An Angel Saved My Life: And Other True Stories of the Afterlife

If you go looking for psychic experiences, they just seem to happen! Welcome to my world.

CHAPTER 3 Spiritual Growth (#ulink_f48328d3-9a85-58f3-8927-65e305f6c5d3)

We cannot pass our guardian angel’s bounds, resigned or sullen, he will hear our sighs.

Saint Augustine

The previous chapter was a journey through into my spiritual and psychic adventures. I feel that it was necessary in order for me to appreciate and validate the experiences of others. To assist others with their own angel and paranormal adventures I needed to have visited these inner realms myself. To understand my journey was another thing altogether.

The full-time angel investigation was beginning. Are angels a spark of the great divine energy we call ‘God’? I wanted to know everything. Quantum physics teaches us that there is no separation between an object and the person that observes it. We and our own consciousness totally affect that which we observe, and I totally wanted to affect my own observations.

I began spending even more time on the internet. It was the fount of all knowledge as far as I could see, and I realized it was time to create my own website. I wanted to encourage people to write to me about their own angel experiences so I had to try and get my non-technical mind around how to build a website.

John was by now taking a mild interest and supplied all of the technical knowledge except the creative part, which was up to me. I built my first ever website and I was very proud of it. It was cringingly embarrassing and rubbish but I didn’t realize how bad it was at the time…it didn’t matter. I started inviting people with angel websites of their own to visit mine and before long, I was getting hundreds of e-mails every month.

To start with, people were sharing mainly their own angel stories – we were all looking for some reassurance. Then later, when people started to ask me questions about their own angel experiences, I was able to help. I’d read so many books by this time and of course I’d had so many paranormal experiences.

‘This is the first time I have told anyone about my angel experience,’ they would say, or ‘I told someone about my experience once and they didn’t believe me.’ I believed them. I’d been there and done that. I was the ‘queen of weird’ myself.

There had to be a book out there which explained things in a down-to-earth way. I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I decided to write my own book about angels and I honestly thought that it would be that easy. Everyone gave me permission to share their stories and was happy to talk about how they now worked with their own angels. I wanted to put real people’s stories into a book. Some people had been through amazing things and other people’s stories, although more subtle, were still fascinating.

We were ready to move house. We decided to downsize and sell off many of the inherited furniture we had around us. It was time to clear our clutter and our relationship. Throwing away hundreds of magazines, wardrobes full of old clothes and duplicates of every single kitchen tool was a very therapeutic thing to do.

We filled up one of our downstairs rooms with everything which was too good to throw away. This room had previously been my meditating room and it was now so full you couldn’t move in there. A local women’s refuge group came with a massive van and took the haul away, including a three-piece suite, armchairs, tables, an old hifi, lamps, bedding and curtains.

Clearing the space in our home had a dramatic affect on my depression which still lingered around at this time. Although I was already a lot better, clearing the house made the biggest difference of all. It was now easy to move house – we had whittled down our possessions to half of what we had owned previously so we literally bought a house which was half the size. Throwing and giving things away was amazing. ‘Things’ have a way of weighing you down.

Moving to our new house created an amazing wave of creative energy. The new place had large, bright windows. Light flooded into the south-facing living room and I began to write. By this time I had hundreds of spiritual books, had experienced so many weird and wonderful things and heard so many fantastic stories. I did feel I was able to help because I could recommend which chapter of which book had similar stories or which book had advice for any particular problem. I could put people with similar stories in touch with each other and was beginning to see patterns between psychic and angel experiences.

My website letters were fast becoming a kind of ‘agony aunt’ column. I wanted to do something with these letters, whilst I was collecting material for my book. For six months I oversaw the decorators and the carpet fitter and the landscape gardeners. I got away with being at home for six months before John asked me when I was getting a proper job. It was so important for me to write this angel book but I knew it was going to take a lot longer than I had originally thought. Writing the book was my new work.

It was whilst I was struggling for a way to continue doing what I felt I was destined to do that I came up with the idea of writing for magazines. Again, with perhaps a touch of naivety I decided to become a freelance article and feature writer. I paid a visit to my local newsagents and picked up a handful of magazines. Again I felt I was being guided and brought the magazines home, full of confidence. I poured myself a drink and plucked up the courage to start ringing editors. ‘Hello, my name is Jacky Newcomb and I am a freelance writer…’ I began. Sometimes not knowing that it is possible to fail is a gift in itself.

The first article quickly followed and others came shortly afterwards. It gave me the experience I needed to earn whilst I learnt, and I had the opportunity to read and study paranormal books for a living. Bliss! It was a massive breakthrough. This is what I should have been doing all of my life. I suddenly understood why I had spent years in a state of depression. With young children, a lot of what you do is a compromise, but now that the girls were older I was able to do more of the things which pleased me. Every day I would e-mail or ring magazines and suggest articles. As soon as an idea was accepted I began the research. I loved reading books about things I was interested in and it was all in the cause of earning money to help the family budget. I continued to collect angel stories and file them away.

I was still getting stacks of e-mails through my website every month and spent many hours answering them. Sometimes I would spend an hour or more answering just one question. There had to be a better way and I wondered if any magazine would take a regular column from me? After posting out months of queries and ‘mock up’ columns, I finally got my first column, ‘Dear Angel Lady’, in It’s Fate magazine.

After quite a while I had written several articles in magazines, newspapers and e-zines (internet magazines) all over the world including, one in my local newspaper, but my biggest postbag, for sure, came from my regular magazine column. I began writing for more mainstream magazines as well as holistic, spiritual and paranormal ones. I often sat down at the keyboard to type and words would just flow from nowhere. Was it from nowhere or was it from my own guardian angels?

I enjoyed reading other people’s work on angels and the afterlife and really anything which related to my own experiences. In my column and articles I had the opportunity to promote some of these books which I had enjoyed. I had always spent a lot of money on books but suddenly publishers were sending me books for free. It really helped financially. These items were necessary for research but I would have bought them anyway.

I was walking around the local garden centre one day when I received a telephone call on my mobile phone. It was a publisher asking me if I would be interested in writing a gift book on angels. What an honour! I could barely hear her on the phone. The reception was so poor and Christmas carols were playing in the background. As the telephone rang I was looking at some cherubs on the display – the ‘coincidence’ hadn’t gone unnoticed! The ‘gift book’ eventually turned into my very large book, An Angel Treasury, and even after I had finally finished writing it I had to wait many months for it to reach the shelves.

I lived on a fever pitch of excitement and could hardly believe that this ‘baby’ was mine. I’d finally done it – the book was complete and I’d like to say that it was the easiest thing I had ever done, but of course it wasn’t. The research in its entirety had taken me around seven years to pull together. I had achieved my dream and created the angel book I had always wanted to buy. But the book was so much more than sharing angel stories and suggesting ways that people could work with their own angels; it was a partner to my own spiritual growth. The book and the stories which came with them travelled hand in hand with my own story. It was the catalyst by which I opened up my own spiritual eyes. Life is not a destination, it’s a journey and my journey had involved many unusual things along the way. Nothing is ordinary. Every aspect of our lives is learning. Each and every experience is growth.

The book’s publication was just the beginning of the journey. For the briefest time after I had finished the book I felt that I had written everything there was to know about angels. What I had written was in fact everything I had discovered so far, but as time went on I realized there was so much more to come! More angel stories poured in from all over the world. Amazing, life-changing and life-saving stories, which needed to be shared.

What is an angel? The answer was different to each person and I felt the need to distribute this information by way of providing the opportunity to read. Being moved by other people’s amazing true-life experiences in the way that I had, and sharing those experiences, was part of my destiny.

Hundreds of articles and features in magazines have taken the word into normal homes with normal people. But a second and now a third book were requested. Every day I realize with thanks that I am doing what I love.

When you are ready, read on and be moved, as I was, by the thrilling thing called the afterlife, where angels and our guardian loved ones on the ‘other side’ watch over us with rapt attention. Love is a greater thing than we experience here in our every day world. We live and feel such a small part of the greater love that is part of the divine architect.

Looking back on that night at my mother’s house I remember that feeling of being wrapped in the arms of our loving creator, and it helps me to understand that we are never totally alone. Our guardian angels are with us always, and never more than now have they made themselves known to us.

Part 2 (#ulink_64ca8f2a-c1e4-5955-98da-c909fc2bc279)

CHAPTER 4 An Angel Saved My Life (#ulink_df9a12bd-46a6-5c03-a507-79ef53fcaa27)

Every visible thing in this world is put in the charge of an angel.

Saint Augustine

Amazing angel stories are being shared all over the world, right now. Our guardians and loved ones on the other-side are sending their love to us every day, and more and more folk are having divine intervention in their lives on a day-to-day basis.

Many people believe that these experiences are ‘stepping up’ now because the angels are beginning to draw close to us, ready for massive spiritual changes in the world population. There is no doubt that the little pockets of people who are spiritually aware are growing at a massive rate. Even though wars still rage all over the world, there are people who bring hope to these negative spaces.

A single torch in a dark space brings light and hope. Imagine the effect of two torches, or four? Angels are beginning to appear in many people’s lives. People who at one time had no belief or interest in these miraculous celestial beings are now beginning to open their hearts to them. Angels bring their messages of hope and affection, spreading the word as they go. Each astounding angel encounter now spreads around the world like ripples on a pond.

Some of these fascinating stories are about our loved ones and angels helping us with simple tasks; sometimes the ‘angel’ appears to be human, and at other times these stories are extraordinary and even life saving. Most mesmerizing is when an angel experience happens and you are left wondering, ‘What was that?’ Sometimes if we are lucky, the ‘angels’ will leave a little symbol or calling card behind. A white feather is a common sign, but sometimes the sign might be a flower, a coin or even a little angel lapel pin!

Angels let us know they are around in a thousand subtle and not so subtle ways. An angel is a majestic being sent from God for our protection and guidance. Angels are pure love and guardians of humankind. Angels don’t have their own free will in the way that humans do, and their role is God’s bidding. This they do with great devotion.

But we sometimes call humans ‘angels’ too. When someone has ‘been there’ for us during our time of need, we say, ‘Thank you, you are an angel.’ Yet still a few people feel that angels are part of the paranormal or the occult (which simply means ‘the unknown’), which in a way they are but really this is because we know so little about them…at the moment. Do not be afraid of this wave of heavenly love! Embrace it!

Angels can perform miraculous life-saving feats as well as bring us comfort and great joy. But angels come in a variety of disguises. Sometimes people write and ask me, ‘Can my grandma be my angel?’ We will see in a later chapter that although our loved ones in the afterlife are not actually guardian angels they can be there for us in a comforting and supportive role and CAN even save our life on occasion! So they can certainly act as guardians even if they are not actually angels in the traditional sense of the word.

I wanted to explore ‘angels’ in every sense, including traditional angel experiences, our loved ones in the afterlife, our animals on the other side and even real-life human angels on this side of life. Life, and indeed the afterlife, is full of astonishing and uplifting experiences.

Let’s begin our journey with Olivia’s story.

Angels Saved a Drowning Man

One summer when I was just fifteen years old, my youth group went to a church camp in Arkansas. On one particularly hot day, our leaders decided to take us to a nearby river to cool off. The first part of the river was very calm and placid, in fact it actually resembled more of a lake, and we spent several hours swimming around. As the afternoon wore on, we discovered that further on down the river was a small waterfall and a deeper area to swim in. It was beautiful and we decided to move down to this area to swim around.

Although the water did not appear to be deep at all, the youngest of our leaders, a twenty-five-year-old man, decided to jump in and see how deep it was. He was a certified diver and we didn’t question his swimming ability at all. My best friend and I sat down beside another of our leaders to watch the others and to top up our suntans.