Cheung - An angel on my shoulder

May you always have an angel on your shoulder.

There are two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

Yes, I believe in angels. I always have. I believe that there are angels in the afterlife and angels resting on my shoulder right here on Earth! I think that we tend to chalk a lot of things up to coincidence, lucky breaks, close calls or being in the right place at the right time, but if you have ever felt a magical, loving presence around you I believe this is the work of your guardian angel. I also believe that angels can speak through your intuition or your dreams or the spirits of loved ones who have passed to the other side. And sometimes they appear in the guise of other people or animals, consciously or unconsciously guided by those from a higher dimension.

First of all, I believe in angels because that is what I was taught to believe as a child. My mother was a psychic and my grandmother and great aunt were both clairvoyants, so angels have always been a part of my life. I have simply taken it for granted that they are always there to watch over me, guide me and comfort me and, when my time on Earth is up, to accompany me to the other world.

One of my mothers favourite sayings was: Wherever I go, I call on my guardian angel to be with me to be above me, below me, beside me, in front of me, behind me and within me. And angels were with her. One day I must have been about seven at the time she picked me up from school and told me we were going to drive out of town to visit a dear friend of hers in hospital. Her friend had suffered a stroke and, as I would discover a week later, had only days to live. We drove for about half an hour and then Mum must have taken a wrong turn or something because it soon became clear we were heading in the wrong direction. Although I was young, I sensed how important it was for Mum to see her friend that evening. It didnt help that it was midwinter and the weather was extremely bad, with thick fog refusing to budge. The roads were fairly quiet, but driving was still hazardous. Mum could barely see the markings on the road.

Suddenly the steering wheel jerked in Mums hands and she lurched from the slow lane of a dual carriageway into the fast lane to overtake a car travelling ahead of us. As she overtook the car she came dangerously close to bumping into it and this uncharacteristically bad driving forced it to swerve. Understandably infuriated, the driver hooted his horn several times and, obviously still angry, proceeded to over (or is it under?) take us via the slow lane before cutting in front of us in the fast lane.

Unaware of just how hazardous Mums erratic driving had been, I found it all wildly exciting. As we watched the car speed off and disappear in the fog ahead of us I asked Mum if she was going to play catch-up and follow that car. She shook her head and told me a voice was telling her to stay in the fast lane, but this didnt mean she had to drive really, really fast.

By now we were approaching a bridge. The fog was getting really thick. I looked out of the window and saw the hazy figures of two people frantically pushing a car from the slow lane to the side of the road. The stalled car was moving, but as we drove past it was still blocking much of the slow lane. If we had stayed in that lane we would almost certainly have slammed into it because the fog was so heavy and the car being pushed out of the road had no lights on. My mum slowed to a crawl as we passed by, with her emergency lights flashing to warn cars coming behind, and we watched the car being pushed off the road, relieved that it was no longer a threat to traffic in the slow lane.

We were just about to speed up again when there, shining in the headlights, my mum noticed a nearly concealed sign pointing us in the right direction to the hospital.

My mum later told me her guardian angel had driven her car that day and that very same angel had made sure she had found a sign to direct her to the hospital to see her friend one last time. She also told me that an angel had saved not just our lives as we headed to the hospital but the lives of the people in the stalled car and the life of the driver with road rage. If her guardian angel hadnt made her overtake the car ahead and made the driver angry, he would have stayed in the slow lane and crashed. She explained that angels can manifest in the most unusual and unexpected ways. I believed her.

Then there was the time, a year or so later, when we had hardly any food left in the house. All the earnings from Mums psychic counselling service had recently been spent on repairing our leaky roof. We were used to living on very little but not this little, and for days we ate nothing but pasta, cheese and apples. It was all we could afford. At no point, though, was my mum distressed or anxious. She told us that we shouldnt worry because she had asked her guardian angel to make sure we would not starve. And she was right.

One afternoon there was a knock at the front door. When Mum opened it a young woman in a blue dress, yellow cardigan and brown sandals stood there smiling. This lovely woman told us that she was a close friend of Jean, our next-door neighbour. She said she hoped we would not be offended, but Jean had told her we could really use some supplies. Then she explained that she was moving house the next day and needed to clear out her kitchen cupboards, fridge and freezer. With open mouths and growling stomachs we stared at the bags of groceries lined up on the floor beside her. There were dozens of them, brimful of tins, packets, fruit, vegetables and other essentials. Our mouths stayed open as we watched her drive away in her little white Mini.

We ate well that night and for several nights after, and the grocery gift was enough to tide us through a really rough patch financially. A bit overwhelmed by this act of kindness from a stranger, Mum felt that she had not thanked her properly, so she asked Jean for her address so she could send a note of thanks. But Jean had no idea that we had even been in need of food supplies and scolded my mum for not asking for help. She also had no idea who the woman was and neither did anyone else on the street. No one knew of her. I never saw her again.

Was this kind lady an angel? Perhaps! Probably! Possibly! Mum was convinced that she was. All I can remember thinking was, Why couldnt Mum have ordered chocolate muffins from the angels?

Perhaps you are beginning to understand why I believe in angels, but what I witnessed and assimilated in childhood is only half the story. Ive also had paranormal experiences of my own as an adult. One of the most dramatic was when the voice of an angel saved my life. I dont want to go over the whole story again if youve already read it in my first angel book, An Angel Called My Name, but for those who have not, here is a mini version. I was driving towards a busy junction when I clearly heard the voice of my mother tell me to take a right turning. She had passed several years previously. Unbeknown to me at the time, if I had turned left I would have faced certain death in a back-to-back collision involving two trucks, a stray dog and several vehicles. The accident killed three people one of whom would have been me if I had turned left as I had fully intended to do before the angel called my name.

After this dramatic celestial rescue my life transformed in many wonderful ways. Previously, although my belief had been strong, I had doubted my own psychic abilities because Id never actually heard, seen or felt the presence of angels for myself, but after hearing my mother actually communicate to me in spirit, a psychic door opened and I had several other angelic experiences, some of which I shared in my first book and some of which I will share in this book.