If you search for “angel” in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, you’re met with a 21-word definition. Below that, a separate explanation for “guardian angel” is given. In its simplest form, and as told by the Bible, an angel is synonymous with a messenger. While there will always be those who follow the adage, “seeing is believing”” most will agree that not everything in our world is visible to the naked eye.
That’s something Karen Maher of Four Seasons, a retired paraprofessional at School of the Osage, knows all too well. Over 30 years ago, the then-21-year-old had an encounter she still has trouble interpreting. “I mean, I believe in guardian angels now,” Maher said. “I didn’t used to.”
It was a Saturday, and at 23 weeks pregnant with their first child, Karen and her husband Tim were ecstatic to feel their baby kick for the first time. Aside from this milestone, the pair had a relatively normal day. It’s the middle of the night that she remembers most vividly. She opened her eyes in bed, and the room was glowing — the source of the light was nowhere to be found. In the middle of the paddle fan was a translucent cylinder the size of a coffee can bearing a cross, unscathed by the running blades.
“I just laid there and watched it, thinking to myself all in a quick second, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that and why aren’t you scared?” Maher said. At that moment, she looked over to find her husband staring up at the ceiling as well. She asked him what he saw, and he described the same thing in detail. As he reached for the apparition, it shot out of the room and down the hallway before disappearing. The next day, the Mahers rehashed the night before, both confused by what they witnessed and unsure why feelings of fear hadn’t followed.
“We just felt like it must be trying to tell us something, but we didn’t know what it was,” Maher said.
About a month later, and again on a Saturday, Maher went into premature labor. Her son Nick lived for nine days. At the time of his funeral, the Mahers thought back to their experience weeks earlier, for his coffin reminded them of what they had seen that night. Despite the grief that comes with an immeasurable loss, Maher maintains that the middle of the night experience was a gift, only taking peace and closure from the unexplainable.
If you were to talk about angels and how they’re most frequently depicted, you’d likely detail a feminine creature with flushed cheeks and larger-than-life wings and crowned with a shiny halo. In reality, it’s said that angels take many forms.
Maher’s story shares some remarkable similarities to what you’ll read in Ezekiel 1:15-17 NKJV. In part, “The appearance of the wheels and their workings was like the color of beryl, and all four had the same likeness. The appearance of their workings was, as it were, a wheel in the middle of a wheel.”
Scripture often speaks of signs, which are additional examples of messengers at work, though sometimes more challenging to pinpoint. This is the case for Lake area resident Airee Curran, formerly an educator at School of the Osage High School, who knows these signs best as what she calls “Godwinks.
“A few weeks after her son Zach’s death in 2017, friends had come to the Currar’s home to check in on the family. As the parents talked near the garage, one of the children spotted a toy tub and picked up a football inside it. Everyone thought the discovery was the cause for his excitement, but it was instead the spicebush swallowtail butterfly that had landed on the tip of his finger.
Though their meaning varies slightly from culture to culture, “citizen scientists” Patty Bigner and Fred Miller of Gardens with Wings share that generally, black and blue butterflies are associated with “transformation, change, and new beginnings.” According to the duo, they may also “be seen as messengers from the spirit world.”
“The blue butterfly is kind of my thing,” Curran said. “Zach is blue. Everything is blue with Zach. This “Godwink” was only the beginning of others to come. Curran and her husband Paul were on a vacation in Arkansas with friends. They decided to take a couple of days to themselves at a random spot along the Buffalo National River, which happened to coincide with the anniversary date of their son’s death. They spent the day by the sandbar, only to later spot another butterfly.
“It was the bluestone I’d ever seen; I was just mesmerized by it,” Curran said. “I would walk pretty close to it, and then it would fly away about ten feet, land, and I’d walk up to it.” This routine continued until the butterfly rounded a corner and settled in a patch of sand where someone had written, “HELLO.”
Butterflies aside, Curran notes music as another symbolic instrument. “I don’t just hear music — I hear music,” she said. “I’m listening to lyrics all of the time.”
Just a month after attending her father’s funeral, another family death, Curran’s sister Beth lost her cancer battle. As she turned on the car following the service, she heard familiar piano tunes, then the first lines of the ballad by Kiss: “Beth, I hear you calling.”
Most recently, Curran was traveling back to Omaha to spend time with family. In fact, she was making the same drive when she got the call about her son at MM 17 seven years prior. As she passed the stretch of roadway, she looked at her radio. The screen read, “Let Me Go” by Heaven 17.
As Train’s song “Calling All Angels” suggests, maybe we don’t need to call to angels. They could already be sending us signs and letting us know they’re here. The coincidences of specific messages and the movement of our lives may not always be directed by our will. If you follow Hebrews 13:2 NKJV, for instance, you might even pay closer attention to the individuals who are placed on your life course.
“Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so some have unwittingly entertained angels.”
Ultimately, we all need support at varying times in our lives, and that support doesn’t always look the same. It might arrive on the wings of a butterfly, the timely words of a well-placed song, or even a chance encounter with someone whose path crossed yours. Whatever it might be for you, it seems for many that angels truly are among us.