A miracle, or a mere coincidence? Trampled to Life.

My Dad and I, still enjoying
every moment of his comeback.

Trampled to life.  

A true rendition of faith healing. 

My mother replaced the receiver, and then collapsed into the chair, her hands shaking and all color had drained from her face.  'Mum, is Dad okay?'  I asked, knowing something dreadful had happened, but had no details as to the message that my mother, Julie, had received, other than it concerned my father, Aubrey, who had been helping his cousin in Cape Town with his trucking business. My mother attempted to explain, whilst fighting back her tears, 'Ah, Sancheo, it's Dad.  He's been, he's been in an accident, a truck, I don't know…', then she became overwhelmed with tears.  I went
to lay my four-week-old baby, Julia, down in her cot and rushed to fetch my mother some sugar water.  Returning seconds later, finding my mum trembling while paging through her phone book, I handed the sweetened water to my mother, 'Mum, drink here, it will calm you,' reassuringly I added, 'we will get through this nightmare, Dad has much work left to do, all will be well, you will see.'

My family had recently suffered so much loss, my brother Alan had died in a mining accident, my uncle Alan had passed in my arms from Cancer, and most recently my other brother, Patrick, had died in a senseless car accident.  I had to be strong for her Mum.  Years in the South African Police had taught my how to focus on the situation at hand, but also taught me to disconnect from my emotion self, and apply inner strength.

After my Mum painstakingly made endless phone calls, it appeared that while my Dad had been bleeding the brakes of a 10-ton truck.  Whilst under the vehicle, the jack had collapsed and as a result, his body had taken the full impact under the wheel of the truck, leaving him with broken ribs, which penetrated his lungs and above that he had suffered major organ failure.  The specialist telephonically insisted that the family come express their farewells before it was too late.

Packing only the bare necessities, my mum, daughter and I set off for Cape Town, every stop along the three hour drive becoming a landmark, and every song playing on the radio becoming a soundtrack to an ill written script.

My dad had been a big game hunter at age 14.  He had won the 'Battle of the Giants', and the 'Hell Run' to him was just an adventurous outing, having driven monster trucks from Tanzania to Pretoria on roads, which claimed a life with each kilometer of treacherous route.  He had eventually retired from Special Forces having driven Abnormal loads for the military throughout the Apartheid era.  He was now my daughter's grandfather, how could this be his fate?  The idea was inconceivable!

Arriving in Cape Town just before dusk, we had arranged to stay over at friends who lived nearby the hospital to which my dad had been transferred by helicopter.

Seeing my father, he filled the width of the broad hospital bed; he resembled an overflowing pot of spaghetti mixed with some robotic sci-fi enigma.  Tubes poured out of his body, and machines were controlling what specialists believed was to be his last breath, so much so that they did not even bother to clean the grit and grime off him.  The tire marks engraved over his body and arms, the course gravel still clinging to him mesmerized my mum and I.  His fate did appear to be doomed.

Throughout the next three days, we followed a routine of mundane cell phone calls to the specialist, whom had never made any face-to-face contact, but kept to his theory that the family and friends were to come pay their last respects urgently.  Religiously Mum and I visited during the specified visiting hours, witnessing no change in my mechanized father.

On day four, whilst standing over his bed, Mum and I were overwhelmed with a feeling of hopelessness, staring down at this man.  The iconic father, husband and now grandfather to baby Julia.  A man worshiped and praised.  I stared; this man lying in the bed did not even resemble my father!  His size and proportion was wrong, his color was wrong and the manner in which my mother looked at him in pain and agony was wrong.  As all these thoughts flooded her mind, so the visiting hour ended, it was time for the mystery specialist to come examine my Dad.

As the penny dropped that this was so wrong in so many ways, so did the idea of finding truth to the matter appeal more to my spirit.  There was a sign on the wall, not too far from her father's bed, which read 'Relax, God is in charge'. Well, I thought, if God is in charge, then we will go visit Him in His house!

Traveling in the direction of my friend's house as fast as I could, I noticed, whilst en route, a building I had past several times before, but never bothered to really look at.  This time the sign above it was larger than life, 'West Coast Christian Academy'.

Speeding into the parking lot, there were students lining up and a man stood overseeing them.  I leaped out the little Uno, crying out to the man, 'I urgently need an elder and someone to pray with us!'

The man realized the urgency and ran off to find an elder, while I unfastened baby Julia from her car seat.  For the following hour the five of us were sat in a circle in deep prayer and meditation, pleading for God's interception, and accepting His work, His healing, His divine miracles, and His truth over any other recitation which we had been expected to believe from the specialists.

Thereafter, with a strange feeling of enthusiasm, nervous anxiety, and expectation of miracles, we returned to the hospital's demarcated waiting room, until the specialist finished his rounds in the ICU ward.

After what felt like a life time of waiting and anticipation the ward doors opened, revealing for the first time the mysterious specialist.  He approached us, knelt down before my mum and I, taking our hands in his own, said, "We have just experienced a miracle, and your dad's organs have just started functioning".

Today, Dad still celebrates with us.

So Be It.  Amen.