Under His hand

A true
story about my miraculous deliverance

Joshua Kim

Imagine
what it would feel like to have an elephant sitting on you. That’s how I felt
on June 5, 2012. Let me back up a little. Our cousins from Kentucky were
visiting my grandparents’ farm in Leicester, North Carolina. We lived about an
hour away from the farm, so we went to see our cousins. There was a rustic old
barn with a rusty metal roof near my grandpa’s driveway. The house was located
on the top of a hill. On the left side of the barn was a nice shallow creek.
Near it were scattered some large rocks that were left over from landscaping.
Each of these rocks probably displaced at least a thousand pounds each.

After
our family arrived at the farm, my cousins and I quickly ran down the hill to
the left side of the barn, where the rocks were. At that time, I was 10 1/2
years old. I stood on one to pick honeysuckles off of a luscious bush populated
with the white to yellow blossoms. My 8 year old cousin Grace climbed up next
to me on the low lying boulder. Soon, she jumped off and the rock began to
roll.

The
rock had been sitting on another rock. We had made it unstable, so it tipped
when my cousin jumped off. Instead of jumping backward however, I jumped
straight forward, right into the boulder’s deadly path. Within a few seconds, I
was pinned under the rock, essentially paralyzed. I managed to choke out,
“Jesus, help me. Call 9-1-1,” before I sank into a sleeplike unconsciousness.

My
cousins ran up the hill to the house. Grace said, “Joshua’s ear is turning
red.”, and her little sister said, “Joshua got hit by a rock.” My mother ran
down the hill. She came to the boulder where I was under. She said, “Where’s
Joshua?” She came around to the other side, and saw me, with only part of a
right arm and my head sticking out. My aunt called 9-1-1. My grandfather used
his tractor to try to lift the boulder off of me, but it only partially
succeeded. People working next door ran to help. As my grandfather tried
lifting the rock with the tractor, the tractor itself started to tip. After
about twenty minutes, the fire department came, and using the Jaws of Life,
successfully freed me. I went to Mission Hospital and was CT scanned from head
to toe. I only had some contusions, bruising, a minor pneumothorax, and two
cracks in my pelvis. I spent the night in the pediatric unit, and then was
amazingly released the next day. I was interviewed by a news station on my way
out.

After
about two weeks, my father visited the site where under the rock, was a small
tree. As the rock had fallen, the tree had slowed the speed of it. My physician
father saw that if the rock had turned one more time, my life would have been
instantly extinguished. If I had not landed in the peculiar position I had been
in, I could have had spinal injury, resulting in paralysis, a broken hand, a
fractured wrist, or worse. God directed my body, so it fell just right as to
cause minimum damage. My father was so impressed he wrote a paper about the
possibilities that could have happened to me.

I
had a rapid recovery, but another problem arose. My family at this time didn’t
have insurance. The bills came out to about twelve thousand dollars. We
searched and searched for a way to pay the bills. Miraculously, my
grandfather’s land insurance covered the entire hospital bill. Due to this
experience, Philippians 4:19 has become one of my favorite texts. God surely
did supply all our needs. Prayer is truly powerful.