Little did I know that after I wrote a column on angels a few days ago, my inbox would become a veritable explosion of stories about angels.
Throughout these last days I have been reading so many angel stories that I haven’t had time to do anything else, such as eat or bathe.
Truthfully, I was going to write something different today, but if there is one thing I’ve learned by reading all these emails and messages, you can’t talk too much about miracles.
CHARMIE—I want to tell you my angel story. I rarely tell it because—well, you know—people look at you funny.
I was camping, just me and my cocker spaniel, in a remote campground in Washington State. It was a beautiful day. I was sitting at the picnic bench, enjoying the sunshine when a loud carful of several drunk guys stopped in front of my picnic table and started saying disgusting things to me.
No one else was around and it was frightening. I was praying like crazy. “Ok, God, what do I do?”
Suddenly one of the guys starts approaching me, but stops and screams, “Santa Madre de Dios!” And they all saw something behind me and became so afraid that they ran away.
I was scared to look over my shoulder, expecting a grizzly bear or something. But there was nothing. I don’t know Spanish except that I knew that “Madre de Dios” means Mother of God.
An angel protected me from a horrible fate.
JANIE—It was 1981, I was 17 years old when I started dating my future husband. We went on a fall picnic to Kings Mountain outside of Charlotte, North Carolina.
I needed to use the restroom but we didn’t want to pack up and move our stuff, so he stayed with our picnic while I walked to the restrooms. As I got to the facility, I saw a man leaning against the wall. I got that weird feeling and heard the words in my head, “Don’t go in.”
I turned around to leave and the man started following me. No one else was around. The faster I went, the faster he went. It was as if I were watching myself in a cheap horror movie.
Soon, I was running back to our picnic area, I kept turning around and he was still following me.
As I jumped over the creek a young couple appeared out of nowhere. I yelled to them, “That man behind me is chasing me!”
The couple just looked at the man, and the man stopped running and he headed the other way.
As I turned back for one more glance at the couple, they were gone. They had vanished. I knew angels were sent to save me that day. I’m now 56 and anytime I tell this story I feel their presence.
JESSICA—I wanted to share our miracle story. My son was born with a congenital heart defect. Had his first open heart surgery at 3 days old. We brought him home on IV meds, oxygen, apnea monitors, and a pulse oximeter.
We checked his pulse-ox on a Friday afternoon and it was low. He seemed fine, but I called the doctors and they said to order him a new pulse-ox. They said they’d get someone out to our house first thing the following Monday.
Monday was a long, long time to wait. Too long. Thankfully, one of their workers heard the message and happened to have a pulse-ox machine in his truck. He stopped at our house on his way home from work. And the machines said that his oxygen saturation was 62 percent. Not good.
An ambulance was called, we were rushed to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh where things went from bad to awful, very quickly.
We ended up in the CICU. My baby was gray, cold, limp, and the doctors told us we needed to call our pastor—he wasn’t going to make it through the night.
Our pastor came, he blessed some sterile water and baptized our boy right in the CICU. The whole unit of doctors, nurses, and staff, crowded around my son’s cubicle, and we all held hands and prayed.
About one hour later my son’s oxygen level started rising. By morning, his color was back, and he had an oxygen saturation of 82 percent. The surgeons came in to see how he was, and decided it was now or never to open his heart and fix the problem.
Fast forward 8 hours. They let us in to see him. He was pink again, strong enough to cry and fuss. The surgeon started explaining that the shunt in our son’s heart was completely blocked with infection, and this was the problem all along. It should have killed him. He should not have survived this infection. But he did.
“How is that possible?” I said.
The surgeon just threw up his arms and said, “Well, we are calling it a miracle.”
Today, that sickly little baby is a snotty 15-year-old boy who is pretty much normal, except for his many scars and hospitalizations. He will require a heart transplant someday. But we’ve prayed about it, and are leaving this to God.
BECKY—My rotator-cuff surgery was brutal and the pain was constant. I couldn’t even shake hands. But my complaints were as endless as the pain.
One day, my husband was driving me to my daddy’s house and as we passed a neighborhood church, we both saw a lady putting mail in the church mailbox using only her feet because she had no arms.
I was so humbled, I exclaimed, “I hear you, Lord. Enough complaining!”
We passed that church many times after that, and never saw that woman again. But to me she was an angel. I’m convinced. And every time I want to complain I remember her.
JASON—My late mother has been seen by all three of my kids, sitting in a rocking chair in our den, even though she has been gone for nine years. She is our favorite angel.
KELLY—I was blessed to hold my Daddy’s hand as he took his last breath. A few moments later, I collected myself to call my son and let him know his grandfather had passed.
My son was 9 years old at the time, and he responded with surprise. I was taken off guard by his immediate reaction. I didn’t understand why he was so surprised.
So I gently reminded my son that Paw Paw had been sick and that’s why I needed to go to Georgia for a few days.
My son replied, “I’m surprised, Mom, because Paw Paw sat next to me in church this morning.”
The first thing my Dad, the angel, did after he went to heaven, was check on my boy.
BONNIE—When I was 13 years old, my 15-year-old cousin Tommy passed away in a car accident with some other boys. A few nights after I was lying in bed and closed my eyes. When I opened them, I saw Tommy and another guy standing at the foot of my bed.
Tommy told me he just wanted to say hi and that he loved me. I tried to scream but nothing came out.
Later, at Tommy’s funeral, my aunt had pictures of the other two boys that died in the car accident with Tommy, and one of those boys was the same boy standing at the foot of my bed that night.
I know in my heart that Tommy watches over me to this very day.
MARLO—I had been on an overnight trip, hours from home. During the night, there was an ice storm. I made the (foolish) decision to drive home the next day.
Just like they say, the accident seemed to unfold in slow motion. The car spun around on the ice, left the road, and landed in a ditch. When it came to a stop, I could not believe I wasn’t hurt. The car, however, was stuck.
This was in a rural area with very little traffic to begin with—given the icy conditions—little chance of anyone passing by. I had phone service and called a tow truck, but they estimated it would be at least four hours before they could get to me.
It was still freezing outside and it would be dark soon. Then a man in a truck pulled up. He explained that he worked in the service department of a car dealership and gave me his business card.
He produced chains and pulled my car out of the ditch. He inspected my car, made sure it was drivable, then followed behind me for two hours as I drove south, making sure I safely reached the point where the road was ice free.
A couple days later, I called the car dealership on the card he’d given me to thank him again. The people at the dealership told me they did not know anyone by his name, and said that no one by that name had ever worked there.
KEN—Last night, my 5-year-old daughter crawled into our bed while having an asthma attack, and said she was afraid. So we talked about angels and then read her some of these angel stories you shared, and my daughter started breathing better, and she said, just before drifting off, “I believe in angels, Daddy.” I just kissed her and listened to my little girl breathe. So thanks for the stories.
35 comments
Linda Chapman - October 4, 2021 6:58 am
Thank you, Sean…. You are an Angel yourself! We can all be if we trust God to use us in blessing others- as YOU do so well.
Paul McCutchen - October 4, 2021 10:33 am
I would tell you mine but I think you have had enough.
Susie - October 4, 2021 6:07 pm
Oh, come on, Paul. Don’t make us beg. 😂
Debbie g - October 4, 2021 11:05 am
I believe in angels too. And I believe all of us on earth have the ability to be angels to someone every day. Thanks for encouraging us Sean love to all
Susan H Poole - October 4, 2021 11:18 am
In September, my mail lady, Jenny, took her 2 grandsons, ages 6 & 3, for a trail ride on the 20+ acres of family land. The ATV turned over, the little boys were thrown off, but Jenny was trapped beneath it. The children didn’t know the direction to take back to the house. A man appeared and walked the children home through woods and fields, telling them which way to go until the house was reached. When a family member asked where their grandma Jenny was, the 6 yr old said, “She was lying on the ground and wouldn’t talk to us.” Then the older child was asked how he and his little brother got back to the house. He responded, “A man with long white hair and a long white beard came to us and walked us home, and when we got here, he disappeared.” Condensing the story somewhat, other family members went searching for Jenny and eventually located her body. Within the next day or so, the 2 children and several family members were looking through old photo albums when suddenly, the 6 yr old pointed to a photo and exclaimed, “That’s the man that walked us home!” The man pictured had long white hair and a long white beard; he was Jenny’s grandfather who had died many years ago.
Angels, yes, I believe God sends them.
Susan Forte - October 4, 2021 11:38 am
Thank you for sharing more angel stories, Sean!❤️❤️
Erika - October 4, 2021 11:55 am
Can you stand one more? A little different, this one.
My brother died suddenly and tragically in 1983. We were close. Several days after the funeral, I was crying my heart out alone in a front church pew, when I heard an odd clicking.
I looked up to find the most beautiful young man I had ever seen gliding down the central aisle on a fancy bike. The clicking was its gears.
He braked next to me. “You are sad.” “Yes, my brother died.”
He closed his eyes and put his free hand on my head with great gentleness for a moment. Then he wheeled his bike around and rode back down the aisle and out of the church, leaving me with his strangeness, his beauty, and the beatitude of his blessing.
That’s all.
Susie - October 4, 2021 6:18 pm
Erica, that was beautiful. I’m sure it lifted you when you needed it.
Jan - October 4, 2021 12:28 pm
Thank you!
Mary Ratliff - October 4, 2021 12:38 pm
My first encounter with an angel happened when I was a teenager. I was in bed trying to sleep when I heard this gentle repetitive knocking on my sister’s bedroom door which was closed. I got up and stood in front of the door (it was locked) and was getting creeped out by the knocking which was getting louder, and got my mother to come and see what she thought was happening. She picked the lock with a bobbypin and upon opening the door we saw my sister sound asleep with her long hair inches away from her burning candle which had fallen over onto its side. It was probably just a matter of minutes before she would’ve been burned.
Nancy Crews - October 4, 2021 12:42 pm
❤your writing.
Shelton A. - October 4, 2021 1:17 pm
Amen. Angels and God exist and I believe all these stories through and by faith.
Nick - October 4, 2021 1:32 pm
Happy to share my Angel stories but you have so many. I would merely add what I did not know on the first one that saved my family’s life, that we each are given a guardian angel to protect our body and soul, whose role is to lead us home to heaven. Matthew 18:1-5,10
Encourage ALL to share our stories at every opportunity!!!
Ruth Mitchell - October 4, 2021 1:48 pm
Please keep these first person accounts of angels and miracles coming. Reading them to start my day is so inspiring!
Linda E Crenshaw - October 4, 2021 2:16 pm
I believe in angels, and know that they watch over us. However, people do not become angels after they die. Humans are one kind of God’s creation, and angels are another. Angels are ministering spirits sent to minister to us.
Rikki - October 4, 2021 2:23 pm
So inspiring!!! Thank you!!
Linda - October 4, 2021 2:23 pm
I was trying to find a great aunt’ s headstone from 1906 who had died in a terrible accident when her clothes caught fire. She was 20 years old
I wanted to pay my respects
A man came up to me and told me he would help me find it as he knew the cemetery well
It was at the top of the hill with a wonderful view of York , PA but the massive stone had fallen down.
I asked how much it would cost to fix but he told me he would get it fixed and called two other men over who had been mowing the grass to get it back upright as soon as they could … he told me he was the owner of the cemetery and took my info and told me he would send me a pic.
I never heard from him and it was a year until I could get back to PA …
The headstone was back up …
I called the cemetery office to thank him and was told that this cemetery had been owned by the city and then a corporation…. never by one person !
All three of those men were angels in my opinion …
Patricia Harris - October 4, 2021 2:36 pm
Sean, my darling husband who I met in high school and dated for four years died of Alzheimer’s in 2019. I was by his side. We had been married for over 56 years and in love for 60. After he passed I went home to go to bed. Suddenly the lights over my bed went on and off. Not once but twice. I knew it was him telling me he was finally whole again and wrapped in the arms of his family members who had died before him. Those lights have never come on by themselves since.
Sandra - October 4, 2021 3:15 pm
Sean, I have one I will never forget. Before my husband passed away it 2016 he was laying in his hospital bed in our home. I was setting in a chair close to him. He was just starring at a rocking chair, I ask him what he was looking at and he said, mama is setting in that rocking chair and she doesn’t have that blank look in her eyes anymore. She had died of Alzheimer in 2008. Yes I believe in Angels. I love your stories.
Teresa Larkins - October 4, 2021 3:18 pm
Sean, you’re right. You can’t talk too much about angels. My son Sam was born in 1978 with a heart defect and had a couple of encounters with angels. When he was 2 1/2 he was in the bath tub one night and pointed to the ceiling and said “Oh look mommy. There’s Jesus!” I said “Where?” He said “See right there!” He was very annoyed that I could not see Him. I was afraid it was the angel of death that had come to take him. I stayed awake prepared to fight this angel if I had to. Nothing happened during the night so then I thought it was probably his guardian angel watching over him.
Sam had a heart double lung transplant at age 16. A few years later he was driving home one night on a two lane road when he came over a hill and a car had wrecked and the rear end of the car was in the road. He saw a man dressed in white move the car out of his way. He looked in his rear view mirror and no one was there. He said it all happened so quickly that he would have hit the car if it had not been moved. He was shaken and said “Mom, it had to be an angel.”
I know you’ve received so many stories but I wanted to share mine with you also. Sam went HOME to heaven in 2007. He had just had his 29th birthday. Today babies born with the heart defect he had have surgery right after birth and are expected to live a normal life span.
Laurel F. Johnson - October 4, 2021 3:28 pm
What a Blessing! Thank You
billllly - October 4, 2021 3:53 pm
Thank you for sharing these stories. I need to hear them!
Linda Holmes - October 4, 2021 4:05 pm
My mom passed away in August of 2015. At the funeral, my granddaughter, then three and a half years old, walked up to her mom and put her hand on her mom’s tummy. She said, “I’m going to have a baby sister.” My daughter laughed and told her she didn’t think so. Nine months later my daughter gave birth to a baby girl. She is named Geneva, a namesake for my mom. How did a three year know that?! She said someone whispered it in her ear. We call it a God thing. It helped ease the pain of my mother’s death.
Janie Shouse - October 4, 2021 4:21 pm
Love these stories! Keep them coming.
on3pnr1117 - October 4, 2021 4:56 pm
Hi Sean… I think you will be getting more and more of these, which is awesome! Maybe consider making 1 post a week of Angel Stories.. Like every Friday is Angel Story night and then you have the other 6 nights to write what you want. We all love your stories, and you might have enough Angel stories to last you a good long while.
Nita - October 4, 2021 5:24 pm
Here’s one more Sean. You probably have seen all you want to but just have to share this with you. My mother passed just a couple weeks past my 11th birthday. In fact today is the 78th anniversary of that day. I dreamed about her a lot for several years. She was always just out of reach keeping an eye on me but I could never get to her to talk to her. She would always be “there” whenever there was something I was concerned about so I knew she was aware.
Finally, after I had been married for awhile and was pregnant with out first child I had an extremely real dream about her where she actually talked to me. In fact she answered all my questions – such as “Why did you leave Daddy and me ?” She explained why she felt she had to go plus commenting on so many happenings in my life that it all made sense – now that I was 20 years old – when it certainly would not have when I was 11! She said she had been checking on my husband, Dave, and decided that he would take good care of me so now she could go on to finish her project. I ‘woke up’ sitting there in bed introducing her to Dave. I have never had another dream of her. He did just what she said … took good care of me for 68 years before passing on.
Karen Snyder - October 4, 2021 7:40 pm
💙😇💙
Linda Moon - October 4, 2021 8:13 pm
My story from maybe an Angel or Providence itself is when I first met Sean of the South and Jamie Dietrich. You see, they weren’t supposed to BE THERE. But, they were. And the joy they’ve brought to my LIFE many times since then is….well, just Divine.
Linda Moon - October 4, 2021 8:24 pm
P.S. And they eventually led me to my father’s resting place that I had not visited since his death more than 50 years ago. God was there with me, too. Thanks Be to the Dietrichs.
Ruth - October 4, 2021 8:32 pm
I, too, have an angel story Sean. At the age of 71, having never been in the hospital, except for having a baby, in three months time I had a DVT, both lungs 80% full of pulmonary embolisms,then uterine cancer. I was sitting on a gurney waiting for an epidural for a hysterectomy, worried sick. I had read that after having blood clots, an epidural could kill you by giving you another fatal clot. I asked God to give me a sign that I would be okay. Almost immediately a male nurse walked through the curtain and said, “You are going to be all right. Do you know how I know?” When I said no, he said “Because when I came through the curtain, I could see God on your face”. He walked to me and said ” For the 5 minutes it takes to get the epidural I want you to lean into my chest. I will hold you tight and I don’t want you to move. I leaned into him and for about 5 min. he held me and talked soothenly to me. He told me that he was retired military and that he had been nursing his whole career. We talked small talk and before I knew it the epidural was over. My cancer was 1A and I did not have to have chemo or radiation. God is so good. Oh, as the nurse walked through the next curtain, I heard him tell the next patient that he was there for her epidural. He said nothing like he had said to me. I really felt like God had sent an angel to relieve my fears.
Pat - October 5, 2021 5:40 pm
Please Sean, do tell more angel stories. We need them, especially in these times. We need to get our minds off of all the bad things happening and turn our attention to GOD and his angels he sends to us
Bill - October 4, 2021 10:04 pm
It’s a shame that in today’s day and age we always seem to hear about the bad things. You highlight the good. Thanks for that.
MAM - October 4, 2021 10:17 pm
I agree with Bill. We keep reading you because you highlight the good things in our world. Thank you, Sean of the South! We appreciate you!
Bill Harris - October 5, 2021 12:14 am
Thank you Sean. The Bible tells us that God sends His angels to watch over us. I believe it.
Lynda Gayle Knight - October 5, 2021 3:22 pm
We can never read enough angel story! Loved each and every story. I certainly believe in angels and in a God who blessed us with his messengers ❣️