Angel intervention?
Last Friday, my 12-year-old son and I were working on our privacy fence in our backyard. We have a pool and it can be a bit noisy. We put up a privacy fence mainly to reduce noise and not disturb our neighbors. This fence has been a thorn in my side for almost a year; you see that it keeps falling for one reason or another. We had taken the fence down earlier in the day and started other projects while the glue we had used on the stone foundation set. After lunch we went back to work with enthusiasm, knowing that all we had to do was put the fence back together. My son stabilized the fence from the inside while I went around to put in some screws. Some screws were up high, so I stepped on top of the top of an outside chain-link fence. From my yard, that fence is less than two feet off the ground, but about six feet off the ground from the neighbors. I grabbed my screwdriver and climbed on top of the chain link fence and started to crawl over to where the screws were. As I started to line up the fence and supports, I lost my balance and started to fall backwards. I tried to reach the fence in front of me, but it was too late. With my electric drill still in hand, I approached.
I remember going through a series of bushes first, hoping they would break my fall. I kept falling, landing on a brick ledge of a raised flower bed. That must be what I thought, but that was not the case. From the brick ledge I still had another 18 inches to go before coming to a complete and sudden stop. I stood there for a few seconds with my eyes closed, then I heard my son call, “Dad, dad,” panic in his voice. I slowly sat up and reassured him that he was ok, I asked him to go find mom and he ran off to find her. I sat there for a few seconds trying to figure out what had just happened. I was lying on my back with the drill still in my right hand, in my left the neighbors pool was about six inches away. As I stood up, I realized that my hat, glasses, and sunglasses had been blown off and landed on the pool deck. I reached for my hat and put it back on; I couldn’t reach my glasses and clips. I don’t think I lost consciousness, but I was certainly disoriented and had a severe headache, and I slowly moved my butt towards the stone ledge and sat there until my wife and neighbor came out of the house.
As I sat there, my wife and neighbor asked questions and thoroughly scanned my head, back, shoulders, ribs, arms, and legs. Surprisingly there weren’t any marks on me except for some minor scratches from the bushes. He was talking and I knew what day it was, I understood what had just happened and that he was not seriously injured. This was the moment when I realized that I had broken a garden ornament during my fall. It was in about 4-5 pieces, and as I was picking up the pieces I told our neighbor that I would replace the broken ornament, to which she said “don’t worry about it”. Then I thought maybe I could put it back together and started putting the pieces together like a puzzle. It was then that I realized that the ornament in the garden was an angel. My wife helped me to my feet and we went home, apart from a bad headache, I was not injured and rested for the rest of the day.
On Sunday morning we were on our way to church, I was recounting the story of my fall as more of the incident became clear to me. I made everyone laugh when I mentioned the thoughts going through my mind as I fell. Falling through the bushes, hitting the bricks thinking it was all over, but in a nanosecond I realized I was still falling and completely destroying an angel standing innocently in the garden. Then there was silence and I said, jokingly: “Maybe the angel broke my fall.” Perhaps the angel cushioned my fall? In hindsight I should have said with conviction; “The angel broke my fall!” Of this I now have no doubt, how does a 48 year old man who weighs 180 pounds fall backwards a distance of six feet and end up with little or no injury? Clearly the angel gave his life so that I would not be seriously injured or killed.