I experienced what I perceived to be a miracle, when I was an 8-year old child. The source of it, making it possible, can be explained, but the timing of it was so perfect, that I still think that my prayers were being answered. I call this my “Polywog Story.”
I grew up in Green Valley, in northern California. It is a community built around a golf course. There is a creek that runs through the valley. Our house was by the 6th green of the golf course, and there was one house between our house and the creek. I played in the creek during the late spring and summer months. (During the fall and, especially the winter, the creek becomes a deep and raging river.) Every summer the creek dries up.
Every summer, there were pockets of water, with polywogs (ie., tadpoles), that had not developed into frogs yet. The water was drying up, and they were going to all die. Therefore, my mission, every year, was to rescue the polywogs. If I could connect the pockets of water, they could, eventually, get downstream to where there was an area that was fed by a spring, so it had water year-round. Sometimes, I had to scoop them up and take them down there. One year, the creek was drying up faster than I could save them. Some of the pockets of water had very little water left, and a lot of sand. When I tried to get them out, I was making the situation worse, because the sand was caving in on them. Then I had to rescue them from the sand. The situation was bad, and I did not know how I was going to get them out without the sand continually caving in. I stood up, and I was about to give up. I was standing in the middle of this creekbed with my eyes closed, and I started crying, and saying, “Please God help me!” All of a sudden, I felt water around my feet. I opened my eyes to see the water inching up to my ankles, and then up my legs. I just stood there, not believing what my eyes were seeing, until I, finally, realized that I needed to get out of the creek, because the water kept rising. All of the polywogs were free from the pockets of water, and they were now able to get downstream to where there was water year-round, and grow up to become frogs. I ran home, yelling, “It's a miracle. It's a miracle.” (Years later, I thought to myself, “I wonder how many golfers heard that,” not only while running home, but when standing in the creekbed, crying and asking God to help me.)
My grandmother was taking care of us, so my parents must have been on a trip somewhere. My older brother, who was 11 years old, was at home (along with my younger brothers, who were 4 and 5 years old). When I came in the house, saying that a miracle had happened in the creek, because it had water again, my older brother “poopooed" me and said, “They just let water out of the dam.” At the far north, way up into a mountainous area, there is a dam, and a waterfall. (Our school was named “Falls School,” after that waterfall.) It is in an area, where one would have to hike up there to see it. I had never seen water in the creek, at that time of year, and I had never thought about where the water came from, other than from the rain (that we got a lot of every year). When my brother said that, I still thought it was a miracle. No one was going to convince me, otherwise. [Years later, I still wondered whether a golfer had heard me, crying and asking God for help, and, possibly, called someone in charge of the dam, and said, “Hey … we need water down here.” (But we did not have cell phones, back then, and someone would have had to go into a house to do that.)]
I had gone to church several times with a friend's family, so I had learned a little about God, Jesus, miracles, and etc. in that church's Sunday school. It was something that stuck with me. I prayed every night and talked to God, when I needed help. (I still pray and talk to God, but I don't belong to a church. I still have the crosses that I got from that church, one is silver and one is made out of palm leaves.)
As an 8-year old child, who was desperately needing God's help, and with my prayers being answered, as I cried and asked God to help me, there was no way anyone was going to convince me, that it was not a miracle. The timing was perfect. I think that it was God, who got on the “phone” to someone in charge of the dam, and said, “Hey … we need water down here.”
