My two-year-old can hold a conversation — or even a decent argument — with herself. She talks and rails, her voice inflecting and rising and changing in all the right places. The other day, while we were out in the yard as she was running from the play house to the baby pool, talking all the way, my husband looked at me in disbelief.

He didn’t need to say anything.

“I have to wonder, watching her, if she actually sees someone I don’t,” I said, in response to his expression.

The someone I think she sees? Maybe it’s her angel.

I haven’t always been a fan of angels, which is not to say that I ever disliked them. I just wasn’t into fat babies with wings.

And then I discovered that they’re far more powerful than that. I tapped into a bit of a relationship with my own guardian angel and started to wonder about the little inexplicable things in my life.

I’m not sure why La Negrita is called, formally, Our Lady of Angels, but I like it. It makes me think of Mary in the midst of these powerful beings (who may or may not actually have wings), surrounded by gentle giants of a sort.

It’s the same sort of image I get when I see my husband or one of his brother’s holding a baby. There they are, towering over this tiny little infant, cradling its delicate little body in their huge hands, and in their eyes is a sparkle (surely not a tear!) and a glimpse of the beauty of how God made each of us.

Today’s feast of Our Lady of Angels makes me want to hold a conversation with my angel. Care to join me?

Image source

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In other places:

  • That last link above goes to my latest article, “Coincidences That Aren’t,” at Faith & Family Live. You’ll get a short version of the story of Our Lady of Angels, La Negrita, and links that are worth exploring.
  • It’s official: I’m weird. Why? I didn’t flip out over gray hair. Dare I suggest I enjoyed finding it? Well, maybe I didn’t. But I did use it as the subject of my last column at CatholicMom.com: “Finding Grace in the Gray.”
  • I’d be remiss not to send you over to sign up for the latest and greatest giveaway at CatholicMom.com, in celebration of the dog days of summer and a sure way to beat the heat. There are 24 different Catholic fiction titles, and you could be a winner! Go on! Enter!