Chapter 24

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friday morning, we gave Roma and Taylor standard instructions. They were holding down the fort while we were away, being the men of the house. Taylor was dropping off Roma to his destination to meet his boss, Bobby, while we prepared to leave for our three-hour trip to the lake in West Virginia.

On Saturday morning, December 5, I left our lake house to run some errands a half hour away. Bruce had chores around the house.  

It was an exceptionally beautiful morning. We had no snowfall yet. The vegetation was dead, and the weather was blustery. But the lighting on this particular morning raised my awareness. The clouds were dramatic white and gray contrasts against the intense blue sky. The majesty of the heavens caught me off guard. I was suddenly overwhelmed with joy and gratitude. I couldn’t imagine my life could get any better than it was at that moment. I began praying aloud, thanking God for my wonderful life and family, and praying aloud for the protection of each one of them by name.

As I returned home and approached our driveway, I notice the ladder was propped against the house. Use of the ladder when home alone is contrary to our safety rules. If Bruce cleans gutters, I need to be there to hold the ladder, or call for help if needed. Once he got stuck on the roof when he was home alone, and the ladder fell leaving him stranded on the roof. He had to called out to neighbors until someone passed and came to his rescue.

Holding my breath, I drove up the short, steep hill of our driveway, craning my neck to see the floor of the deck. With my vivid imagination, I was relieved to not see my risk-taking husband sprawled unconscious beneath the ladder. I winced, remembering the vision in my closet, when I had assumed it was Roma I “saw” falling from a ladder. I had been thinking too much about ladders lately. 

Bruce met me at the door, eager to tell me he had indeed fallen off the ladder. As my minded raced back to my prayers of thanksgiving and protection for my family earlier that morning, Bruce shared his morning’s experience enthusiastically, marveling that he was spared injury.

“It was only by the grace of God, I wasn’t hurt,” he kept repeating. He had climbed the ladder to the roof level, but the ladder was too upright and began to fall backwards, away from the house, with Bruce hanging on. He related that he had fallen in slow motion, and it was “miraculous” that he had the presence of mind to push the ladder away from himself, so it wouldn’t hit him when he landed on the driveway. He rolled when he landed and only had a scuff on his shoulder. “It is only by the grace of God that I am not hurt,” he repeated several times.

I scolded him for climbing the ladder while home alone. I told him of my overwhelming gratitude while I was away that led me to praise God and pray for the safety of our family. That moment of prayer had been one of those times of heightened awareness, a moment of “amazing grace” as I felt God’s almost tangible presence. Those sudden moments of a recognition of God are hard to describe, but they always hit me with a weight of sacredness. At one moment I’m totally unaware, and the next second, I’m surprised by profound understanding. This unexpected “knowing” always astounds.

I thought Bruce might be sore as the day progressed from his 15-foot arc from roof to I scolded him for climbing the ladder while home alone. I told him of my overwhelming gratitude while I was away that led me to praise God and pray for the safety of our family. That moment of prayer had been one of those times of heightened awareness, a moment of “amazing grace” as I felt God’s almost tangible presence. Those sudden moments of a recognition of God are hard to describe, but they always hit me with a weight of sacredness. At one moment I’m totally unaware, and the next second, I’m surprised by profound understanding. This unexpected “knowing” always astounds me.

At 4:30 that afternoon, I texted Roma,” How was your game? Who won?”

Roma: “We won!  I threw a touchdown!”

Me: “Great job! What was the score?”

Roma: “27 to 6.”

Bruce and I both texted him more often than usual. I was so conscious of wanting him to know we were thinking of him, maybe so he would remember that we were trusting him, and he would rise to the level of our trust. Perhaps we just missed our boy, having seen him every day for almost seven weeks after so many lengthy absences.

I awoke in the night. As I looked around in the darkness, I was puzzled.  A vapor of chartreuse filled our bedroom. I had never noticed light that color in the first moments of the sunrise. I closed my eyes for a few minutes, thinking I might go back to sleep. Then I opened them again and turned on my side. The door was still glowing green in the early morning light. What in the world? I studied the edges of the door. The room glow faded and the green no longer extended beyond the edges of the door, but it was not like the oak door was painted that color. The color shifted and blurred at the edges of the door, as if I was looking through a gas vapor.

I never found a satisfactory answer to the mystery of the green cloud in my room in the early hours of December 6, 2015. Was it a spirit? An angel sent to be by my side? A scientific explanation of this peculiar phenomenon is impossible, in my humble opinion. I felt it was something rather more “holy” than frightening. Days later, it felt like our not-so-ordinary day had begun and ended with something sacred, a glimpse through the veil into Heaven.

Continue with Chapter 25