Angels on Overtime

by Ann Crawford

  “But he’s not saying all that.”

  “No. And he’s getting exactly what he’s asking for. And it frustrates him no end because he could be as big as he wants to be. He’s just, as the master teacher once said, ‘Praying amiss.’ He needs to be specific. The universe only picks up on ‘painting’ and his increasing frustration, and it responds with, ‘Wow, he must really love being in that state because there he goes again.’ The universe delivers whatever he’s vibrating at.”

  Brooke nods, although her mind is whirling and swirling somewhat. “But doesn’t the universe know what he means?”

  “Life responds to clarity and intention. Muddled begets muddled.” Blake claps his hands. “Alright, enough of a respite, back to some heavier-duty stuff.”

  “Ugh. This was pretty big. Really big. If only more people could understand this. This is really, really big.” She’s lollygagging—although this is indeed really, really big—as she has no desire to see heavier-duty stuff again. “Can’t we go visit a frustrated sculptor or two?”

  He takes her by the hand and they vanish from the garage...

  ...and Brooke finds herself standing on the Golden Gate Bridge. A woman calmly sits on a bench in the nearby park. Her angels beseech her to change her course of action. The woman’s expression is stone. Brooke tries to hear her thoughts, but she finds that nothing is passing through the woman’s mind.

  “She’s made it up,” Blake says. “Her mind, that is.”

  “But obviously something’s holding her back.” The woman stands and heads toward the sidewalk leading to the bridge. “Okay, not anymore.”

  Her angels are beside themselves. “Janie, please! You’ve got to hear us! Janie, there’s more for you!”

  Brooke is beside herself wondering where the bridge officials, who are usually on a careful lookout for potential jumpers, are.

  Janie holds the railing tightly, as if she’s about to change her mind. She looks over at San Francisco—a luminous array of lights in the midst of the blackness of the water to the left and behind the city.

  “It’s so interesting that the jumpers here almost always jump on the side facing the city, with all the lights,” Blake comments. “It’s as if even in their darkest hour they still want the lights of their brothers and sisters to be with them.”

  Brooke looks over her shoulder to the black expanse off the west side of the bridge. Not very inviting—maybe especially so in someone’s darkest hour.

  “What people don’t realize is that there’s really nowhere to go. They’ll still be just as alive on the other side.”

  “Will they have some kind of punishment waiting for them?”

  “Whatever they decide,” Blake says. “Every soul gets to write its own story.”

  The woman continues walking. Her mind is still quiet, resolute, at peace. No longer pleading with her, the angels surrounding her start speaking along a very different track: “We love you, Janie. You are love. Go with love. We’ll see you on the other side. We love you. Love is all there is.”

  “Will they have a harder job next time?”

  “What makes you ask that?”

  “Because, well,” Brooke hesitates, “this one wasn’t exactly a success.”

  The woman jumps. After what seems to Brooke like an interminable passage of time, she hears a splash. If she could, she’d weep.

  Blake puts his arm around her. “There’s never a failure,” he whispers. “Ever. Just evolution. And then, more evolving. And then, more evolving. That’s what creation does.”

  “But won’t she have to pay for that at some point?”

  “They advance not because of karma or something outside of themselves judging them or dictating to them. They evolve because it’s the thing to do. That’s what creation does,” Blake repeats. He pauses for a moment. “Always and forever and everywhere.”

  “So everyone gets to go home?”

  “No.”

  Brooke looks at him, puzzled.

  “You heard Jason’s grandfather. Everyone’s already home.” At Brooke’s bewilderment, he adds, “Doesn’t mean home couldn’t use a remodeling. New drapes, new furniture, new perspective—especially the new perspective. Drapes won’t cut it without that. Humans always, always have that choice. Always. And forever. And everywhere.”

  Chapter 5

  SLAM! The cell door closes behind Jack.

  Okay, maybe we shouldn’t have sprung that on you quite so suddenly. If we all back up a little, we would see Jack, après gym, being pulled over by a policeman because his car’s left taillight was out. The cop was a little bored that night, and Jack seemed inordinately deadpan, almost zombie-like, so he asked Jack to step out of the car while he checked it. The only person more astounded to discover drugs in the trunk was Jack.

  So if we back up a little more, we would see Dick putting the drugs in the trunk as well as monkeying with the taillight. And if we back up even more, we would see Jack’s angel team working for four—four!—years to help him wake up. Nothing! Finally, the Big Boss intervened in a Big Way.

  And a few weeks before we would’ve seen Dick putting the drugs in the car, we would’ve seen a very interesting scene in Jack’s living room. One night, for some reason, Lacey stuck by Jack’s side as he read to the children and tucked them in. None of them wanted her intruding on the special father-child time, but she was oblivious to the strong emotions that were trying to push her out of the room. After the reading time, she held Chelsea and then, later, Ben. “Let’s say a prayer. Let’s ask Jesus to keep you safe and make everything all right for you tonight, tomorrow, and always.”

  Chelsea and Ben complied, but they weren’t happy about it. Not because they had anything against Jesus, but because, well, they had something against their mother, even if she was their mother. Oh sure, they loved her, but that didn’t mean they wanted her around at bedtime, normally their favorite time of day.

  When Jack and Lacey left the sleeping children and drifted into the living room, Jack turned to her. “We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Jesus!” It came out much stronger than Jack had intended.

  “Jack, don’t swear at me. Just tell me what you want to talk about.”

  “Jesus!” He was so upset that he couldn’t say the hundreds, perhaps thousands of additional words that were flooding his brain.

  “Jack, stop swearing at me! What do you want to talk about?”

  “Christ!”

  Lacey stormed out of the room. Jack had been finding himself, much to his own surprise, reading, searching, researching, and reading some more. If Jack’s sudden upset hadn’t tied up his tongue, he might’ve said something along the lines of, “Jesus was a master teacher, one of the most important teachers humanity has ever had. He wasn’t telling people to believe in him, but to believe in what he was teaching. He doesn’t want people to rely on him to keep them safe, rather to rely on their own inner power, which is what he was trying to teach them about.”

  But, as you now know, it didn’t come out exactly like that. Not even remotely like that. Lacey flipped. She suddenly realized that the main thing, other than the children, that had been keeping her with Jack—their shared religion—looked like it was fading away. So she did what any upstanding, moral person would do. She consulted with her boyfriend.

  And that leads us back to Dick putting the drugs in the car. Oh, you might think setting up false charges happens rarely. It actually happens fairly often. And you might think that prison is an unnecessarily hard and unjust challenge to face. But then so is getting tortured, raped, murdered. So is having a parent die when you’re a child or having a child die when you’re a parent. Or having a loved one disappear without a trace. Or losing loved ones and all worldly possessions in a flood, earthquake, mudslide, or forest fire. Or in a war—and most absurd of all is a war in the name of God. This might have worked back when Earthlings were trying to explain where lightning bolts came from, and having a god of war
seemed as likely as a god of weather, but it’s way passé at this point in existence.

  All of these seemingly random things seem so...well, random. But every being in eternity has...well, eternity. We never know what challenges a being has called into his or her life to experience in order to grow, learn, evolve. Our discussion of this isn’t meant to minimize the pain endured in tragedies. And it’s not to blame the victim. Indeed, it’s to empower every human being. There actually are no pawns, no victims. But there must be responsibility, and in that comes personal power. There are no kings, no victors, either. It’s all...... Life.

  And you want to know what’s really strange? Humans sometimes want to be like the other beings in the universe. But do you know how many beings are lined up waiting to be human? They know where it’s at.

  And you humans can’t mess it up. Even Jack, even Dick, even anyone. Winning awaits everyone at the end of a long day, or a long lifetime as the case may be. Or, better yet, winning awaits everyone in every moment—awareness of that fact is the only requirement.

  While we’re talking about it all, which we guess we always are, here and everywhere, you might think Lacey and Dick are being, well, bad. Villains. But there are no villains; there’s just another side of a story, another sovereign being playing out his or her part on the grand stage with other sovereign beings. The rapist has been raped in his (or even her) life and plays that out. The warlord has been ravaged and seeks to play that out. Or he will be ravaged. Or the rapist will be raped, one way or another. Everyone has his or her part to play. Everything anyone does can be understood from the higher point of view.

  Or, as in Dick’s case, it also just might be possible that he or she just signed up to be a real Class-A jerk in this lifetime!

  Back to our story. A few days prior to the cell door slamming, the angel team was still batting ideas around until Blake went for a private conference with the Big Boss. He even stayed in conference when Jack woke up, leaving the other three to attend to Jack without him—an extremely unusual thing for a head angel to do. It’s nearly unheard of, except in extreme circumstances. Brooke noticed that Jack was especially out of it that day, almost like he was sleepwalking. Technically, he was. But much more about that much later.

  Later that night, when Jack was circumnavigating the universe—oh, sorry, we mean sleeping—Blake returned to the group. “So, well, um, hmmmmm. Prison is always a good place for waking up.”

  The laptop and the microphone and the mouse were dropped, as were three angelic jaws.

  “Say what?”

  “Prison?”

  “But he’s such a good guy. He even obeys the speed limits.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to find something,” Blake responds. “We can make something up if we have to. And I guess we’ll have to. Wasn’t my idea.”

  The group is silent for a moment as it considers why in creation.....

  “Okay, how?”

  “Okay, what?”

  “There’s nothing on this guy. He’s as straight-laced as they come.”

  “Hmmm, we’ll need some human intervention for this one. How about Dick, his boss? He’s a greedy, tenacious SOB. I mean, he’s a beautiful being of the divine, cleverly disguised as a greedy, tenacious SOB. And he wants Lacey. Well, he can have her. So let’s have him do something.”

  “And then what will happen to Dick?” Brooke asks.

  “The right reward for greedy SOBs. Business disaster, divorce, kids will hate him, a plague or two.”

  “Which one?”

  “Yes.”

  “All of ’em?”

  “All of ’em.”

  “Yes,” Christopher says, consulting the computer he retrieved from the floor. “He’s the one to do it. He’s friends with a judge and a U.S. attorney and a drug dealer.”

  “What about Jack’s poor children?” Brooke moans. “They’ll be without their father. For years, perhaps.”

  Christopher punches some other codes into the laptop. “Let’s see, what did they sign up for in this lifetime? Hmmmmmmmmm. Ah, here it is. Forgiveness, compassion, overcoming adversity. Well, this would certainly fall into teaching them those lessons.”

  “And what did Dick sign up for?”

  Christopher punches a few other codes into the computer. “Hmmmm, okay, great, he signed up to assist someone’s growth in any way he could. He would certainly be doing this for Jack’s highest good.”

  “But what about his punishments?” Brooke asks. “How could life punish someone who’s actually doing someone a favor?”

  Blake puts his hand on her shoulder, as she’s frenzied herself into quite the swivet. “The helpers know going in that they’ll suffer for being despicable. That’s all part of the lesson they choose, all part of the game.”

  “Great game,” Brooke murmurs.

  “Would you design it any differently?”

  After recovering from her surprise at the question, Brooke takes a few minutes to deeply ponder potential possibilities. “No. I wouldn’t.”

  “It’s really ingenious, isn’t it?”

  More pondering. “Yes. It is.”

  A flabbergasted Jack stands before a very stern judge in a courtroom.

  “Your sentence will be no less than three years.” The judge’s gavel crashes onto the bench.

  Jack’s lawyer is as stunned as his client. “This is absolutely lunacy,” he calls to Jack as he is lead out of the courtroom by the bailiff. “This was a trumped-up, bogus charge. We’ll have another judge for your appeal and get you out.”

  The family of four tries to visit in a packed room that is more like a bus station than a visiting room. Ben and Chelsea sit on either side of Jack, and he wraps an arm around each. Lacey, sitting on the other side of Chelsea, grunts.

  A baby screams in the background, making it very difficult for Jack’s soft voice to be heard. “As soon as I’m out on appeal,” he says to Lacey, “we’ll start living the life we always dreamed about.”

  Christopher drops his computer, Sapphire stops whispering, and Brooke and Blake hang their mouths wide open. The angel team surrounds him, waving their fists in the air, wanting to strangle him. Angelically.

  Over a year later, a big, red DENIED stamp slams down onto Jack’s appeal papers.

  Jack lies on his bunk, blankly staring into space and shaking his head ever so slightly in disbelief. He releases a very, very long sigh. He unclenches his fists, opens his hands, and rests them on the bed, palms up.

  Emily walks into her mother’s nursing home room, sits on the bed, and takes her mother’s hand. “Mom,” she whispers.

  “My Emily. It won’t be long now.”

  “Oh, Mom, now don’t talk like that.”

  Okay, perhaps we shouldn’t have sprung that one on you quite so suddenly either. While Jack’s angels were working with him for all those years, Emily’s angels were working with her, too—and then for even one more year. Her angels, except for David, also met with the Big Boss many times during that period, but nothing as flamboyant as prison was determined for her.

  In that time, Barbara decided she was done with the Earth phase of her journey. At least, her soul made that decision and, as a result, her body became inordinately tired as some cells became inordinately active, even more than they did years back, before the disease went into remission.

  Just for the record, sometimes beings come in with a certain timeline, sometimes not. Depends. The future is always...well, you could recite the answer by now.

  “I will talk like that, thank you very much. I don’t have much talking left to do, and I want to make every word count as much as possible.”

  Emily starts to protest, but the reality of her mother’s words hits her heart with a sharp pang. Barbara smiles at her, and she tries to smile in return. Out of habit, both as a flower maven and a compulsive task-doer, she starts to get some more water for the flowers. But she stops and slowly sits back down, realizing that no task could be more important than any words a
t this point. “Are you scared, Mom?”

  “Heavens, no. Will you be, when you go?”

  “I doubt it.” Emily studies the family photographs, sitting next to a special heirloom vase filled with roses, all of which Barbara had requested for her bedside table. “Do you think about Dad?”

  “All the time. You know I never wanted to get married again because I already had the best husband in the world.”

  “As you’ve told me only a million times.”

  “There was no topping him. No way, no how.”

  “You’ve told me that a million times, too. Maybe a billion.”

  “And just think—now I get to be with him again. Oh, I can’t wait!”

  Emily studies another picture on the table. “You’ll get to see Lisa.”

  “Yes.” After some fumbling to free her hands of her bedcovers and despite her weakness, her mother reaches out to take both of her daughter’s hands. “Emily, I want you to be happy. When are you going to let that happen?”

  “Soon.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “I believe you.”

  “I will!”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes! Otherwise, you’ll still be bugging me from the other side about it.”

  Sunshine pours through the window, casting the room in a warm, golden glow. Barbara releases Emily’s hands, and Emily finds sudden fascination with tracing a finger along the petals of a wide-open rose, relishing their softness.

  “You can bet on that. But that’s not the reason to let yourself be happy. It’s not some bourgeois activity, you know, this happiness thing. It’s what you’re here for.”

  Emily continues her tracing.

  “I’m surprised Lisa isn’t bugging you more about it.”

  “Maybe she is. Still in the way a ten-year-old would.”

  “You didn’t have to leave life with her, my sweet Emily. Can you let yourself live at last?”

  Ching!

  “Just at the nursing home?” Marion gently asks.