My Epiphany

Epiphany, what an interesting word. Even though I read a lot and have a decent vocabulary, I had not heard of the word Epiphany until around 3 years ago. I was at once intrigued by the word and Googled it to find out more about it's meaning, This is what I found:

1. A Christian festival, observed on January 6, commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi; Twelfth-day.
2. An appearance or manifestation, esp. of a deity.
3. A sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
4. A literary work or section of a work presenting, usually symbolically, such a moment of revelation and insight.

After reading this information, I realized I had an Epiphany in 1990.
I'd like to tell you the story.

It began on a hot night in August of 1990. I was married to my first husband, Donnie. We had gone to sleep in our cool air conditioned bedroom. Dusty and Chad had crawled into bed with us and Harold and his son Justin, who were spending the night with us, had gone to sleep on a pallet in our room. We were all cool and sound asleep. Suddenly, at 2:00 am there was a boom sounding like thunder right outside our room, followed by a bright flash of light. Then there was complete quiet. No air conditioner, no hum of appliances, no phone. All our power was off.

Donnie looked out the window and said he could see a semi truck crashed into a building we were constructing in our lot next door. We rushed outside to see if there might be a gas leak or anything else to cause danger. Harold went to wake our nearest neighbors to use their phone to call for help. It seems that within minutes our property was full of firetrucks, emergency crews, ambulance, electric co. trucks and what seemed to be half the population of our little town.

To make a long story short...once the sun started coming up we could see all the damage and could determine what had happened. It seems that the driver of the semi fell asleep, lost control of his truck and it ran into a large tree at the edge of our property. This caused the truck to head towards our house. It hit Harold's truck, which was in our front driveway. Thankfully this caused the semi to veer a little to the right and barely miss the corner of our front porch. It continued it's journey, tumbling over and over across the yard, and finally landed inside the building next door. The driver was found later and taken to the hospital.

All though the morning I would stay in the house for awhile, then walk out the front door to see how the clean-up was going. I would repeat this over and over. One time as I was walking to the front door I saw a figure that seemed to be formed by clouds. It was standing at the edge of the porch right where the semi had come within inches of hitting. It's legs were spread and feet were firmly planted on the edge of the cement porch floor. It's arms were spread and holding onto the porch roof, as if it were supporting it. Strangely enough, I wasn't frightened, concerned, or curious about this figure. I just walked out the front door and walked right by where I had seen it. I didn't think another thing about the figure until a couple from town came out to see the damage and ask if they could help us in any way. I suddenly thought about the figure and told the lady about it. Without any hesitation she told me that was my guardian angel and I knew immediately that she was right.

So that was my Guardian angel and my Epiphany. Now, 18 years later I often close my eyes and I can see that figure and a warm, comforting feeling comes over my body and I feel so wonderful.

I would love to hear your stories of Epiphanies, or your thoughts or comments.