Angel intervention

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 get 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 it keeps falling for one reason or another. We had dismantled the fence earlier in the day and went on to other projects while the glue we had used on the stone base set. After lunch, we returned 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 turned around to tighten some screws. Some screws were too high so I climbed on top of an outside wire fence. From my yard, the fence is less than two feet above the ground, but approximately six feet above the ground from the neighbors. I grabbed my screwdriver drill and stood on top of the chain link fence and started shuffling over to where the screws were. When I started to align the fence and the 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 left.

I remember walking through a series of bushes for the first time in the hope that they would slow my fall. I kept falling, landing on a brick ledge in a raised flowerbed. 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 a sudden complete stop. I stood there for a few seconds with my eyes closed, then I heard my son call “Daddy, Daddy,” with panic in his voice. I got up slowly and assured him that I was fine, I asked him to go find Mom and he ran out 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, on the left, the neighbor’s pool was about six inches away. When I got up, I noticed that my hat, goggles, and the sunglasses clip had been blown off and landed on top of the pool deck. I took 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, I slowly moved my butt to the stone edge and sat there until my wife and neighbor left the house.

While I was sitting there, my wife and neighbor asked questions and thoroughly scanned my head, back, shoulders, ribs, arms, and legs. Surprisingly, there were no marks on me except for a few 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 point where I realized that I had broken a garden ornament during my fall. It was in about 4 or 5 pieces, and while I was picking up the pieces I told our neighbor that I would replace the broken ornament, to which she said “don’t worry”. Then I thought maybe I could put it back together and started putting pieces together like a puzzle. It was then that I realized that the ornament in the garden was an angel. My wife helped me up and we went home, apart from a severe headache, I was unharmed and rested the rest of the day.

Sunday morning we were on our way to church, I was telling the story of my downfall as the incident became clearer to me. I made everyone laugh when I mentioned the thoughts running through my mind as I fell. Falling through the bushes, hitting the bricks thinking it was over, but in a nanosecond I realized that I was still falling and totally destroying an angel standing innocently in the garden. Then there was silence and I said, jokingly, “Perhaps the angel broke my fall.” Maybe the angel broke my fall? In hindsight, he should have said with conviction; “The angel broke my fall!” Of this now I have no doubt, how is it that a 48 year old man weighing 180 pounds falls back a distance of six feet and ends up with little or no injury? Clearly, the angel gave his life so that I would not be seriously injured or killed.