Today I awoke at 4:44 am, in the world of “Angel Numbers”, a system of finding meaning through numbers as related to Angels, it means, among other things, that I am surrounded by Angels.  “Good Morning!” I laughed out loud.

I have read numerous books on Angels but until recently had never encountered this idea of Angel Numbers, in fact I saw a brief blurb on facebook by Doreen Virtue just prior to my youngest son’s brain surgery this past winter about the sequence 444 and how it related to Angels.  A few short weeks later I entered the recovery room after my youngest had under gone an eight hour procedure of placing electrodes on the surface of his brain, this was to map the seizure activity precisely prior to the second surgery to remove the affected areas.

Anyone can tell you waiting in a hospital is not for the faint of heart, it is grueling.  And one would think that being a nurse I would be at the very least “comfortable” with the idea of surgery, not so.  Seeing my child after the initial surgery was a shock to my system. In hospice nursing we do very little with the technology of medicine, critical care never held an allure for me as a nurse.  I am not versed in all the monitors and gadgets that are “normal” in the course of someone who has just had brain surgery.  So to see him laying there, his head wrapped in a turban of gauze with a drain attached, my heart sank.  The surgeon reappeared and seeing my dismay assured me that this was “good” and everything had gone well.  He was a sweet and kind man, gentle in spirit.  He believed in what he did and his motivation was to change the lives of his patients for better and hopefully make them seizure free.  I trusted him beyond words, I knew from the moment we met him he was a man of God, doing God’s work, an Angel of sorts. His words consoled me a bit, but still I was scared.  I needed more assurance than just the good doctor.

The monitor beeped showing a steady heart rate and pattern, blood pressure was fine, breathing was within normal range, these things I could read but there was one set of numbers I didn’t understand. The monitor read 444.  I realize in that moment it didn’t matter what it meant clinically, because to me it meant that the Angels were surrounding us and caring for us.  Heaven had spoken, and I was comforted.  All is well.