Today’s guest blogger is Tanya Richardson.
I’ve always loved the idea of angels: messengers of God who guide and protect every human life; offer forgiveness, comfort, grace and aid; and love us as God does–unconditionally. So I was thrilled when I got hired at Angels on Earth almost 10 years ago.
From my first day on the job, I felt like God intended for me to work at this magazine. After being at the magazine for about a year, one evening on my subway ride home from the office I wondered silently: Do I really believe in angels?
I enjoyed that readers got so much reassurance and peace from our stories about angels, and I felt honored to be a part of bringing them those stories. And I related to what readers shared: feeling God’s presence in times of crisis, hearing words of comfort and courage, having help appear out of the blue.
I knew these were all signs of God at work in our lives. But when a reader would write in about actually seeing an angel, a figure in a white robe with large feather wings, I’d often set aside their hand-written note and furrow my brow.
I believed our readers had seen something–I knew they weren’t just daydreaming or imagining these visions. But invisible creatures with wings? Was that really what God’s messengers were like?
Then one day I was in my bedroom at home working on a project, so engrossed that I hadn’t looked away from the computer screen for some time. Suddenly I sensed a presence behind me, and I glanced up to see if someone, maybe my husband, had entered the room.
Over my writing desk, which faced a wall, hung a large mirror. When I looked up at the mirror I could always see who was walking in the bedroom door behind me. But when I looked into the mirror that day I gasped.
Standing just behind my desk chair was an angel: tall and graceful. She was wearing a long white robe and had hair that fell in ringlets around her shoulders.
A golden rope was at her waist, and she possessed two enormous wings. The sheer size of them struck me. Her wings looked so strong–so powerful. And they were covered in hundreds of white feathers.
I didn’t move a muscle. I sat there still as a deer surprised in the woods, watching this otherworldly being in the mirror as she slowly floated out of view.
The whole experience lasted about 30 seconds. Once I felt able I turned around in my chair. The room was empty, but I now knew that I was never really alone.
That experience ignited my passion for all things angels. Suddenly I wanted to read every book I could about angels. I began collecting angel figurines and jewelry.
I started assuring friends and family that angels were watching over them. And the stories I worked on at Angels on Earth had a deeper meaning for me.
They say that angels appear in our lives at pivotal moments: when we need encouragement or healing or transformation.
The day I saw my angel I was playing around with an idea that, years later, would become my new guided journal, Heaven on Earth.
The chapter about angels is a wonderful place to record your own interactions with angels: both divine angels and human earth angels like friends, family and even strangers.
Angels surround each one of us every day–protecting, nurturing and inspiring us–whether we see them or not. Take my word for it: Angels are magical, but they are also very real.
Get Tanya’s new book by clicking here: Heaven on Earth: A Guided Journal for Creating Your Own Divine Paradise.
