When I was younger, I was fascinated by stories of flying saucers beaming people away and those alien crash landings the government always seemed to be covering up. But even at a more innocent age, I recognized that the people sharing these “alien abductions” weren’t exactly reliable.
The phenomenon is lampooned in one of my favorite episodes of How I Met Your Mother, when Marshall reads a favorite childhood book to his skeptical wife, Lily: “July 8, Cheyenne, Wyoming. A hunter spots a hairy form in the forest. Bigfoot. His story is dismissed because, to be honest, he’d been drinking and had a history of mental problems. But was it a hoax? Or was it an enigma of the mystical?”
It’s not so easy to dismiss the stories in Mysterious Ways. In our upcoming issue, we’ve got a deputy for the Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Department, an emergency trauma nurse, an elementary school teacher and more, all of whom share events that defy any earthly explanation. Here’s a quick preview:
Fireproof
“The road is impassable,” the fire chief warned us. “You’ll never make it.” We’d pulled up next to his firefighting team in a snow of ashes, staring at Highway 39, the only route into the San Gabriel Canyon of Angeles National Forest, 30 miles northeast of L.A. Thick smoke and bright orange flames roared from the trees beyond. My partner, John, and I, deputies for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, exchanged glances. “We’ve got no choice,” I muttered. I wheeled our SUV around the roadblock, into the jaws of the fiery beast. The firefighters had their job to do. We had ours: to save 70-year-old Sigrid Hopson…
Immediate Care
Unmistakably, I heard a distant, calm, yet commanding voice: This man could die in front of you at any moment. I looked around—I was sure I was the only one who had heard the voice. The man looked at me quizzically. I had the option of sending him immediately to trauma, but only if he was a serious case that couldn’t wait. My colleagues would question my competence as a triage nurse if it was a false alarm. But I couldn’t shake the feeling. Not minor—immediate. He could die in front of me. I grabbed a wheelchair. “Please call trauma,” I told a colleague. “Let them know I’m coming with a patient.” My colleague gave a skeptical glance. “Let them know,” I repeated. “Now.”
Shelter from the Storm
A teacher’s supposed to have the answers. I can teach my fourth graders the state capitals and how to write cursive; I can list all the books in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia series. But I can’t explain why some children died in the tornado that hit our school last May and the ones with me survived. All I can tell you is that the tragedy doesn’t mean God was absent…
A Ticket to Life
The hospital. That’s where Linda and I were headed. A sterile monolithic building where a surgeon was going to operate on my brain. I’d complained of headaches and blurred vision. Doctors had found an aneurysm, fatal if it ruptured. I’d undergone tests, taken an MRI, a CT scan, had met with my surgeon and scheduled the operation, all while putting on the same brave face I wore as an officer for the Atlanta Police Department. I’d been in life-threatening situations my entire career, but this time, my bravery was a front. In truth, I was terrified. Lately, a recurring nightmare confirmed my darkest fears: I was going to die.
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