Guardian Angels

 

How often do we recognize the angel on our shoulder?  For most of us, it’s after a “near miss”, typically when something that would have caused a major accident is suddenly averted.  Driving down the highway, and the car in front of us suddenly breaks when everyone is going faster than they should as we are able to swerve without hitting them.  Then we say a quick “Thank You, God”, and move on.  As I think back over the years, I remember times when I thought nothing would get me out of a situation, only to end up unscathed.

The time in Germany, when we had a major IG inspection going on and a blizzard started up.  It was bad enough that the Commander closed the Air Base. Yet, the officer inspecting my unit informed us that HE was going to continue his inspection and if we left, he’d fail us. After all, he only had to walk across the street to the visiting officer’s quarters, so what was the big deal.  The big deal was that I lived close to 45 minutes from base and I had to pick up my toddler before heading out.  I stuck with the inspection for a short while, then said, I’m leaving, fail us if you will, but I’m leaving.

I picked up Brigham and put him in his car seat, then headed out on the rural roads I would need to travel to get home. In Germany, when heavy fog, rain or snow might prevent you from seeing where the road is, they put reflective posts about every 50 meters. On one side, the post has a rectangular reflector and on the other side of the road the reflector will be 2 circles. I knew that as long as I stayed between the reflectors, I would be on the road.

As I got close to the village we lived in, a large bus following me, the wind whipped up as I crested the hill, blinding me, but worse literally turning my car sidewise on the road. The wind died down and the bus driver was able to see me in time to stop, but only by a foot. The passengers on the bus, angels themselves, got out and pushed my car around so I was once more going in the right direction. Shaking, I drove through the village to my home, knowing that my son and I had come very close to never making it home.

In Miami, several years later, we had just moved into our new home with its swimming pool and were enjoying one of our first swims with my visiting parents, while Nathan, my toddler at that point, was happily splashing away as he rode in his rubber safety tube in the shallow end of the pool. Then suddenly he was upside down in the water. Brigham, age 5 now, reacted faster than the adults and pulled his sputtering baby brother upright. I think all our guardian angels worked overtime on that one.

So often we say Thank You, when the disaster is first averted, but we forget to say Thank You, every day, for all the small disasters that were averted without our even noticing them.

Dale Weir

Photo by Christian SPULLER on Unsplash