Sedona Votex Strikes again

February 6

A young man named Lalo Esquer is putting in dish TV at the house where I am staying.

We talked, and he told me this story.

He was driving his daughter Mirabel to Cottonwood AZ when something broke on his truck. The truck rolled and his daughter was thrown from the truck. Everything in her upper body was hurt or broken. She damaged her lungs, heart and brain. For 28 days she was in a coma. Three times the doctors came to Lalo to tell him his daughter was about to die. Twice they told him she would be blind for life.

Lalo is a long time Sedona resident; his extended family is well-know. When his daughter was in the hospital in Flagstaff the resorts took turns sending food to the people who had gathered at the hospital to pray. Lalo learned over five thousand people gathered in South America to pray for his daughter. Because of the Internet, Mirabel’s story is known to many and so they pray.

Lalo tells this story calmly and with a compelling sense of purpose. It is now six years, and he cannot count the times he was told Mirabel would not walk, would not see, not regain mental acuity, would not reclaim her old self. Lalo gestures with both hands in front of his chest, and his brown eyes water when he talks of his daughter’s amazing journey, the prayers, and community support.

He never said, “miracle” but he did say the doctors have no explanations for her living and then recovering. “God is big,” he says. “We don’t know how big until something happens.”

We shake hands and then hold hands. He has honored me with his story; simply told and packed with unsaid meaning. We wipe our tears and he goes back to work.

I look up from my writing to a solid red rock cliff with the markings of a million years. “The doctors only know science,” Lalo told me. “They did not really see my daughter. They do not know Maribel.” That explanation works for me.

I’m claiming the famous Sedona vortex. I don’t understand it, can’t do the science, but here in the Sedona swirl, I find myself joining in prayer for Mirabel, thankful for all I do not know, and a big God. Sometimes when you add it all up, the score is larger than the sum.

That is the lesson I was offered today in my effort to be a better person.