And the miracles begin!

Written by my mother:

One of our family miracles happened sometime in the mid ‘70s. I can’t remember the exact year. The farm we live on once had a barn located on Flatwoods Road. It was in very poor condition but it served the purpose of storing square bales of hay so we tried to keep it maintained. Roy was going to paint the shed part of the roof and since it wasn’t steep, I told him I would help him. We were painting with black tar paint, so of course I picked out the oldest clothes I had to do the job. I remember that the button was missing from my pants and I pinned them with a very big safety pin. (Remember what your mother told you about always wearing clean underwear because you might have an accident?) Well, it goes for other parts of your wardrobe as well. I also had curlers in my hair.

As we were painting , Roy stepped over in the wet paint and lost his footing and his feet slid out from under him and he started to slide down the roof. I immediately stepped over to get hold of his strap on his bibbed overalls and my feet slide out from under me too. Within seconds we were both sliding off the roof to probably a 30 foot drop. At the bottom was an old set of cattle scales that had been removed but the cut-off posts were still in the ground and a lot of jagged rocks were still there. Roy said that was what he thought of as he was leaving the roof. God was so merciful to me that I don’t have any memory of the fall. All I remember was the landing. We both seemed to fly through the air several feet away from the barn and landing in the hay field, missing all the posts and rocks. We both had the breath knocked out of us and were gasping for breath. I remember still trying to breathe and Roy crawling over to me and kissing my face and asking if I was okay and I couldn’t get out, “Stop kissing me, I can’t breathe.” There were two girls sitting on the porch of the house close by and saw us fall. Roy called to them and told them to call an ambulance.

While we were waiting for the ambulance, Margie Flannigan came by and sat with us. She immediately asked me if I wanted her to take my curlers out. Bless her heart, she thought like a woman and knew what the important things were about.
After the ambulance came (they transported us together) I kept begging the attendants not to put me on those clean sheets. We both had slid through the black paint on our bottoms, taking the fresh paint with us. At the hospital they cut away our clothes (remember the big safety pin) and threw them away. I’m sure the sheets were discarded as well.

To make a long story much shorter, we were put in separate rooms and didn’t see each other until the next day. They wouldn’t allow either of us to get out of bed because they were not sure of internal injuries. They thought Roy had broken his back, but that was not so. The next day they told me I could get up to go to the bathroom. I decided I was going to find Roy and make sure he was okay. I walked from one end of the hospital to the other to his room. By the time I got there I was so exhausted that I told him to scoot over and I got in bed with him. A nurse came in and almost had a heart attack. She said, “Oh, no, no. We can’t have any of that.” She got a wheelchair and took me back to my room. We were released in three days. We were badly bruised internally and externally as well as blacked both of our eyes, but neither of us had a broken bone. Only by the grace of God could that have happened.

We continually praise God for his many blessings. This is just one of the many miracles that He has given us.