Chainsaws and Prayers

It was spring.  Lots of spring cleaning kinds of things to do in that kind of weather. I’d made my list of supplies to pick up and was almost ready to leave to run my errands when I looked out the kitchen window.  There in the back yard, my husband, Eric was trimming and cutting away at the fast growing honeysuckle and the bushes and shrubs that were turning into trees.  As he was working with the chainsaw, I had this vision flash into my head.  It was like I had glimpsed into the future.

In this future, only a few hours ahead in time, I was gone and Eric was working at the back of our lot.  As he was working with the chainsaw to trim back this overgrown shrub, one hand slipped off the chainsaw. The chainsaw came crashing down on his left leg, just at the knee and cut deeply into his knee.  He lay there unable to drag himself to the house to call for help.  It was a work day and our neighbors were not home.  There was no one to hear his calls as he slowly bled out. A few hours later, I return home to find my husband dead in the back yard.

This flash all occurred in a split second. It was like being teleported into the future and back.

Oh my, God! What do I do with this?  I stood there staring out the window watching him work.  Knowing if I asked him to stop working until I got back from my errands, he’d think I was nuts.  And then this other knowing came over me, I cannot live my life in fear of what “might be”.  If I live in fear, how will I ever go off and run my errands, now or in the future?  My power to control things is very limited.  I realized that I did have the power to pray.  I chose to believe that evil had planted that fearful thought into my mind at that moment.  I began to pray and rebuke that thought in the name of Jesus, to replace that thought with God’s promises and love.  I prayed that the Holy Spirit would stand guard over my husband and acknowledged she was far better at that than me. I gave my husband’s care over to God. Surrender.  And as, I neared the end of my praying, I was filled with peace. Off I went to run my errands.

A few hours later, I returned home from my errands to find my husband watching sports on tv.  He was bathed and dressed after his afternoon of yard work. He had accomplished a lot of much needed work on the yard.  As I sat next to him on the couch, I noticed a band-aid on his knee.  What’s that band-aid for?  His face flushed with embarrassment.  What an odd reaction, I thought.  It was only a small band-aid.  Then he told me this story.  He said, after I left, he continued working in the yard.  He only had one more tree to trim – one more branch to finish the job.  As he used the chainsaw on this branch, another branch got in the way. When that happened, he didn’t skip a beat – he lifted his left hand off the chainsaw to push the invading branch out of the way and realized that was the wrong thing to do – too late. The weight of chainsaw (still running) caused his right hand to slip and the chainsaw blade came down upon his left knee.  And then, mysteriously, it stopped running.  The blade nicked him, but the chainsaw stopped running.

He was embarrassed that he had made such a mistake of not using two hands to hold the chainsaw AND shocked to explain why it stopped running.  He realized that it could have been a very serious cut – maybe cut his leg off.

I immediately told him how thankful I was that he was okay and that miraculously the chainsaw turned itself off.  Then, I said, I have a story to tell you about just how miraculous I thought your story was.