Julie’s Angel by Garry Lefebvre

In the spring of 1984 our family came very close to a real disaster. Sandy was awakened at 5:00 am with the sound of Jesse crying.

“Quick, get up!” she shouted. “Something’s burning!”

Brad had taken the shade off of his reading lamp to see better and had fallen asleep. The bulb had somehow burned a hole through his jean jacket, through the bedspread, the sheets and four inches into the mattress. I picked up the smoldering mattress and ran it outside.

All the children seemed unaffected by the whole thing except for Julie who was about eleven at the time. She kept repeating, “What if we hadn’t woke up? We would have died!” She had been really shaken.

Later that summer God removed that fear permanently. One day I was walking back to the house with some kids when all of a sudden Julie let out a gasp.

“Dad! Look!” Her eyes were popping out of her head.

“What? What is it?”

“There! There on the porch! Daddy, can’t you see him?”

“Who? What?” I shouted as I moved left and right, straining to see what she was staring at.

“Can’t you see him?”

“Who?”

“The angel on the porch.”

“No, I don’t see anyone. What does he look like?” I had never seen an angel in real life.

“He’s about two feet above the roof,” she said. “He’s wearing a white robe that falls to his ankles, and his feet are bare. And his arms are folded across his chest….. like he’s a guard or something.”
“He is,” I declared. “He’s guarding our house.”

“His hair is blonde and comes down to his shoulders,” she added excitedly. “Dad, how come his hair isn’t moving?”

It was then that I realized that God had opened her eyes to see into the spirit realm. “Honey, if his hair were moving in the wind we would all be able to see him. You are looking into the realm of the spirit where the angels live.”

From that day Julie was never again afraid of fire.