Meaningful Reflections: Promises in Puddles

By Kim Crawford Meeks
Spiritual Care Manager

We could hear screams and a crash from inside the office where we worked. As we ran to the scene, we saw glass and puddles of fluids coming from the wreck. An elderly man was trapped in the floor of his orange Volkswagen Beetle. His head was pouring blood, and we tried to comfort him. One of the medics was his neighbor and did not think he had family, therefore as they airlifted him to the hospital, we followed. We wanted to be in the waiting room so that he would have someone that cared.

We soon became very close friends with Mr. G. He was eventually transferred to another hospital, and we went to visit. I put a hand on his arm, and my friend, Ellen, held his hand. We told him we had been praying for him, prayed for him, and told him to hurry and get well because we wanted to have a celebration in his honor. He smiled. He was not able to speak due to being intubated. At the elevator I told Ellen that I had such peace about our new friend. She said, “What you don’t know, is that he was squeezing my hand when you were praying.” She felt he was communicating to us that he was doing okay. We rejoiced. As we left the hospital Ellen said, “Look, Kim!” as she pointed to the puddles in the hospital parking lot. There was a rainbow in the puddles. There were promises in the puddles, because when we looked up, we saw a double rainbow. I soon found out that I needed the double blessing that day.

That night I got a call to go to the same hospital, because my daughter had been run over. I did not know by what. Upon arrival, I was told her ear had been cut off, and her neck was broken due to a motorcycle running over her. A young man was showing off and stood on his bike to ride it. It knocked over a group of people including her, hit a car, then ran over her again. She was holding someone’s puppy while babysitting. When the bike hit her, the puppy took the blow that would have damaged her internal organs. She turned her head toward the direction the puppy jumped, therefore the main blow went to the side of her head and shoulder rather than to her face. Her neck was not broken, but her collar bone was sticking straight up. They sewed her ear back on and after a few surgeries, she was great.

I imagine as they drove her to the hospital the tires rolled through those same puddles that held the rainbows of promises that I saw earlier that day. During one of her surgeries, a chaplain walked in the room. I was in Bible college at that time and wondering what I was going to do with my degree. Upon meeting her, I knew I was supposed to be a chaplain, and my daughter later became a registered nurse.

As we have just gone through a very rainy season, let us remember to look for the rainbows, because they might just show up as promises in puddles.

Chaplain Kim Crawford Meeks can be reached at 251-451-9015 or kcrawfordmeeks@health.southalabama.edu. Call the Meaningful Reflections Line at 251-445-9016.