CLTP 14
Power and Protection!
True-Life Stories of God's Help in Crisis!--Part 10
(Recommended reading for 9 years old and up. Selected stories may be read with younger children at the adults' discretion.)
DFO. Stories courtesy of Guideposts and The Guideposts Treasury of Faith.
(Christian Leadership Training Program publications are circulated tree at charge on a strictly non-profit basis.)
Table of Contents:
There's a Girl Down There!
The Cold, Cold World of Mary Brittain
The Woman with the Umbrella
A Horse Called Amber
The End of Flight 836
The Pencil
Out of Detergent
From the Fifth Dimension
Out of the Storm
Lifeline
Discussion Questions
Glossary for Young Readers
There's a Girl Down There!
--By Carol Balizet
A squall [1] of rain blew across Florida's Route 60 highway that sultry [2] August afternoon. Wearily, I rolled up the car window without taking my eyes off the road, which was lined with an endless ribbon of scrub. I'd made the trip dozens of times from my parents' home in Vero Beach to the hospital in Tampa where I was a student nurse in 1953.
Then suddenly, through the rain ahead of me, I saw a flashing red light. I stepped hard on the brakes. They must be repairing the road, I thought--and then I had no time to think. My car was skidding on the wet surface, moving sideways into the oncoming lane. I wrenched at the wheel but the car would not turn. Now the front wheels were off the road on the far side. The car was rolling down the bank. ...
And then the sense went out of things. I was falling. My head struck something. The car seats fell out and tumbled around me. Suddenly everything was dark, I couldn't see! I groped for the door handle, but I couldn't find it. The steering wheel was gone too, the rear-view mirror, everything.
I put my hands to my head, trying to press some sense into it. Among the other impossible things my mind seemed to be telling me was that the car was still moving downward. It felt as though it were falling in uncanny [3] slow motion, floating down toward the centre of the earth.
And suddenly there was water in the car. Water was trickling down the walls, rising under my feet, dripping into my lap. It had a putrid [4], sour smell. The water seemed to come from everywhere, as though the car were surrounded by it. It was impossible, but it was happening.
The water kept rising. Not fast--the windows had been shut against the rain--but steadily, and at last I realized that somehow, somewhere, the car had fallen into deep water.
"Oh, God!" I cried. "Don't let me be trapped in here!"
Now the water was nearly at my waist, and the numbness of shock was wearing off. I began scrambling frantically for the door, crawling first to one side of the car, then to the other side of the car. At last my hand closed on the window crank. I pushed, but it would not budge. I hurled myself on that handle, straining like a madman. It didn't move. At last, panting and baffled, I leaned back and the handle gave way in my hand. The crank moved backwards. I accepted the fact dumbly, as part of my whole world gone-upside-down, and, backwards, rolled the window down.
Muddy, foul-smelling water spurted into the car, drenching my face and arms. I shut my eyes against the stream and cranked furiously. The window went down five inches and then stopped. No matter how I yanked and tugged I could not move it further.
Now I wound it hastily shut against the racing water and jerked off a shoe to batter the glass with. It was the soft black ballet slipper every teenage girl wore that summer: it smacked soggily against the glass.
The water was at my shoulders. Mindlessly I flung myself at the solid metal above me, trying to tear myself loose by sheer strength. The water reached my chin. For the first time I understood that I was dying. Seventeen years old and dying.
Often I had been curious about God and had asked many questions, but now that the moment to meet Him was here, I was terrified. What had I done to make life worthwhile? How would I account for myself to Him?
"God, forgive me!" I cried. "I should have been better, but I wasn't and I'm sorry!"
No sooner had I uttered this plea, this prayer, this heartcry, than a curious thing happened. Even as my body struggled for life and air, an indescribable peace surrounded me. Some part of me no longer struggled, some part of me did not belong to the agony, some part of me whispered, "I'm going to know! I'm going to have every question about God answered!"
The water climbed higher. I flattened my face against the metal ceiling above, sucking at the air. And then the water closed above me. I remember the roaring in my ears, and then nothing.
But all the while, above me, the drama on which my life hung continued. Here, as I pieced it together later, is what was happening. The flashing light I had seen belonged to a trailer stuck pulled off on the side of the road. Three men were repairing the blowout on the truck when they heard the squeal of my tires on the road behind them. They peered through the rain, but the highway was empty. Puzzled, they lay down their tools and started walking along the road. A hundred and fifty feet away, in the tall grass beside the highway, they came upon the underside of my car, sinking through the weeds, the rest of it already out of sight. Trapped inside, in the black night below those weeds, I had not known that the car had turned upside down. Even as the men watched unbelieving from the bank, the bottom, too, sank beneath the scummy surface, and only the waving swamp grass showed where a car had been.
Several men took a step backward. "I've got three kids," one of the truckers said.
"Anyone in there's dead by now most likely," said another man.
"Killed when the car turned over," someone else agreed.
And then all at once one of the men leapt. His name was Theodore Henderson, a truck driver with a big hauling company. He landed in the centre of the ditch. Six inches below the surface his feet touched the car, slowly settling through the muddy water.
"You'll drown!" the others shouted at him. "You can't do anything!"
But Henderson didn't answer. Perhaps he was thinking of his wife, expecting their fifth child in another month. Perhaps he was only bewildered because the car, instead of striking the bottom of the ditch as he had expected, still continued to sink away from him. At last in that incredibly deep canal, he was treading water, the car out of reach.
He took a long breath and dove after it. In the blackness under the surface he could see nothing. He swam straight down through weeds that grabbed at his arms and wrapped themselves around his waist. Ten feet down he touched metal. He found a door, braced his feet against the car's side and pulled. The door opened about an inch, then the weight of the water slammed it shut again.
His breath was gone. With his free arm he struggled to open the door again, but it held fast. Feeling faint, he surfaced.
A shout of relief went up from the other men as he reappeared. But Henderson, too winded to speak, climbed the bank and ran for the wrench he'd been using on the truck tire. Water streaming from him, he came back to the side of the ditch and jumped again.
Twice more he surfaced and then went down again through the foul water and strangling weeds, for someone he had never seen, who was probably dead. On the fourth trip he got the door open. He groped through the front seat: empty. He found me in the back seat where the somersaulting car had thrown me--in the back seat of a two-door car where I had found no handle because there was none, where I had fought a window built to open only inches. ...
The first thing I knew after my rescue was that it was light again. My eyes hurt and I closed them. There was pain in my chest. My head ached and I felt sick. I opened my eyes again. I was lying on some grass beside the road. A man kept saying: "You're going to be all right, Miss. We're going to get you to the hospital. You're going to be just fine."
But I was only thinking: I haven't seen Heaven. I didn't find the answers. I was still too dazed to be glad I was alive.
And you see, I still didn't know the story of my rescue. I didn't know yet that a man had risked his life to save mine. I didn't yet know Theodore Henderson and his wife and their family.
But I do know them now. And I know, too, that I did catch a glimpse of Heaven, and I did have an answer that August day. I had wondered about the meaning of life and God had showed me an act of love.
The Cold, Cold World of Mary Brittain
--By Mary Brittain
The most terrible time of my life was when I had to move the whole family into the bathroom.
It all started when my husband decided he wanted a divorce. That left me in a small apartment with three small children.
I got a job working in a doughnut shop but the salary was low and there were no fringe benefits. The kiddies missed their daddy and would cry and ask about him. He was supposed to pay me weekly child support. But he skipped and missed his payments, and mostly missed.
Whenever I ran short of money, which was most of the time, I would phone Alice, my oldest sister, and ask for a loan. She had a wonderful husband, Paul, who would fix things for us. They also had three children.
The real battle started when winter came. The apartment was heated by stoves. But I couldn't find any way to connect my big heater in the living room. A tiny gas heater was installed in the bathroom. I kept it burning and kept the kitchen oven on to keep us from freezing when the thermometer was reaching zero.
Then the doughnut shop went out of business. I also got a huge electric bill, and since I couldn't pay it they shut off our service. I had to use candles for light. Then Alice's husband Paul died of a heart attack.
We attended the funeral and then came home to more problems. I certainly couldn't ask Alice for help. She had plenty of her own problems now. The few other relatives I had all held on to their nickels tightly.
Our money was gone and we had no food. I managed to arrange credit with a local grocer and bought only enough food to sustain us from day to day. I couldn't cook it with the electricity turned off, so we lived on cold soup and sandwiches. When the children and I arose each morning, we all made a beeline for the bathroom. The temperature continued to linger close to zero most of the time and the bathroom with its gas wall heater was the only warm place.
That was when, in a manner of speaking, we moved into the bathroom. After the two girls left for school, four-year-old David, my youngest, and I would stay in the bathroom all day to keep from freezing. I would rush into the bedroom long enough to make our beds. That was the limit of my housework.
When the girls came home from school they too headed for the bathroom and there we all remained every night. At first the children would play, but after a while they grew tired of being cooped up like chickens and they'd pick at each other and cry. It would get on my nerves so bad I could have pulled my hair out.
After they tired of annoying each other, they would lie down on the floor and go to sleep. Then I would pick them up one at a time and carry them to the cold bedroom and cover them with every blanket we had. After I put the children to bed, I would go back to the bathroom and cry and pray and wonder what to do.
During this time, a young couple named Georgia and Bill Graves brought us food and some money. They invited me to go to church with them, but I didn't feel up to going. Georgia spoke of how close she knew the Lord could be to us, but I hadn't experienced that.
Each day and night seemed worse than the last. No one could locate my former husband. Our grocer, landlord and other bill collectors were pressuring me for their money.
One night after two months of living like this I felt I just couldn't stand it any longer.
I went back to the bathroom, sat on the floor by the heater, and cried and drank tap water coffee. It came to me what Georgia had said about how the Lord could be so close. I got down on my knees and prayed to the Lord to forgive me for my sins. Then I asked Him to show me He was with us. I felt that if He was with us, then I could endure our problems, knowing He would help us out of our prison. I waited until my bottom felt paralyzed from sitting on the floor. I finally thought He would not do it because I had been so wicked. I gave up and went to bed.
The next morning I heard someone knocking at our front door. A little girlfriend of Sharon's asked if she wanted to go to Sunday school with her. Sharon said yes, then got up and ran to the bathroom to dress. As I stepped into the bathroom with her, Sharon happened to raise her eyes to the ceiling. She gasped and said, "Look, Mommy, there is a picture of Jesus on the ceiling!" I looked up and nearly fell over. She was right.
At first it frightened me. Then my mind went back to the night before and my praying for Him to show He was with us.
I sat down on the floor and kept staring at the portrait. The best description I can give is that it was from the top of His head to His waist. His beard and hair were long and black, His face was pale with dark features. He held a long rod in His right hand.
I sat there a long time trying to figure out how He had painted it there. Then it dawned on me. The little gas heater gave off a lot of carbon because I kept it turned up so high. Our ceiling had turned a dirty grey colour from the heater. During the night the Lord must have guided the soot from it to just one area to paint His portrait.
When Sharon came home from Sunday school, I explained to her and the other two children why the portrait was there. I called my sister and Georgia Graves and told them about it. After a few days the picture slowly started to fade as the dirt from the heater slowly spread over it.
But it had served its purpose. I was a changed woman. I dug out my Bible and dusted it off and read the New Testament to the kids in the bathroom every night. The children ceased to fuss and we were all happy and at peace for the first time in months.
One day the rain was pouring down and it was not fit for man or beast to be out, but still I heard knocking at my door. There stood my attorney [5]. He said he had a present for me and handed me a cheque for $300. My former husband's attorney had mailed it to him. I thanked him from the bottom of my heart for bringing it to me all that way in the rain.
I grabbed my coat and broken-down umbrella and ran out into the rain. I cashed the cheque and paid the electric bill. Then I stopped at the grocery store and paid our food bill and bought food and goodies for the children. When I got home the electricity was back on. I cooked us supper, the first good hot meal we had eaten in months.
After supper I felt so good I turned on the electric light in the living room and started to clean the room. As I was moving the sofa to another part of the room, I saw a little white pipe running along the top of the baseboard. It was a gas pipe! I ran next door and my neighbour came and hooked up our large heater to the connection.
So all in one day we had been given money, food, electricity and heat. We were so happy! A couple of weeks later I got an office job with good pay and fringe benefits. Thanks to the generosity of the Lord, life was finally coming up roses for us. I guess the Lord had to put me in the dark to make me see the Light.
The Woman with the Umbrella
--By Sylvia W. Stevens
On a gloomy day years ago in Oregon, my sister and I were driving back home on the old Columbia River Highway. As we went past the beautiful Multnomah Falls near Larch Mountain, Elva said suddenly, "How odd. Why is that woman sitting there with an umbrella? It isn't raining."
"What woman?" I said. I had seen no one. I thought Elva must have dozed off and dreamed it.
"She was sitting on the ground beside the road, her feet out in front of her, looking straight ahead," Elva insisted.
At home, we heard on TV that two hikers were lost on Larch Mountain. "I'm sure I saw one of those women," Elva kept saying, until finally we called the sheriff's office. That afternoon, two officers came and asked us to drive with them to the place where Elva had seen the woman. We arrived at Multnomah Falls at dusk. Sheriff Terry Schrunk said that Elva's description fit perfectly with one of the women, even to the umbrella and the colour of her clothes. The police searched into the darkness, then said they'd continue in the morning.
We went home. We prayed hard for the lost hikers and heard on the news that scores of other people were doing the same.
At 10:00 a.m., Sheriff Schrunk called--the women had been found! "They were on the mountain right above where your sister said we should look," he told me. "They were trapped above the falls."
"Trapped"--the women had been trapped, he said. They couldn't climb down. That meant there was no way that Elva could have seen one of them sitting beside the highway ... !
A Horse Called Amber
--By Mary D. Wilson
This is a story of two horses one a jet-black mare called Midnight--some would call her a "devil horse"--and the other, my favourite, a gentle six-year-old palomino [6] called Amber.
Shortly after my husband John had bought Midnight, I went out to work with her. I led her out, locked the stable door behind me, and proceeded to saddle and mount her. Midnight was nervous. She skittered [7]. Within seconds she became violent. She reared and threw me to the ground and my neck was violently twisted in the fall. Then she went berserk, rushing wildly about the yard. Suddenly she headed back to me at full gallop, teeth bared. Already in pain from a shattered neck joint, unable to move, I knew she was trying to kill me, to stomp me to death. "Lord, Lord!" I screamed.
Unbelievably, Amber came charging out of the stable. She hurled herself at Midnight, savaging her with her teeth. Midnight retreated, charged again, retreated again and came back again. Amber stood her ground, defending me until Midnight gave up.
And to think that I'd last seen Amber in her stall, a restraining chain across its entrance. And the stable door-it was locked. I myself had carefully slipped the metal bolt.
Yet my gentle Amber had rescued me. She had overcome barriers between me and her.--Had done that with crucial and uncanny speed. How?
The End of Flight 836
--By William B. Smart
The captain's voice was calm: "We have a little problem here. Nothing to worry about. But we'll have to return to Miami airport."
Donna and I looked at each other as the Boeing 727 tilted into a turn. So that heavy thump we had heard five minutes after takeoff had meant something. But probably nothing too serious.
So we followed instructions and didn't worry--until the flight engineer hurried through the cabin with a long screwdriver and an expression that clearly said he was worried. He looked even more worried when he returned to the cockpit and came back with a pair of pliers.
"I wonder if he needs some bailing wire," someone joked.
"Or a hairpin," a woman added.
But the mood sobered when the captain announced, "Folks, it looks like we may be making an emergency landing in Miami. But first we'll circle while we dump our extra fuel."
Emergency landing? Dump fuel? I had seen enough and flown enough to know what that meant: a crash landing. Flooding into memory came the sight of a blackened fuselage [8], and the smell of jet fuel in a disaster I had covered as a newspaperman almost 20 years earlier.
Atire had blown in the wheel of our plane, knocking out the landing gear's hydraulic system. The pilot's effort to lower the landing gear had brought the nose and left wheels down; the right wheel stayed up. The flight engineer's attempt to lower the one or raise the others manually had failed.
But all that we wouldn't know until later. All we knew now was that our future was very uncertain.
Our Eastern Airlines flight 836 from Miami to Denver was nonstop, and our fuel tanks were full. The lights below disappeared as we flew out over the Atlantic and, for more than an hour, jettisoned fuel [9].
As we sat in the darkened cabin I wondered how each of the 156 persons were handling the trouble that loomed. Across the aisle, a young woman shushed a fretful infant. From somewhere in the rear came a muffled sob; from around us, the hum of mumbled conversations. But mostly there was a quiet of deep introspection. Were others praying for their families as Donna and I were? And the pilot, was he in their prayers as he was in ours? Were others having thoughts of regret for deeds done or undone, as I was?
Donna and I held hands and spoke softly of our love for each other and our gratitude for a full life. Beside us, our seatmate had her head bowed, her lips silently moving.
"You're a religious person, aren't you? I asked. "You believe God answers prayer."
She raised her eyes to mine. "What else is there?"
After a long, long hour, a stewardess began crash instructions: "Tighten seat belts. Lean forward, head on knees, arms cradling a pillow over your head."
"What about my baby?" the mother asked. "How do I protect her?"
"Fasten a seat belt around her and cushion her with as many pillows as you can." But there were no extra pillows. I gave her mine. Others gave theirs too.
Stewardesses picked four capable looking men to deploy [10] the emergency chutes and help passengers out the doors. The instructions were terse [11]: "Jump on the chutes feet first, arms folded. When you hit the ground, run!"
The pilot brought the plane in low past the control tower. This is it, we thought. But it wasn't; this was for a visual inspection from the tower that confirmed the worst--one wheel up, two down.
Back up we went for a series of gut-wrenching roller coaster maneuvers as the pilot tried to shake the right wheel down into position.
Another pass by the tower to see if that had worked. It hadn't.
So the time had come to live or die. The captain eased the giant jet onto the runway The wheels touched gently as a feather. The cabin erupted in cheers. We were, we thought, safe.
But we weren't. In seconds, the landing gear collapsed, and the plane was veering and bouncing on its belly. Sparks showered beneath us. I caught a flash of orange flames in the right wing.
The Miami airport damage-control team had been alerted and was ready. Fire trucks raced alongside, pouring foam on the plane even as it skidded down and then off the runway. Foam soaked the passengers as they tumbled down the emergency chutes. Some required medical treatment to wash foam from their eyes, but no one complained.
After finding Donna in the darkness and confusion, I paced the distance from the foam-drenched plane to a chain link fence 30 yards away. Beyond it ran a freeway where hundreds of people, alerted by newscasts about the impending crash landing, had gathered to watch.
Thirty yards. It was that close. I whispered a prayer of thanks.
Afterward, in a jam-packed airport lounge, shaken and drenched passengers downed hot coffee, scrambled for telephones to call loved ones and described to one another what they had thought and felt: "I thought for sure we were goners." "The worst part was those roller coasters I thought we were falling out of the sky." "I never prayed so hard in my life." "I promised God I'd quit smoking if He got us down safely."
But from a young man returning from missionary service in Ecuador came the statement I cannot forget. It expressed all any of us really needs to know about what God expects from and hopes for us. It has changed my life.
"What I kept thinking," he said, "was that we should live our lives always ready for a crash landing."
The Pencil
--By Mrs. Theo Hill
|t was a cold midwinter day in South Carolina, but I was busy--and warm--inside the house I had lived in alone for the past 15 years. I needed some wrapping paper, so I pulled down the folding stairs and started climbing to the attic. I was 81 at the time, and the moment the frigid [12] attic air hit me, I knew I should have put on a coat. Oh well, I'd hurry.
To keep the warm air downstairs, I shut the door to the attic storage room behind me. I heard a click. I knew immediately that I was locked in. The door had no knob, I'd taken it off to replace one downstairs. And there was no one else in the house.
The cold penetrated my bones. I wrapped myself in a blanket to stop my shaking and looked out the attic window. No neighbours in sight. Anyway, the window was stuck shut from years of disuse.
An hour passed ... then another. "Dear Lord, please send my children to help me." I knew this prayer was unrealistic. None of my four children was due to visit.
At my feet sat a yellowed and dusty pile of my son Billy's school papers. On top of them lay an old pencil. I picked it up, thinking of the hours it had spent in Billy's hand.
Once again I prayed for help. Immediately, as clear as any words I've ever heard, a question came to me, "What is that in thy hand?"
I looked at the pencil, my glance falling not on the leaded end, but on the metal end that had once held an eraser. It was now flattened, no doubt by my Billy's biting down as he sought to unlock a math problem.
I went to the door and inserted the end of the pencil into the keyhole. The lock turned. The door opened.
Out of Detergent
--By Shiney Pope Waite
Two months after my husband finished graduate school and started a new job, I gave birth to our first child. We had very little money and at times we had none at all.
The days went by and I eked out this and eked out that. Then one morning after I'd gathered up the baby's laundry, I found I'd run out of detergent. Our monthly pay cheque wasn't due until the end of the week, and we barely had enough money left for our food needs, never mind soap. But I had to have clean diapers for my baby! It was one of those little frustrations that wells up to blimp-size discouragement.
"O Lord, You know I need soap. I pray that my folks send me money--soon." My parents periodically sent a small cheque. They were the only source I could think of.
Iheard a noise at the door. Could it be the mailman? Somehow I actually expected God would answer me that quickly. I glanced out the window, but no mailman. It must have been the wind rattling the screen.
Iwent on with my housework. I kept crying out to the Lord. "What will I do about these diapers? O Lord, what will I do?"
Then suddenly I felt prompted to go to the front door. Perhaps the mail carrier had come and I'd missed seeing him. Perhaps a cheque ...
I opened the door, and hanging on the handle was a plastic sack containing a sample box of a new detergent!
From the Fifth Dimension
--By Edith M. Dean
My husband Jim and I were getting ready for bed when the phone rang. The stranger explained she was Grace Morrison's aunt, "calling from Nebraska," and Grace's brother had been seriously injured in a car accident. No one knew how to get in touch with Grace. Did I?
Grace and I had once been office friends, but we hadn't spoken in years.
"I'm sorry," I said, after fumbling through my notebook, "I don't have Grace's address or phone number. Let me call you back if I find it."
"No, I'll call you in the morning," the woman said.
The memory of that pleading voice kept me up for hours looking through old files and address books. When I went to bed, I prayed and then tossed and turned, thinking of phone numbers in my sleep. When I woke up in the morning, my favourite ballpoint pen was lying on the nightstand. I had no idea how it got there.
I left early for work that morning but when I came home Jim exclaimed, "Thanks to you, Grace Morrison is on her way to Nebraska."
"Thanks to me?"
Jim looked at me, puzzled. "Yes, when her aunt called, I gave her the number you had written on that pad on the nightstand. Then she called back to say all was well."
"But, Jim," I said, "I never found it."
"Look," he said, handing me the pad. There in my handwriting was the correct phone number for Grace Morrison.
Out of the Storm
--By Emma Stenehjem
I didn't expect the storm to break until later that day. When the sky cracked open and the rains began, I was still driving on the main road with my granddaughter, MaryBeth. The wind howled, swirling bits of sagebrush [13] around my little car, and I peered anxiously out of the windshield. My farm in Arnegard was still twelve miles away! Then I remembered the shortcut across some grazing land.
It was a gravel road, deeply rutted by tractor marks, as is common in these rural parts of North Dakota. Something warned me not to risk it, but darkness was coming on and I was anxious to get home. I came to the fork in the road and turned off the paved road.
"How did your practice go, MaryBeth?" I asked brightly. I knew my ten-year-old granddaughter was afraid of storms. She had come to spend the Easter weekend with me and, to pass the time, had joined the church choir. Tomorrow, Easter Sunday, they would be singing the beautiful "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah.
"It was fine, Grandma," MaryBeth said in a small voice, keeping her eyes on the road.
I zigzagged along, grumbling each time I swerved to miss the giant cuts in the road made by the tractors. Then suddenly, as I rounded a curve, a blur of lights exploded in front of me. Horrified, I pulled hard on the wheel. A big car swooshed by, crowding us into a deep rut. The steering wheel jerked out of my hands and the car flipped over. We rolled over one more time into the roadside ditch. Then an eerie stillness filled the car except for the furious drumming of the rain ...
Dazed, I tried to move myself. The crash had pulled me under the steering wheel and into the leg space in front of the driver's seat. I heard a weak whimper from the back seat. "Are you hurt, child?" I called.
There was a brief silence. Then a faint voice said, "I think I'm okay, Grandma."
I remembered stories I had heard of cars bursting into flames with the occupants trapped inside. "Come to me if you can," I called frantically. I knew I was too hurt to move to her. My legs were twisted and there was a strange heaviness in my chest.
The car had landed on its roof and MaryBeth had to crawl along it, pushing aside the seat cushions that had come loose and blocked her way. In a few minutes I saw her frightened face peering at me from between the spokes of the steering wheel.
"Lord, forgive me for bringing this upon her," I groaned to myself. But there was no time to chide myself for choosing the shortcut. I had to think of a way to get help. Should I send my frightened granddaughter out in the rain where lightning flashes cracked across the sky? There was little chance of another car coming by and seeing us because we were hidden from the road. Dismally, I recalled that my husband wouldn't return from a business trip until tomorrow. The rest of my family wouldn't come by until it was time for tomorrow's church service. There was only one solution.
MaryBeth would have to go out in the storm that frightened her and look for help.
My eyes searched the car for an opening. Just before the crash, MaryBeth had partially cranked down her steamed-up window to see out, and it was still open. "Crawl through the window, child," I told her feebly.
Soon she managed to wiggle out into the rain. "I'm scared, Grandma," she wailed through the wind and thunder crashes.
"Don't be frightened," I called. "Look for a light or a house." There was silence. Then at last she said, "I think I see some lights."
"Go to them," I urged, and prayed for God to be with her as she splashed off through the fields.
I tried to free myself, but it was useless. The pain in my legs and chest was becoming unbearable, and I had to rest my head against the steering wheel for support. "Dear God, please protect and guide MaryBeth," I prayed over and over again. "Send Your Guardian Angel to be with her!"
The rain continued to pour on the crushed car as I waited and prayed. It seemed like hours and hours. What had happened to MaryBeth? Had she found someone? Was she lost in the storm?
Faith had always been strong in my family. We came to the farmlands three generations ago from Norway, and had always lived by the land and our faith. "My faith looks up to Thee, O Lord," I repeated to myself over and over.
I don't know how long I lay in the car, praying. But suddenly through the steady movement of the rain and wind I began to detect a new motion. What was it?--A rubbing? Craning my neck painfully, I was able to see cows nudging my wrecked car!
"Hiyah, hiyah! Get home, you critters," I heard someone shouting. It's a farmer, I thought joyfully. I began to call for help.
"What's that?" came a startled reply from out in the storm. Soon a rain-soaked farmer was peering through the opened window of my car. I tried to smile at him. "Are you hurt?" he cried, vainly trying to pull open the jammed door.
"Somewhat," I answered weakly. "But I can't move and had to send a little girl for help. She's out there somewhere ... " I looked helplessly into the fields.
"Don't worry," the man said, "we found her in my field. My cattle strayed in the stone and I found her right in the middle of my cows. She was so frightened and exhausted that she wasn't able to make any sense, so I brought her back to my house. Then I came on horseback to round up the cattle, and found you." He shook his head. "It's amazing. I wouldn't have seen a darn thing in this storm if it weren't for these here cows!"
Suddenly I knew how the Lord had answered my prayers. He had sent the cows! They were our guardian angels--a herd of cows!
The fanner took off his horse's saddle blanket and covered me with it, promising to go for help. Soon I was taken to Arnegard Hospital. MaryBeth, already there, rushed to my side.
"You'll be all right, Grandma," she said happily.
I nodded, thinking about God's special answer to my prayers. My old body would mend. MaryBeth was safe. She would still be able to sing that wonderful song of praise at the Easter service.
Lifeline
--By Don Herring
"Mayday! Mayday!" I screamed above the ocean wind into our ship-to-shore radio. We were far out in the Gulf of Mexico that Sunday morning, September 26, 1987, and our 22-foot fishing boat was being swamped by heavy seas.
My wife, Lois, her younger brother Billy, and his friends Benny and Brad had already grabbed life jackets and leapt over the side. Holding on to the helm, I kept calling the Coast Guard. I heard an answering voice crackle over the loudspeaker, but before I could give our position, the boat rolled over-with me in it.
Quickly I swam out from under it. As I broke the surface, sputtering, the bow [14] of the boat emerged beside me like the head of a whale. It stuck straight up, about three feet out of the water, rising and falling in the breaking waves. The fishing boat, weighed down by seawater and the two heavy outboard engines on the stern, remained perpendicular [15].
At first I couldn't see anyone because of the waves, but I heard Brad yelling for everyone to grab hold of one another and not get separated. An orange life jacket floated past, I grabbed it and tied it on. Then I clutched the boat's metal bow rail and called for everyone to hang on to it. The others worked their way over, coughing and gasping. It was almost noon, but the sky was overcast with grey clouds. I berated [16] myself for not paying better attention to the weather and heading for shore earlier.
"Did you reach anyone on the radio?" asked Billy.
"Someone heard me, I think, but I was unable to give our position."
We all fell silent; the only sound was the hiss of the waves, but I knew what everyone was thinking. We were 18 miles out at sea in water 120 feet deep.
"This sure is a fine mess we're in!" Billy finally sputtered. "What are we going to do?"
"We're going to pray," said Lois. "We're going to ask the Lord to rescue us. How He'll do it I don't know, but let's pray."
That's just like my wife. Though we'd been married some 30 years, our priorities differed. Lois was the spiritual one.
I dog-paddled over and we five held hands as Lois pleaded, "Lord, we are alone out here. Please help us."
The wind was whipping cold foam into our faces. I was beginning to feel chilled in the water. Ever since a heart attack and open-heart surgery some years earlier, I had been taking a blood-thinning medication, and besides the life jacket, all I wore was a pair of shorts. I was a prime candidate for hypothermia [17]. Already I was feeling queasy.
The waves were now four to five feet high and the air-filled prow of the boat bounced so much it was difficult to hold on to. I spotted a length of rope floating and grabbed it; I tied one end to the bow rail so that everyone could hold on to it. Waves were crashing over our heads, making it difficult to breathe.
By late afternoon the sky was darkening. "I'm going to climb up on the bow rail to see if I can see another boat," said Brad.
Up there Brad peered around but shook his head. However, he learned something else: Up on the bow, with his body out of the water, he felt warmer, and he could breathe without waves hitting him in the face. So we all began taking turns, spending about 15 minutes each up on the rail.
It was getting dark now and we had difficulty seeing one another. We had been in the water six hours and it would be another 12 before daylight. As night came on, Lois quietly told me she was praying that sharks wouldn't find us.
In the dark we all suffered even more from the cold. Lois, knowing my blood problem, hugged me and wrapped her legs around me to help keep me warm. But after a while she became fatigued and her legs and arms cramped painfully. "Oh, God," she prayed, "I need some help."
Lois had no sooner said the words than my whole body felt on fire. "Jellyfish!" someone cried.
They were all around us! Their stings were searing [18]. But I didn't feel cold anymore.
After an hour or so, the heat from the stings began wearing off, so Lois warmed me again. Then, when she tired, the jellyfish came back. "Thank You, Lord," she prayed, "for sending such wonderful help."
I thought she was taking an awful lot for granted; even so, it was strange how those things came just after she prayed.
Jellyfish or not, by 1:00 a.m. I wondered if we could ever make it until daylight.
"Look, a light in the north!" We looked up to see a pinpoint of light coming toward us. As it neared we could hear the throb of a helicopter and we cheered. But about a mile away it turned and headed east. Then, as if we were being teased, for about a half hour we could see helicopter lights crisscrossing in the distance. But none came any closer.
The night wore on. We talked less and less. Then someone rasped, "Look!"
A helicopter with a bright searchlight was headed straight for us! The sea brightened as the copter neared, and we began waving and shouting. Then when it was only about 150 feet away, it swung west and disappeared into the night.
"Don't worry," Lois said, "someone will come."
I marvelled at her faith.
About three o'clock in the morning I thought I was hallucinating [19]. Someone seemed to be saying, "I think I see a boat."
Then I heard it again. It was not a dream. It was Billy up on the bow rail.
"Where? Where?" we all cried.
"To the north," he said. Then his voice dropped. "But it's gone."
Just a few minutes later Billy said he saw the boat again. Was it his imagination?
Now it was my turn on the bow rail. Wasn't that a light out there? It appeared ... and disappeared. Then I realized: It had to be a boat-pitching in the waves.
By four o'clock we could all see the light. By 4:30 we could all hear a propeller throb, and all of us began shouting. About 150 feet away the boat stopped; its spotlight switched on and began sweeping the sea. The light passed over us, hesitated, backed up and stayed on us!
"We see you!" cried a voice.
Ten minutes later all of us were bundled in the warm cabin of a 46-foot sport-fishing boat, the Maverick, drinking hot cocoa.
The captain told us a startling story. When his party left the marina, they changed their minds about the fishing site they'd originally selected and chose another site, which set them on a course toward us. "But we still wouldn't have found you if our automatic pilot hadn't messed up," said the captain. "It put us ten degrees off course, which," he added, "brought us straight to you."
Back in Panama City we were given medical examinations. Outside of welts from the jellyfish stings, we were all okay.
I was more than okay. For out there facing death, I got my priorities straight. I know that the only things that kept us going during those 16 long, cold hours were Lois' prayers and faith. Now I know how important it is to keep one's personal relationship with God alive and the lines of communication open.
Glossary for Young Readers
(The meaning given is for the use of the word in the story and does not cover every meaning of the word.)
1 squall: a sudden violent storm, gust or shower
2 sultry: very hot and humid
3 uncanny: strange and mysterious
4 putrid: rotten; stinking
5 attorney: one who has legal power to act for another
6 palomino: a gold-coloured horse with a white mane and tail
7 skittered: skipped or jumped quickly and nervously
8 fuselage: the body of the aircraft
9 jettisoned fuel: the act of releasing or dumping fuel overboard to lighten a ship or aircraft in distress. In this case to reduce the risk of explosion upon crash landing
10 deploy: to place in position ready for action
11 terse: brief and to the point
12 frigid: very cold
13 sagebrush: green, bushy plant common on the dry plains and mountains of western North America, that smells like sage
14 bow: the front part of a ship or boat
15 perpendicular: pointing straight up
16 berated: scolded
l7 hypothermia: a condition of reduced body temperature caused by exposure to extreme cold
18 searing: burning; scorching
19 hallucinating: seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling or feeling things that exist only in a person's imagination
(Definitions condensed from the World Book, Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary & Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary.)