As I promised, a ‘proper’ posting. And first of all, a health warning - what I am about to say may seem like, to quote George W Bush (allegedly, commenting on Donald Trump’s inauguration) ‘some weird shit’.
On Friday, finally, after more than six months of waiting, I received the telephone call I have been expecting for so long - a date for surgery to ‘fix’ my main health problem (a couple of cardiac arrhythmias) - next Tuesday (25th September), with a prior consultation on 18th September. My mental state is still a little fragile, and the suddenness of the news threw me out of the eye of the storm and back into the howling gale. The weekend wasn’t all that great, shall we say - though the church services were good!
Anyway, on Monday night, whilst I was going to sleep, but before I was really asleep, I found myself ‘elsewhere'. Suddenly I was transported in my mind to somewhere warm and semi dark, which smelt faintly sweet - like cedar wood (the smell you get when you sharpen a pencil) or cinnamon, or both - but apart from that, and that my forearms were leaning on a polished wooden surface, I know nothing about ‘where’ or ‘what’ the place was - and it really didn’t matter. Resting there, I suddenly became aware of a female figure ‘snuggling’ really close to my left-hand side, face hidden by a ‘mop’ of long, curly, brown hair, so I couldn't see her clearly. Whispered words, which I can’t remember exactly now, but the gist was a very comforting ‘We’ve got this; we’re in control; we’re looking after you and we’re going to keep you safe.’ And then I was fully awake again, and back in my own bed.
Was that an angel?
Scripture has plenty of those guys around and not always appearing as we might expect. And it wasn’t at all what I expected - in fact it was a complete surprise... That kind of thing doesn’t happen to me. It’s odd - at first I mistook her for a friend, only working out gradually that she was someone I didn’t know... But she seemed to know me, to be at ease and entirely comfortable with me - which is perhaps why I thought she was a friend... If that makes sense?
With the ‘vision’ being female, my first thought on ‘awakening’ was that it must have been something sinister masquerading as an angel of light. But the vision was chaste, and too ‘warm’ and comforting - not at all ‘seductive’ or siren-like - so I dismissed that thought pretty quickly. And thinking about it in ‘the cold light of day’, it struck me that God knows me very well - he knows that a female angel would be ‘better’ for me - less threatening, more comforting, and calculated to put me at my ease, just because of how I am made, and who I interact with most easily.
The effect was to make me feel incredibly relaxed, warm, and loved; sure that I was safe and secure in God’s loving arms, so that I was able quickly and easily to fall asleep. When I woke, I didn’t feel as though I had slept long enough, but the sleep I got was of a quality I rarely achieve at the moment, so that on waking I was more refreshed than I’d have expected. And I didn’t go straight into ‘panic mode’ when I woke either, which has been a ‘feature’ of life recently.
It was all pretty strange to be honest. First off, it had been so incredibly vivid - more so than any dream I can remember; perhaps even more real than reality itself (so that my first feeling was confusion - how had I got ‘there' from my bed with no intervening journey?) - but very ‘limited’ in that I have no idea about the surroundings. It was a bit like being in a spotlight, with very little illumination of what’s around.
The strangeness continued, in an odd way. As I said, I had to go into hospital for an assessment on 18th September (the next day). I’m not, at the best of times, a fan of hospitals - heck, I don’t even like visiting people in hospital, let alone going in for myself - and I’ve done a lot of that this year. But I was oddly calm, and ‘unpanicked’ about the situation - I seemed to be ‘in the eye of the storm’ instead of being battered by the winds and having to dodge flying debris. I could almost sense a ‘presence’ - and I seemed to be expecting to see the ‘angel’ again - I kept half expecting to see her walking along the corridor, or coming out of a door - and somehow, despite not having seen her face, I knew I’d recognise her. Most odd. But comforting somehow. Make of it what you will!