Plant more trees
Sunday April 12th 2015, 10:32 pm
Filed under: Friends,Life

She used to come to my knitting group, but then her daughter was born and priorities on one’s time shift. It’s been a few years but we’ve reconnected online and she recently offered to do a very kind favor for someone I love just because I do and because she’s that kind of person.

And so. I offered up a thank you prayer for her sake.

And felt strongly, Pray for Meg.

The next night, during the meditation that is my treadmill time, I felt it again as I walked: Pray for Meg.

This became a thing, and so for oh easily a month at this point I have asked daily for a blessing on Meg and her loved ones, not knowing what it should be about other than my offering up my thanks–which isn’t hard, because I am grateful and she’s a good person. But it was kind of a curious staccato mark. It commanded attention somehow: that it not be a quick glancing nod in her direction but with thought and effort put into it. Oh okay I can do that and I did (and kind of wondered what that was all about, but hey, I’ve had enough people pray for me that I certainly owe the favor.)

She started off her Facebook post a few days ago by announcing that, first, everyone was okay.

And then she described a kid with a license of about a year now being hit, crossing five lanes of freeway at high speed and striking her car and spinning it around and then both cars went over the embankment. Hers, she’s convinced, would have rolled (and looking at the picture with the car sideways to the steepness, most definitely!) but for the trees and bushes growing there that had caught it, the top of a palm visible to the side from the ground below. The kid, though, went straight down, through a fence, and on into an industrial area.

And to her and her husband’s amazement he came running right back up that hill to see if they were okay. The empty car seat scared him; the couple quickly assured him their daughter wasn’t with them just then, it was okay. Meantime, people who’d seen it happen had come running, too, whether they pulled off the freeway or were from the business below or both I don’t know but there were people ready to do whatever needed to be done to save whoever had just gone down over that embankment. The poor kid was so shaken; she gave him a hug and did her best to comfort him and wrote, We were all just fragile people who’d just gone through a scary experience.

And all three of them were able to walk away from it. The tow truck driver and the cop marveled, she said, that their car had been stopped where and how it had. It had all been such a near, near, thing.

Did God need my prayers for Him to go rescue those good people? Of course not. I wonder; the prayers certainly didn’t hurt, and at the same time maybe (speaking selfishly) I was going to need that comfort too for their sakes, given how close to home this hits with my daughter having gone through a similar accident and still being in recovery. I do believe God reaches out to us in such quiet ways to teach us to look out for one another, to care about each other, to help us to matter to each other all the more than we might think to do on our distracted own. I am ever so fervently grateful for them at their best-case outcome, and for all the people who put themselves on the scene to offer any help they could.

They have sore muscles to heal and paperwork and insurance hassles to get through.

Her words have been of joy in the greatness of the reprieve. To life!


4 Comments so far
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Wow! So glad the outcome for all invoved was so good, considering. Your knack for tuning into the prayer needs of your friends is amazing. I hope you enjoy a wonderful day.

Comment by DebbieR 04.13.15 @ 11:32 am

To Life indeed!

Sending a prayer of gratitude.

Comment by Suzanne from Montreal 04.13.15 @ 3:46 pm

So glad everyone is okay.

Comment by RobinM 04.13.15 @ 4:01 pm

I know you write wonderful knitting books. Has it ever occurred to you to write a book of life philosophy or just a book full of the stories you tell so well? I’m so glad this one had a happy ending!

Comment by twinsetellen 04.13.15 @ 8:35 pm



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