A Miracle

I was saved by Our Lady of Guadalupe. Literally.

I don’t tell this story often, for good reason, but I think that since the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe was yesterday, it deserved a shout out.

It all happened when I was eight years old…

That was - what? - twelve years ago.

My family loved traveling to Mexico every couple of years because we would visit family from both sides of my parents. It was how I was able to really understand Mexican culture and why it was so important to our family. Anyways… we were in Mexico at my grandma’s house and were doing laundry. It was a normal day with the constant teasing of my siblings and running around trying to “help” my mom do laundry. The laundry room was located on the top floor of the house which was connected to a large enclosed balcony (it’s the best way I can describe it).

That day my twin sister had been annoying me. I disliked that she had been sassing my mom and we had probably been arguing for a while. I distinctly remember my mom telling my sister to go hang up her laundry. She rolled her eyes and said, “I don’t want to do it.”

I remember feeling sassy and snatching her clothes away from her saying, “Fine, I’ll do it.” As some of you know, I’ve always been a naturally a short person :) In order to hang the clothes on the line, I had to stand on the edge of my tip-toes and toss it up. When I couldn’t get it over the line, I felt frustrated. Looking around, I looked for something - anything - to step on so that I could hang it up. When I couldn’t, I saw the lifted skylight that was centered in the middle of the floor.

Perfect, I thought. It was the perfect height to reach the line.

No one saw. No one knew. No one had any clue about what I was about to do.

I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to stand on it. No one had told me any different. My grandma had warned my siblings, but apparently I had not been there when she had told them.

I stepped on the skylight, turned my body towards the line, lifted my arms and crack.

I had no time to react. I don’t even remember screaming. Only hearing someone else scream, my stomach drop, and then darkness enveloped me.

Now, what I saw next, I can’t quite explain. You can choose to believe me or not. I don’t care either way, because in the end what really mattered was the result.

I saw total and utter complete darkness, but I wasn’t afraid. I remember sticking out my hands in front of me and not being able to see them, yet it didn’t occur to me exactly what was going on. Earlier in the school year, we had been learning about the different layers of the earth. I distinctly remember learning about the magma layer and thinking to myself, huh, I must be going down into the earth and in that layer. And then all of a sudden there was a blinding light. It was so blinding that my eyes couldn’t focus beyond it, but the curious part was that it didn’t hurt my eyes. And then I was thinking to myself, oh, I must still be falling. At that point, I thought I had just passed the window in my grandma’s house and just being confused about the entire ordeal. I don’t remember much after that. Only that I landed against something hard and when I lifted my head, my dad was standing over me asking, “Are you alright?”

It was then that I registered screaming coming from upstairs and my twin sister running down the stairs calling my name. I remember thinking two things 1.) they do care. 2.) why did it take them so long to get to me? Because for me, it had felt so much longer. If I could describe it in human minutes, it had felt like five minutes. My little brother and twin sister approached me first and my dad picked me up, checking me. I had landed on a sofa-bed that my brothers had forgotten to put away that morning. My mom didn’t come down for a very long moment. I'm pretty sure that someone had to tell her that I was alive before she came downstairs. When she saw me, she hugged me and the disbelief in her eyes was startling to me.

My eight-year old mind had NO idea what had just happened. Maybe I was in shock, maybe I was too young to understand, but all I knew was that I survived and felt fine. I remember that I was really quiet after that. I didn’t talk too much. The sass that I had felt prior to the incident was completely gone. My parents later took me to the doctor to double check that I was fine… the doctor did not believe the story they told him. I was given an ointment for the scratches from the skylight that had cut me, but other than that, I was not hurt at all.

Now, you may be thinking, why do you attribute it to Our Lady of Guadalupe? Well, here’s the thing: that house is located about ten minutes away from the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe and when my mom turned and saw me fall (this is what she told me), she was only able to get a glimpse of my arms slipping through the skylight. In that moment, she screamed Mother Mary’s name. Obviously, no one immediately thought I survived (besides my twin) because of the horror of the situation.

All this to say that, here I am. I don’t know why she rescued me. I have no idea exactly what reason. I do have a lot of theories, though :) I can’t say I remember much of the supernatural experience.

But, I give Our Lady of Guadalupe all the credit. She knew what she was doing. Our Lord answered my mom’s prayer through Our Lady, of that I am very certain. Try to convince me, otherwise, or give me a logical explanation for how I survived, I won’t change my mind.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I don’t talk about this event much because it draws a lot of attention and people are very curious, but I thought today would be a good to do it because I want to give Her the credit. It won’t ever be enough to express my gratitude this way, but…

Thank you, Mother Mary!