Do you have a guardian angel?

This is a way off topic post, feel free to skip fast if you don't like to venture in the unknowns. :)

My life, like most others, has not been easy.  In fact, the burdens often left me wondering and questioning instead of finding comfort and peace.  Even today I look back on the events of the past and am amazed I made to where I am today.  The mere fact that I am living and breathing is just a miracle of sorts or a representation of my own weaknesses to rectify the situation (in a bad way...without saying the word).  From a small child I can remember praying to a God I didn't even really know existed, to end the torture.  Yet, nothing ever happened and things continued on the burdensome path for me. 

Seven and half years ago things changed ever so slightly.

Up until that time I had never lost anyone in my inner circle.  Being from a broken home the circle was indeed small and consisted of only seven people.  Other family members were distant and I have to think didn't know how to help us, so they stayed away.  I can't really blame them, but it isn't a step I would take (possibly because I have went through these things).   I would be there helping in any way I could, it's just who I am.  So, when the time came for one of my immediate circle members to pass-away - I was broken. 

I hadn't experienced death so close to me before and I had no tools to deal with it.  I think for most of us these tools are learned from watching and experiencing these things with those we love.  Something that just didn't happen in my experience.  I was lost in grief and had no idea how to find my way out. 

It had been years since I went to church, this is not a story about church really, but I was so emotionally broken that I went to the local parish to speak with the pastor there.  Not to underscore what the pastor did, which was help me find peace in an open environment, but that pastor was not the one that saved me that day.  It was a woman I had never seen before that happened to be there that day and walked me out to my car. 

I often look back on that short walk and talk.  It wasn't so much what this woman said but how she said it.  As our conversation continued I could literally feel the burdens being lift and a tiny bit of light shone at me in the darkness like a beacon.  I knew that things would get better.  I don't know how, but I did.  Before climbing in my car I gave this woman a hug and told her that I think she was my guardian angel and that I came there that day to really meet her. 

In the years since then, I see her every week pretty much.  She continues to take care of me in ways that may seem small to most, but that really just .... enhance my life.  Makes me feel loved, safe and important.  Isn't that strange???  Getting these feelings from a person you didn't even know existed. 

When times get tough on my roller coaster life, she seems to always be there and say the right thing.  My blood family caused me much sadness recently and just as though she knew I was lost again, she gave me a card with a little token inside.  That token was a guardian angel pin, so that I was protected even when she wasn't around.  I'm still amazed at how this happened and just when I needed it again. 

My guardian angels ability to always be there when I need her, for almost 8 years, takes my breath away.  It is so amazing that even my husband has commented numerous times how she is always taking care of me.  How does another human know these things if not by some intervention?  She absolutely renews and in some ways establishes my faith.

Tell me, do any of you have a guardian angel (even if you don't use the name) that seems to help when you think no one knows that your roller coaster is headed downwards?