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Angel Babies

And other true stories of guardian angels

Theresa Cheung

Contents

Epigraph

Introduction: An Angel at my Door

Chapter 1. Growing Up Again

Chapter 2. Angel Babies

Chapter 3. Unborn Angels

Chapter 4. Angel Children

Chapter 5. Invisible Friends

Chapter 6. ‘Take Care of this Child’

Chapter 7. Angels of Mercy

Chapter 8. Angels in Waiting

Chapter 9. Everyday Angels

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Your Guardian Angel

You have a guardian angel

Who watches over you–

Everywhere you go

And everything you do.

This gentle, silent helper

Is there to be your guide

To shelter and protect you,

And for you to walk beside.

Your angel will always help you

Whenever things go wrong,

They’ll be the wings beneath your feet

As life’s path you walk along.

Feel this calming presence,

Be enfolded by its love,

And let your life be guided

By a power from above.

Anonymous

Introduction: An Angel at my Door

‘A house call from an angel can

heal a broken heart.’

Anonymous

Anyone who knows me or who has read my previous angel books, An Angel Called My Name or An Angel on My Shoulder, will know that without a shadow of doubt I believe in angels. I believe that departed loved ones watch over us from the other side and that each one of us has a guardian angel guiding us both in this life and the next.

I also believe that our guardian angels can manifest their loving presence in a limitless number of ways. On rare occasions they appear in their full-blown glory, complete with wings and halos, but more often than not they prefer to express themselves in subtler, gentler ways. They may appear in our dreams, in a flash of insight, in a hug or in other people who are consciously or unconsciously guided by those in the world of spirit. They may manifest as a gentle breeze, a cloud, a bird, a coin, a song or anything that speaks volumes to our hearts. They may choose to express their love through the spirits of departed loved ones. Last, but by no means least, they may appear or express themselves through children or those with a youthful spirit. Indeed, the ability to live life with the open and trusting heart of a child may well be the vital ingredient angels need to manifest their loving presence on Earth.

In my previous angel books I gathered together collections of true-life angel stories from people of all ages and backgrounds, and it soon became clear to me that a great many of the stories focused on the experiences of the very young. Another theme I noticed was that regardless of their age, people who encountered angels or believed that angels were watching over them tended to be young in their approach to life. I’ve been researching and writing about angels and afterlife experiences for many years now and looking back I can see that almost from the very beginning this ‘young at heart’ theme was quite literally knocking on my door.

Opening the Door

About a decade ago I was in the bathroom when a boy of about eight or nine rang my doorbell. He had my eight-month-old son in his arms. I was stunned, as I had left my son on the living-room rug for just a few moments and he was crawling but not yet walking.

The boy at my door told me he had found my baby crawling on our porch dangerously close to some steps which led down to a stone path. Wracked with shock, guilt and relief, I snatched my son and hugged him tightly to me, closing my eyes. Then I remembered the boy at the door and how abrupt I must have seemed. I hadn’t even thanked him. I opened my eyes, intending to ask his name and give him some money, but he was nowhere to be seen. Holding my son tightly, I walked down the stairs and looked up and down the street outside our house. I was convinced I would see the boy walking away either to the left or to the right, as the street was straight and there were no bends or turnings he could head down, but there was no trace of him in either direction. He had vanished.

Whether human or in spirit, this boy will always be an angel in my eyes, as there is no telling what might have happened if my precious baby had fallen down those stairs. Even now, all these years later, I can still picture him in my mind, with his twinkling blue eyes, lopsided smile and mop of dark hair. Many people have told me that he was probably just a kind and helpful child doing a good deed, but why didn’t he linger for a thank you or for some reward afterwards? How on Earth did he disappear so quickly?

From that moment on, stories concerning babies and children held a growing fascination for me. I was already collecting angel stories from people from all corners of the world, but it soon became clear that stories sent in by children or about children were truly special because children live in a world where angels are real. ‘Grown-up’ doubt, fear and scepticism simply aren’t there. Unfortunately, this innate ability to ‘see’ spiritually declines with age, but as this book will make abundantly clear, it doesn’t have to fade away and we can all rediscover, nurture and cherish the child within.

Young at Heart

The term ‘inner child’ is a clichéd one but, like a number of clichés, it resonates with truth. Carl Jung called the inner child ‘the Divine Child’, Emmet Fox called it ‘the Wonder Child’, Charles Whitfield called it ‘the Child Within’ and some psychotherapists call it ‘the true self’. But what is it?

The inner child is the child you once were, the child who desired to be nurtured, cared for and loved. This child still resides within you, however old you are. It is the part of you that is sensitive, creative, emotional, spontaneous, playful, intuitive, passionate and enthusiastic, but it is also the part of you most in need of comfort, guidance, love and reassurance. Many of us lose touch with our inner child as we leave childhood behind, but it remains with us all our lives. We are all children at heart, innocently searching for meaning in life, and it is through our inner child that our guardian angels reveal themselves to us.

According to the Swedish mystic Emanuel Sweden-borg there is no need to look outside ourselves to encounter angels, because angels are within us, waiting to be discovered. This book aims to bring together inner child and inner angel by showing that it is through our inner child that angels speak to us. In this way, with love, trust and the open mind and heart of a child, anyone, whether they are eight or 80 years old, can see, hear or sense the nearness of their guardian angel.

Therefore, in the pages that follow not only will you find miraculous stories about babies and children, but you’ll also find miraculous stories about adults of all ages and at all stages in life. The thread linking all the stories in this book is that the people who submitted them all have the ability to see the world through the eyes of a child, whether they are young in years or not. Seeing the world in this way doesn’t mean being childlike in the sense of being naïve or ignorant of the ways of the world, but it does mean having an open mind and the ability to feel things deeply and express them spontaneously, and it is this openness and emotional spontaneity that draws angels.

True Stories

Another thread linking all the stories in this book is that they are all real-life stories based on fact, not fantasy. The first chapter outlines some of my own experiences, both in childhood and later in life. You’ll see that even though I was born into a family of psychics and Spiritualists, and am in no doubt today that angels are real because I have encountered them both in my work and in my personal life, when I was a child I didn’t see, hear or sense them. In fact it took quite a while for me to trust in angels and there have been many doubts and fears along the way.

I feel it is important for you to understand some of what I have experienced over the years and how this has brought me to where I am today. Although amazing things have happened to me, and I hope they will continue to happen as nothing gives me more joy and happiness, I’m not a medium, a psychic, an angel lady or a guru. I’m a very ordinary 44-year-old mum with two children–my son is eleven and my daughter is nine–and although some of the things I have experienced have been a direct result of my work as a paranormal writer, other things have simply happened. This has led me to believe that we are all born with the ability to see, hear and sense angels, and although many of us lose our sensitivity over the years, there are ways for us to reawaken and reclaim it. I guess what I am trying to say here is that by sharing some of my psychic journey with you, I hope you will see that anyone, however sceptical and whatever their age, background, doubts and fears, can have the profound connection with angels that is their birthright.

The rest of the book is a collection of true stories sent to me by people whose lives have been touched by angels in some way. These people come from all walks of life. Some, but by no means all, had a deep faith in angels before their angelic encounter, or were devoted to a particular religion (angelic spirits of goodness appear in most of the world’s religions), but others did not describe themselves as religious in any way. Like so many people today they believed in something, but were not quite sure what. And there were those who believed in nothing at all.

The first few chapters focus exclusively on stories concerning babies, born and unborn, and very young children. Then the following chapters move on to stories about teenagers and adults encountering healing angels, or angels that intervened during times of crisis or danger, or angels that spoke to them through animals, dreams, signs or spectacular coincidences. Some of these stories were sent to me in response to my previous angel books, but others have been collected over the 25 years I have been researching and writing features, books and encyclopaedias about spirits, ghosts, angels, dreams and the psychic world. Everyone who contributed to this book, either by submitting a story or by allowing me to interview them, has touched me deeply with their truth and integrity. I am extremely grateful to everyone and if you can’t find your story here I do apologize, it is simply because space would not allow. I do feel incredibly privileged to be given permission to share these experiences with a wider audience.

The Power of Conviction

I’ve lost count of the number of times people have told me that there is always a perfectly rational explanation for encounters with the world of spirit. One of the most popular of these so-called explanations is that angels live only in a person’s imagination. At first I expended a lot of energy trying to prove that angels were real. I would stress that angelic encounters had been recorded and illustrated in almost every culture for thousands of years. I would point to the vast number of angel stories I had gathered from around the world–after all, in a court of law a witness statement is taken as evidence. I would try everything I could think of, but it soon became clear that I was wasting my energy. At the end of the day angels are spiritual beings and their existence cannot be proved in a rational way to those who have closed their hearts and minds to their existence. Basically it all comes down to belief, and to those who believe, either because they have an affinity with the message of love angels bring or because their lives have been touched by angels in some way, no proof is needed. No explanation will ever have the power of their conviction.

Some of the stories you will read in this book are profound. Others will make you smile and others may make you shed a tear. Some will send a chill down your spine, others will amaze and astound you and even stretch your belief, but let me again reassure you that to the best of my knowledge every one is true. Although in some cases grammatical and editorial changes have been made, and names, dates and other personal details have been changed to protect the identity of those who wished it, all of these stories are the real deal. They demonstrate the myriad different ways that angelic encounters can transform people’s lives and they all bring simple messages of hope, comfort and love and the reassurance that loved ones who have passed on are never far away.

Whether you have had an angelic experience yourself or not, I hope that reading these incredible stories about people whose lives have been transformed by angels, as mine has been and continues to be, will remind you that we are all spiritual beings. We are all born with intuition and psychic potential. I hope these stories will encourage you to listen more to your intuition and to laugh, love, open your heart and live your life to the full like a child again. I hope they will make you laugh, or cry, because every time a person is moved in some way by reading an angel story, angels fly closer to Earth, bringing with them their pure unselfish joy, love and laughter.

So, if you feel ready, prepare to be amazed and inspired by the stories in this book. As with my previous two angel books, working on it has renewed my connection to the realm of spirit and opened my eyes to new possibilities. It is my sincere wish that it will do the same for you by showing you that ordinary people like you and me can open their doors and their minds and their hearts to let in laughter, love and angels, and can see this world and the next through the bright eyes of a child.

Chapter 1
Growing up Again

‘When we are willing to live as adults in childlike spiritual surrender, we are nurtured and cared for so sweetly.’

Karen Goldman

I’d love to be able to say at this point that I saw angels when I was a child, but sadly that simply wasn’t the case. Sure, I was born into a family of psychics and Spiritualists and always believed angels were close by, because that is what I was taught to believe at an early age, but I wasn’t one of those children who levitated in my cot, had nightly chats with angels or saw dead people in the playground. I didn’t even have an imaginary friend! I was incredibly shy as a child and perhaps overly serious. I didn’t trust my imagination or intuition at all. Creative writing lessons in class were pure torture. Obsessed with lists and chores and ‘to dos’, I never allowed myself much time to play or dream. It was only much later in life that I learned the importance of balancing doing with dreaming.

One of my first memories–I must have been three or four–is taking everything out of the food cupboard and putting it back in colour-coordinated order, much to my mother’s dismay when she found out later. Perhaps I unconsciously chose the role of the organizer and the practical, level-headed one in our family as some kind of counterbalance because I grew up in a rather alternative family where talk of angels was commonplace and nothing was ever planned or seemed certain. We were constantly on the move, never staying in one place long enough to put down firm roots. My dad was disabled and we lived on Mum’s meagre earnings as a psychic counsellor and there were often days when we really didn’t know whether we’d be able to afford food, let alone pay the bills. My mum was never worried, as she always believed that angels would provide–and they did, as somehow we always had a roof over our heads and food to eat–but as a child I worried endlessly about the haphazard, unpractical nature of our lifestyle.

Falling Down

Despite being ‘the practical and sensible one’, I desperately wanted to be psychic and to see and sense things like my mother and brother, so I read books, attended meetings and meditated for hours. Nothing worked. It was like bashing my head against a brick wall. Although I was smart, developing psychic gifts was one challenge that hard work and discipline simply couldn’t help me with. Inside I felt disappointed with myself. School was hard for me, as fitting in with the crowd didn’t come naturally. Gradually I lost confidence in myself and self-doubt took over. Then around the age of 12 my world crumbled and my childhood disappeared forever. I developed an eating disorder.

Looking over my diaries from the time, I’m still astonished by how distorted my thinking was back then. The world around me was not as perfect as I wanted it to be and controlling food became my way of coping. For the next four or five years I was on a painful journey. Although my weight never fell so low that I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, I experienced life as a joyless battleground. Every day was a battle–to get out of bed, to get dressed, to function. At times my head was filled with thoughts of death, as it seemed to offer some kind of freedom. Every move I made was controlled by a relentless voice in my head. Regulating my food intake and my weight became my sole focus and nothing else seemed to matter. And in the process I lost everything. Any friends I did have disappeared, unable to understand or handle what was going on in my head. I also missed a lot of school as the once together and organized child disappeared into oblivion.

Thinking now about those dark and bleak days, I can see that even though I felt lost and alone and abandoned, angels were always there guiding me. I simply didn’t have the eyes to see them or the ears to hear them or the heart to receive them. They manifested their loving presence first and foremost through my family. I took it all for granted at the time, but I don’t know where I’d have been without my mother, who quietly and anxiously supported me every step of the way, even if those steps were sometimes backward ones.

Angels also manifested their loving presence at the moment when I needed them the most, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Only now, as I reflect back on a significant turning-point in my young life, can I see the hand of my guardian angel at work.

Seeing the Light

One summer morning when I was 15 I woke up with a blistering headache. I had not allowed myself to eat and drink anything but apples and black coffee for five days. The destructive and overwhelming voice of anorexia switched on the moment I opened my eyes, as it had done relentlessly for the past three years. Anorexia would tell me to do something and I would have to do it. It didn’t matter what it was that I had to do; to me, anorexia was going to provide the solution to everything–or so I thought. This morning it told me to keep going with my apple and black coffee regime and to increase my exercise programme to four hours a day.

Wearily, I swung my legs over the side of my bed and felt for my hip bones, reassured that they felt sharp and defined. I looked up and noticed that I had forgotten to close the curtains the evening before and that the window was open. This was rather strange, because I had never forgotten to close the curtains before and I suffered from hay fever, so the windows in my bedroom were never left open in the summer. I wondered if my mum had opened the window, but then I remembered that she was staying overnight with friends. I’d been invited, too, but hadn’t wanted to go. Mum had only agreed to go if I promised to call her regularly and eat a banana as well as an apple. I had called, but I hadn’t eaten the banana and had no intention of doing so.

I moved towards the window, squinting as the sunlight hurt my eyes, and tried to draw the curtains, but I simply couldn’t lift my arms. They felt too heavy.

I tried once again to draw the curtains, but it felt as if something was gently but firmly clamping my arms to my sides. So then I tried to slump back into bed, but my feet were rooted to the spot. I couldn’t move an inch.

I don’t know how long I stood there soaking up the morning sunshine, but it must have been at least half an hour. At first I struggled, but then I stopped fighting and simply stood there, allowing the sunshine to wrap itself around me. As I felt the warmth of the sun on my face, a sudden clarity came to me. I realized in that instant that if I continued down the road I was headed on, anorexia would eventually kill me. It was then that I promised myself I would never let it get to this point again.

From that day onwards my recovery was gradual but steady. I had made the decision to live. It took a while, but eventually mealtimes were no longer a battleground. My mum told me that an angel had drawn my curtains back, opened my window and wrapped its arms around me that morning, but although the thought comforted me I still couldn’t quite believe it. My practical, logical side told me that I had simply forgotten to draw the curtains the night before and that food deprivation had made me too weak to lift my arms. My fearful, anxious self told me that I wasn’t special or psychic enough for angels to bother with me. But even though self-doubt still plagued me, somehow my common sense and my zest for life had returned, and they grew stronger as time went by. There wasn’t room for anorexia in my head anymore. I started to take better care of myself and gave myself permission to have a life again.

There was a lot of work to do in terms of building my self-awareness and self-esteem, but my psychic journey began that day I stood by the window in the sunshine. I still didn’t think I would ever see, hear or sense angels, but my mum, who had seen and spoken to angels all her life, used to tell me that when I was ready to open my heart and my life to them they would appear. I doubted her then, but years later I realized that she was right.

However, it took a good 20 years before I was finally ready to let angels into my life. In the meantime I was simply too anxious, fearful and lacking in self-trust. The harder I tried to sense angels, the further away they seemed to be and the more abandoned I felt. What I did not realize was that all along angels were guiding my life through my dreams, my intuition and the ‘coincidences’ that happened to me, but I was too full of questions, insecurity and fear to acknowledge those experiences for what they really were–the voice of my guardian angel.

The full story of my spiritual awakening and how the voice of an angel saved me from certain death can be found in my previous books; for now, all that it is necessary to know is that as a child and young adult my inner eyes were tightly closed. It was only when I learned to relax and get a handle on my fear and self-doubt–or, to put it another way, to see the world again through the eyes of a trusting child–that they began to open. And then it was as if a psychic doorway had also opened and all the angelic sensations and incredible experiences I had longed for came flooding in. Then I knew what I had always known but had forgotten along the way. With a newfound lightness of spirit, I reclaimed my inner angel and the innate spirituality I had lost faith in.

The more I worked with and trusted my angels, the more they began to work their magic in my life. Opportunities came my way both in my personal and professional life and barriers broke down. It wasn’t long before I was presented with one of the greatest gifts and responsibilities of my life when I was asked to gather inspiring true-life angel stories and string them together in a book. Until then I’d distinguished myself as a writer with bestselling encyclopaedias about dreams and the psychic world, but the new book, An Angel Called My Name, entered The Sunday Times top 10 bestsellers list within a week or so of release. My mailbag swelled with letters from readers keen to share their experiences. It became abundantly clear to me then that my angels had been waiting for this moment and my life had been building towards it.

I realized that my task was to collect angel stories and bring them to a wider audience, because every angel story is a miracle, a living testimony to heaven on Earth. Each story demonstrates the very real presence of angels in our lives. Each can help people see that there is goodness in and beyond this world and that this goodness is more than a match for the pain, suffering and injustice we see all around us.

Although we have advanced technologically, the same cannot be said for our spirituality. Our inhumanity to each other has not been eliminated. We need a spiritual lift–a big one–to help us feel safe again. We need the restoration of our faith and trust–in one another as human beings, in love and in our ability to make humane and positive choices for ourselves and for others. In short, we need to hear about angels around and within us and the miracle of love and goodness they bring to the world.

An Angel Child

I’ve fast-forwarded a little here in my excitement, so let’s go back a decade or so now to one of my very first encounters with an angel child.

I’d made friends with a neighbour who had recently moved into a house two doors away from me. She was roughly the same age as me–in her early to mid-thirties–and she had a four-year-old daughter and was expecting her second child. I guess we bonded because at the time I was expecting a child too.

I’d known her for about a month when she asked me if I’d mind looking after her daughter while she treated herself to a haircut. Normally I’d have politely declined, as I wasn’t very good with kids, but this time I welcomed the opportunity to spend some time with a young child. You see, even though I did want to be a mother, I’d never been very maternal. In fact I’d never even held a baby or played with a young child. I felt uncomfortable around children. I didn’t think they liked me. If truth be told, I was a little apprehensive about becoming a mother and wondered if I was up to the task. I figured that it was high time I gave myself a trial run, so to speak.

When I arrived at my friend’s house, she greeted me at the door. I’d seen Sophie, her daughter, a few times before, but we had not been formally introduced. She was like a little doll and said, ‘Pleased to meet you,’ with an adorable lisp. Then she laughed and laughed before saying, ‘Abir says hello.’ I looked at my friend and she shrugged her shoulders and explained that Sophie was ‘at that imaginary friend stage’ and I should just ignore her. But I was working as a magazine journalist gathering stories for a series of articles about the paranormal, and I was immediately fascinated. I had no idea where this fascination would take me.