Me: Where did they go?
Prodigal: They went to git something, they will be back in a jiffy.
This is from Mildred Shell
On that sunny August afternoon several years ago, there was no indication that anything could mar the beauty and peace of the day. It was a Friday, and I could hear the hum of my husband’s tractor as he mowed the grass in the field next to our backyard.
Our house stands on a hill above the highway about a mile from the little town of Marble Hill, Missouri. Mr. Stephens, a farmer, is our nearest neighbor and he lives a quarter of a mile down the road.
I don’t know what it was that caused me to turn suddenly and look at my husband on the tractor. As I did so, I watched in horror and disbelief as the tractor hit something hard in the grass, then turned over, pinning my husband beneath.
In a panic I began running toward the tractor knowing that I had to get Howard out from under before it burst into flames.
Jack, our ten-year-old son, was already by his father’s side.
Together we pulled and pried, but all our efforts seemed only to hurt Howard, who was lying on his back with the steering wheel pressing against his chest. One of his legs was caught under the back end of the heavy machine, a Farmall Cut, which weighed three thousand pounds.
Our cries for help rang out across the empty field. We could hear the cars go by on the highway, but they couldn’t possibly hear us.
Howard was struggling to breathe–if the weight of the tractor wasn’t lifted off his chest, he might die! Frantically we searched for something to prop up the tractor. There was nothing.
O God, I thought in despair, send someone…anyone!
I didn’t stop to think how hopelessly ridiculous it would be for a woman alone to try to lift a tractor. I only knew that Howard would die if it wasn’t done. With one shoulder leaning against the radiator, I took hold and lifted with all my might…and the tractor moved. I was holding it up, thank God! Howard was breathing easier. He was saved, at least for the moment.
“You try and pull Daddy out,” I said to Jack. “I’ll hold the tractor.”
Jack was pulling as hard as he could, but Howard wasn’t moving.
“I can’t.” Howard was straining to breathe and talk at the same time. “A rock…under my back…I’m hurt.” His leg was still pinned under the tractor. It was obvious that we couldn’t get him out without help.
“Run,” I said to Jack. “Phone Mr. Stephens and ask him to bring help.”
I watched Jack race across the yard and into the house and prayed that our neighbor was at home.
Then, for a while, it was as if time had been suspended. I didn’t seem to be aware of the weight of the tractor and I wasn’t even bothered by the heat. Meanwhile, Howard was struggling to speak. “I…can’t….take….it….much…longer.”
In many private conversations Howard and I had agreed that death was not something to fear. We had surrendered our lives to God many years before. Miraculously, we felt, He had brought Howard back after a head wound nearly killed him on Saipan during World War II. And now, once again, Howard was in God’s hands. With a sudden calmness I knew that if Howard was to live, God would use me to hold up the tractor till help came.
Finally I saw them running toward us–Jack and Mr. Stephens and his son, Jerry, and Henry Thiele, another neighbor. Together they lifted the tractor. The doctor arrived, and then the ambulance. Howard’s leg had to be stitched up, and the doctor said X rays would be necessary. “But I don’t think he’s seriously hurt.”
Then Mr. Stephens took my right arm firmly and said, “Now I’ll take you to the doctor.”
“Me, what in the world for?” I could feel no pain anywhere. But then I looked and saw that the skin and flesh or my left arm and shoulder was hanging in shreds. I could hardly believe what I saw. At the clinic the doctor explained that the heat from the radiator had actually cooked the flesh on my arm and shoulder to the bone.
In a few days Howard came home in a wheelchair to nurse a crushed vertebra in his back. My left arm was helpless until the burnt muscles slowly healed. For months we were quite a pair, both semi-invalids with a house and two children to care for.
Every time we think back to that August Friday, we marvel at the way things worked out. When Jack telephoned our neighbor for help, Mr. Stephens just happened to walk into his kitchen in time to take the call. His son Jerry, who no longer lives at home, just happened to be there visiting that day.
And all the while God was lifting that tractor for almost one hour. I wasn’t. On my own I couldn’t. We still have the tractor, and I have since tried lifting the front end. I can’t budge it.
Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, Job 33:16 (KJV) Jennifer Van Allen www.theprodigalpig.com www.faithincounseling.org |
