Abby's Angel

By Abigail Aguilar –

You may not believe in Christmas angels, but I do.

I was almost crying at school around Thanksgiving 2022. My family wasn’t celebrating Thanksgiving. My sister was doing drugs. It seemed like nobody cared.

That’s when Miss Peterson saw me, came up to me with sweet words and a hug and invited me to Thanksgiving with her family.

My tears of loneliness turned into tears of joy.

What could a girl like me want more for Christmas?

Rachel Peterson, teacher at the Lighthouse Christian Academy, became my angel.

I was born in Los Angeles in a single parent family. My mom and my brother have tried their best to strive for some sort of normalcy. My mom works a lot. I get to do the household chores. There isn’t much time for homework. Sometimes I lived with my brother. Things were unstable.

I was getting into trouble in my old school. I was ditching class and doing things I should have not done.

My brother is a Christian and worried about me, so he brought me to LCA in 2022. He was working at Ocean Park Inn; he lived there too. At the time, I was living with him. It was close to LCA. He enrolled me.

I hated it. It’s an apartment-looking box-type building. Everyone was white*. It kind of scared me. I didn’t think I’d make any friends.

One day I visited my mom; it was a tough night.

I was crying in class the next day. Miss Peterson brought me aside and tried to figure out what was going. I opened up to her. I felt God’s love through her. She was patient and understanding.

At the school-wide Thanksgiving, I was overthinking and feeling alone. She invited me to her family’s meal.

It was a new experience. It was family. Everyone gathered up and said what they were thankful for. It was an environment I had never experienced before. They made me feel welcome.

That marked the turnaround for me.

Clearly, I’m doing way better than before. I look at old pictures of myself and I realize I’m happier. I’m super grateful for my brother putting his life on hold and making time for me.

I’m super grateful for Miss Peterson. She was my “advocate” teacher. Every time we had a meeting, she would check up on me and see how my life is with God, not just my studies. She’s more of a friend than a teacher.

Abigail Aguilar studies journalism at the Lighthouse Christian Academy in Santa Monica.

* Editor's note: Not "everyone" is white, but her scary, ugly, grinchy journalism teacher happens to be white.