Once I was in my kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon and a voice in my head said, "Take out the trash." I thought, that's strange, why would I take out the trash on a Tuesday? My trash pickup was on Monday. See, I always kept my trash in the mudroom until trash day because dogs would get into it and make a mess. I ignored the "voice" and kept washing dishes. A minute later, I heard the voice say, "Take out the trash." I thought that this was really strange! Why take out the trash? All I knew was that I had an overwhelming desire to take out the trash, so I picked up a bag and started heading out to the alley, where the trash cans were. I kept thinking, "this is so stupid. Dogs are gonna get into this and I'll have to pick it all up again," but I absolutely felt compelled to take out the trash. I learned a long time ago to trust those little nagging feelings. Anyway, when I reached the trash cans, I heard someone screaming. Then I heard a man scream, "Oh my God! There's so much blood!" I ran towards the voices, even though I couldn't see, and discovered a little boy lying on the ground, bleeding profusely from his foot. He was barefoot and had jumped off his back porch and landed on a Mason jar. The jar was imbedded in his foot, almost coming through the skin on the top of his foot. His parents were the ones screaming and they were trying to pull the jar out! I immediately ran over and took control of the situation. The parents were so freaked out that they hadn't even called 911 yet. I knew they could do more damage getting the jar out and that the jar was plugging the hole. If they pulled it out, the boy would have bled to death. The parents finally called 911 and it took 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. I laid the boy on his back and held my thumb against the femoral artery in the leg to stop the bleeding. He still bled a lot over a 45 minute span but, if I hadn't known what to do, he would have bled to death. It took surgeons at the hospital three hours to get the jar out without severing his foot. He lost movement in a couple of his toes but that's all. His mother and the ambulance driver both told me that, if I hadn't been there, the doctor's said the boy would have died. I didn't know these people and had never seen them before. The mother told me that she was praying to God for help and I just appeared in their back yard and saved her son. She thought I was his guardian angel. So, I do believe that God intercedes in our lives when we need it. If I hadn't listened to that little voice, which I believe was the Holy Spirit, telling me to take out the trash, that little boy would have died. You can believe it was something else, not God, I don't care, but I've never doubted that there was someone in the universe who knew there was a little boy whose life was in the balance and that I was only a block away and qualified to help. That "someone" contacted me and got me out into the back yard where I could hear the cries for help. I've never doubted that God exists since that day. I think everyone has to come to their own acceptance or rejection of belief in a divine being themselves. It's not something that comes from books. For me, it was personal experience. StAnn
