An Encounter She Had

A woman I know in a very friend-of-a-friend way shared an encounter she had at the age of fifteen, and I imagined it played out like this:

I was sprawled across the sheets, all the stringy arms and legs of a fifteen-year-old who thought she was fat, and could feel it in the air. Some thing was in my room. I let my eyeballs move to my right while I kept my body rigid, straight as the backs of the chairs in Sunday school, and felt my lungs swoosh in the cold room‘s air. Hairs sprang up on the tops of my arms, standing to attention in stiff formation.

I was looking at a being filled with light that reached the ceiling. Hair the color of sunflowers. A long dress sequined in gold that radiated internal light rather than outer, and a cape that rushed from her shoulders to the floor in satin-like waves. A face with soft lines. Eyes that looked at me and through every cell I was made up of and saw everything.

An angel. In my room.

Her cape touched the covers on my bed and instantly I felt a charge of power radiate down and then back up my body—so filled with fire I thought I was going to die. I closed my eyes so tightly, I could swear I was cutting off their blood supply.

Our Father,

Who art in heaven,

Hallowed be they name…

It was the only prayer I had ever memorized. The only words that could make it to my lips that I thought would save me.

And then I opened one eye very slowly. The angel was gone. My bedroom was back to normal.

Yet it never was again.