Low Flying Angels

Low Flying Angels

It became common to hide in the dark. As a child, I heard my parents quarreling and fighting, mostly at night. I sought solace and security under my bed and in my closet. I recall wanting to make sure I could only see my hands. If I had them, I could pray that my world would become a better place. With my hands, I could fix all that was broken. I could dry the tears in my eyes as well.

As life progressed, I learned to close my eyes to what I saw. I could not close my ears, however. The screams came from a vengeful grandmother who despised me because I carried my father's name, who was now divorced from our lives. To her, he was the bane of her existence. I was next as I carried his name. She put herself as God over my life. My grandmother placed herself as judge, jury, and executioner for all she saw wrong with the world.

When my eyes were closed, she would slap my head and dare me to open my eyes. She wanted me to see what misplaced justice looked like. When I dared to open them, she would make sure the sight of freedom came with a cost, with pain. With her ungodly judgment, hell was on the earth for me.

In my dreams, I knew sunlight would shine, delivering me from the darkness that held me in its control. My hands were of no use. My lips were now the only prayer I had. Out of her grasp and from all the darkness, I made for my escape.

I ran from the house into the trees that littered the countryside in my paradise of deliverance. I climbed the tallest one. The farther I climbed, the more freedom I felt; closer to the clouds meant I was closer to heaven. Deliverance was to be the angels who flew close behind the clouds, hopefully within reach.

I climbed to the highest branch, hoping and praying that a low-flying cloud would come my way. The breeze was in my face. I called to the cloud with my lips in prayer, reached with my hands, and leaped with all my strength. The angel I had prayed for was not there. My eyes were closed as I did not want to see how far I might fall.

I descended back toward earth, falling from branch to branch, from tree to tree, with tears from fear falling with me. Cuts and bruises came from the assault of each incursion, adding to the pain I had encountered from my grandmother's scrounging. Large bushes broke my fall as I landed on the ground. The sudden stop was the least painful of all.

"Was this all I am to be?" I asked myself.

"Run!" That is what the voice inside me said. Sharp words had wanted to kill me. Fist and thistle had branded me. To leave this place of pain would be my only salvation. I could be free. No one could hold me down. My name is not what made me.

With each step, my heart raced to a new beat, to a new song, to a new awareness. I owed no apologies for my life. I was not running away but toward a life where I was one of the best by giving my best.

I could run until I could fly, then soar through the sky in sight of the sun, burning the eyes of all those who looked up to me. The one who inflicted the pain would be the most jealous. In my flight of fancy, I had risen above her control; now, I controlled who I was and who could love or harm me.

I could use my lips for more than prayer. I could use them to lift those who were down. I could use my joy to free the hostage spirit that had overtaken me. My happiness would lift those who felt beaten as well.

My thoughts were now mine to have. My hands waved at all those below to follow a new path, a new course, a new sight for all eyes to see.

Such were the thoughts I had when I was young, and my mother and father split up. My demonic grandmother felt embarrassed and put upon by the situation our existence put my mother in. As a child, this was the life I knew that waited for me. It would be up to me to free myself from the thoughts my grandmother had attempted to make mine.

Many years later, when our son was an adult with his children, he posed a question to me.

"How did you know how to be a good dad when you never had a dad at home?"

It was a humbling question for me, as my father played a small part in my life. Many grown-ups stood proxy for him when the need arose for an example of what a father should be like.

The only answer to my son that day was, "I knew the kind of father I wanted to be and the kind of father I did not want to be."

While I was their father, I also wanted to be a parent they would like to be like. I wanted to lavish them with a love that was easy to understand and one that we could hold fast to.

When our children were young, and sometimes not so young, they did not live up to the rules my wife and I had set down as a way of conduct. After scolding them for what they had done wrong, we would send them to their room long enough for the furor of recent events to calm down.

I would go into their room and sit side by side as we discussed what they had done wrong. I would explain what they had done and why it wasn't good. In a calm tone, we would discuss the larger consequences of how their actions affect our lives and society.

Before I went into their rooms, my wife and I settled on a fair punishment for the infraction of the rules. Once our children received an explanation of their inappropriate actions, I told them what their punishment would be. Before leaving the room, I hugged them and told them I loved them.

Our children were human and had to be corrected many times before leaving home to pursue their own lives. In both cases and their way, each remembered our way of determining and administering discipline.

One day, when he was grown, our son told me he never wondered if we loved him. He knew that forgiveness came after his actions. His transgression is in our minds but not held against him. He knew that he remained loved by a force greater than any one person held or could have. He now shares that same love with his children—the love passed on from the Father of us all.

The days of my childhood have long since passed. The tyrant who administered judgment against me and my sisters no longer scares us or scars us. In her misplaced judgment, we know we have become all we could become. Our children are all they can and will become. I pray that our grandchildren will surpass every obstacle and prove to themselves to be more than their grandest dream.

I hope they never feel the need to climb a tree to escape the world; expecting a low-flying angle is their only rescue. I hope they will never have to fall branch from a branch, assaulted on the way down, with no sudden stop from a cruel world. I hope they never have to hide in the dark but are guided by the light of love and soar to heaven after a better life. I hope when they arrive to take their place in heaven, I will be able to greet them and then fly through heaven, helping those on earth who are waiting for a low-flying angel.