Luck or Something More?

When I was 7 years old and living in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, my family belonged to a neighborhood pool complex. Early on summer mornings, when the dew was still clinging to the grass and the temperature of the air was still reasonable, I rode my bike down to the pool for my swimming lesson. One morning in particular, the sky was overcast and the air was cooler than usual. Getting into the pool was as painful as having my hair brushed, but not getting into the pool was even worse because of the cool air outside. After completing the lesson, we were allowed to jump off of the diving boards. At that age I was still fearless so of course I wanted to jump off of the high dive. In my mind I was in the air for an eternity so the jump was much more like flying off of a cliff and into a river miles below.
To avoid becoming an icicle in between the pool and the high dive, I ran-walked as fast as I could without eliciting a whistle blow from the lifeguard. I waited my turn at the bottom of the ladder until the child who had just jumped made a loud splash in the water. My hands reached for the rungs on the ladder and I moved hands and feet together as fast as I could to get to the top. Slippery hands, slippery feet, chattering lips, and goosebumps everywhere are not ideal companions when one is trying to climb. When I got to the top rung I quickly grabbed for the bar and slipped. Before I knew what was happening, I was falling through the air with nothing near enough to grab. What seemed like slow motion was in reality probably 2 or 3 seconds. Bodies falling don’t take long to reach their destination. The cement was where I landed and for a few seconds it felt as if I were in a bubble and sounds were muted. Whistles were blowing, people were shouting and before I could make sense of what had happened, people were leaning over me telling me not to move. Looking into their faces as they knelt down beside me or stood over me and peered, I began to feel afraid. Fear was the mask they were each wearing.
Within a short time, the siren of an ambulance began to howl, getting closer and closer. Lying on the cold and rough ground covered with a blanket, I didn’t understand the ambulance was for me. When they loaded me into the ambulance and pulled out of the pool complex, they did not blare the siren. That might have been fun! Sometime later that day the doctor met with my parents and said they had done as many tests as they could and he could not find a single thing wrong with me. He was releasing me to them but warned them to keep an eye on me because he believed something could still arise. As the 4th of 6 children, I enjoyed the attention that day after I arrived home.
It wasn’t until many years later that I began to wonder how I could have fallen 20 feet (approx.) on to my back on the cement and not suffered even a scratch or a bruise anywhere on my body. Is that physically possible? Was I just very lucky or did God intervene in some way? If God intervened, that raises a whole other set of questions. Why would God protect me and not so many others? Does God intervene in the world like that? How could God intervene sometimes and not other times? My cousin fell on to the cement at a football game and is now paralyzed. Was he just unlucky? Could God have intervened? People talk about miracles. What is a miracle? Did I experience a miracle? At the very least I am decidedly lucky. Daily I keep my eyes and ears open for how God might be at work in our world. And I wonder…