Psalm 66:8-9
New King James Version (NKJV)
8 Oh, bless
our God, you peoples!
And make the voice of His praise to be heard,
9 Who keeps our soul among the living,
And does not allow our feet to [a]be moved.
And make the voice of His praise to be heard,
9 Who keeps our soul among the living,
And does not allow our feet to [a]be moved.
On May 23, 2020, we were climbing in Joshua Tree National
Park. Sylvia suddenly fell. Neither she nor anybody else knows what happened
exactly. As she fell, I heard the sickening sound thud, …thud, ...thud, …thud
of soft flesh striking rock at least four times. She fell somewhere between 20
and 30 feet (almost 10 m). In the picture, my brother, Elwood, indicates the
position she was in when we found her deep in a rocky crevice. She appeared to
be dead.
He and our daughter Julia were the first to reach her. They
thought she had to be dead until they noticed a flicker of an eyelid. She then
muttered, “Hurt!” Julia encouraged her to try and sit up if she could. She
responded by sitting up--with their help. Julia yelled at me to go get help.
Cell phones have no coverage in that part of the park. I
tried anyway and confirmed my suspicion. Three of us headed back to the Echo T
parking lot. We found two women who had just passed their EMT training, and
they went back to help. I remembered that there was a group of Search &
Rescue people promoting their organization at the Hidden Valley parking lot.
One of them grabbed a radio and immediately started calling for help. The she
drove back with me to Echo T. As I pulled to a stop, a ranger, with emergency
lights flashing, pulled in next to me.
Within a very short time an emergency helicopter from the Big Bear Fire
Department was circling overhead, trying to find a spot clear enough to land.
Finally, they landed back at the parking lot. It took the emergency crew three
hours to get Sylvia out of the crevice and into the helicopter.
Sylvia was alive! They wouldn’t let Julia and me into the
hospital, of course, because of COVID-19. Sylvia was talking to me when her
doctor or radiologist came in. She laid the phone down, and we heard him tell
her that she had fractured her scapula, a rib, and three processes on her lumbar
region vertebrae. She reminded them of blood on her head, and he the saw the
big gash there. They all missed a fracture on her fibula and several fractures
on the glenoid fossa on her shoulder joint. These were all on the left side of
her body.
She is alive and is getting around the house on a wheel
chair until the fibula heals. Her spirit is amazing, and she counts herself as a
miracle woman. Several have reminded her that God must still have plans for
her.
Bless our God who has kept her soul among the living!
