The Angel Coin

It just sounds silly when I say it out loud, and almost sillier that I'm writing it down. I think I'm involuntarily searching for something I really can't find. So when Nathan handed me that gold colored angel coin, I flipped it over and over in my fingers, expecting to see some symbol or letter that connected it to the modern world such as the E Pluribus Unum on a Untied States coin. But there was nothing except the image of an angel, and I don't know why that struck me as strange, but it did.

"Helen gets them in the mail," my younger brother told me after I had asked him where he got it. "She gave some to me. You can have that one if you want." Normally I am a person who tosses religion out the window. I've been raised to believe in God and the numerous lessons and stories in the bible, but as of a year ago I came to the realization that my religion wasn't building a bond with a loving person like my mom said it was. Perhaps it was rebellion, but I was so tired of hearing everything revert back to religion as well as always worrying if I was doing the right thing, if God was mad at me because I didn't want to agree with all the ideas in the church.

The breaking off of my religious principles was fuelled entirely by anger and hatred toward everything. It was a turning point in my life. I had been annoyed with religious beliefs before, but I had always returned, trying to force the parables inside of me. Surely if I didn't follow God's laws, I'd never make it upstairs. As this snapshot of my life started to pass so fast and yet in slow motion my stress levels at school mixing with my low self-esteem and my mother's spiritual excuses threw me forward with such seething momentum that I was able to finally melt the iron chains around my legs and with one final yank I tore free.

I threw out religion completely, even ignoring the idea of a God. I drew my strength from provocative fights with my mom. I wanted her to fight me. I wanted to get her to yell and scream and try to force it in deep like a blade to the chest cavity, but she gave the monster inside me no such pleasure. Now as I reflect back on my emotions I realize that underneath all of my hot hatred there was a little girl scared of the dark world she was creating inside. Deep in the crevices of my heart, crevices I refused to visit because I didn't want to show weakness, a part of me was crying hoping that somehow my mom could show me God's light, that she could prove he was real and still cared. But that would take a miracle.

Nobody can prove God actually exists, and as the days turned into months my anger fell away, but my skepticism remained always ready to scoff when anyone spoke of God's love for everyone. If he loved everyone so much, why did he ignore us all? Then my battle with others turned in on myself. I realized that perhaps God didn't even hear me. Out of all the 6 billion people on Earth, how could he possibly be able to hear my silent plea for help when I laid in my bed at night, crying tiny transparent tears, hoping someone with much more wisdom might hear me? Or perhaps he just didn't want to hear me.

I don't consider myself religious anymore. I'm still unsure of whether there is a God or if he can even hear me after all of immoral things I've done and after cursing him numerous times in my head, but even so there's a part of me still picking up the pieces after a few black as night months where I explored my inner demons. And the part of me that continues to pick up these fragile glass shards still hopes to find some sort of assurance in a wiser figure that can tell me life will be okay, that everyone will be okay, that I am not heading for Armageddon, that the world is not chaos walking.

Holding the angel coin in my hand I found it odd that it had no markings, no symbols, no words that spoke of love, of harmony, of faith, or even of those of us who are wicked. It was merely a gold coin with the simple image of an angel. The fantasy part of my brain went wild, blazing like a spontaneous solar flare. Was this a way for me to talk to God? Was it like the Greek stories where you tossed a Gold Drachma into a rainbow and Iris, the messenger of the gods, would allow you to communicate? No, those were only stories, and I was not about to go try and find a rainbow and toss the coin in like a foolish dreamer.

I still do not know what the angel coin means, or why it came to me when it did, or if it means nothing at all and that it is just a simple coin. I do not know much about religion, I do not believe in everything the church teaches, or even what others say about God. But I do know that whether God exists or not, I found an inner solace holding that coin as if the angel was looking right at me and saying, "I'm still here in ways you do not understand." And I know that if there are angel coins then there are people that believe in a better life beyond the cosmos. There is still good in this world, there is still good inside of me, and it is most certainly worth fighting for whether God knows this…or not.

A/N: This was therapeutic. Man I'm losing it...well actually I've been having to read a lot of memoirs for my AP Lang and Comp class so while reading this memoir I got to choose myself I've really been focusing in on all of my deep psychological thoughts.

I guess this is just my war with religion. I'm not bashing anyone for being religious, this has just been my internal struggle over the past year. I don't want to consider myself an atheist. That seems too harsh of a word, but I don't necessarily believe in the whole of religion.

It seems that sometimes I feel as if God is real, and other times I just can't really believe that he does exist.

But I still believe in courage, and I still believe in the good inside of everyone.

I think in a way God, if he's real, may be letting me know he's there or else Fate is creepily messing with me. The whole Angel Coin thing really struck me hard and so I had to write about it.

But tonight I had another counseling session and Polly, my counselor, said, "You seem to see things deeper than what other people see, Sarah, you're not so worried about every day life. You see the world differently than others."

And I guess I feel like that sometimes, but then I was telling her I'm too shy to tell people how I feel.

Okay so then my mom bought Chinese for dinner tonight and when I opened up my fortune cookie this was my fortune:

"You tend to have deeper thoughts than you are able to express to others."

Uh, what? HOLY CRAP! Fate is so messing with me. Some supernatural force is messing with me. It's totally freaking me out, but in a good way like, "Uh...is someone up there finally hearing me? Or is this all a coincidence?"

Eerie...

Well, I guess I just had to write this story about the Angel Coin and push it out here on the web. I got homework now so everyone enjoy if you can.