Angels in My Hair

by Lorna Byrne

  Later the children and I caught a bus back to the cottage in Maynooth. As I was washing up in the kitchen I was keeping half an eye on Christopher – who was playing with toys on the dining room floor while Owen was sleeping on a blanket. I was thinking about us being invited to this prayer group in Dublin as a family. At that moment the kitchen door gave a little creak and opened. Instantly I knew it was Angel Michael.

  Angels do not usually intervene with something material that is happening in our world, but for some reason they frequently do with me – often in small ways, such as Michael helps me to lift things and Hosus blows on the washing. I have also heard stories about times when angels are allowed to intervene physically in exceptional circumstances. One woman who came to me described how she couldn't get a key to turn in a locked door, as she tried to help her elderly mother who was inside. This went on for some time and she was desperate. She prayed to God and asked her angels for help and, suddenly, the locked door opened without her touching it. This is what we call a miracle: we have no explanation for it, but we know we couldn't have done it ourselves. This is rare, but it is happening more frequently as people are evolving spiritually and are reaching out to the angels.

  'Is that you, Michael?' I called, without turning around from the sink. As he entered the kitchen he touched my shoulder.

  'Lorna, you called me!' Angel Michael said.

  'I didn't realise I had, Michael,' I replied.

  'Lorna, you have not realised yet,' he said, 'but for a long time now you have not needed to call us by name when you want us. All of God's angels are with you all of the time.'

  'How did you know then, Angel Michael, that it was you I wanted to talk to?' I asked.

  'Lorna, your human mind and soul are connected,' Michael explained. 'Your soul knows, ahead of your consciousness, that the human side of you needed to talk to me.'

  I laughed at the idea of my soul knowing ahead of me and Christopher called out, 'Mummy, what are you laughing at?' As he got up and walked into the kitchen, Christopher put his hand over his eyes and said, 'Mummy, where did that bright light come from?'

  I tickled him and didn't answer his question, then I sent him back to play with his little brother.

  'Michael,' I said, 'you know one of the things I love is going to the prayer group in Maynooth. I have met wonderful people there.'

  Angel Michael gave me a big smile and said, 'Tell me now what is really on your mind.'

  I took a deep breath and I told Michael about being in my mum's house in Leixlip and about the man leaving the house who had invited us as a family to this prayer group of born-again Christians in Dublin. 'You know, I always feel nervous about having to go somewhere new,' I said. Angel Michael started to laugh at me. He reached out and took my hand.

  'Lorna, you won't have to stand on your head or do anything like that,' he said. 'Don't worry.' We both laughed. Michael continued, 'Just remember, when you go to the prayer group in Maynooth you should pray and praise God. Do so the same way; just be free, Lorna, in your prayer and praise. There will be a lot of families there, so in this way it will be different. When the time comes, Lorna, you will go as a family to this prayer group with your parents, but it won't happen for quite some time.'

  As always, Michael was right. It was to be many years later that we all went together and, when it did happen, it was a turning point in my life which brought me much closer to my father.

  Christopher peeped in the kitchen door. 'I can see the light again, Mummy.'

  Angel Michael disappeared. I picked Christopher up and we played wheelbarrow for a little while.

  In the New Year, just as the angels had said, I became pregnant. Joe and I were very happy about the pregnancy, even though my heart was heavy as I knew that this little baby wasn't going to stay.

  When a woman becomes pregnant, the baby's soul already knows if its mother will miscarry: if it will be aborted, stillborn or deformed. Regardless of what happens, the baby's soul still loves its parents and will always be by their side – it will be there to help them through life. If you have ever lost a baby, never forget that that little baby's soul chose you to be its mother or father. It actually chose you before it was even conceived; that little soul loves you and was full of joy that you were able to conceive it.

  In the Bible you read sometimes that God already knew you before you were conceived: this is because we were already spiritual beings in Heaven, where we were all queuing up to leave Heaven and be born on earth.

  We have an awful lot of abortions in the world, but one must remember that even if a mother decides to have an abortion, that little soul already knows that its mother may do this and, even knowing this, has already chosen this woman to be its mother – even if that means that they are only conceived and never actually born. The little soul has chosen that mother and will love her no matter what. It is unconditional love. I would like every mother to remember this, particularly any woman who has had an abortion. Maybe a young girl had an abortion because she was afraid of life, of the world out there, or maybe she was scared of her parents or felt she had no one in whom to confide. Remember, that baby's soul loves you and never for one moment holds it against you that you did not give birth to it. It already knew what would happen and it will pour its love onto you.

  I remember, some years later when people started to come to me, a woman came to me to seek guidance. At one stage she said to me, 'I had a few miscarriages.'

  'Yes,' I said. 'The angels are telling me that.' At that moment, I remember turning and looking towards my kitchen door and there, sitting on the floor, were five little children, five little souls surrounded by light, and they were beautiful – beautiful souls and beautiful little children. They turned and smiled at their mother. She couldn't see them but I told her what I could see and she was filled with joy. I was able to tell her that some of them were boys and some were girls, and also what they looked like. That made her so happy. The little souls told me to let their mother know that they have always been around her and have always been with her.

  'You know, I've always felt in the past that they were around me,' the mother said to me. 'Sometimes I even thought I felt their little hands touching my leg. I can even feel them now, touching me.'

  I had to smile, because at that moment they were up around her chair and they were touching her.

  'Yes, they are,' I said with a smile, 'and you are blessed that you can feel the touch of your own little children who God has sent to visit you. Remember, when the time comes for you to pass over, those five little souls will have their hands stretched out to you to bring you to Heaven as well.'

  'Thank you,' the woman said, 'I never told anyone about the presence of my little babies around me, and I never told anyone that I felt them touch me. I was afraid to tell anyone. I was afraid that people would think I was mad.'

  One thing people must remember is that there are millions of people who are actually having spiritual experiences, but they are afraid to say it. There are plenty of people who believe that angels are there helping them, and who actually sometimes feel them, but often they say to themselves – maybe I didn't see them, maybe it was my imagination. It is wonderful to acknowledge them and to say, 'Yes, I do believe in angels. Yes, I do believe in God.' Many times we don't do this. Many times we only say these things when we are bereaved, very ill, or desperate in some ways. Only then do we turn to God and pray. We are often afraid to acknowledge God and his angels. As you grow, spiritually, you will find that you won't be afraid to acknowledge God, his angels or any spiritual being that has come from the heavens.

  During the first few months of my pregnancy, Joe did not look well either. He complained a lot with pains in his stomach and the doctors sent him to the hospital for tests. They said it was a rumbling appendix, but that he was not sick enough to operate and so he was sent home with medicine. Joe continued to be in a lot of pain and, unable to keep food down, he lost a lot of weight that he couldn't afford to lose.
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  I could see the deterioration in Joe: the grey around his internal organs that I had seen before we married had got darker, and around the area of his appendix I could see a swollen mass of red.

  I gave out to the angels; I told them it was so unfair to see Joe suffering like that for months and months on end. I begged them to help. The doctor said he could do nothing; he apologised to Joe but said that the hospital wouldn't remove his appendix unless he was critically ill.

  I miscarried at three months. For about a week before my little unborn baby left, the angels kept touching my belly and beams of light would flash straight out. Many times I asked, 'Can my little baby not stay?' But I was always told, no. Sometimes Joe asked me why was I sad and I would tell him it was just the hormones and to take no notice of me. I never told him what the angels had said.

  No matter how sick Joe was he always tried to help around the house. On that fateful day, I had been helping Joe to stack turf in the shed and I told him that I wanted to go in and lie down on the couch, that I was tired. I fell asleep for a while and Joe came in and said the job was done – all the turf was in the shed. The children stayed outside playing. I was going to get up to make tea, but Joe said he would make it instead.

  Joe was only in the kitchen a minute when I started to feel horrific pain; I could feel the life going out of my body. I called out to Joe urgently. He came immediately and sat beside me on the couch and said I looked very pale. He went into the bedroom to get a pillow to put under my head.

  I felt my soul holding my baby's soul and rising out of my body, going towards a beautiful light. I knew my baby had died and that I was dying too.

  I was rising towards the light, carrying my baby. The pain had gone. I was travelling through a tunnel of silver and gold: an enormous tunnel made of shiny white angels. I couldn't see the end of the tunnel as its path curved. I knew without being told that I was on my way to Heaven, and I felt no fear, just tremendous joy.

  I could see other souls on their way to Heaven, too. They looked human in appearance and were dressed in brilliant white robes. I call the colour white because I don't have any other word, but it was much more brilliant than the colour we call white. Through their robes, I could also see the light of their souls, and this radiated up through their faces, making them look more pure and radiant than they ever had been on this earth.

  When I got to a particular point, a beautiful angel stood in front of me and stopped me from going further. I knew without being told why she was blocking my way, but she spoke to me in the sweetest, gentlest and most compassionate of voices.

  'Lorna, you should not have come with your baby. You must return.'

  'I don't want to go back,' I said to the beautiful angel, but deep down in my soul I knew it was not my time to come to Heaven.

  'Turn around, Lorna, and look back down the tunnel,' said the angel.

  I turned and I could see Joe holding on to my still body lying on the couch, trying to feel a pulse, a breath, shaking me, saying, 'Come back, come back – you can't die on me.' He was praying as he talked.

  I turned back to the angel and said, 'No matter how much I love Joe and the children, I still don't want to go back to the human world. Why would I go? Here I am in the presence of God. Here I am perfect in every way. I feel unbelievably alive; I feel no pain and no sadness of any kind.Why do I have to go?'

  'You have no choice,' said the beautiful angel. 'You have to return, Lorna.'

  I looked at the soul of my little baby in my arms. He smiled at me; his blue eyes sparkled and he was radiant with life. The beautiful angel in front of me put out her arms to take him.

  A powerful authority entered my soul. I knew I had no choice, that I had to go back, that I wasn't meant to be there.

  I kissed my baby, holding him very tight and then, very reluctantly, put him into the beautiful angel's arms. I really did not want to let him go, even though I knew that someday I would see him again and that in the meantime this beautiful snow-white angel would take care of him.

  As soon as I had handed over my baby, it was as if God took hold of my soul and brought it back gently through the tunnel, back to the house in Maynooth and to the couch where my body lay.

  My soul started to enter my body slowly, but the pain was horrific. I felt every pore, every organ, every bone, every bit of flesh and muscle. Life was being poured back into a body which had been dead for a few minutes. It was horrific pain but, for some reason I am unable to understand, I couldn't cry out; I couldn't make a sound.

  Eventually I heard Joe's voice.

  'Lorna, thank God you are alive. I thought you were dead.'

  I managed to give him a weak little smile.

  I lay there for hours, with the angels holding me, and I wouldn't let Joe leave me, even to call a doctor or an ambulance. Deep down inside I knew I was going to live, that I was meant to live. I never told Joe that I had died for those few minutes; he did not need to know that and it would have only frightened him more than he had been already. Eventually, Joe went to the phone-box and called my parents and they came up to the house.

  I asked Joe not to say anything about what had happened. All I told Mum and Da was that I had been feeling unwell all day and had started to bleed. Joe and Da brought me into the hospital and Mum stayed and minded Christopher and Owen.

  At the hospital they were very concerned that I seemed so weak and, of course, I didn't tell them all of what happened earlier that day, either. They did a scan and said they could see nothing – there was no sign of the baby. The doctor came to see me and he held my hand and said he was very sorry.

  'You lost your baby. It must have happened before you got to the hospital.'

  As the doctor was leaving, Da walked in on his own and said, 'I'm so sorry you lost the baby. I know how much this baby meant to you.' He had tears in his eyes as he talked with me. I had never seen my father so upset over something to do with me.

  The doctors said I needed to stay in the hospital, and when I was settled in the ward Joe and Da went home. A few days later they did a D and C.

  Joe came to visit me every night. He was worried about me and sad that we had lost the baby. Two weeks later I was discharged, but I was still very weak and spent a lot of time in bed. I was so glad to get home and hold my children in my arms and hug and kiss them.

  It was years later when I told Joe more about what happened that day; the day that I died and went some of the way to Heaven and back. I told him as a way of consoling him in the last few months of his life.

  Many of us have a fear of death, but there is no need for it. >At the moment of death there is no pain, no discomfort; some people may have pain right up to that last moment, but then there is none. You have no fear and anxiety – you go freely. Death is like birth; I know you might think that's a strange thing to say, but you are being born into a new life. You actually don't 'die', it's only this physical shell that you leave – like an empty egg shell.

  I know there is a place called Hell, that it actually exists, but God has never shown me anyone being sent there. I can only go by what I have seen myself, and from what I have seen, God forgives everyone – no matter what they have done. I know this is hard for us to understand. A lot of the time we look for justice and revenge. So it is very hard for us to understand, but when our soul stands in front of God after death, it feels so much love and desire to be with God that it wants so much to stay there and it asks forgiveness in a very deep and real way; forgiveness for all that was done on this earth out of the frailty of the human condition.

  And God in His infinite mercy forgives His child. We are all nothing but children in the presence of God, who is our father.

  Your soul is perfect; when your soul is free of your body it can travel through the universe to places you could never even imagine. How can I help you to understand how wonderful this feeling is? There is no way to express it; no way to tell you, unless you have experienced it yourself. And most of us have to wait until
we die to do this.

  When you die, you are not on your own, you are accompanied all the time by angels and those spirits who have gone before you. You won't want to come back. Why, when you have no more pain, no more tears, no more sadness, would you want to get back into a human body? That is why people, when they die, do not want to return and the only thing that brings a soul back to a human body is being sent back by God, because it is not yet time.

  We have become very materialistic as a society, and so frequently we look at death and ask, 'Is this it? I rot away and there is nothing more?' I assure you there is more – much more. I hope that through the books I write I can communicate this and help people to understand. Believe what I say. Believe that, yes, there is more, much more, even though I may not be able to prove it or show it to you now: it is proven to everyone when they die. Some people feel that that's too late – waiting to die to see the proof. People are given proof while they are alive, but sometimes they have to look or listen very hard to recognise them.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Three knocks on the window

  A few days after I got out of hospital, the weather started to get very cold. Joe was back working with the local County Council, even though it was only a temporary contract, and I was out in the shed getting turf for the fire when I heard my name being called. I turned around but saw no one. I brought the bucket of turf into the house and there, sitting in the chair beside the fire, was an angel.

  He startled me because he was very striking, very different from any other angel I had ever seen. It was as if he was made of jagged glass, of perfect shattered splinters which were all identical in size and which all reflected light. His face and his features were very sharp and as he stood up he was about twelve feet tall, his head almost touching the ceiling. Very unusually, music seemed to come from every part of him – enchanting, soft, mellow music, quite unlike anything I have ever heard before. It wasn't human music, but the sort of music I could imagine hearing in Heaven.