A Journey to Spirit # 13: An Angel in our Midst

We met in 1998, a year before the assault. Today I believe it was divine intervention. She entered my home office by way of referral. Rose was her name. She looked older than her years as the ashen skin spoke of her searing physical pain.

She walked carefully and consciously into the room, her hands begging the wall for support, her eyes distant yet focused on the mere task of moving. She was here to look at some alternative health care equipment that we sold, and I was there… about to meet a very wise old Soul.

We connected quickly and on a very deep level; she in need of someone to believe she could rise up from the prison her body had held her in for the past five years, and me in need of the profound counsel only she could give. More importantly however, in our meeting came the validation that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

My husband and I had been living in an average marriage. 1999 was our sixth year together and for the most part, we got along; money being the only dreaded subject. Our business was growing and we were finally realizing the reward of a lot of hard work and sleepless nights.

I had financed our company and we were being helped by a financial silent partner who had a large stake in our success. And at this juncture, we had finally reached a place where we could almost fly on our own. As a leader in our business, I was growing in leaps and bounds and spreading my wings more and more every day. His leadership pace had slowed however, almost to a crawl. No longer lived his dream of becoming everyone’s guru.

He sat at his desk one day watching me as I spoke with a client. I noticed his stare and the beads of sweat on his forehead, and I wondered if he might be falling ill. He had grown quieter around the house recently, and a strange feeling had taken over the space between us. I had no way of knowing what was in his head.

One night, as I rose from the table where we had been talking, I said, “I’m really tired and I’m going off to bed.” He followed me into the kitchen where I was preparing to feed the cat. It was only a second later that I recall being bounced down the hall, my glasses flying across the floor, and then my throat constricted by his hands.

Shock, fear, sudden disbelief encroached as I tried to fathom what was happening. In my hand I remember the dull dinner knife, and my conscious decision to drop it for never was I of the mind to use a weapon. I would fight though, and in the heat of the minutes that followed, I did what I could…to no avail. The more I fought, the angrier he got. The decision to leave him was certain. I would never give him another shot. “There had to be something out there better than this.”

The next day, someone was there to help. Rose, who lived in her grey stupor of pain, she who held a Master’s in psychology, was there for me. And she would pick up my tiny pieces and give me a way to put them back together again, with the help of her Clinical Glue. For the next year he stalked me while the court case for Assault proceeded because, of course, I turned him in. Then there was my humiliating bankruptcy and loss upon loss that filled every waking moment for the next year. I would be the only one to pay the piper.

But I walked down those sweet country roads every day, a sacred path trimmed with untold hours of conversation with my wise and gracious teacher-friend-mentor. She was an angel in our midst. Piece by tiny piece, I would find myself again. My long sordid past, an unfortunate landscape of abuses, would finally be over. And after I was rid of the last of the abusers, I was determined to learn what I needed to know in order to never go down that road again. And…she would teach me what I needed to know.

It appeared I was on a rather profound journey, and I was being called to many things. I began hearing the messages, slowly at first, but once I knew how to recognize them in the midst of my thoughts, the guidance became as precious as diamonds. My Pink Cotton-Candy Place of Peace was next to herald in another message.

Soon came the message about taking all the pain, the anger and darkness from the past, and turning it into something else; a healing story perhaps, a helping hand, maybe a lesson…for someone else who might face the same shades of concrete in their own life. I set out with a new confidence and a renewed sense of self; after all, I had survived, and now that I knew my Spirit, I was as determined as ever.