a few years ago a guy who bore him a grudge was in the pub carrying a knife. A knife he was carrying with the sole intention of stabbing my brother. The guy’s mates spent about 2 hours trying to persuade him to hand the blade over to them. 5 minutes after he did, my brother walked into the bar, despite not having been in there for months and not knowing the guy was there.

Last summer Gary and me finally reconciled our differences after 15 years of not speaking. It’s not so much that we didn’t get on, as we were not able to be together. My father lives in Crete and when I went to visit Dad, my brother would come weeks before or weeks after me so he didn’t see me.

Last summer things worked out odd. Dad forgot who was coming when and we ended up overlapping. One day my brother had to go to hospital as he was very, very sick. For the only time in the entire holiday, my father wasn’t in the house and was about 20km away in the next town. Dad wasn’t answering his mobile phone. The local doctor paid a brief visit but told me to take Gary to hospital. I had to organise EVERYTHING.

I got a mate to give us a lift to the next town where the hospital was, I borrowed money and I got Gary in to see the doctors. Then I waited for about 5 hours until he was cleared to leave.

ANY OTHER DAY and none of this would have happened the same way. Dad would have been there and would probably have accompanied Gary himself to the hospital.

My brother’s attitude towards me changed completely that day and has remained changed ever since. I had been able to prove, due to an extremely contrived set of cosmic coincidences (his illness, me being the only one around to help him, and our father’s absence) that I did care enough for him to be there when he could conceivably have died.

Problem is…how the hell did such a weird set of coincidences happen? Why that day? Why on the ONLY DAY in the month I was there that Dad wasn’t around?

I don’t believe in religion but I do believe in spirituality and the existence of a God. The house my father lives in, in Crete has what could politely be described as “bad energy” in the bedroom area. I have had exceptionally unpleasant nightmares while sleeping there. Thing is it’s not just me. So have my brother, my father, the upstairs lodger and the owner’s eldest son. We’ve all seen or felt something in there and it’s not benign.

When I got up for a piss one on a stormy night I distinctly heard a voice whisper, “LANCE!!” I gritted my teeth and turned around to face the window. There was nothing there.  Dad’s heard this voice call his name too.

I personally feel that in summer 2012, when me and Gary met for a very brief time and ended up arguing very quickly, that the two Guardian Angels looked at each other over our shoulders and went “who the fuck are you?!!” Keeping their swords sheathed they paid each other the mutual respect that one with such responsibility must give to another of equal standing.

Realising that they had two people whose destinies dictated they were to be kept alive at all costs, they also knew that they could spin this together to give us something that would mend the damage between us.

So in summer 2013 they weaved our patterns together.

I was able to prove to my brother that I would do anything to help him.

He was able to see that I felt that way and possibly saved his life.

The only answer I can reasonably come up with as to why such an impossibly contrived situation ever came to life.

When Guardian Angels meet, stuff happens.

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** Briefly considered getting back into Catholicism after seeing Mel Gibson's The Passion. Spoke to a priest who gave the answer"less pollution then" when I asked why Adam had lived to be about 950 years old. I re-embraced Agnosticism very quickly.