The Tall Visitor
It was Christmas Eve, but I was not aware of that special day. Lying in a hospital bed in Germany, I’d hovered between life and death for two days.
As refugees after World War II fleeing the Communist regime, my mother, sister, and I had tried to get across the border from East to West Germany. After two nights, we were successful and, on the West German side, we met with Red Cross workers. They placed us with a farm family in a north German village.
Sick from malnutrition and from walking across the border that cold fall night, I developed pleurisy and pneumonia shortly after arriving at our destination. So I was rushed to a city hospital in Oldenburg some miles away.
Now I lay unconscious in bed, my body wracked with fever. The doctor held out no hope of my recovery. Somehow the doctor had connected with neighbors of the farm family by phone, asking them to let my mother know I would not survive the night.
I did not realize how severe my illness was. Earlier that day, I had awakened briefly when I had heard a Christmas carol sung somewhere down the hall. But then I had lapsed again into unconsciousness.
During the night I woke suddenly. A tall, gangly man stood by my bed extending his hand toward me. Even though I did not know him, without question I immediately jumped up and stood next to him. Somehow I knew he had something to do with death.
Up to that time I had been terrified of death. I’d heard of dead people appearing to taunt the living, and I didn’t know what would happen to me if I died. I was only ten years old and did not want to think about death.
But as I went to the man, I did not experience any type of emotion. I was neither afraid nor sad.
That tall man took me by the hand, and we moved toward the wall. Yet there didn’t seem to be a wall. We floated through at least two more rooms and hallways as if the thick walls did not exist until we arrived at a courtyard outside. That courtyard was surrounded by three hospital wings four stories high. Still barefoot and clad in my hospital gown, I did not feel the cold even though snow and frost blanketed the ground.
Suddenly, we heard an authoritative voice coming from somewhere above. The man and I stopped instantly.
“Don’t take her. Take him!” the voice commanded. My eyes focused on the second-floor window of one of the wings. I knew that’s where the farm family’s neighbor boy was hospitalized with diphtheria.
Immediately, the man let go of my hand, grasped my shoulder, and bent my upper body for just a moment. As I bounced back upright, the man disappeared, and I found myself back in my hospital bed.
The next morning, my fever was gone. I was still weak, but I started to recover quickly. My mother rode to the hospital with the neighbor whose son had diphtheria. I was alive and almost well, and my mother was overjoyed.
“Our neighbor’s son died suddenly on Christmas Eve night,” she told me.
“I know,” I said. I was sure the tall man had gone to get the neighbor’s son after he let go of me, so the boy’s death was not a surprise for me. Yet somehow I could not tell my mother about my Christmas Eve just then. Would she think I had dreamed or hallucinated?
“The neighbors are devastated. They were told the day before that he was recovering,” my mother continued. “And you were so sick. I tried to get to the hospital, but no buses or trains were running. And no taxis were available. I stayed up all night worrying about you. I asked our landlord to hitch up the horse to take me to the hospital, but he said the roads were too icy. I am so glad that you have recovered so quickly. It really is a miracle.”
“Yes.” I nodded, thinking about the Christmas Eve night in the courtyard. Who was the man that came to get me that night? And whose was the authoritative voice we had heard in the courtyard?
I had never heard of God or the Bible.
Just before I was discharged, I took a walk through the hospital and came to a courtyard. I was astonished to recognize it as the one the man had taken me to. Suddenly, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my experience on Christmas Eve had been real, not a hallucination.
Yet from the day the death angel had bent my upper body to the ground, I began to develop scoliosis. Was it to be a reminder of my encounter with spiritual forces? I wondered.
Years went by. Later on in life I finally learned that God was real. Through that hospital experience God had taught me not only that there is life after death, but also that He is in control of the universe. His plan for me was to stay on earth at that time. I realized it was God’s voice I had heard in the hospital courtyard on that Christmas Eve night.
Just like God had sent Jesus to die in my place so that I might have eternal life, I feel the young neighbor’s son was taken into eternity in my place for reasons I cannot know now. It is a lesson I will always remember. I am grateful that I had another chance at life that Christmas Eve, grateful that God gave me opportunities to share the story of His grace in my life with those around me.