THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness

An Excerpt from Chapter 42

Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous

Bicycling to my first day of work in a pelting rainstorm, I rode west on Mission Road along the left side, facing oncoming traffic, water streaming into my eyes as the sky hung low and gray.

A car came straight toward me, drifting too close.

I edged right toward the narrow asphalt shoulder. My front tire hit the slick edge and slipped, and in an instant I went down hard onto my right hip on the wet pavement.

The impact shot through me. I tried to move, but the pain locked me in place. I could not stand.

Traffic slowed. Tires hissed past on the rain-slick road. I lay half on the shoulder, half in the lane, rain soaking through my clothes, mud grinding into my hands as I tried to push myself up.

Nothing.

A sheriff’s car screeched to a stop. The deputy stepped out and came over, looking down at me.

“Can you stand up?”

“No,” I said through clenched teeth. “I fell on my right hip. It hurts like hell.”

“Okay, don’t move. I’ll call an ambulance.”

He asked if there was someone he could notify. I told him I was new in town, living alone, and didn’t think to mention my new employer. He nodded and stepped away to radio in.

He did what he could—directing traffic around me—but he couldn’t touch me. For legal reasons, he couldn’t help me up or drive me anywhere.

So I lay there in the rain, helpless.

The cold seeped through me. My body began to shiver uncontrollably. Water pooled beneath my back. My tears mixed with the rain, unnoticed.

I tried again to rise. The pain was unbearable. I stopped.

A line of cars stretched down the road. Drivers sat inside, dry and warm, watching.

One woman got out.

She had been waiting like the others, but instead of staying in her car, she stepped into the rain and walked toward me, her shoes sinking into the mud at the roadside. She held an umbrella over me.

“Let’s get you out of here,” she said.

She slipped an arm under my shoulder and helped me up. I gasped as my weight shifted onto my right side. Together, slowly, we made our way to her station wagon. She lifted my bicycle into the back seat, then eased me in beside it.

The deputy looked over as we pulled away. The ambulance was no longer needed.

Her name was Erma.

She drove me to Richland House.

As we rode, I learned something that stunned me. She knew Ken—and his mother, Virginia. In fact, Virginia was staying with her family.

Out of all the cars on that road, in that storm, in a town I had just arrived in, the one person who stopped to help me was connected to the only people I knew.

“How did you happen to come along when you did?” I asked.

She kept her eyes on the road. “Ours is not to question such things,” she said, and fell silent.

I leaned back against the seat, soaked, shivering, my hip throbbing with every bump in the road. I had lost my first day of work. I might have lost the job. For all I knew, I might never walk properly again.

But I was alive.

And I had been rescued by a stranger who was no stranger at all.

God had not left me there.

But why did my God allow this?

I went back over it—the wet road, the slip, the long minutes in the lane, the one who came—and I could not separate the fall from the help.

From the memoir-in-progress, nearing publication:
Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous
—a spiritual epic for truth-seekers, contemplative mystics, and all who long for God.

Visit www.RMDellOrfanoAuthor.com and pass it forward.