An Angel Speaks To A Troubled Mind

An Angel Speaks To A Troubled Mind

By Mark Hammond Baker

One night after the dusk had fallen I lie attentive and aware of everything in my dim surroundings. Then I felt a presence which I at first retreated from. It took me surprisingly as I judged I was alone. Without causing a sound with their footsteps, I realized that the presence was shining. Yes, it was brighter than the dark bedroom. “Go elsewhere, please I beg of you, take what you will and leave behind me in my gloomy state of fear through which I am contemplating about what will become of my reputation.” When no turbulence followed, I covered my brain with the bed cloth and declared to myself that there was nothing there, that I should go to sleep.

Yet my conscious was shaken by the thought of having been brought into the presence of an intruder and so I asked aloud who it was and what did they want by standing there without communicating. It sounded ironic that they hadn’t murdered me yet, and it followed that in my frail and weary state the only reason they would not leave was naturally so they could petrify me more. Frighten and scare me more than what I was going through before. Next I heard a voice, yes it was a voice, and I was certain then that I had not been wrong. This person had been there all along.

All through the night, that person stood there while I speculated on what was at stake and fretted over how I had spent the last of the money to pay for my dwellings. Not knowing whence, when or whereabout the next day would take me or how I could ever overcome myself from embarrassment I had grown into, the mockery and criticism of those who I once implored to think of me as an author. I ordered the voice, “Kill me and let it be over with. I have nothing left to live for, anyhow.” The whole time I did not but very slightly peak out from under the blankets.

“Gabriel, why do you trouble all these nights and work yourself into a state that indeed the best of men would be hard pressed to escape from? Don’t you realize that the Lord God is with you and has assigned me to console you? I am an angel assigned from above to bequeath upon your head a gift and remove all your grief and apprehensions,” replied the voice that moved from across the room which at every juncture whose sparking became brighter.

“What moron do you take me for? You are another monster sent to betray me and cause me to fall into a trap whereby my trembling hands will forever go on shaking because of my passionate distress,” I answered to the voice whose company caused my mind to feel as if my nervous fever had been, if not just for a minute put at calm. “It is a trick of my mind. They will tell me I’ve lost my mind and in doing so, my hopes of creating prose will once again be forced at bay as my mind dwells over what they say. More so, if it isn’t what they say that disturbs my nervous illness even further it would be that I would worry something was not right. And so when I finally tiptoe out of bed and go into the world to collect my wages all that I experience would be endured with regret, strife and the awareness of my affliction. All of which consumed my weary and worried senses.

I shuddered over from the light that I answered that it was only a candle I had left burning. Again, I spoke to myself inwardly and said to myself that these plights of passion would soon diminish as I wandered off to sleep. But still the voice spoke yet anew whence I said to myself. “Am I hearing the voice of an angel or has the day finally came where I have lost all control over this nervous defect? Now I am listening to someone speak who isn’t really there but I could not resolve why they did not leave. After several minutes went by, I felt reluctant that I had not even gone to blow out the candle, yes that was it. I had left the candle burning and needed to blow it out to keep for tomorrow.

I got out of bed and passed quietly into the next room whence I saw a majestic human form made of sparkling sunshine. “Whereabouts have you come from and for what purpose do you seek my company?” I shouted loudly. Oddly, my nerves felt calm and my mind had ceased suffering from the mental plague it was tainted by.

“Why is it that you have stopped drafting your emotional experiences into a prose? Oh ye who claim to have been born again by the son of the most high God? Are you a hypocrite? Why let you grant these civil servants to neglect hearing your gift of inventing prose? Let not these sentiments be regarded as strife or ye make the angels who look over this town at night and throughout all the day feel remorseful that a gift from God is being undermined when it is not their fault, declared the angel. “Gabriel, this is not a defect you have, but it is rather fuel for your experiments with the pen. The pen you have not picked up and of which is an apparatus for you to communicate any and all adventures of psychological experiences you have to share with us. Do not allow the people God has planted in your life to cause you worry. The most high and powerful have sent me here today to ask that this episode of refusal to follow your passion to write prose be over. As it is the passion to write about psychological experiences you determined was your life’s purpose and meaning… to be conned away and squandered away because you lack faith!”

The angel put his hands on Gabriel’s forehead and delivered peace into his mind. “Never again persuade yourself that you should simply face a life of misfortune, but rather be proud and contented for your struggles. Appreciate that the Most High has gifted you with a character rout with emotions, which are your greatest treasure.”

At that moment, my eyes saw what the splendor of the Lord looked like and I received peace in my heart and peace in my mind. I refrained from that day onward to say I had a nervous disease after that night but instead I resolved that life was an adventure not to be wasted on how much I could earn, but… instead I beseeched God and implored him to bestow my conscious with even more emotions. Then I prayed and in doing so confirmed in agreement with the words the angel had delivered. I laid to rest all the anxieties about what mistakes and regrets that would only bring about a life more miserable than I previously thought imaginable. Instead, I pulled out the pen and wrote this very message and earnestly I mailed it to the paper.

Now I welcome what the day has to bring. That every moment is overflowing with emotional experiences that I am content will go on forever until I write with such passion that there will be no more left to say. My psychological experiences are a gift and that for not one second should I waste my gift of expressing exactly how it feels to be alive at that moment, for why not when so often nobody else feels anything or has anything worthwhile to do? Alone in my chamber I commenced, deep within my mind, without anyone’s request, to resolve why I had, for why so long had I occupied a life that I detested, loathed, abhorred and for more often that nil repudiated as being of importance. For what seemed and for what was in fact reaching thirty years I had wasted, but now I would stop asking myself if I would live or if I would I die from social anxieties. Yes indeed, it was upon a night clear as fresh satin sheets that my mind discontinued its idle and irrational convictions of social inadequacy and whist doing so, I discharged myself from wondering about things done wrong when there was more to say about things that went right.