By Trina Machacek
“December is the season of miracles.” This means that the month of December, particularly around Christmas time, is considered a time when people are most likely to believe in or experience extraordinary events, often associated with the miracle of Jesus’ birth, signifying hope, generosity, and the possibility of unexpected positive occurrences.
Trina Machacek
There seems to be a notion that miracles are huge and ground crashing events. Surely there are those. The miracle of birth. Walking away from a terrible accident. Even seeing the silhouette of Jesus in one of your cornflakes seems to constitute a miracle. But. Yes, a divine “but.” I tend to give a nod towards little miracles in life. Like these.
In my Diamond Valley the roads that run east and west are numbered. I live along 7th street. The fact that I am still here after so many years is a miracle in itself. But a true. Shake me to the bone miracle has gripped me a few times here.
It happened when we were putting up our shop building. At the time, 1977 this was considered a monster of a building. It is 50 feet wide, 60 feet deep and the side walls are 18 feet. It is metal and the two of us, my husband and I, put it up together. In February. It got down to minus 30 that February. We were very young and just as nutty. To put the metal up on the sidewalls, since we didn’t have anything tall enough, we set a tractor with a front-end loader on the flat bed of a farm truck we had. That way he could work from the bucket as I backed the truck into position then climbed up on the tractor and lifted him up to the required 18 to 20 feet in the air. Quite a sight I must say.
On the north side we were working and the sun was shining and the temperature was a balmy 17. He was in the bucket at the required height, finished there and needed to be moved over to the next panel some 4 feet. I got down off the tractor, which by the way had no cab, it was 1977, pre fancy tractors. I got up into the truck, to move it over. Get in, go forward, moving over the required footage, then back it up to the building. Yes, husband still in the bucket up some 18 to 20 feet in the air. Easy peasy. Well on the backing up my foot slipped off the clutch and the truck rolled back. He was up in the bucket. All he could see was that the loader bucket was going to hit that new metal siding so he put his arm between the building and the bucket!
I have no idea how I got to the brake in time. I have no idea how his arm didn’t get cut off. I have no idea or memory of putting the truck into gear and pulling forward without it going back just a bit more as it usually did when I was trying to go forward. His arm got squished just enough to bruise it. It was a miracle and we both said silent prayers of thanks.
Looking up the meaning of miracle in Websters Dictionary, miracles are an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs. When I read that I thought of one of the strangest and odd things that has happened to me when talking of God. I was with a group of scientists. These were hard core scientists who studies led them into the outer most of outer space and as far beyond as is imaginable. Of course they didn’t imagine it. They only recognized what they could see. Even as far out into outer space that has been recorded by man.
As we were all standing at the airport in Eureka, waiting for a returning pod to fly over that had collected some dirt off of an asteroid, I asked this question. “Who here believes in God.” If you have never felt the earth shake, time stop, a cold front move in, you cannot imagine the quiet that fell in that room that morning. Not one person made a sound. Like we were all thrown into a vacuum where sound does not occur. Flabbergasted as I was, I looked around and people from early 20’s to upwards of late 60’s, in the dozen or so people, I was the only believer. I can still feel that emptiness. I was at a loss as to how you could see all the things a scientist may see or create or discover and not wonder the big question of “HOW?”
I have never seen Mother Mary in the brown of my toast. But without a doubt, He was up in that bucket that cold February day.
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
