Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Introduction

       Chapter 1: Love and Valentines

       Chapter 2: Angels and Christmas

       Chapter 3: Births, Birthdays and Deaths

       Letter to Readers

       About the Author

       Also by Jacky Newcomb in the HarperTrue series …

       More by Jacky Newcomb

       Moving Memoirs eNewsletter

       About the Publisher

Introduction

      An angel is a common symbol at Christmas. I mean the gold and sparkly ones we use in decorations, of course! We place them on top of the Christmas tree; they decorate our Christmas cards and we light our candles in angel-themed holders. It was the Archangel Gabriel who told the young Mary that she was carrying a child. That child was the baby Jesus, and so Gabriel became known as the Christmas angel.

      The angels were given the special task of watching over the small family on their journey to Bethlehem. One of them also told the shepherds that the Christ child had been born. Many witnessed the angels that day and readers of the Bible will recall that the poor shepherds were terrified at the sight. Much as I love angels, I’m sure I would have been just as frightened if several angels had suddenly appeared overhead while I walked with my sheep! Wonderful though their visit must have been, I’m sure the subtler visitations we experience today are much more comforting.

      What is an angel or guardian angel? That question is on many people’s lips. We have all seen angels represented in paintings, statues or figurines as winged beings or glowing figures, but is this who they really are?

      Angels are said to be manifested by the divine being, the one true creator – or God, as we tend to call ‘him’. It is said that God made the angels just before, or just after, he created humans (depending on which source you believe!). Some feel that God is an energy source (like a cloud of electricity), and all of his creations are like sub-clouds that separate from this heavenly being. Like drops of water in the ocean, we and the angels are not separate from each other or from God, but are all parts of the ocean, all parts of the energy cloud, all God. He/she is whole in all of us: in the souls on this side of life, in the souls on the heaven side of life, in the angels and in beings on other planets, too.

      Many believe that angels watch over and guard us. But this is just one of the tasks they seem to take on. There are stories of their interactions with human lives that go back as far as you can imagine, before humans even began recording their history – whispered experiences passed down from one generation to the next.

      While some don’t believe they exist, these stories of angels interacting with human lives have been around for many thousands of years. If they are not real then why do people talk about meeting them, seeing them, hearing them or experiencing these beings of light? I am an ‘experiencer’. I have been lucky enough to have a great deal of contact with God’s angels. They have helped me and communicated with me many times. They reach out to us in their own way, and although contacting us through many different layers of consciousness can be a challenge, they still seem to manage it.

      Some people believe that I personally hear and see angels all the time. This isn’t true, sadly. I live a normal life; I’m a wife, mum and grandmother (‘Nana Jacky!’), and on occasion I have had some unique, extraordinary experiences. Some might call them mind-blowing (I know I do). It seems to be no different for some of my readers. Some have more angelic contact than others, though there seems to be no specific reason why this might happen. Angels come when they want to and visit when we need them. Occasionally they appear when we ask them to, but sometimes they arrive unannounced. Always they are welcome. They seem to appear when we feel afraid or alone. We might not always see them (in fact, usually we don’t), but if you are really lucky, you might sense them, hear them or pick up a little sign that they are there. Your angel is watching over you.

      Can we really define an angel? Many have tried. They seem to be a type of spirit, but not like a human soul. They are beings of light but without solid bodies (or what we would call solid); they may not have a physical presence in our dimension, but they certainly have substance in their own realms. They exist, but on a