Woken by the relentless hum of cicadas in the nearby palo verde,
Jocelyn forced herself to open her eyes. Her head throbbed as if her heart had
somehow relocated itself inside her skull, and she almost passed back out as
the nauseating stench of hydrochloric acid entered her nasal passages.
She was lying in a pool of her own vomit.
She managed to pull herself up enough to escape the vile substance
but collapsed in a messy heap just a yard or so away. She tentatively reached
her hand up to touch the crown of her head, which seemed to be the source of
the heart-like pounding. With a sickening squish she pressed her middle and
index finger into the mangled mess of blood, brown hair, and scalp.
She had split her head wide open.
Surveying the area directly in front of her, she tried to make
sense of what had happened. She recognized where she was almost immediately;
she was in the drainage ditch between her neighborhood and the US 60 highway.
It was her favorite spot to come and skateboard.
I must have hit my
head skating! Jocelyn thought. Painfully she twisted her head around, and sure
enough, she saw her Plan B skateboard
lying about twenty feet away from her.
Ugh, she thought, you’ve done it this time Jo. Mom is going to
kill you.
Her mom’s blonde hair and blue eyes flashed into her mind, anger
and disappointment evident in her expression. When Jocelyn’s mother saw what had
happened she would most assuredly yell something along the lines of, “Look what
you’ve done! Do you know how much these medical bills are going to cost me? This
wouldn’t have happened if you just came to church with us on Sundays!”
Lately Jocelyn’s mother had woven religion into every
conversation they had, and she was getting sick of it. Jo loved church as a kid,
but since the divorce three years ago everything had changed. A place that had
once been a place of refuge and comfort had become nothing more than a
glorified prison every Sunday. Sermons that were meant to encourage and uplift
only reminded Jocelyn of how much her own family fell short.
She definitely didn’t want to deal with her mother right now,
but even more she didn’t want to sit in the heat until she either cooked to
death or bled out, so she forced herself to her feet. She would walk right up
to her mother and tell her what happened, no mat-
Crack!
Jocelyn screamed in pain as she felt her leg snap, and the
jagged remains of her fibula tear through her flesh. Her leg was horribly broken,
and for the first time during the ordeal Jocelyn felt fearful. She was alone,
her head was bleeding profusely, and it was more than 115 degrees outside. Without
any water or medical attention, it was a very real possibility that she wouldn’t
last more than an hour or two before she passed out again. Just this morning
she had seen on the news that a hiker had died from heat exhaustion on
Camelback mountain. She did not want that to be her.
Jocelyn kicked herself as she contemplated her predicament. Why didn’t you bring your phone? What are
you going to do?
She tried to yell for help, but was too far for anybody to hear
her, especially with the deafening sound of freeway traffic coming from just
behind her. Darkness enveloped her mind in fear, and Jocelyn felt totally alone.
At the peak of this abysmal darkness, a strange memory flooded
Jocelyn’s thoughts. It was a story she had been told as a young girl at church.
The story spoke of a young man stranded in the desert. After hours of being stuck
in the middle of nowhere, an old man had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and
taken him to safety at the nearest hospital. When the young man turned to thank
his rescuer, however, no one was there. In fact, no one in the hospital had
even seen anybody enter with the young man. It had been an angel or something
like that, a complete miracle.
Gee, I could sure use
a miracle like that right now, Jo thought to herself.
She quietly bowed her head to pray, “Dear Heavenly Father,” she was
surprised at how easily the words came to her, she hadn’t prayed in years. “I
know I probably don’t deserve this right
now, but I’m hurtin’ pretty bad. Can you please send me an angel? I promise I’ll
be better. Maybe I’ll even come back to church.”
A very strong maybe, she thought.
Even though pain still seared through her shattered leg and her
bloodied scalp, peace rolled over Jocelyn. It was the same type of peace she
had felt as a child when she sang at church. It was a peace she knew came from
God, and she believed deep in heart that she would be okay that day. She
smiled, closed her eyes, and waited for her angel to arrive.
She didn’t know what time it was when she woke up, but judging
by the position of the sun she knew the day was drawing to a close. Her head
had stopped pounding, but her leg hurt worse than it had when she’d fallen
asleep. She could taste blood in the back of her mouth, and her lips had
started to crack from the lack of moisture. She needed water, and she needed it
fast.
Are you kidding me? She thought miserably,
Some miracle, I’ve been laying here for
hours. I guess I’ll have to be my own angel today.
Slightly frustrated at God for not sending an angel, but more
frustrated at herself for believing such nonsense, Jocelyn agonizingly pulled
herself into a sitting position. She would have to crawl her way out of the
drainage ditch. It was a seemingly easy task, but with the impairment of her
injuries, she may as well have been climbing Mt. Everest.
She had no choice.
Using only her arm strength, Jocelyn painstakingly hauled
herself onto her stomach and began the slow climb up the steep incline. Putting
both arms high above her head, she dragged the rest of her body up the pavement.
Even though her limp left leg was nothing more than dead weight, Jocelyn was making
progress. After about ten minutes she had made her way up about three fourths
of the embankment. In just a few minutes she would be at the top, and she would
able to crawl herself to the safety of her neighborhood from there.
“You see that God?” She yelled with a sense of pride. “I don’t
even need your stupid miracle!”
Drip.
Jocelyn felt the drop of rain run down her cheek, the unexpected
moisture bringing refreshment to her parched skin. She looked up and saw that
dark black storm clouds were moving in from the east. She wasn’t surprised, all
Arizonans were familiar with the mid-summer monsoons that showered the valley most
evenings for two to three weeks every year. No, it wasn’t a surprise, but the
timing of this particular storm couldn’t have been worse.
A few minutes later when the storm hit in full force, Jocelyn
couldn’t tell which was louder; the booming sound of lighting cracking in the distance,
or the thunderous patter of rain as came down in sheets all around. Her face
stung with pain as powerful gusts of wind turned raindrops into pricking
needles against her skin.
Now you’ve done it. You
should’ve just kept your mouth shut.
She clumsily reached out to pull herself up, but a rogue gust of
wind caught her under the arm and knocked her slightly off balance. Slapping
her hand against the pavement, Jocelyn attempted to find her grip, but the water-slicked
incline yielded no such mercy. Her face twisted itself in horror as she slid
swiftly down the embankment, hitting the ground with a thud.
Lying on her side at the bottom of the drainage ditch, Jocelyn
watched as the water around rose slowly. The water was coming down so heavily
the ditch was beginning to flood. Jocelyn couldn’t believe that after
everything she had been through that day, she was going to drown in a stupid
ditch not even half a mile away from her house. She couldn’t believe that God
hadn’t sent her a miracle. She had felt so sure. She had felt so much peace.
Was he really just going to let her die, broken and alone at the bottom of that
ditch?
At that moment Jocelyn remembered another church lesson from her
youth, only this one had been read to her from the Bible. It was a story about
a man named Job or something strange like that. Job had lost everything meaningful
in his life, including his children, his money, and even his hair. Job had no
reason to thank God, and he definitely didn’t see any miracles like the one the
man stranded in the desert had seen, yet at the end of the story he still
praised God.
As much as this sucks,
she
thought, its still not as bad as Job’s
situation. I still have my family who loves me. At least, I did…
For the first time in many years, Jocelyn began to cry. Tears
flowed freely down her face as she remembered the awful way she had treated her
mother. When Jocelyn’s dad had left with another woman, she had blamed her
mother. Jo resented her mom for everything that had happened, and she made she
sure to let her know with every possible opportunity.
“I’m sorry.” She whimpered, her tears now almost instantly
mixing with the rising rain water.
Jocelyn remembered the times her mother had screamed at her, was
emotionally distant, or shamed her for not going to church as often as she’d
like. She no longer saw the angry, raging tyrant she had made her mom out to be
in recent years. She saw instead a woman doing her best to raise decent
children, while simultaneously dealing with incredible heartbreak. She saw a
woman who should have been able to look to her eldest daughter as a source of comfort
that was instead emotionally berated every time she tried to reach out.
“Mom, I’m sorry!” She screamed, nearly loud enough to rival the sound
of pounding rain and crackling thunder.
Struggling to keep her head above water, one last image was
impressed upon her mind. It was a picture that her mom set near the Christmas tree
every December, one that Jocelyn had never paid much attention to. Now however,
the picture had such an impact on her mind that she could not think of anything
else. It was a baby. Jocelyn knew this baby was important for some reason, but
she couldn’t remember why exactly. As the she stared at the baby, lying in the manger,
the baby seemed to stare back at her. His eyes were penetrating, and they conveyed
a message more powerful than could have been spoken by the most eloquent adult.
She knew that everything was okay, whether or not she made it out of that ditch
alive. Life was hard sometimes, and people made lots of mistakes, but those
mistakes didn’t define them. Somehow, this little child would take care of all
the unfairness life could dish out. Somehow, he would make it all alright in
the end.
“I love you mom. I really do.” Jocelyn closed her eyes and let
herself fall limp in the water.
She was barely coherent when the rescue team pulled her out of
the ditch. Passing in and out of consciousness, Jo saw fragments of the world
around her. It all happened so fast. She was taken in an ambulance to a nearby
hospital. She could hear bits and pieces of the conversation around her, and it
sounded like she was going to be okay. A doctor came in to tell her she was lucky
to be alive. Apparently, a young family near the ditch had been taking pictures
of the storm from their backyard when they saw Jocelyn crawl out of the ditch
and fall back in when the rain started.
Huh, that is pretty
lucky I guess, she thought, not exactly
the miracle I was looking for God, but I’ll take it.
She smiled softly and leaned her head back against the pillow.
She opened them a few minutes later when the hospital door room burst open, and
her mom came rushing in. Jocelyn braced herself for the inevitable lecture but
was surprised when her mom just hugged her. Neither one said a word for a long
time. They just held each other.
Jocelyn’s physical healing would take months, but the more
important healing between mother and daughter had already begun. She couldn’t
help but picture the manger-bound child, his penetrating eyes seeming to speak
to her once more.
Everything was going to be okay.
