There aren't always wings

On pimple-faced college boys and blinking signs

There aren’t always wings, you know.

No bright lights or corkscrews of blonde hair.

Some angels look like pimple-faced college boys, gently shaking you awake from your passed out slumber on their sticky couch. They whisper, “You shouldn’t fall asleep at random people’s houses,” and you are annoyed they have the audacity to tell you what to do.

You stuff a cigarette into the corner of your mouth and nod wordlessly. You don’t thank them, but angels don’t need thanks.

Image by Andreas from Pixabay

Others are more clear. They bear the title of healer and you can sense their divine aura. But even then…even believing they are connected, even having sought them out for this purpose…you doubt. They share a message that conflicts with your current reality and you think, “What a crock of shit.”

There are people who come into your life for a blip of time–days, months, sometimes hours. People who speak a single word or sentence that changes the entire trajectory of your life These are angels.

There are people you’ve known since birth. People you spend every day with, whose faces you have memorized; who always seem to be there right at the exact moment you need saving. Of course, you don’t think of it as that at the time. It’s just a yoga class or an AA meeting. But upon reviewing your life, you see very clearly, this was not by chance.

Angels can come with four legs. Their eyes boring into us with sadness as we lean over the toilet bowl yet again. As we chug from yet another can. They nuzzle their snout into our side and allow us to hold them when we are lonely and lost. They are anchors in the sea of loneliness and despair. Living embodiments of unconditional love.

The messages are more obvious than we think.

We demand God to be louder. We pound our fists on the bathroom counter, tears rolling down our cheeks, “Give me a clear sign, damnit!”

But is it the sign that needs to be clearer? Or the lens through which we take in that information.

We hunt for a blinking billboard or a bright light shining down from heaven. What if the message has been whispered on the lips of another human being? Someone fallible and mortal just like us.

There are angels everywhere. It’s up to us to learn how to recognize them when they arrive.