Angel in My Closet

A Warm, Breezy Night

It was a warm night in early May of 1996. The windows in my room were open, and a soft breeze ruffled my ivory curtains, making the paisley-patterned seashells on them dance. The light from a desk lamp lit up the room as I lay on my bed beside the desk. I had just hung up my purple phone in its cradle, tears streaming down my face. My head was pounding. My stomach was clenched in a ball of knots. I braced myself for another long night of preparing lessons.

Painful Relationships

I finally found a way to escape from the cold voice of Kevin, my boyfriend at the time, who renumerated all the ways in which I was failing our relationship by not being as fiscally affluent as he was. There was no love in his voice when he spoke to me at the end of a long day. The phone calls between us became very painful and this evening's was the worst. It was time to let go and give myself more peace of mind.

My relationship with Kevin was not the only thing that was a source of pain for me at the time. It was the final semester of my M.Ed., and my Cooperating Teacher could find little that I was doing right as a Student Teacher. The Liaison between the school and the university agreed more readily with the Cooperating Teacher when she was being paid to be my advocate. My mother and I were estranged because she dwelt only on how deeply in debt I was whenever we spoke. There was always contention in her voice. The icing on that cake was my roommate, who could often be heard screaming at her cat outside my door. I suffered from migraines on a weekly basis.

After I hung up with Kevin that night I wept. It was a soul-wrenching weep that spent all the grief I held inside. What would I do? How would I pick up the pieces of my life that lay shattered on the hardwood floor? Then, somewhere in the midst of my despair, I could feel someone in the room. I could not see this being, but I felt a palpable comforting presence, emanating from the entrance to my clothes closet at the opposite side of the small room, just a few feet away from the bed. This being stayed with me no longer than five minutes, yet that comfort and peace has stayed with me for the past 13 years.

I’ve since concluded that my heavenly visitor that night must have been either my deceased maternal grandmother or an angel. Perhaps it was the angel Cassiel, comforter in times of loneliness and despair. Even after this being departed from my room, I continued to relax. I began to feel that everything would be okay. I remembered how supportive my Aunt Lucy and my friend Susan were. They helped me keep my sanity that semester. I could laugh a bit as I looked at the card my Aunt had recently sent me, reminding me to “hang in there.” I remembered my friend Susan’s laugh and the funny messages she liked to leave for me on the answering machine.

I survived my final semester and graduated on June 1, 1996 with an M.Ed. in Elementary Education and a Massachusetts state teaching certificate. I broke up with Kevin in May of 1996 and in July of 1997 I met the love of my life, Edward. We were married on September 28, 2001 and we have been blessed with a heavenly little daughter. I have also been blessed with the opportunity to home-school her with the support of a rich home-schooling community throughout central Massachusetts. My relationship with my mother is much better now, too. That may have something to do with becoming a mother myself. Most importantly, I have kept hope and faith since then because, at the time I felt most lost, God remembered me and sent one of His angels to make sure I knew I was loved.