Edited Part I

This is a portion of my manuscript that I cut out. I thought it would be fun for you guys to read it anyway.
The main character, Tess is an angel who just got sent on a Ministering Mission to Earth. She will be working with one of her friends Valerie, who has been assigned as the mortals Guardian Angel.


To my surprise I found Valerie, protectively hovering near the spirit I had come to see. I discerned Valerie's mood, it was somber—not unusual for her—but this time it was founded on real worry over the human that she stood next to.

“She is surrounded by traitors!” Valerie came to my side in flurry of emotions. "Even her own people are trying to sell her out!” She exclaimed with horror and collapsed with relief in my outstretched arms.

“Who are you talking about?” I asked while I patted her back.

“My mortal, Joan.” She said as she moved back in shock at my lack of knowledge.

“Your mortal?”

“You know what I mean! I am her Guardian Angel, I consider her my mortal.” She shrugged. “So what brings you here? I thought you were training with that Seraph?”

“Dayspring? ...Yea I was, but now I am here as a Ministering Angel—to her.” I pointed at her mortal.

“Oh… well, she gets lots of visitors from our side.” She said in a huff. “She has the Gift of Beholding Spirits, so she sees us all—and hears us too.”

“Wow… that's amazing. If she sees all of us, does she ever get mortals and spirits confused?”

“No!” Valerie said with a look of disgust. “We are see-through, and we wear white robes!”

I laughed.

“I’m really glad they sent someone I know." Valerie said as she gave me a friendly shove on the shoulder. "It can get kind of lonesome sometimes. I haven’t seen Dane in… a few centuries.”

“Sorry" I said understanding her plight, "I rarely get to see Alex anymore." I told her, but Valerie didn't seem to be paying any attention to me anymore. Her features looked frozen and her eyes were glazed over.

"Val? Are you..."

She shook her head and snapped out of her trance.

"She's in trouble--again!"

"Who?"

"Joan, my mortal. She'll be betrayed tomorrow, she is walking into a trap!"

"A trap? What do you mean?"

"Did I tell you how happy I am They sent you Tess." She said again, but with a new kind of meaning. "We really need a discerner, especially tomorrow." Valerie said as she looked back at Joan.

In the distance I could see Joan. She couldn't have been older than eighteen, she looked weary, determined and oddly out of place in what looked like a military training ground.

Out of breath she rested her hands on her knees and turned her head toward us. She looked straight at us and squinted a little when her eyes focused on my form.
She excused herself from the training and came toward us. Valerie exchanged looks with her and told me to follow her into a nearby tent.

"Tess, this is Joan. She's the leader of the French army."

Creating... me.

Our True Identity

So many of the desions we make are hinged on how we view ourselves. We think we are a certain way, therefore we must act the part--much like in a play.

But who are we really?

There is a quote that I came across when I was 22 yrs. old, I can't remember where I read it, or who said it...but it has stuck with me and has changed the way I see myself and my life.

"Life is not about FINDING yourself, its about CREATING yourself."

I always thought I had to find myself, by experiencing things, life... . But I soon found that some of those experiences left me empty, hollow and unrecognizable even to myself. This quote helped me realize that those experiences were creating something else, someone I didn't know.

So I set to work at creating the person I wanted to be. Then, I found myself again--it was me all along who I wanted to be.

It was in finding myself that I lost myself. It was in loosing myslef to creating, through service, that I found myself again.

Novela Watching Grandma Who Fortells the Future

You could say that I am a little obsessed by the supernatural, I can’t help it. You see, it runs in my family.

She runs down a deserted beach, the sun setting on the horizon. She looks back, her dark long hair gets tangled around her face and she stumbles. Driven by some unseen force she gets up again and on shaky legs takes to running again—she is begins to cry and wipes her tears with the back of her hand.
In the distance, his horse kicks up a cloud of sand, and in no time catches up to her. She looks back and stumbles again. In one flawless move he dismounts and catches her. She beats her fists against his bare chest; he draws her to him and kisses her. She slaps him and shouts something in that passionate language—Spanish. He smiles that crooked smoldering smile… she relents… [we sigh] they kiss and kiss some more.

“I wish I spoke Spanish.” You may say still riveted to the screen. “I wonder what she was so mad about?” You sit down, still watching—you are sucked in—just like my grandma.

My Spanish grandmother spent her time doing two things…well three—she did two of them at the same time. She could tell the future and she watched novelas while she embroidered—the latter being an excuse to do the watching. I used to think she was weird and boring, but time has given me the opportunity to appreciate her life. In fact the older I get the more appreciative I am of her quirky influence. For one, I still have a table cloth that she embroidered and every time I pull it out, I wonder "how many hours of novela watching did this take?" The other thing I have grown to appreciate is her ability as a foreteller.
I still remember her bending over me, declaring certain things about my future…things that came true. I know what you are thinking, “Novela watching grandmothers can’t tell the future.”

Well… mine could. One of the times that stands out the most in my memory, happened on a stormy afternoon in Buenos Aires, where I grew up. She was visiting with us for a few weeks, my brother had invited his girlfriend to dinner and she lived in the other end of the City. He was anxious, because she was taking way too long, and in that pre-cell phone era, all you could do was sit and wait and bite your nails. She was in fact two hours overdue.

My brother paced in front of the window, lightning and thunder echoed through our house. My grandmother, more like a fixture than a member of this solemn group, embroidered in one corner of the room; lit by a single lamp.

My parents tried to offer hope, but my brother was full of reproach for himself, for not meeting her at the train station.

“She’ll be here soon.” My grandmother declared from her corner.
No one turned or said anything.

“…And she’ll be wearing something pink.” She added.

We turned and looked at her, half mystified, half believing. Not five minutes later the doorbell rings and my brother opens it. There, underneath those see through extra curvy umbrellas, was his girlfriend—wearing the only pink thing she owned in the world.

My grandmother had never met her, or talked to her. She didn’t know that my brother’s girlfriend disliked pink, and that this sweater was the only one she had.

My foretelling grandmother had a gift. She was wrong about a lot of things, but never about the future as she saw it through her gift.
Some say that these gifts get passed down, generation to generation…and they have.