Nothing could have prepared us for that afternoon on Apr. 27, 1998. The day began as any other Monday. I kissed my wife Jenny and our four girls goodbye as I headed to work. Jenny drove our older three girls to school, after which she would return home with our youngest daughter, Christy, who was just a month and a half away from her fourth birthday.
Jenny and I had been married for 14 years and lived a few blocks from our parish, St. Anthony of Padua in Fargo. We loved St. Anthony’s and had made many friends there over the years. Though Jenny and I did our best to educate our girls in the faith, sending them to the local Catholic school and giving them a loving family life, our spiritual life, and marriage as a whole, left a lot to be desired. We were “cradle Catholics,” going through the motions, but we lacked an intimate relationship with God, and we were starting to drift apart.
At 1:30 p.m., the phone rang above my workbench at the local Ford dealer where I worked as a mechanic. It was my neighbor Bettie who said, “Tom, one of your girls is hurt and you need to come home.” That was all the detail she gave me. Our neighbors, Bettie and Bud, were like family to us and the best neighbors we could ask for. As I put my tools away, thinking I may be gone for a few hours, Marilyn, who worked in the cashier’s office, ran up to me and said, “Tom, you need to go home now!” Little did I know that the situation I was about to encounter was being broadcast on the radio.
As I got closer to our home, my heart pounded and I began feverishly praying to God to help whomever of my daughters was hurt. In our driveway and on the street were several police cars, an ambulance, a fire truck, a TV news crew, and lots of people looking around our yard. I ran into the house calling out my wife Jenny’s name, but no one answered. I ran up to Bud and pleaded with him for an answer. As tears streamed down my face, he informed me that our little girl, Christy, had been accidentally shot by another neighbor, who was a security guard, as he was handling his .40 caliber pistol.
When I got to the hospital, I was escorted into the emergency room waiting area. There I met Jenny and our other three girls, a priest, and our parish nurse from St. Anthony’s. We hugged, cried, and prayed in earnest for what seemed like hours. Suddenly a doctor entered and then we saw the huge smile on his face as he exclaimed, “I think your daughter is going to be okay. It was very close, an inch closer and that bullet would have gone right through her heart and instantly killed her.” We were able to see Christy about 30 minutes later as she was wheeled into the ICU. Miraculously, we brought her home just five days later, though she would need frequent visits to the hospital to monitor her healing.
Much physical and spiritual healing took place in our family in the weeks, months, and years to follow. We were overwhelmed by hundreds of prayers, gifts, meals, and well-wishes, not only from St. Anthony parishioners, but the Fargo-Moorhead-West Fargo community and beyond. God blessed our family with a true miracle through the prayers and faith of so many around us! Jenny and I knew it was time for a change in our lives, a time to welcome God into our daily lives in an intimate way.
Many things came to light later about that day that simply cannot be coincidence. When the accident happened to Christy:
Bettie and Bud were less than 100 feet away, ready to help.
The ambulance was only two blocks from our house.
The first emergency doctor to stabilize Christy was a parishioner from St. Anthony’s.
The two best cardio-thoracic doctors in the region operated on Christy.
One of the first responders in the firetruck was a parishioner of St. Anthony’s.
Christy was on hundreds of prayer chains across the country.
I don’t believe God wills accidents like this to happen, but when they do, he always provides us with the graces, the people, and everything we need to get us through. Christy will be 29 years old this year and has a wonderful husband, Kevin, and two children, Edith and Blaise. Though it has been 25 years since her accident, we still celebrate every year on Apr. 27 in thanksgiving to God for healing our family.