I used to wonder what I did to merit a divine calling.

I spent hours scrutinizing my internal reflection, and I didn’t particularly like what I saw:

• A cynical journalist who could drink and cuss with the best (or worst) of them.
• A Christian who, despite her belief in God, hadn’t attended church regularly in years and was certainly no prime example of a God-fearing person.
• Someone who is generally kind and good but not good enough, surely, to be called to do God’s work.

I’ve bent the truth to get myself out of tight corners before, joined in on bitchy gossip sessions for some malicious fun at someone else’s expense, and I’ve definitely done some things that I’m not at all proud of.

So I laughed out loud when a clairvoyant told me, about five years ago, that I would be a spiritual teacher and healer.

I had once, long ago, toyed with the idea of teaching Sunday school, so perhaps that was what she meant about me being a spiritual teacher. But a healer?

For a couple of seconds, a mental picture flashed in front of me. I saw myself with both hands raised towards some faceless person, rays of light beaming out of my palms.

How utterly ludicrous.

Obviously, I’d watched one television programme too many on faith healers, and far too many sci-fi and fantasy movies.

“Are you talking about hands-on healing?” I asked disbelievingly.

“Well, you’re already healing people in a sense,” she responded. “You’re a good friend to so many. People tell you things that they normally wouldn’t tell others. You listen and you’re a natural counsellor. You help them heal emotionally.”

Yeah, right, I thought. Everyone’s a healer then, because everyone’s got friends who will share secrets with them. So much for being clairvoyant.

But when God knocks on your door, it seems He’ll keep at it until you respond, one way or another.

In the next 14 months, so many uncanny things happened to me on such an uncomfortably regular basis that it became impossible to bury my head in the sand and simply write them off as unhappy coincidences.

In the first half of that period alone, I think I prayed more than I had ever prayed in my entire life.

In the beginning, I feared the unknown.

I believed in God – which meant, by default, that I believed in angels. But all I knew about them was what I had learned in Sunday school, which basically translated to very little.

How could I know for certain that what I was experiencing was really with God’s holy messengers? Were they truly from the light? I couldn’t tell, and I was scared.

I also feared being put to the test.

In my younger days, when I zealously went to church every week, attended Bible study sessions and sang in the choir, I readily proclaimed my faith to one and all. Yet if what was happening was God testing me, I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure I would pass.

Explore what you’ve been experiencing all your life, the clairvoyant had advised.

But I didn’t fancy inviting anything supernatural into my life that could spiral out of control. I didn't want to open a door that I wouldn’t be strong enough to shut later.

So I prayed for protection and discernment. I prayed and prayed and prayed.

Finally, when I thought I’d break down from the stress of living in constant fear, I asked God to prove that it was Him and the angels reaching out to me.

And that night, I had a vision of Archangel Michael.

It was so real that I finally acknowledged that perhaps the angels were, indeed, trying to communicate with me, and that God did want me to do something. With that acknowledgement came a release from my fears.