When I was young, probably five or six, we lived in West Texas. We lived out in the country in West Texas. We were about three miles outside of Denver City, Texas. Denver City had a population of about 5,000 people so it was very small.
We lived in a trailer out there. I always sat in the same place at the kitchen table for meals. One day we did not have snack time and so we were not at the table. Mom heard a noise and didn’t think anything of it at first but later noticed a bullet in the chair I sat in. It seems as if I would have been shot if we would have had snack time. Now I do not remember this but this is just what I remember of her telling the story.
This is not a near death experience but I love the story. I guess it could have been near death. Several years later we still lived in that same trailer. My sister and I went to bed as normal but we were awoken and dragged down to the cellar to avoid the tornado that was just a few miles away. I do remember begin literally dragged out of bed and into the cellar. Normally we just stored food down there but that night we stored our lives.
Even more years later, we had moved to East Texas and had traveled west with some friends of my parents. We stopped at a lake and went swimming. One of the boys with us lost their flotation device and I was dumb and decided to swim after it. I kept getting almost close enough to reach it but never quite got it. I wore myself completely out and started screaming for help. I sank all the way to the bottom of the lake (I’m not sure how deep) and I pushed off the bottom. I reached the top and took a deep breath, screamed again, and sank again. I reached the bottom and pushed off. I got to the top a second time and again sank to the bottom. The third time up I remember seeing the light from the top of the water before I passed out.
Next, I remember flashes. I was being pulled into a boat. Then I was lying on the bottom of the boat. Then I was lying in the sand or dirt on the beach. Then I was being bitten by ants and was put in a chair. Then someone put a straw in a cup of water so I could drink. For years I would get amused at TV shows where someone drown and got up and ran away because that is not what happens. When you almost drown, you do not recover quickly.
I found out later that the people who pulled me out went to that lake every year on that weekend. And every year they finish having fun boating around and then load the boat up on the trailer except that year they left the boat in the water. They really had no idea why they had not followed standard protocol that year but it had to have been divine intervention. God used them to save me.
Those are all the times that I remember almost dying. Maybe tomorrow will be about sleep…