Angel in the Night

Angel in the Night

When I was growing up in southern Ireland we had no television Our evenings were spent avidly listening to our father's wondrous tales of leprechauns, faeries,and the banshee.I loved those scary stories but when it was time to go to sleep I would shiver and shake and ask for a light in the night.My mother always told me to think about my guardian angel, who was there with me to protect me at all times.
"What if my angel goes to sleep before I do?" I once asked.
"Angels are on duty all night," my mother calmly replied, and gradually my childhood night- fears disappeared.
Many years passed.One August night, about four years ago,sleep decided to bypass me.I lay in bed and tried counting my blessings,counting sheep, visualizing peaceful, pastoral scenes.Nothing worked so I turned on my bedside lamp, found a book and read until 2:30 am when my eyes,finally, felt ready to close.
My bedroom was in the front of the house.Directly above my bed was a diamond-shaped window Just as I was drifting off to sleep I heard a soft,scratching sound.I could not identify it nor could I recognize from where it came. It was such a little sound that normally I would have shrugged it off. Something, however,prompted me to get up and investigate. Maybe the cat was in the house, I thought.

The living room was empty--no cat there.I looked all around and saw nothing unusual so I headed back to my room.As I reached my bedroom door there was a terrific crash. The window above my bed burst into a hundred tiny pieces of flying glass. The bed,where I had been lying moments before,was instantly littered with broken glass.Even my pillow was covered with sharp, shiny chards. Had I been in bed I would have been badly injured.

Initially I thought someone had fired a shot through my window. Later, when the police arrived, they found that a large rock had been thrown with great force from the outside.

A young policeman, looking at the bed covered with glass, remarked, "Lady, you have the luck of the Irish not to have been in bed when this happened!"
But I knew it was not luck.What was that tiny sound I had heard? What had nudged me to get up and investigate its source? I was out of bed only a few moments, yet it was during those moments the damage had occured.

I believe it was my Guardian Angel protecting me. My Angel in the Night was on duty, even at 2:30 a.m. just as my mother had told me in the years gone by. And so I thank God for giving us these angels to guard and protect us. I thank my Irish mother for passing on that belief to me, and , to my Angel in the Night I send a hundred thousand Celtic blessings.