Introduction:Why I Believe in Angels

      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 mother’s 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 didn’t 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 Mum’s 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 Mum’s 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 didn’t 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 hadn’t 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 Mum’s 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 shouldn’t 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