Angel At The Prison Door

Janice Chang

“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.” Rumi 

It was crunch-time and stomachs were churning.  The lunch-delivery menu options were offered to the three staffers and two consultants.  One of these new consultant-colleagues, KK, selected the “oxtail and beans” – my all-time favorite meal. Like a beam of light from another realm, I knew then and there that he was “good people.” We became instant friends.

“What draws friends together does not conform to laws of nature...
A hand shifts our birdcages around.
Some are brought closer. Some move apart." Rumi

At that time, my marriage was disintegrating in spectacular blow-out fashion. Concurrently, my spiritual life was burgeoning upward from the “low-level spirituality” to which I had accustomed myself. There was an almost unquenchable thirst for God.  

Image: whirlingdervishes.org

KK gave me a book of Rumi poems, the Sufi mystic poet and I were entranced.  Rumi’s poems gave voice to my new spirituality, my new thirst and my new feelings about God, despite the fact that my path was Christian and Rumi’s was Islamic.  “Lovers” is what Rumi called those who have these life-enhancing yearnings for spiritual matters. 

Work was increasingly stress-filled and negative.  I prayed for insight into why I was in that place. The Inner Voice answered and stunned me: “For Judy” – my new (then) but now life-long friend.  

I was there for her. 

The reason only became apparent many years later as our friendship flourished.  It was delayed as tragedy struck. My father died suddenly.  I was devastated and had never before felt such emotional pain.  Facing our mortality with the death of a loved one, we recognize that life is too short to be unhappy. So I resigned from the job and the inexorable death of my marriage progressed.  

It was then I decided to leave my children in the care of their father upon our separation and relocated to another Caribbean island.  I was dying inside. I managed to hold it together on my new job, pushing myself through the days but my nights alone were hard.  Then my former colleague (my oxtail-loving friend, KK) took the lead and became my strength and sustenance when he told me that he “had my back."

Image: thisgirlcanhelpit.com

In many religions, angels are depicted as benevolent “celestial” beings who act as intermediaries between Heaven and Earth, or as guardian spirits or a guiding influence.  Other roles of angels include protecting and guiding human beings, and carrying out God's tasks.

How did he know to call at that particular moment when the tears were overwhelming me and my heart was breaking into pieces?  How would he know that his affirmations of my worth as a person meant so much to my battered self-esteem? How could his seemingly simple questions lead me to explore the deeper meaning of my situation?  Statements and questions like:

• "Don’t feel too bad about feeling bad – embrace your mood whatever it is” and “Use your journal as signposts to reflect what is going on in your soul."

• Don’t let anyone take your dreams away.  They may not unfold as envisioned, but when you stop dreaming, your soul begins to die and it’s a slow excruciating death”

• “If you feel separated from God, then who moved?”

Then almost a year later, I read an article by a Jewish Rabbi Marc Gellman, based on a Genesis 37:15 question “What are you seeking?” He interpreted the question as “what are you looking for in life," and showed how the man who asked that question and who re-directed Joseph had played a pivotal role in history.  

With that question, Joseph located his brothers, setting off a course of events that saw him being sold into slavery, later elevated to working for the king of Egypt and culminating in him saving the Israelites during the great famine.  If this “man” had not been there at that time, Joseph would not have found his brothers and would have returned home. The history would have been so different.

Rabbi Gellman concluded that this was not just a man but an “angel” who provided direction, a messenger who delivered a much-needed message and, when the job was done, the cameo appearance in a life ended. 

That was what my oxtail-loving friend KK was and is to me, “my angel," when direction was needed. KK’s presence in my life was not by chance. He guided me to my healing; he was at my prison door, he showed me the way to the pasture and my calling. It was now my turn to be there for someone else - "For Judy."

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along." Rumi

Have you met an angel, someone who directed you to a point in your destiny? When did you recognize who you had encountered? Did you exit your prison door? Share your story with us by posting a comment here or on our Facebook page. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Be blessed and remember to "show hospitality to strangers as you might be entertaining angels."

Janice Chang is a medical doctor and lives in Michigan with her husband.