Episode 2 — The Invisible Hand
Episode 2 — The Invisible Hand
The guardian angel story I have carried with me since I was a baby
There are things in my life that I can explain.
There are things I can explain because I am a doctor.
And then there are things I can only tell you about.
I can tell you what happened.
I can tell you what I saw.
I can tell you what I felt.
But I cannot give you a laboratory explanation for everything.
One of those things has followed me since I was a baby.
I call it the invisible hand.
I have felt it in moments when I was completely alone.
I have felt it when I was afraid.
I have felt it when I prayed.
And one morning in Baguio City, when I was only sixteen years old, I felt it more strongly than ever.
That was the day I became convinced that whatever had been watching over me since childhood was not just a childhood imagination.
I believe it was an angel.
Baby Who Drank His Own Milk
I don't remember being a baby.
Of course I don't.
But my mother told me a story about myself that I have never forgotten.
I was born by Caesarean section. My mother had eclampsia, and after I was born, she struggled with producing enough milk.
We were also poor.
Formula was expensive.
So my milk was what my family called our little “power formula.”
It was a mixture of whatever my mother could provide, formula, and something called AM—the first-boil rice water that could be collected and mixed into my bottle.
My mother had to be creative because we didn't have much.
At night, when I cried because I was hungry, she would prepare my bottle and sometimes place it above me on a table because there was no one else to constantly hold it.
My father was a soldier and was often away.
One thing my mother could never explain was how I managed to finish my bottle.
I was only a few months old.
I couldn't properly grasp things.
I could barely open my eyes.
And yet, according to my mother, she would come back and discover that the bottle was empty.
Not once.
Not just one strange night.
It happened all the time.
She was shocked.
How could a baby drink an entire bottle without someone holding it?
She didn't have an answer.
Years later, when I was old enough to understand the story, I began wondering about it too.
But there was something else.
Something I don't know how to explain except through my own memory.
The Hands
When I was very young, I sometimes sensed something around me.
Before I cried, I would feel something.
Then there would be what I can only describe as a happy energy around me.
And then I would see what looked like transparent hands.
They were not frightening.
That is important.
They didn't feel dark.
They didn't make me feel threatened.
Quite the opposite.
There was warmth.
There was peace.
There was something comforting about the presence.
I remember the feeling of hands near my cheeks and the sense that someone was helping me with the bottle.
I didn't have the vocabulary for it as a child.
I didn't know about theology.
I didn't know about guardian angels.
I didn't know how to explain something invisible.
I simply knew:
Someone was there.
Someone I couldn't fully see.
Someone I felt.
Someone who seemed to help.
As I grew older, I began to call that experience the invisible hand.
And eventually, I began to wonder whether that invisible hand was my guardian angel.
Growing Up With That Feeling
My childhood wasn't easy.
My mother left the Philippines to work abroad when I was six.
My father was a soldier.
My siblings eventually went away for school.
There were periods when the house became very quiet.
Sometimes it was just me.
I learned very young how to do things for myself.
I cooked.
I cleaned.
I washed dishes.
I studied.
I learned how to manage the house.
There were nights when being alone felt much bigger than the physical size of the house.
And yet, strangely, I was not always afraid.
Sometimes I would feel that same presence.
That same peaceful feeling.
It was almost as if someone was saying without words:
You are not alone.
I didn't always understand it.
Sometimes I ignored it.
Sometimes I simply continued with whatever I was doing.
But the feeling stayed with me.
Then Came Baguio
I was sixteen years old.
I was a first-year college student, cross-enrolled from UP Diliman to UP Baguio, and I was staying in a dorm.
It was summer, and I was involved in NSTP and ROTC.
One morning, around 11:30, I was riding a taxi alone.
I was sitting in the back.
I remember that Baguio morning.
It was cold.
Foggy.
The kind of Baguio weather where the surroundings can suddenly feel very close and very far at the same time.
I was heading home.
The driver was unusually quiet.
There was something about him that I noticed.
He seemed agitated.
Silent.
I didn't know why.
I didn't think much of it.
Then, suddenly—
I saw the dump truck.
It was only about five seconds before the impact.
Five seconds.
That is all.
And then everything changed.
The Crash
I remember feeling myself being pushed forward.
Then everything seemed to happen at once.
The taxi spun.
Round and round.
My large bags—the bags I had brought from the province—were thrown toward me.
They hit me.
And strangely, those bags became part of what I believe protected me.
The impact was violent.
The rear part of the taxi was badly wrecked.
But somehow, I was still there.
Conscious.
Awake.
Alive.
I wasn't bleeding.
I hadn't hit my head.
I didn't feel pain.
I was dizzy.
Shocked.
I felt as if I had been thrown around.
But there was something else.
Time felt slow.
And in the middle of all that violence, I felt something completely unexpected.
Warmth.
Peace.
I wasn't screaming in terror.
I wasn't consumed by panic.
I felt protected.
I cannot tell you that I saw an angel standing beside me.
I didn't.
I cannot tell you that I saw wings.
I didn't.
But I felt something.
It was the same kind of knowing I had experienced as a child.
That unmistakable feeling:
Someone is here.
Someone is protecting me.
The taxi finally stopped.
And then reality came rushing back.
The Driver
The driver was badly injured.
He was unconscious.
He eventually went into a coma.
He had broken ribs.
I remember seeing the situation around me and realizing how serious the accident was.
People came to help.
I was taken for medical attention.
People were surprised that I was okay.
And I was surprised too.
I should have been terrified.
Instead, I cried.
Not because I was in pain.
I wasn't.
I cried because I had just realized how close I had come to something terrible.
And I prayed.
I remember the peace.
That is one of the things I have never forgotten.
The strange peace after something so violent.
I Didn't See an Angel
People sometimes expect stories about angels to involve bright lights, wings, voices from heaven, or someone appearing in human form.
Mine wasn't like that.
I didn't see a figure.
I didn't hear a voice saying, “I am your angel.”
There was no dramatic supernatural announcement.
There was simply a feeling.
A warmth.
A peace.
And a deep sense that I had been physically protected.
It reminded me of those strange childhood experiences with the invisible hands.
The same feeling.
The same quiet certainty.
The same sense that I wasn't alone.
And I believe those experiences were connected.
Why I Believe in Guardian Angels
Today, I am older.
I am also a doctor.
That makes this part of my story interesting even to me.
Medicine taught me to observe.
To question.
To look for evidence.
To distinguish what we know from what we assume.
And I respect that deeply.
But becoming a doctor did not destroy my faith.
In some ways, it strengthened it.
Every day, medicine reminds me how precious life is.
A human body is extraordinarily complex.
A person's life can change in seconds.
A heartbeat can stop.
A brain can be injured.
A person can recover in ways that surprise us.
A person can also deteriorate despite everything medicine does.
Working around life and death has made me even more conscious that there are things we can observe without being able to explain every dimension of them.
That doesn't mean that every unexplained event is supernatural.
I don't believe that.
But it also doesn't mean that everything spiritual must be dismissed simply because we cannot put it under a microscope.
My own experiences are personal.
I know what I experienced.
I know what I felt.
And I know what I believe.
The Catholic Understanding of Angels
My belief in guardian angels is also not something I invented for this story.
The Catholic Church teaches that angels are spiritual beings who serve God, and the Catechism specifically speaks about human life being surrounded by the watchful care and intercession of angels. It describes the guardian angel as a protector and shepherd. ([Vatican][1])
That teaching gave language to something I had experienced long before I knew how to describe it.
As a child, I only knew:
Someone was there.
As I grew older, I began to understand the possibility:
Perhaps God had allowed an angel to accompany me.
And the Baguio accident made that belief much deeper.
The Angel of God
One prayer that became especially meaningful to me is the traditional Angel of God prayer:
Angel of God, my guardian dear, To whom His love commits me here, Ever this day be at my side, To light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.
There is something beautiful about those words.
Not because they promise that nothing bad will ever happen.
But because they remind me of something I had already experienced:
I don't have to walk through this life believing that I am completely alone.
Saint Michael
I also learned to pray to Saint Michael the Archangel, especially when I felt spiritually vulnerable:
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
For me, these prayers aren't magic formulas.
They are acts of faith.
They remind me that protection ultimately comes from God.
Looking Back at the Invisible Hand
Sometimes I think about that baby I used to be.
A little boy in a poor home.
A mother who had to work hard just to make ends meet.
A father who was often away because he was a soldier.
A bottle placed where a baby could somehow reach it.
A child who, according to his mother, somehow managed to drink it.
And then I think about the hands I remember.
Transparent.
Gentle.
Never frightening.
Always accompanied by that strange feeling of warmth and happiness.
Then I think about the little boy who grew up alone sometimes.
The teenager who was bullied.
The young man who struggled.
The student riding alone through the fog of Baguio.
The taxi.
The dump truck.
The impact.
The spinning.
The bags flying toward me.
The wrecked rear of the taxi.
The injured driver.
And me—
still alive.
Still conscious.
Still without pain.
Still feeling that same invisible presence.
Maybe That Is Why I Never Truly Felt Alone
There were many moments in my life when I could have concluded that I was alone.
My mother was far away.
My father was often away.
My siblings eventually had their own lives.
There were times when I felt misunderstood.
There were times when people hurt me.
There were times when I was bullied.
There were times when I failed.
There were times when I questioned myself.
But looking back now, I don't think I was ever completely alone.
I believe God allowed me to experience protection in ways I could understand only much later.
Sometimes it came as peace.
Sometimes it came as an unexplained feeling.
Sometimes it came through another person.
And sometimes, I believe, it came through an invisible hand.
I Have Ignored It Too
I want to be honest about something.
I have not always listened.
I have not always paid attention.
I have not always tried to understand these experiences.
There were times when I simply ignored them.
Life gets busy.
School gets busy.
Medicine gets busy.
Work gets busy.
Dreams get pushed aside.
Spiritual experiences become things we don't talk about.
But they remain part of us.
And sometimes something happens that brings everything back.
For me, that happened in Baguio.
The accident didn't make me suddenly religious.
I already believed.
What it did was make something inside me much clearer.
The feeling I had experienced as a child had followed me.
What Does a Guardian Angel Mean to Me Now?
When I say I believe in guardian angels, I don't mean that I think nothing bad can ever happen to a person.
Bad things happen.
People get sick.
People get hurt.
People die.
Faith doesn't make us immune to suffering.
For me, guardian angel means something deeper.
It means that God's care can surround us even when we don't understand what is happening.
It means that protection may not always look like the miracle we imagined.
Sometimes protection is obvious.
Sometimes it is quiet.
Sometimes we only recognize it years later.
And sometimes we may never know what we were protected from.
The Catholic tradition itself speaks of angels as God's servants and messengers and describes their mysterious help and watchful care in human life. ([Vatican][1])
That teaching makes sense to me because of the life I have lived.
If You Feel Completely Alone
If you are reading this because you feel alone, I don't want to give you a perfect religious answer.
I want to tell you something from my own life.
There were times when I genuinely felt that nobody was there.
But looking back, I don't believe that was the whole truth.
I was alone in a room sometimes.
I was alone in a house sometimes.
I was alone in a taxi.
But I don't believe I was ever completely alone.
And maybe you aren't either.
You may not see anything.
You may not hear anything.
You may not feel a hand.
You may even be angry with God right now.
That's okay.
You don't have to pretend.
Just talk to Him.
Tell Him you're scared.
Tell Him you're tired.
Tell Him you don't understand.
And if you can, simply say:
“God, please stay with me.”
That is sometimes enough to begin.
Because I have learned something throughout my life.
The greatest protection isn't always the absence of danger.
Sometimes it is discovering, in the middle of danger, that you were not abandoned.
I believe that is what happened to me in Baguio.
And when I think about that little boy drinking his bottle alone all those years ago, I think about the invisible hands again.
Maybe they were there then.
Maybe they were there in Baguio.
Maybe they were there during the moments when I didn't even realize I needed protection.
I cannot prove that to you.
But I can tell you what I believe.
I believe I was protected.
And I believe the invisible hand has been there much longer than I ever understood.
A Prayer for Protection
Lord Jesus,
Thank You for the gift of life.
Thank You for protecting us in ways we see and in ways we do not see.
When we are afraid, give us peace.
When we are alone, remind us that we are not abandoned.
Guide our guardian angels to watch over us according to Your will.
Protect our families.
Protect our minds.
Protect our bodies.
Protect our souls.
And when we cannot understand what is happening around us, help us trust You one step at a time.
Amen.
This is my story.
And perhaps the most important thing I learned from the invisible hand is not that I should spend my life looking for signs.
It is that I should never assume that silence means absence.
Sometimes the presence we are looking for is already there.
We simply haven't learned how to recognize it yet.
Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of our readers.