The Angel in my bathroom...

by Layla Beth
(San Antonio, TX)

As a little girl, I VERY much believed in the concept of Guardian Angels. I never remember being told about them, I just always knew they were there.

As I have grown, and gone down many spiritual paths, I have never stopped believing in them, but let's just say that my relationship with them, like my relationships with most aspects of religion, has grown more and more distant.

Don't get me wrong--I love hearing those stories of supernatural occurrences in which the "savior" of the story just HAD to be some kind of miraculous, unearthly being. Yet, I had never had my own experience with one.

Until the other day...

Without going into detail, I will simply start off by saying that some "strange" and oft times uncomfortable things have happened to me and in my household over the last few weeks. It seemed like my husband, Bret, and daughter Chevelle and I had been on such a fabulous groove there for a while. I even received a nice note in my FaceBook inbox from a second cousin who commented on how good my family and I seemed to be doing.

(This meant a lot to me, as I don't regularly communicate with much of my family. This second cousin, whom I don't really know all that well, was one of the few who has kept in touch with me. It was nice he noticed that things were going great for me and my family.)

To get back to my point, however, things were going stellar, and then started to fall apart real quick-like.

Most people will never know this as Bret & I are pretty good at keeping negative things to ourselves. Heck, no one even knew he was on death's doorstep last year with liver failure until I wrote a FaceBook note about it. And that was after he'd been given just days to live. Of course, even in the face of that would-be tragedy, neither of us could remain serious. We literally laugh about everything. It's just our way.

Sadly, as things started becoming tense in our home, the laughter, although still there on occasion, and mostly online, started dwindling.

For many reasons that I need not divulge at present, the happiness was rapidly leaving my home...

...so, one night, I did what other weak minds would do. I poured a few too many drinks and decided that eating dinner was too much of a bother. I kept slamming cocktails until I was headed to the bathroom and praying to the one God that I still consistently bow down in front of: The Porcelain One.

I was sick-as-a-dog, and camped out for a few hours on the tiny bathroom floor until I started feeling that making the fifteen foot trek to my bed was a doable event.

The next morning, after full-blown hangover mode had set in, I asked Bret who the guy that had visited while we were still in the kitchen was.

He looked at me funny and said, "Um, no one, Sweetie."

"No, there was someone here." I insisted. "Here in the kitchen, and then again in the..." I realized that I was about to say 'bathroom,' and quickly realized how ridiculous that was--some strange guy in my tiny little bathroom with me, while I wretched like the prom queen after too many wine coolers.

Not realistic at all, folks.

This made me start wondering just who this "guy" was. I don't think he was a drunken hallucination, because I saw him several times. And all he did was stand there, over me, watching, in an almost protective manner.

He was like a smaller in stature, more angular version of Bret. Short hair like him, but with the chiseled features of something otherworldly. He wore all black, and just watched me...he seemed aware that I knew he was there.

As these last few weeks have passed, and I have struggled to help the happiness find it's way back into my home, I have not forgotten how real his presence felt. I honestly thought there was another person there with Bret & myself that fabled evening.

Of course, I haven't tied one on like that since, either, and don't intend to. But if nothing else, I am both intrigued--and thankful--that an otherwise yucky experience introduced me to this strange, yet comforting presence.