Authors: Lorna Byrne
We prayed together and I blessed Nick. Then we went
outside to the car and I invited his parents, Dermot and Susan,
to come in. Our dog, Heidi, had pups and Nick played happily
with Ruth and the puppies in the garden, under the tree. I
smiled as I watched them. Nick's parents fussed over him but
he told them to leave him alone, that he was playing and they
were to go in and sit with me and listen to what his guardian
angel had said.
Susan gave me a worried look as we went into the kitchen.
We sat at the kitchen table and I spoke to them as gently as
possible. I told them what their son had said, how Nick's
guardian angel had spoken about taking Nick to Heaven
someday soon. I asked them to try, if possible, to be strong and
to listen to their son and to spend as much time with him as
they could from now on. They cried, holding each other in
their arms, sobbing. It was heartrending to see.
Eventually, both parents spoke. They told me they had been
listening to what Nick had been saying about his guardian
angel taking him to Heaven for the last few months, but they
found it too hard to bear. They felt a little ashamed that Nick
had had to ask me to get them to listen to him. I hugged both
of them, blessed them and they went home.
A few days later, Ruth walked into the kitchen saying,
'Mum, you remember that boy I played with in the garden the
other day? I liked him; he was a really nice boy. What is his
name?'
'Nick,' I replied.
'I know he is sick, Mum. Is he going to get better?'
'No, he's going to Heaven,' I told her.
I saw tears in my daughter's eyes as she said, 'That's not fair!
He is such a nice boy!'
I gave my daughter a big hug; I just held her in my arms for
some time and then she said, 'I'm all right now, Mum,' and
went off to do her homework.
A few months later, Nick became seriously unwell again and
was in and out of hospital. Every so often, I would get a phone
call from his parents, saying that Nick asked them to ring me
to ask for the pain to be taken away. It always was and I
thanked God for that miracle. One day, though, I got a phone
call from Susan to tell me that Nick had peacefully passed away
the night before. I told his mother always to remember that
Nick is a beautiful soul in Heaven, and that he is beside her
every time she needs him.
It's hard to describe the effect Nick had on his family, his
parents and his brothers and sisters. They had lost a son and a
brother, and yet it was as if his sickness and death awoke the
entire family. Nick showed them such compassion and love: it
was as if God Himself shone through that child. He was
different; in a way he was like an angel himself, an angel who
shone for all who came into contact with him. If you go into a
children's hospital you will meet children who are seriously ill,
yet despite this they are happy, so full of love. Few of them
have any bitterness or resentment. It's as if they are here to
show us their light. I am always fascinated by the wisdom of
children. Children who are terminally ill become very spiritual
and so grown up, so matter-of-fact – even at as young as four.
It's fascinating and very beautiful.
One other thing that's worth remembering about children is
how spiritually open they are when they are very young. After
all, they have only just come from heaven. Many of them see
angels, even though they generally forget this later. Many of
them may often also see spirits; particularly spirits of grandparents,
or other relatives, who have come to protect them. I
have frequently come across cases of very young children
saying things like 'Grandda was playing with me'. I've heard of
parents looking through a family photo album with a child who
talks about knowing someone who was dead before the child
was born. The child may even have a message for the parents.
Children are founts of wisdom, including from the other
world, and we should listen to them more.
More and more people came to visit me. By this time Joe was
so unwell that he was rarely out of the house, and when
people came he would disappear. He was a proud man and he
didn't want anyone to know he was ill. No one who came to
see me knew what was going on in my life, or the difficulties
I was facing with a seriously ill husband and the knowledge
the angels had given me that he wouldn't be with me much
longer.
A woman came to visit me, looking for the intervention of
angels. She was a medical student called Marian. She told me
that she was really stressed and couldn't cope with her exams.
'I heard that you talk to angels,' she said to me. 'I believe in
God. I have faith and I believe in angels, but I really need help
now, because I am under such pressure that I fear I am going
to have a breakdown.'
Marian was studying to be a doctor and was almost
qualified, but she was terrified she would not pass her final
exams. She desperately wanted to become a doctor, and she
knew that she could be a good doctor, but she was finding the
whole process very tough. I told her that her faith and her
belief had helped her through this rough period and that God
had already sent her angels to give her the strength to stick it
out. We prayed to God and the angels to send her angels who
could actually teach her to pass her exams and guide her to
become a spiritual, loving and caring doctor.
We all have our guardian angel with us all the time, but the
guardian angel, in its role as gatekeeper of your soul, can allow
other angels to come into your life to help you with different
things. I call these angels teachers: these angels come and go
frequently and are different to guardian angels.We asked for a
group of angels who would be her teachers. As we prayed I
could already see three angels on their way to her. They were
striding towards her, but hadn't reached her yet.
'All three of them are men,' I said. 'Not a woman amongst
them. I hope you don't mind that.'
Marian laughed and cried with relief and asked me to ask
God to have the angels arrive before she left me because she
really needed them. I prayed over her. I asked God for all the
confidence, the courage and the abilities that she needed. And
I asked for hope because she needed to be able to see hope
within her own life. As I finished praying over her, I asked for
the names of the angels who had been sent to help her. I was
told that she could call the angels 'The Three Stars'. They had
already arrived and were waiting outside the door for her to
step out into her new world.
Recently, years after she came to see me, I got a call from
Marian. She is now a doctor, working overseas and doing a lot
to help people. She rang because she wanted to thank the
angels. 'I had to ring you to ask you to thank them because,
that way, I feel the message will get there quicker,' she said.
I had to laugh. I told her that with the phone call we were
already thanking them. I reminded her never to forget to call
on her three angels whenever she needed them. 'They are still
there. They haven't left you. You still have a journey to
undergo and a lot of work to do,' I said.
Marian had believed enough to ask the angels for help: she
empowered the angels, and in return the angels empowered
her.
Most of the time people came to see me, but occasionally, in
special circumstances, I was asked to go to people's homes.
Often if this happened someone would collect me and drive
me. One day I was taken to a big old house to visit a boy of
about three who was very sick. He was very run down and had
difficulties breathing; he could hardly get out of bed.
There was an old man there, and I thought he was a member
of the family. It was only when he sniggered at me that I
realised he was a ghost, a spirit, but he had turned his light
down so that he had appeared to me like a living person. He
knew he had caught me out and he was highly amused by this.
When I was having a cup of tea with his grandmother, after
seeing the child, she mentioned that her grandson was so like
her grandfather, who had also lived in that house – as had
generations before him. She said this a few times. For some
reason I don't fully understand, the grandmother's continuous
reference to him being like her grandfather was resulting in
this spirit staying around. The spirit was that of a great great
grandfather of the sick child.
I knew the spirit wasn't good for the family, that he was in
some way a malevolent force, and that his presence was a part,
if not all, of the child's sickness. All the time I was in that house
I kept watching this spirit and praying that he be surrounded
by love and angels, so that he could depart and go to Heaven
and leave the little boy in peace.
A few weeks later, I was asked back to the house to see the
little boy, who was now completely recovered and full of
energy. I knew that the spirit had left.
I was amazed; the house looked completely different. The
house I had been in a few weeks before had been damp and not
very clean, with a big old staircase and an ornate grimy fireplace
in the sitting room. Now I was in a beautifully restored
and well cared for old house with no fireplace.
I asked the grandmother, 'Where's the fireplace?'
She looked at me a little strangely and said that nothing had
changed since I was last there. It had for me, though. Not only
had I seen the spirit of her grandfather, but I had been shown
the ghost of the actual house – as it had been long ago, when
he lived in it.
Joe was still unable to work, but at least he was at home so he
could keep an eye on the children and so sometimes I was
able to get a job for a short while. I scrubbed floors in
a school, I worked in a shoe shop, but the truth is there
was not a lot of work available at that time for which I was
qualified.
Christopher's diet as a coeliac added to the financial problems,
Joe needed special food too. I struggled hard to feed the
family with the limited money we had. We lived from hand to
mouth. My daughter Ruth now laughs that the only time she
got a piece of meat was when she chewed the bones of the meat
from her dad's plate.
There were some short periods when Joe's diabetes was
under control and he was well enough to do odd jobs. During
one of these spells he gave driving lessons, but I always looked
on in fear, concerned he might have a turn. He was always very
happy when he was well enough to work, but unfortunately
these periods never lasted long.
We had chickens in the garden, so every so often Joe used to
call on a coffee shop in the town, looking for remains of bread
to give the chickens. He didn't say that they would also help
feed his wife and children, but they did.We used to go through
the bags of food he would bring home to see what was edible,
cutting off the mouldy parts. Sometimes there would be a
perfect cream cake or a fresh loaf of bread in the bag. I've
always believed that the man who ran the restaurant guessed
what the story was and deliberately put these in.
At one stage we were deeply in arrears with the loan on the
cottage and in danger of losing our home if we didn't pay. I
went to the Social Welfare office to see if they could give any
help above the disability pension that was being provided. Joe
came with me. Although Joe was seriously ill, they didn't
believe our story. They queried was he really sick: despite the
medical certificates, they said they believed he could have
worked if he truly wanted to. After Joe died, the woman in the
Social Welfare office apologised to me.
In desperation, we put part of the garden up for sale. On
reflection it's clear that I was so desperate to make life a little
more comfortable for Joe that I sold it for considerably less
than it was worth. It did, however, allow me to clear some of
our debts.
You lose your dignity when you have to beg, but sometimes
there is no choice, particularly when there is a family involved.
One of the symptoms of Joe's sickness was that he was always
cold; even in summer he would be shivering. I went again to
the Social Welfare, looking for money to buy him thermal
underwear. Again, they said nothing was wrong and refused to
help. What frustrated and upset me was that I could see many
other families being given financial support. I think the fact
that we lived in our own cottage, tiny as it was, rather than a
council house, influenced them, as did the fact that Joe, with
his pride, always tried to look well and respectable when he
went to see them.
My angels kept telling me to go to a local charity. I fiercely
resisted. I was tired of losing my dignity. Why would they
believe me if the Social Welfare didn't? Eventually things got
so desperate that I rang them and made an appointment to see
them.
I went to see the charity and explained our circumstances.
They sent a man to visit the cottage, to inspect us. The man
walked around the cottage slowly, looking at everything,
opening cupboards. He then turned to me and announced, 'If
you have a bag of potatoes and a tin of beans then your family
won't go hungry. You're not in need of our help.'
I tried to explain about the dietary needs of a coeliac – how
Christopher needed a special diet to grow otherwise there was
a danger he would be permanently stunted (in fact, at seven
years old he weighed only two-and-a-half stone, when he
should have weighed at least four) – I explained how Joe's
sickness meant that there were a lot of foods that he just
couldn't keep down. But the man didn't seem interested in
hearing, I'm sure he believed he was right.
In the end, the charity gave us little bits of support, but
much of it was no use. They would drop in free vouchers for
particular foods, but invariably it would be a food that
Christopher and Joe couldn't eat. One Christmas we got a
voucher for a turkey, and we were very pleased about that, but
when I went down to collect it, the humiliation of the
experience took all the good away. The committee was there
calling out names as people came forward to collect their
turkeys, when they called my name they said, 'oh yes, you . . .'
I felt they had been talking about me, and they believed we
were chancing it, taking food out of the mouths of those who
really did need it. Little did they know!
One day I ran into Sean, a man I had known from the prayer
group in Maynooth.We no longer went to the prayer group as
getting there was too much for Joe. I missed it – both the
praying together and the company of the people who we met
there. In fact, at this time I went out little – to do the shopping,
to collect the children from school, to work the odd time I had
a job for a few hours, but nowhere else. Joe's health was so
unpredictable that I was afraid to leave him on his own for
even a short time.
Sean was now a member of the local charity committee and
soon after I'd run into him he called in one day to have a cup
of tea with me. Sitting at the kitchen table I told him the truth
of our circumstances. He was the only person I ever told the
full extent of our financial difficulties. Sean was devastated,
and he promised to get more help from the charity for us.
It wasn't that easy, though. When Sean raised our case with
the committee, they fought hard against giving us help and
eventually refused his request. I know that this was the work
of the devil. Sometimes Satan makes it more difficult for us to
do what we are meant to do; on some occasions the forces of
evil try to frustrate us in our lives and the work that we are
doing, making life harder for us than it might be otherwise.
Sometimes it's in quite subtle ways, such as distracting us away
from something we're supposed to do. I know this is one of the
reasons that I received so little help with my family when Joe
was sick. In this case the devil was blinding the people to the
circumstances in front of them.
I am in a constant battle with the devil. When someone has
a very strong faith, the devil tries to make it difficult – and
frequently succeeds in the short term – but I know that no
matter how hard the evil forces of Satan try to frustrate the
work, God and the angels always win in the end.
Sean found it very hard to believe that he couldn't get more
help for us. He was allowed to bring us some vouchers for
food, and he was distraught when he realised how little good
they were to us, given the dietary requirements. Sean took a
detailed list of the foods Joe and Christopher
could
eat, and
every so often after that he would bring us a small bag of
groceries. I'm sure he was paying for these out of his own
wallet.
As time went on, more and more people heard about me and
came to see me for help.
One woman who came to see me about this time was a
grandmother, not very old, but a grandmother nonetheless.
She was called Mary. About ten years previously, one of her
neighbours had given birth to twins, one of whom died shortly
after birth. Mary told me that even when the mother was
pregnant, although she was not a close friend or a relation, she
felt drawn to the babies. She couldn't quite understand it.
When Mary first saw the baby, Josie, in the cot she knew there
was a connection, a bond, even before she reached into the cot
to touch her little face.
Many of us have heard the phrase 'soulmate', and we tend to
think of it mainly as a romantic concept – as the perfect
partner, perhaps someone to marry. But one must remember
that a soulmate could be a child in the same way as it could be
an adult. People go around searching for their soulmate, but he
or she may be in another part of the world. It may be that
person you send a few euros to help, that man in a wheelchair,
the child with Down's Syndrome you've just passed by in the
street – any one could be your soulmate.
As Josie grew, Mary continued to be very close to her. Any
time that child was sick or in trouble,Mary would instinctively
know. And it was the same for Josie, too. At times, the child
would tell her mother that she needed to go and see Mary, and
when her mother asked why she always got the same answer:
'I know Mary needs me.' Her mother didn't always allow Josie
to go to see Mary when she asked, because sometimes it might
be dark, or lashing rain, but Josie would keep asking until she
was eventually allowed to go. Josie would arrive at Mary's hall
door, knock and say, 'Mary, what's the matter?' Mary would
just look at the little girl and think, 'My God – she knows that
I'm feeling sad today!'
They were soulmates: different ages, the same sex, but soulmates
nonetheless. Soulmates have a very special connection
to each other. Each knows how the other is feeling.
Mary is dead now. Some time before she died, she said to
me, 'I know Josie is my soulmate – I knew it wasn't my
husband.' It was an understanding that she came to, towards
the end of her own life.
Mary's death had an enormous effect on Josie, whom I had
also got to know. When Mary died, she felt as if a huge piece
of her heart had been taken away.
It's very possible that Josie will meet another soulmate
during her life – as there can be more than one during a
lifetime. I believe that sometimes we miss our soulmate
because we don't recognise him or her: we are too busy, but
that doesn't mean that the other person doesn't recognise us.
We also all have to learn that we can love someone and
cherish them and give our lives for them, but that doesn't
necessarily mean they are our soulmates. It's so sad to see
young people, or not so young people, who say, 'I won't settle
until I meet my soulmate'. As soon as they say that, they are
putting a big block on finding someone who may not be their
soulmate, but who may be able to bring them considerable
happiness. You needn't search for that person, because if your
soulmate is to pass through your life, then they will, whether
it is for a brief moment or a longer time.
I remember watching the news with Joe one night. There
was a report of a horrific train crash in the UK. I had noticed a
picture of this in the paper earlier in the day, but had avoided
it. Yet I knew, somehow, there was something I was supposed
to see. I should have known better, though, when God and the
angels want to show me something, I can't avoid it.
There was film of a man on a stretcher, surrounded by
rescue workers. I have no idea who the man was, other than
that he was a survivor of that train crash, but I do know that,
whoever he was, he had just met his soulmate on that train and
that his soulmate was now dead. I knew this because I was
allowed to see the contact between them. As he was being
carried on the stretcher, he reached up with his arm and I
know he was able to see the soul of his soulmate; I was allowed
to see that his soulmate was comforting him, making sure he
survived. I wasn't allowed to know what gender the soulmate
had been, or whether he or she was young or old, but I know
it was his soulmate and that they had met only fleetingly.
I remember feeling terribly sad and thinking, 'Oh my God, I
hate this.' Actually, hate is the wrong word. I felt such pain as
I was watching and such compassion for the pain and loss the
man on the stretcher was feeling, seeing his soulmate as he
reached out for that brief instant. I don't know whether he
would remember he had fleetingly met his soulmate. Sometimes
spiritual things happen when we are in a state of pain
and shock. Afterwards, we wonder if it really did happen: did
we see something, or was it just a flash of light?
Around this time I became very conscious of the connection
between myself and a man who had murdered his wife. No
matter where I went or what I was doing, this connection
would appear in some way. I'd turn on the radio and hear
something about the murder; I'd be walking down the road,
and somehow would come across a newspaper, maybe even on
the ground as I was walking past. The print would stand out,
as if it were rising from the paper, and the only thing I would
see in that newspaper would be something about this horrific
murder. One evening, I went into the front room and turned
on the television. The late news was on. I went to turn it off,
but the television wouldn't turn off! I heard one of my angels
say, 'Lorna. Sit down and watch the News.'
Reluctantly, I did so. I looked at the television and I saw a
film of the man who had just been found guilty of murdering
his young wife in a very cold, calculated, and premeditated
way. As I was sitting watching it, I was shown what he had
done to his soul: he had disconnected his own human self from
his soul, so that his soul couldn't interfere with what he
planned to do. This had put coldness, ice, into his heart. It's
hard to explain, but it was as if he had pushed his soul away,
away back from him, and had then chained his soul as if to a
wall, with chains that couldn't be broken. Sometimes we do
these things to our soul because we
want
greed to rule our
lives. We become obsessed with material things. It wasn't the
devil, or anyone else who had done this to this man's soul; he
had done it himself. He had become, in a sense, a man of ice.
That is how he was at that moment; I was allowed to see his
soul as he was being led off to jail. This doesn't mean that over
time that he might not feel remorse and his soul might break
some of the chains. He'll never be able to bring back the girl,
his young wife whom he murdered, and he has to pay,
humanely, for what he has done, but the worst part of all is
what he has done to his own soul. This is the worst. As his soul
breaks free, if he allows it, he will go through terrible torment
within himself; he will try to avoid feeling it, but eventually he
will break down and then he will feel deep and terrible pain.