The Indian Head Miracle
Some say I’m neurotic. I prefer protective with a pinch of psychic. It (being psychic, protective, neurotic?) runs in my family—on my mother’s side. Grandma said she always sensed when something bad was going to happen (only she never knew to whom, where, how, or quite the exact time) and she was always right. I’m psychic just like her.
When my son’s 5 th grade TAG (talented and gifted) teacher told me he and his team were all set to go to the National TAG competition and that the school was paying for the kids to go, who was I to put a fly in the ointment? (Especially over a "silly" feeling or so my husband calls it.) But there it was gnawing away at my gut: something bad was going to happen.
The TAG teacher rang to say my son’s a good boy, I could trust him, that he was near 11 years old and a whole bunch of other things like cutting strings, her being responsible and more but all I could hear was my gut. I just KNEW something bad was going to happen on that trip…that, and we had no money.
(We’d been broke ever since my son’s daddy got so sick he had to quit working and the TAG teacher told us the school couldn’t afford to send parents. Our boy had to go 2,000 miles away from home, by himself, for nearly a week’s time.)
My poor-sick husband tried to comfort me saying that even old President Carter had sold peanuts in Plain at the age of 5. I said, "Yeah and Yosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili was also born in Georgia," but neither had anything to do with my gut. After being married to me for 12 years he knew; "Would you feel better if I went?" I checked my gut. It felt better…not good… but better.
But I said it made no-never-mind because we didn’t have any money for him to go fly 2,000 miles, stay in some hotel for next to a week, and eat the whole time. He said the teacher told him it would cost near $1,000. Then there went my gut again, only this time it wasn’t premonition…it was just disgust so I cried and ranted for a good hour about how it’s always the poor that gets their kids sent or taken away for them to be "better" than they already are…how the rich can afford to protect their kids…how it wasn’t right…that I felt helpless…
That night we prayed and I read my King James Bible. It opened to the part where God tells a dad to place his son on the sacrificial alter and he doesn’t want to but he obeys God and just before he puts his little baby boy on the fire God tells him to stop. God didn’t want him to lose his baby boy…he just wanted him to be WILLING to lose his baby boy. "Trust," I said to my husband as I rolled over in bed to tell him the good news but he was already asleep. Since he’d gotten sick, he slept more and more.
I snuggled up to the curve of his back and thought about God. I remembered that He has the whole world in His hands and just as I was about to fall asleep feeling all safe and sound…I remembered, "Praise Him in all things." I sat straight up in bed and my gut was worse than ever. I just knew…just KNEW…something bad was going to happen and I would have to prove my faith, like that father had! My baby boy was going into harm’s way AND I was supposed to praise God when whatever the bad thing was happened?
What if he got killed? Raped? Stolen? Stolen and Tortured? Lost? Thoughts flooded and I shook my husband awake, nearly screaming, "You HAVE to go! God’s will be done, but I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t TRY to protect him."
My husband smiled. "My grandfather left me a collection of coins. They might be worth something."
"You’d do that?"
"Why not?"
"It’s your family heirloom."
"So’s our son."
The next day he listed the set on eBay. The first day a bidder raised over half what the trip cost. But the TAG trip was only 10 days away: the coin bid closed in a week with 2 days to process a check—it was going to be hair-close.
I prayed and prayed. I read the Bible. Prayed. Read the Bible. Went to church.
The coins got bid up right close to a thousand dollars (you see, they were all Indian Heads…all of a special year…much in demand we found out and worth just what we needed them to be worth). The check shipped in time, the bank cashed the check, and my husband bought his plane ticket. It was a miracle! Still—I had that gnawing.
After I watched them board the plane and waved until they were clear out of the sky I went home. Alone and fearful I fell to my knees. "Lord please keep them safe." I heard an echo, "Praise Him in all things."
I envisioned my son and my husband plummeting from the sky, crashing Earth, dying horrible, painful deaths and I cried out to God that I didn’t know if I were strong enough to praise Him in that. Then—I remembered even Satan has to get God’s permission for what he does. So I cried out again to God, "But I don’t think I can BEAR it!" And I stayed there…for a long time. Then I opened the Bible and read:
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Do all things without murmurings and disputings: that ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain. Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all. For the same cause also do ye joy, and rejoice with me.
Suddenly the gnawing was gone. I knew that if God took my son and my husband that it was His will and that He would give me the strength I knew I did not have. I envisioned my son and my husband hurdling through space, crashing into the ground, screaming in pain while burning up in horrible deaths; in that moment I felt utter despair from some primal place I never even knew existed in me and I wailed like an animal (though I did pray God would take them out of their bodies so they wouldn’t suffer) but I submitted it all to God. It was at that very moment the phone rang. It wasmy son.
"Hi Mom," he said.
"Hiiii…"
"Are you okay?" he asked.
I sniffled, "Oh yes, yes…just…uh…anyway…so you’re there?"
"Yes and flying was a BLAST!"
"Really?"
"Yeah! And the hotel is the coolest place I’ve ever seen in the whole world and we’re
going swimming at the pool and it has a water slide and all! Okay Mom, gotta go…
everyone’s heading to the pool! Luv ya!"
"I love you too…"
My husband took the line. "You okay?" he asked.
"Yes. Just praying."
"Everything went fine. Nothing to worry about. I told you it would work out fine. God provided us a miracle…I still can’t believe those pennies sold for a grand."
"He sure did," I replied, "He sure did."
"Gotta go, call you later."
When the line clicked gone I thanked God, not for the pennies but for the journey He’d taken me on; because of my son’s TAG trip I knew God would see me through whatever horror the world could muster (if I loved Him, trusted Him and obeyed). That…was my miracle of the Indian Heads.
Funny though, it wasn’t but half-an-hour after my husband and son had called that my gut started in again. I dismissed it, of course. Only come to find out…that very afternoon the TAG teacher got so ill she couldn’t even get out of bed for a good 24 hours. Stomach flu, I think, was the final verdict.
Thank God my husband had gone along: instead of hanging out in a hotel room listening to their teacher puke the kids got to go swimming and sight seeing. They even watched a team from China compete (I guess TAG kids had come from all around the world for that competition).
When my husband finally called me late the following night and told what all had happened, I said, "So let me guess…the teacher pretty well recovered around today’s dinnertime?"
"Yes," he said, "Let me guess…your gut!"
"Exactly!"
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