When I was a little girl my mother told me stories of angels. Pets and people we loved who had gone to heaven becoming stars shining down, lighting our way. Tinkling bells signaled an angel receiving their wings. There was something soft and comforting about these tales. As a child, they gently protected me from the harsh reality of loss I would eventually come to experience as an adult.
After my mother’s death, I threw aside those fairy tale notions and chose to disconnect spiritually. I could not understand a God that would take a mother from her children. I was not comforted by thoughts and dreams of my mother being an angel watching down from above. Instead, I was visited my nightmares of her buried alone in the dark, deep in the ground.
Almost a decade later, angels came back into my life. Feeling drained and in need of some self-care, I decided to try reflexology. I chose Oma out of a phone book, because her name was Oma, meaning “grandmother” in German. When I walked into her center, a bell on the door tinkled. I gazed around the soft purple room. There were angels everywhere. Peeking out from bookshelves, framed in pictures on the wall and woven into chair cushions.
As Oma removed my feet from her fragrant foot bath that first session and patted them down, she looked up and exclaimed, “You have angel feet. These are the most perfect feet I’ve ever seen.” My appointments with her became not only about physical well being but a journey of spiritual recovery. I couldn’t know at the time what a blessing it was to meet her.
Years later, I used many of her special touches to give healing reflexology sessions to Gary. She had also taught me the value of self-care so I knew to invest some of our resources in acupuncture, chiropractic care and a trip to Glendale every so often to see my own angel, Oma. In her presence, I could breathe deeply and let go…and feel surrounded by love and angels.
Check in here to read how I earned my own angel wings…and don’t miss Wednesday’s blog, Wings of Compassion & Caring to find out ~ who is Jonny Imerman and why is he an angel?