Angels the Fifth: the Christmas House

In which our Lady Gratefully welcomes an Honored Guest into her Home

Last night I had the rare privilege of welcoming my Stake Relief Society President and the wife of our area authority—here for Stake Conference this weekend—into my home for a brief visit.  She is one of those genuinely lovely women who holds an incredible awareness of the good she can do.  She is filled with sunshine and the kind of good smells and hominess that accompany Thanksgiving and Christmas, but without the sense of lethargy that follows Thanksgiving dinner.  On the contrary, our home was alive with the lightning-quick thinking and comforting sharpness that accompanies the Holy Ghost. 

The call ran much like a Visiting Teaching appointment, they asking me to flesh out my recent experiences, with Sister S— sharing a message largely on gratitude.  If I were to sum the message up: The Lord has things in hand and is waiting to bless us, but we need to acknowledge His hand first to allow those blessings to come.  Yes.  I’d already been thinking about this concept a little, and enjoyed getting her very wise take on it. 

It felt good in my home last night.  Of course we’d cleaned the place well, but it was much more than that.  My mind felt sharp—smarter than usual these tired days.  I felt at peace and there was an expansive sense of being loved.  The Spirit was present.  There was great peace pervading every corner of my house.  It swept around Eva’s toy corner, played lightly around the kitchen sink, hid underneath my couch, and even arched into the vaulted ceilings.  For a long time I’ve wanted what I will call “a Christmas house.” This is the place we all imagine spending Christmas Eve—surrounded by good food, tantalizing smells, warm colors, and your favorite people. 

At one point, this angelic woman paused and said there were angels present in our home.  It was a place they could dwell.  She should know.  I did not expect to write an Angels the V, but there it is.  Perhaps they wanted to be a part of the discussion.  Personally, I dislike watching a good conversation without being allowed to put in my own two cents worth of participation.  I wonder if they ever feel the same.  It has been a long time coming, but I hope my home has finally reached the ‘my-home-is-like-a-temple’ status, which I now realize matches my idea of the “Christmas House.”    
 

Angels the Fourth

In which the Air is Thick with Angels.

Did I say earlier that my opiates produced no visions?  “The air is thick with angels,” I said to my husband and (I think) to a few visiting friends as I lay in my hospital bed.  I don’t know.  I was still pretty out of it and I bet they thought I was partially insane.  But I do distinctly remember a certain thickness in the air, as if I could pass my arm to the side of my bed and hit something unexpected.  (Think of Kershisnik image from earlier angel post). After the other angel incidents, I can honestly say that I believe it to be more than opium.  (Although I do admit that it is like opiates in that often with the angels I would close my eyes and then that’s when I could see them).  You just can’t see these things with your waking eyes, but with the spiritual. 

When I closed my physical eyes I could see or sense people I knew drawing close around me.  And not just my forebears, but Jon’s as well.  I am certain that both his Grandpa Melvin’s were there.  I know this because Jon and I had been reading through family history stories for family home evening this summer and these angelic people seemed familiar to me.  There were both men and women, and as I said, the air was THICK with angelic presence, hoping to see me regain my physical and emotional strength.  Looking back, I feel as though the very powers of heaven were clustered around me just to give me support and to watch over Jon and me in our extremity, even as we slept.  It occurs to me that this very same thing happened with my support and friends here in the Stake.  Angels, all of them.  (Also my family and friends not here in Alaska—but you are far away, so you can’t “cluster” around me en masse). 

I should mention that the angelic visits were before I had made my peace with this whole brain tumor and cancer thing.  I was not yet resolved to the Lord’s will on this.  Indeed, as yet I had little idea of how this thing was about to spiral out of control.  I assure you that I already had no grip on the situation.  But it was comforting to have them there looking out for me.  I wish I understood more what exactly my angels could do for a sick girl stuck in bed.  Do they whisper certain necessary hymns inside your ears?  Do they catch you when your physical therapist isn’t paying quite enough attention if you list to the left too quickly?  Do they get out the pom-poms and cheer?  Do they pray?  I don’t know as much as I’d like to about who these people are or what they can do.

However in all my angel experiences, I am reminded of, and will heavily paraphrase, that pioneer story from the Martin Hancock Company and the testimony of a man as he said that he would never regret being on that journey.  He declared gladness and willingness to do it all over again.  He would fix his eyes on a certain point on the road ahead and think, “If I can just pull my cart to that spot, then I will be done and can go no further—but then when he got there he felt the cart pushing him along.   Let me be clear, I am not a glutton for punishment.  I have no desire to go through my trials again.  But I know what he’s saying about the extra help. 

Angels the Third

 In which Our Heroine is Saved Again

This will be a short post as you already know about the Hatcher’s Pass blueberry incident (see posting one).  I hope you also remember Kirsten, savior du jour.  I was less coherent during the moment of seizure, etc…, but in the ER afterward Kirsten sat by me and tiredly told me what had happened.  As she did so, it became quite clear that several miraculous things had happened: that no injury had come to Eva, that she’d been able to get me out of the water at all, and that I’d even breathed again.  She treated it lightly and suggested that she’d had some help from angels “or something” because “I tell you what, Tara, there was no way I could have done all that without help.” As she said it, I knew it to be true.  I picture in my head a painting called Nativity by an LDS artist Brian Kershisnik that I saw at BYU. 

This is one of my favorite paintings.  Notice the hordes of angels surrounding the event (as well as a wonderfully realistic Holy Family).  Again, this image flew into my mind as Kirsten told these things in that hospital room.  And so ends the third incident of the angels. 

The Second Incident of the Angels in the Roadway

In which our Lady writes a letter, or is saved the Second Time

Dear Sister-in-law Cindy,

Thank you for your comments on the latest blog posting.  It is a good question.  Why was our car so miraculously saved the first time? To be blunt as well as corny, I think I needed the point “driven” home.  I didn’t get it well enough the first time.  And so, without further ado, here is the second incident of the angels in the roadway. 

Miraculously yours,

Tara

My birthday was one week after we had moved into our new home.  I’d had a busy last month cleaning, moving, and volunteering time for a Youth Conference, so Jon decided to surprise me with an Alaskan getaway birthday present.  We were to go camping on my birthday in a beautiful little town called Valdez.  It takes 5-6 hours to get to Valdez from Anchorage, traveling up into the interior a bit to get back down to the coast.  Alaska is huge, and I have yet to see much of it.  Getting out of Anchorage for a real road trip in a state without interstates to go see Valdez’s fjord-like valleys seemed like a wonderful birthday present.  Jon was miraculously granted leave from work.  Also, miraculous was the fact that at the last minute we decided to leave our bikes and bike trailer home because we had too much stuff.  When Dahle men camp, they camp in style, so we were naturally overburdened.  Thus, we did not destroy our expensive new investment in biking. 

Yes, I did indeed use the word destroy.  I have included pictures here, for the first time on my blog just to hammer the point in.  (Yay! Finally pictures, you’re all thinking).  You’ll see here the crushed-in roof as well as some shattered glass, battered wheels, bent axels, and pummeled body work if you look closely.  You’ll also notice for future reference the two poles arranged just wide enough for us to fit/flip through.

Some small ‘towns’ are really stopping places to fuel up or use the facilities.  This is the town of Glenn-Allen, the half-way point of our journey.  It was just 8 miles south of there that we hydroplaned in the midst of a freak rainstorm.  I recall Jon saying under his breath, “We can do this…” (slide, slide, fishtale, fishtale) “we can still pull out of this...” (crank, crank) “oh no, we’re not going to make it!”  We hit the edge of the pavement with a spine-shattering jolt and we were off like a rocket run out of fuel, bouncing from high spot to high point, sailing smoothly between two large poles.  We crunched downward and (I believe) onto the top back of the car into a low spot, and then began tumbling through the brush at a different angle.  Bottom, side, top, side—it was the most awful amusement park ride you’ve ever seen.  Only a few things, like my glasses, even moved out of their places, because as our car rolled twice, the whole thing acted like water in a bucket being swung carelessly around through the air.  We landed upright with another spine-shattering jerk. 

You’ve just heard the dry details, but from my end, here’s the really interesting stuff:  While still in Glenn-Allen, I felt the strangest sense of foreboding—enough that I remember hesitating before I grasped the door handle to get in the car.  I knew something was coming.  Nevertheless, I still felt completely shocked, “This is what you had in mind!? You’ve got to be kidding me.”  This last was said in my mind very quietly, and not necessarily directed straight, but zigzag-like to heaven.  However, right after we hit the edge of the road, I believe I screamed my first prayer ever.  It was a mental shout, “Father, please protect my family!!!” Somehow, shouting in prayer seems okay given the circumstances. 

I felt calmed immediately, and felt as though my car was being guided by the angels of heaven.  Even as we were flipping around through the air, rolling in the mud, I knew we would be fine because of my previous experience with angelic powers.  We were, and finally this time I began to get the hint that forgetting these kinds of experiences is not usually the best plan.  Eva was silent until her window shattered above her, then finally screamed, but she was in the end was safe.  In fact, her mosquito bites looked worse than the cuts.  Jon and I had whiplash.  That is all. It is miraculous that we came out of it so well, that we hurt no one else, and that we didn’t hit the two poles, but went right between them.  Actually, nothing but a baby backpack and the car was destroyed.  Just a note, this backpack was repaired and worn to Hatcher’s Pass sometime in August when I foolishly decided to go blueberry picking.  It is possible that the thing is cursed.   

P.S.  Cindy, another reason why wrecking our car the second time instead of the first was better for us was because we had better car insurance the second time.  The first company was preparing to pull out of the state soon, and I think they would have fought our claim.  It turned out that Geico (company 2) paid up and even paid a little extra.      

 

Angelic Drives and Faithbuilding Experiences

In which Our Heroine is saved, the first Time

I have previously discussed how there have been difficulties in finding a place to hang my faith at times during this latest episode of my life, especially nearer the beginning.  I had some questions and had to find ways to answer them.  You’ll remember my fourth blog post about finding out I would live.  Did I mention to you that there were two weeks of not knowing how to pray for the answer to my “Will I live?” question before I received an answer?  Somehow, I found that all that faith that was good enough for a normal day wasn’t quite good enough for the big stuff.  Two weeks is a short wrestle before God, but a sincerely difficult one.  However, I am grateful that I didn’t have to start from a zero point of faith—that would have been very difficult indeed.  And it would seem very ungrateful of me (to my Heavenly Father) if I didn’t offer to you, my readers, a few of the ways that He prepared me for the end of my world.

How did he do this?  Over the past year I have had at least two experiences with angelic ministrations.  Angels among us?  Yes.  I have not mentioned them before because it is difficult to toss something so sacred and personal out onto the loud-mouth internet.  But after watching Conference yesterday, I realized that the general authorities talk about sacred stuff all the time to the world, and leave it up to the Holy Ghost to do the rest.  So, I offer to you my first tale of angelic ministration. 

It was a year ago, a winter day.  I was driving to Target and hit a patch of very black ice—invisible enough that later I actually questioned all of this.  Some of you Alaskans will know the roundabout at Minnesota and C-Street.  There will be many others of you that have driven on northern icy roads, and will know that when you hit ice and need to turn your car, the darned thing will just keep sliding in a straight trajectory toward destruction.  Turning your wheel, even in moderate amounts, will get you nowhere.  Either that, or to the wrong place quick.  There I was, going too fast and not able to get my car into that nice curve that roundabouts require.  I was quite sure I was going to crash our recently purchased car—a car that represented long hours of work and savings for our family. 

Upon this last thought, the terror hit me.  We could not suffer the loss of this car! (Well, we’ll see about that certitude in a later angel blog post.) Anyway, terrified, I opened my mouth and uttered “Heavenly Father, please help me!”  At that exact moment, my car began to turn.  It did not slow, but was on that perfect curvature. At this point my mind seemed fractured between terror and astonishment.  I experienced a second kind of fracturing here as well: I wondered just what was going on with my car, and the answer came through the Holy Ghost.  It was if I had another set of eyes (spiritual eyes) looking down on my situation from above and then again looking to the left out of my window.  It was like I was seeing three things at once (Picasso style): my current physical view along with the double spiritual vision.  I saw my red Subaru legacy had a tall broad-shouldered man just there on the left, pushing the car to make the turn for me.  I don’t remember seeing details exactly, but I had the impression he looked like one of my brothers, Bryce, and that his name was Hyrum Scott, who is an ancestor of mine.  I made it to C-Street, turned to the right, and went shopping as if my day was a perfectly ordinary day.  In the next few weeks, I thought a lot about the protection that temple covenants can offer to us and how our families really are linked for eternity.