Our Greatest "Kindness Remembered"

I wanted to post On Padre Pio's Feast Day, but a variety of factors made that difficult.

Mainly, the topic.

It is hard for me to write about the main reason that day is forever emblazoned in my memory, but there are some beautiful truths I discovered through it that I have been wanting to share for some time.  This is perhaps the greatest "kindness remembered" I have from my entire life experience.  So I have always felt I should share something.  But it has been difficult to know what, and more difficult to actually write it.

Seven years ago, we moved into our new home.  And on Sept. 23, I got into the van to take the keys to the owner of our old house.  My husband was standing right next to the car on the passenger side, we believed all of our children were in the house watching a movie (except the youngest, who was in her car seat), and I was pulling forward out of our driveway, with a full view of everything in front of me.

Or so I thought.

For, as I pulled forward, I ran over our 2-year-old son, Luke.

My husband, too late, saw what happened.  He saw my back tire run over my son's head.  I felt the bump, and from what can only be a whisper from my Guardian Angel, knew that it was not just from a random toy left in the driveway.

Today, Luke is a healthy boy with no harmful effects from the accident -- something that makes no sense to me, without God's intervention.  He suffered breaks in his collarbone, hip, and throughout his legs and ankles, but nothing that even needed to be casted.  I have heard countless stories of children being run over since that day, and unless the only body part affected was a hand, the child  -- except in one other story -- never survived.

I listened to the hospital staff explain, as he got better, how I couldn't have run over his head.  But in addition to my husband's testimony, I could see the tire tracks and cuts that clearly showed exactly where that tire had gone.  He still bears some faint marks today.

A dear friend who came to the hospital that day told me, while it was happening, while I was almost certain our son would die, because I couldn't imagine how he could live, that Jesus was kissing us.  She said in our suffering, we are closest to Jesus.

I felt that closeness.

As I held my son in our driveway, and cried that I needed him, I heard God speak to my heart, asking me to trust that if Luke did die, He would still care for all of us.  I couldn't imagine how I would survive, but He helped me trust that where He had been faithful in the past, He would continue to be faithful in the future.  It was not my son I could not live without; it was God.  And He would care for Luke as well.

As I walked the hospital corridors alone, after being told I could not accompany him in some scan they needed to do, as I felt the awfulness of the entire situation descend upon me, I felt Mary speak to my heart.  Simple, unexpected words that brought so much comfort: "Nothing is wasted."

Our suffering was not without meaning.  If we could open our hearts and let Jesus in, even in this, He could use it to some purpose.  We would perhaps never know what, but just knowing all of this pain was not for naught -- that when we walked with Jesus, our faithfulness helped it become part of something bigger -- flooded me with peace.  Those words have come back to me many times throughout the years, and they always bring that same sense of peace and strength.

And finally, God has a beautiful plan, for all of us.  At some point during that terrible, long day, it dawned on me that perhaps my son was going to live.  We had stood by his bedside as a priest had prayed over Luke and given him his last rites, but at some point, hours later, I realized there might be more to Luke's story.

A small phrase came to my mind: "I know the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord...."  Wasn't this from the Bible?  I walked out to the waiting room where that friend I mentioned was waiting with our family, and when I asked about it, she nearly leaped from her seat.  "Yes!  That was one of the readings this morning!"

She opened her Magnificat, and read the entire verse, from Jeremiah 29:11-12: "For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you."

At hearing those words, I knew Luke would survive.  I knew God still had a plan for his life.  And more than that, I knew this was a message for everyone.  God wants to give us all a "future and a hope."  He wants us to turn to Him in prayer, and to trust He hears us, and that He will answer us. 

We have a very Good Father, Who loves us very much.  We have a Father who can "make all things new." (Rev. 21:5)

And after the gift I have been given -- a precious, now nine-year-old boy with a tender heart and a great sense of humor -- how can I not share that message, even if the memories bring back some pain?  However big that pain may sometimes be, God's Love is always bigger.