The Only Ugly Angel
A million beautiful angels had passed, all with splendid feathered wings, as white as a summer’s cloud, and superb golden auras surrounding them. Each and every one of them was stunningly beautiful; their features were as perfect as their hearts, and just to gaze upon them made your heart melt.
All except one, Jeziliah, the only ugly angel in Heaven. His wings were tattered and bent with a grayish tinge to the feathers, his nose was too long and a little pointed and his legs too short and slightly bandy, and his hair was black and constantly tangled, not golden and silky.
Jeziliah was ashamed of his ugliness and hid from them whenever possible by walking alone amongst the poor and hopeless of society. Eventually, on one of his long, solitary walks, he found himself deep in the slums, at the battered, worn and graffiti covered door of the drug rehabilitation center.
Feeling his soul drawn to this dilapidated building Jeziliah paused at the door. He felt more confident here as he thought no one could see him, only feel his love. Here he could be just like any of the angels, unseen beauty.
He threw himself deeply into his work, whispering words of hope into ears that had gone without hope for so long, touched hearts and gave them a little of Heaven's light, giving them the strength they needed to escape from the vicious cycle they found themselves in. He guided footsteps back to where they could get help, even when the feet they belonged to preferred to go in other directions.
He found the doctors and nurses and helpers working there were as much in need of his talents as the addicts were. They needed inspiration, hope and love because this hard and unforgiving task took so much out of them. They were abused and sworn at constantly, and the faces from last week that they had helped recover often turned up again this week, and many more never survived to return.
Often he cried when they cried, when someone didn't make it and died from an overdose, when babies were born with an addiction, when the addicts got younger and younger.
It was during a quiet period that a young girl looked up from a seat where she had sat silently waiting, her head in her hands, to be examined by the doctor, and said quietly to him, "You're my guardian Angel. Aren't you?"
Jeziliah felt shocked, exposed and scared. He had thought no one could see his ugliness, that he was safe from the shame that had dogged him all of his life. He pulled a tattered wing over his face and ran stumbling towards the door.
"Please," she called out desperately after his fleeing form "Please don't run away. Please don't hide."
He stopped, his wing still hiding his face, and he called back to her, "But I'm ugly. I'm not beautiful like the other angels. You don't want a guardian angel like me."
Then suddenly she was in tears. "I’m ugly too." she cried, the tears starting to roll down her gaunt cheeks. "I’m so ugly deep inside, deep in my soul, so very ugly. An older boy got me addicted when I was twelve; I was too young, too scared and too desperate to fit in, to say no, and I was too scared to say no when he molested me while I lay in a drugged stupor, and when he invited his friends to do so too. I am so ugly, and scared, and alone. Please help me."
Suddenly he was holding her, feeling her bones protruding sharply under her skin. He looked down at her face, at the dark blue marks under her eyes, the gaunt, dirty cheeks, the look of hopelessness that went deep into her soul. She was no more than fifteen now, and she needed so much love.
He smiled and the light shone out of him. She smiled too, and she whispered, "I do want you as my guardian angel. I would like that very, very much."
He laughed and said, "I'm going to need a lot of help here, like to be the one?"
***********
It wasn't easy for Elisabeth. Even with Jeziliah constantly by her side, helping and soothing and giving her all his love, it was still a long, hard road.
She stood up to the boys that had been using her, and told her parents everything. They had cried, but to her surprise, they stood by her side through the court case where a kindly old judge passed a restraining order on the boys who refused to let her escape, and afterwards through the long and desperate times when she was trying to give up her addiction.
Jeziliah stood with her parents as she begged, cried and screamed for a fix, just one, and with his strength added to theirs, they held firm, day after day, until finally their little girl was drug free.
She had to repeat a class in school because of the time she had missed, and it took three tries to get into university, but she never gave up hope, never once did she stop trying, never once did despair triumph over hope.
Whenever she felt sad or hurt, she would quietly whisper, "Ugly angel. Are you there?"
Always the answer would come back, "Yes ugly girl. I'm always here for you."
The smiles would come back to both their faces, and both knew that the other would never be ugly to their eyes.
On the day she graduated from medical school he was standing at her side and she whispered to him, "There is a reason for everything. You were more scared than I was that day, and you touched my soul, perhaps in the same way as I touched yours. I guess I knew then that we could both make each other beautiful."
On the day she stood once again at the doors of the rehab clinic, this time to start her new job as a doctor there, she said, "I'm going to need a lot of help here, like to be the one?"
***********
A little girl who had thought herself ugly on the inside, and an angel who thought himself ugly on the outside, had both become beautiful together.
