Completing the story

Sometimes life seems littered with loops not closed, minor mysteries unsolved, questions unanswered. Mostly we go on with the daily routine, vaguely dissatisfied with not knowing whatever happened to the stranger who helped us in a moment of crisis. Or the childhood friend who moved away. Or any of a hundred other small puzzles. But sometimes there’s a sort of psychic click, a lock snaps shut, and a story is completed. And you feel fulfilled.

I’ve written several times about the near-death experience of my grandson, Rob Duke, when, just 3 years old, he fell into a hole at the beach nine years ago and instantly disappeared from sight, buried under the sand. A frantic search was in progress when a young woman dug down at an indentation in the sand and felt his hair well below the surface. He was rescued, miraculously surviving after more than 5 minutes fully buried. Many others have not been so fortunate, as beach sand cave-ins continue to smother lives.

Rob has a twin brother, Charlie. So it somehow seems fitting that the young woman who found him, Erika Orlando (now Wieland), is also a twin. Last week, she and her husband, her twin sister and her twin’s family, their parents and their brother, all were at Santa Rosa Beach in Florida. They and my daughter and her family had a rich and at times emotional meeting. And the rescued toddler, now 12 years old, was noticeably taller than his rescuer when they posed for a picture.

As events nearly a decade old were rehashed, several interesting facts emerged. Erika Orlando, searching for direction in her life, had just finished a 40-day partial fast and was now sitting on the beach with her brother, discussing her conviction that God had a plan for her and that He works in our lives on His own time schedule, not ours. Minutes later, she was instrumental in the rescue of a child from certain death. Years afterward, now employed by Joyce Meyer Ministries in St. Louis, she learned that a colleague down the hall would be spending his vacation at Santa Rosa Beach. She sent him an electronic message with the link to her blog that contained a detailed description of Rob’s rescue. Yes, he responded, I was there that day.

There was a hurried and excited meeting in his office. He said he had been at the beach that day with his fiancee, and a young woman had rushed up to tell him that a small boy, wearing an orange shirt, had disappeared. He could not have imagined at the time that the young woman would be the one to find the child under the sand and that she would now be standing in his office, telling him the rest of the story. He and his fiancée, now his wife, had gone off down the beach that day, looking for the child, and when he returned, everybody involved had left. He’d often wondered if the little boy had ever been found. Now it all came together, tied up neatly by a colleague working a few doors away, neither of them ever having known that they shared pieces of the same story.

And it all came together even more fully at Santa Rosa Beach last week, when the key figures in the event of nine years ago came together again for the first time, along with their family members, and remembered again the shock and the miracle. They shared memories, delighted in the bright outcome of what had been a disaster, and marveled at how it had affected their lives.

Whether you attach a spiritual meaning to this story or simply consider it a tale of good fortune, it’s interesting to note how many people were blessed in so many different ways by one event. The child and all of us who love him. The young woman who dug down through the sand and felt his curls, and who now refers to it all as the “Divine Miracle,” and who considers it a signal event in her life. Her family. The man who, in what Erika Wieland calls “God’s Wink,” 800 miles from that beach and 5 years after the fact, learned the outcome and the connection with his colleague a few office doors away.

Whatever meaning you attach to the story, I encourage you to listen closely. You’ll hear the sound of soft clicks as bits and pieces lock together in the most satisfying way.

This story was originally published August 6, 2016 at 5:46 PM with the headline "Completing the story."