This story begins before I was even born.  My parents had a baby girl and they named her Elizabeth.  She died a week after birth from a serious heart defect.  A little more than a year later, on my parents second wedding anniversary, I was born. My parents were always open about Elizabeth's short life -  they told me that she was my guardian angel. It was a cute story when I was young, but it became nothing more than a childhood memory as I grew up.

I married at 26 and although my wife and I wanted children,  we were unable to conceive.
After seven years of "trying," a tubal pregnancy almost killed my wife.  A subsequent miscarriage sank us into despair.  We soon gave up, and accepted that we would never have children of our own.

Several months later, a miracle occurred, we were pregnant!  I went to every single obstetrician visit, and watched my wife become more beautiful with each passing day.   As the pregnancy progressed,  we began to relax, every test that came back indicated  that the baby was normal  and a normal pregnancy.

With five weeks to go,  my wife's water broke in the middle of the night.  My wife was in a state of panic.  Although I tried not to show it, I was in a panic myself.   The obstetrician directed us to the local medical  hospital (& it was a school).  When we arrived, the maternity staff was waiting for us.   They attached all kinds of monitors to my wife  Then all we had to do was wait.   Labor didn't progress as well as the doctors expected, and the fetal monitor indicated that the baby was under stress. The decision was made to induce labor.

The baby was born limp, and purple.  The attending nurse announced that we had a baby girl, then immediately whisked the baby out of the room. Thankfully, my wife was still feeling the effect of anesthetics,  but a sense of dread almost paralyzed me. The hospital staff did a marvelous job.  The baby gained color and was alert when I finally got to see her.  Although she weighed only 5 lbs. 4 ounces she was perfect . We named her Elizabeth in honor of my "guardian angel," my mother, and my wife's grandmother.

She went home on my wife's 39th birthday.  Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth became jaundiced, and rapidly lost weight.  She dropped to 4 lbs. 6 oz, and had an umbilical hernia.  I was trying to hold us together, but we were  living in a state of anxiety and controlled panic.

One night I awoke late  and saw a face surrounded by a beautiful light.  Without thinking, I said Hi to her.  She said, "Brother, you don't have to worry anymore, I'm taking care of her now."

It was that simple.  An unbelievable sense of peace surrounded me and I fitfully fell asleep. The next day my daughter regained that rosy pink color of a healthy baby , and began to gain weight. She is now ten years old, plays soccer, and is normal in every respect except for her controllable chronic asthma condition, probably due to her premature birth. And believe it or not,  she now has two younger sisters!

I'm not sure my sister Elizabeth was ever my guardian angel but, she certainly is my daughter's guardian angel. To this day, I still get chills as I recount this story.   It has been alomost ten years since all of this has happened and I cried as I put this story to paper for the first time to Catholic Online.