Spring Break With An Angel

Spring break rolled around, and because I had nothing better to do, I signed up to go on the Spring break Christian mission trip.  It was to Kentucky this year, and on the way down I thought of all the past mission trips I went on.  I remembered how close I felt to God on them, and wondered how real of an experience could they have been.  I was fairly confident I had progressed beyond the stage of my life where I would believe such nonsense.  There were several college groups down there, and we had minimal interactions.  I really did not know anyone from Hiram even.  I put in a couple days of service and got to know some of the Hiramites a little.  Wednesday all of us from Hiram went out to dinner.  I was still feeling kind of distant, not entire conformable with all these people who seemed to have a better relationship with God than myself.  “But I use to be like them, and have progressed beyond that” I kept telling myself.  When we got back to the camp after dinner we all filed out of the van.      When I got out I was shocked at what I heard.  There was singing.  Now normally this was pretty much expected at a protestant Church camp, but what was being sung absolutely floored me.  Out of a neighboring cabin, came the song, “We Are One Body,” the theme song from World Youth Day 1993.  I stood outside the window of the cabin in disbelief for several minutes.  Eventually, I went and knocked on the cabin door and introduced myself and inquired about the song.  They let me in and all introduced themselves.  They were a Catholic Group from James Madison University in Virginian.  The invited me to join them, and I did.       Over the course of the evening one young lady in particular caught my attention.  Her name was Katie.  Getting to know her over the next couple hours, and for the remaining couple days absolutely blew my mind.  It was as in God said to me, “Hey Shawn, why don’t you design a woman for me.”  She was very beautiful, but her outer beauty was just the beginning.  Everything about her, from her playing the guitar, to her stubbornness, to her choice of majors was exactly how I would have imagined.       Now I had read the book of Job several times during the course of my struggles, and could not understand it.  In sum, the book of Job is about a guy who looses everything he holds dear and tries to question God as to why this happened to him.  God ultimately appears to Job and the end of the book and says to him “I’m God, you’re and idiot… don’t question me.”  (That’s actually a paraphrase.)  Nobody likes this ending, by the way.  But it is very true and I now understand it.  My encounter with Katie was as if God sent down an angel, whom I had hand selected, to let me know He still cared and I was an idiot for doubting Him.     There are some things I may never understand, but I just have to learn to trust that God will be God.   I talked to Katie the last night of the trip (I actually asked her to build a bench with me), and tried to explain to her what she had done for me, and also to thank her.  At one point I actually asked her if she was really an angel.  She smiled and laughed.  I think she felt touched by the story I told, but also a bit freaked out.  Can’t say I blame her too much.  But it was my “chance” encounter with her that made everything else fall into place and for that I will be forever grateful.

This is Katie on the bench we built together the last night of the mission trip.  I cannot say the picture does her justice by any means, but then again, I do not think angels are suppose to photograph well.

© 2001 Shawn Willox