Listening

I want to share a story with you that happened almost ten years ago that seems somewhat relevant here. We were living in the country and I was driving home from the school when I happened to look over the side of the bridge that crossed the ditch that split the fields and crossed the road. And I saw something strange. There was an empty truck nose down in the ditch. Now we lived in crazy country, and I at first figured that some lunatic farmer had let his 10 year old drive the truck across the field and it ended up there. But something whispered to me to stop. So I did. I craned my neck to see if anyone was in the cab. No one was,so I put the car back in gear to continue. But something whispered in my mind, "Get out and look over the side." I did. And there, in the bottom of the ditch lying in an inch of water on a frigid October morning was a man. I cried out and heard in response gasps and chokes. He was alive. I was only a half mile from home (and had no cell phone back then)so I rushed there, sent my husband down to the ditch to stay with him and check his vitals (but not to move him) and called 911. David went to the hospital and found out the rest of the story.

He had been coming home from a night shift at work, and less then a mile from home, had fallen asleep for a moment. When he gathered himself after hitting the bottom of the ditch, he wasn't bleeding and decided to move over and get out. He had no idea his pelvis had crushed against the steering wheel, and when he put the weight on his feet, he collapsed to the ground. Unable to move, he cried out to every car and truck he heard pass; dozens in two and half hours. But no one saw him. No one heard him. He cried and prayed, pleading with God to help him somehow. And he did. Someone was listening with something besides their ears. When he knew he had been found, the gasps and chokes I heard were him sobbing with relief.

I thought about how grateful I was that day that I had been listening. And I realized something. So often we find ourselves in the ditches of life. Our cries are too small to be heard and no one sees us. I have tried to live my life in such a way that I could hear with my heart when others are in the ditch, and hope that others would be listening when I found myself in a ditch.