Angels In The Outfield

Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows I am a skeptic. I envy folks who have strong faith. (Say, envy is one of the seven deadly sins, isn't it?) Anyway, people either have faith or they don't. It's not something we can wish for ourselves. Somewhere along the way, we either lose faith, or we never had it. I think I am sort of a combination of both. And yet, things keep happening to me -- strange things.

Last fall I had another mystifying experience that -- well -- mystified me. I work in a very noisy office, in fact, some days the noise level is so high I have to leave for a few minutes to get my sense of calm. But something very odd happened one day. I looked over at one of my co-workers, and she was reading some papers on her desk. She looked very focused and was concentrating on something. I looked back at my computer screen. Just then, through all the noise and cacophony in our office, it suddenly got very quiet and still, and a voice said, "No, don't look away, look back..." So I turned back to my co-worker and I felt something was not right, so I asked her if she was okay.

"Dizzzzeeee..."

And then all h*ll broke loose. We ran to get one of the doctors from the clinic, who examined our co-worker and said she was having a stroke. The doctor asked me to call an ambulance, and our co-worker was in the hospital within 20 minutes, receiving the clot-busting medication she required. I went to visit her later, and the neurologist said our quick actions saved our co-worker's life. If we had left her sitting at her desk, she would have suffered severe damage. She apparently had a minor heart problem which caused her heart to beat with an irregular heart beat. This in turn released a clot which went to her cerebelum. It was just an anomaly that can happen to an otherwise healthy, fit woman like my co-worker.

My co-worker came to visit me at work the other day. She is 100% well, she has had no residual effects of her stroke. She's a pretty woman, and she looked healthier and more fit than I had seen her look before. It was wonderful to see her.

My co-worker (friend...) is a woman of faith, and she believes God worked through me to save her life. I don't know. But I do know that something tapped me on the shoulder that day and told me not to look away. And the strangest thing was the quiet -- through all the noise, everything became quiet. "No, no, no, don't look away."

Faith -- you either have it or you don't. For me, the jury is still out.