________________________________
Is this an angel of God captured on camera?
'I look at things differently than I used to – because I know God is in control'
Posted: December 23, 2008, 8:35 pm Eastern
WorldNetDaily
 Is this a photo of an angel? |
A mother fervently praying while her teenage daughter lay, possibly dying, in intensive care received a blessing of encouragement when, to her astonishment, she believes she saw an angel in the hospital hallway.
Colleen Banton of Mint Hill, N.C., was in the waiting room when a nurse called her to see a video capture of the hallway outside the pediatric intensive care unit.
"On the monitor, there was this bright light," Banton told the Charlotte Observer. "And I looked at it and I said, 'Oh my goodness! It looks like an angel!'"
Banton quickly took a picture of what she saw, and the image stayed with her as her 14-year-old daughter, who has battled repeated illnesses since being born prematurely in 1993, miraculously recovered. Her daughter, Chelsea Banton, will turn 15 on Christmas Day.
Knowing some would doubt an angel was watching over Chelsea, her mother told the Observer, "If they doubt it, that's fine. … But I know what I saw, and the picture's untouched. I didn't make it up. That's just something that I believe.
"I believe that more people have changed since this happened. I know I have," said Banton. "I look at things differently than I used to – because I know God is in control."
 Chelsea Banton, as she clung to life in a Charlotte hospital |
Before Chelsea Banton was 2, the Observer reports, she was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia, followed by a string of troubling health struggles: hydrocephalus, requiring a shunt in her skull; life-threatening viruses; and, this past July, a week in the hospital where doctors withdrew three liters of retained fluid from her body.
But on Sept. 21, Chelsea contracted a wicked cold that required her to be admitted to the hospital yet again and threatened to end her life.
"She was on life-support from the moment she got there," her mother said.
Over the next six weeks, Chelsea battled first pneumonia in her left lung, then her right lung, then sepsis, blood clots, staph infections, E. coli, a collapsed lung and feeding problems.
The stay in the hospital took its toll on Chelsea, who suffered increased anxiety attacks and fought, but failed, to breathe without a ventilator.
Through prayer and heartache, after weeks of battling, Chelsea's family asked the doctors to give her one more shot at breathing without the ventilator. And not to put it back in.
"I said, 'She's been through enough,'" Colleen told the Observer. "I said, 'Can we just take her mask off? She's been through enough.'
"I wanted to do what the Lord wanted me to do. And I really felt like I've had her for 14 years, and if it's time for her to go to heaven, then I know she'll be healed."
On the afternoon of Nov. 5, while the family was spending what may have been their last moments with Chelsea, the image appeared in the monitor.
"Within an hour," reports MSNBC (See article below), "the dying girl began a recovery that doctors are at a loss to explain."
"Her color was good, and the doctors and nurses were amazed," Colleen told the Observer. "The nurse practitioner who saw the image in the monitor said, 'I've worked here 15 years, and I've never seen anything like it.'"
As for Banton, she's convinced God intervened to save her daughter's life.
"I've never seen anything so bright, so beautiful," Banton told WBTV, Charlotte. "I don't think I would have brought Chelsea home from the hospital if the angel had not appeared."
Though others may doubt the appearance of the hospital hallway angel or the hand of God behind a "miraculous" recovery, Banton believes still holding her daughter after 15 years of medical struggles and trials is a blessing in itself.
"I'm learning," Banton told the Observer, "that every day she's alive is a miracle."
________________________________
Did an angel save dying girl in hospital?
A 14-year-old girl with a history of serious health issues lay dying of pneumonia in a hospital room. But as her mother waited for the girl to take her last breath, an image of bright light appeared on a security monitor. Within an hour, the dying girl began a recovery that doctors are at a loss to explain.
But Colleen Banton, the girl's mother, has an explanation. “This was an image of an angel,” she told NBC News in a story reported Tuesday on TODAY. She credited the apparition with saving the life of her daughter Chelsea.
No hope
The incident happened in Charlotte, N.C., in September. Chelsea had been born five weeks prematurely with developmental disabilities and had battled serious health problems all her life. She is particularly susceptible to the types of pneumonia infections that had taken her to death’s door.
Told that there was no hope for Chelsea, Colleen Banton had just instructed doctors to take her daughter off life support and allow nature to take its course when the apparition was seen.
It would be another two months before Chelsea finally left the hospital to return home, where she is about to celebrate her 15th birthday as well as Christmas. Her mother is convinced that Chelsea was saved by divine intervention.
“It’s a blessing,” she told NBC News. “It’s a miracle.”
Banton took a picture of the television monitor on which the image appeared. Some who look at it would describe it as a flare of reflected light. Others — including nurses who were on duty as well as Banton — say the three vertical shafts of light are indisputably an angel.
‘They walk amongst us’
Banton is hardly alone in her belief in angels.
“I think angels really do exist,” the Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook told TODAY’s Ann Curry after watching the report on the Bantons’ experience. “They protect us. They walk amongst us.”
Cook was joined by Rabbi Irwin Kula, who looked at angels as more of a metaphor for the unexplained wonders that life brings.
“Albert Einstein said there are two ways to look at the world: as if everything is a miracle or nothing is a miracle,” he said.
Angels do not play a large role in the Jewish faith, but they have a prominent place in Christianity, which teaches that an angel told Mary that she was to be the mother of Jesus.
Cook said she believes that angels are messengers from God. “They bring the message of hope,” she told Curry.
According to some polls, 75 percent of all Americans believe in angels. That level of belief varies with geography and political affiliation, with more Republicans than Democrats and more Southerners than Northeasterners believing in the existence of the heavenly messengers.
The high level of belief is unique in the developed world. In Canada, Great Britain and Australia, the same polls say, belief in angels does not exceed 40 percent.
Being open to wonder
Kula said whether you believe in angels or not, there is a deeper message in Banton’s story.
“The real question is: Can we be open to wonder?” the rabbi told Curry. “Even at the very last moment, the very darkest moment, can we actually be open to the new possibilities that are always there?”
Angels, Kula said, “can be anything.” In that sense, he said, one could say that someone who just shows up when you most need a hand can be seen as a very real angel.
“You’re having a bad day, and a child comes up to you and smiles and right away you feel better. Is that an angel or is that a child smiling?” Kula said.
Cook had to wipe away a tear of joy after watching Banton’s story. It is particularly appropriate, she said, coming at the Christmas season during a year in which many people are experiencing economic hardship.
“People are looking for a miracle right now,” Cook said.
Some, like Colleen Banton, feel they’ve found one.
No comments:
Post a Comment