A Concussion's Answered Prayer: One Year Later

Her body slumped over.
Faintly crying.

Difficulty breathing.
I couldn't get to her fast enough.
My legs ran while my heart raced and my mouth prayed.
Is she okay?  God, let it be a broken bone.  Bones mend.  Internal healing is harder.
I carefully picked up her fragile body and cradled her in my arms.  Her forehead, chin, elbow and knee were scraped from the hard, brown dirt that blackened her world for a few long seconds.  The tree swing swung like a pendulum above where I stood.  Her injured head throbbed and she lay limp.

Kaylee and her best friend a few weeks' prior to the accident.

"Kaylee!  Kaylee!"  I wanted to shout but instead whispered to her.  "I've got you."
"Where am I?" she whispered back.
I recalled to her the events of the day (at the park, playing tennis, went on the tree swing, and took a tumble), and she blankly stared at me.
"What's your name?" I asked her.
"Kaylee," she quietly answered.
Phew.  She knew her name.  With a series of quick events, we got her home within a few minutes.  We knew she experienced a concussion; we just didn't know the severity of it.
In the next few hours, she would have every freakishly scary sign of a concussion and would spend awhile in the ER.  The scans came back clear (praise God!).  No bleeding in the brain.  Rest.  Rest.  Rest.  Wake her up and check her vitals.  Rest.  Rest.  Rest.  Repeat.

The next day after her doctor's appointment, we were driving in the car.
"Mom, I know that angels were protecting me when I fell," she shared from the backseat.
"Really?  How do you know?" I asked.  Honestly, I was skeptical.  I mean, c'mon, I viewed for that moment that they could have protected her more, and here she is teaching my heart a lesson.
"It could have been so much worse," she answered.

It made me think about something bigger than a concussion.  For nearly two years before this accident, we nightly prayed the same prayer by her bedside.  When we lived in California, their school had a lockdown, and she developed a fear of "robbers"  (there was a man who had stolen a car in the vicinity, so they locked down the school as a precaution).  From that experience, she began to have nightmares which made nighttime difficult, and most nights she would end up in the wee morning hours sandwiched between me and Matt in our bed.  We had prayed for peace over her dreams, and, honestly, we were beginning to run out of words to pray.
When she told me about the angels protecting her, I remembered all of those nights where we prayed she'd feel God's protection around her, and now she understood it in a rather obscure, interesting way.  
It has been 365 days since the concussion, and the number of nightmares this year haven't even filled up the fingers on one hand!  A crazy, horrible concussion jolted all of us to the reality that God's plans and ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8-9).

"Yes, Baby, angels were watching out for you."