Monday, November 29, 1999
Angels Among Us
Teacher finds miracles not rare at
all
By Bill Whitaker
Magazine writer Joan Smith found a true embarrassment of riches
when she rang up former Abilenian Chrys Jones while seeking out
modern-day miracles.
Assembling an article about contemporary miracles for Redbook’s
Christmas issue, Smith intended to interview the pretty Aggie
about her miraculous recovery from a 1994 head-on collision —
one which saw Chrys tended to by a woman who mysteriously disappeared
before rescuers arrived to cut her out of the wreckage.
But the upbeat 26-year-old instead ended up regaling Smith
with details about another miracle. This one emerged last summer
after Chrys suffered a fall in Scotland, incurred serious injuries
misdiagnosed by Scottish doctors and ultimately underwent five
surgeries back here in Texas. Along the way, she gained the man
of her dreams.
“The article finally ended up being about all of it,”
Chrys said at the home of her parents, Roy and Trish Jones of
Abilene. “She took this slant on God and his way of preparing
us for things like this. It’s really been so obvious to me
that God has been preparing a way for me. He’s taught me
to trust in him.”
Chrys’ trials and tribulations certainly would’ve
rated an article all its own. Redbook originally sought her out
concerning her painstaking recovery from the summer traffic accident
near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport five years ago, including
how — just after the accident — she remembered being
comforted and gently reassured by a woman in white wearing blue
eyeliner.
Later Chrys came to the conclusion the woman — gone by
the time rescuers arrived — was an angel.
Not a clue
But Chrys’ life took another dramatic turn a few months
ago. During a trip to Europe on her own in June, the Richardson
sixth-grade teacher was hiking across Scotland on June 14 when
she slipped on a rock in the rain and fell 31 feet. Eventually
she was taken to a nearby hospital, only to be told that, although
banged-up and cut, she was generally fine.
Soon it became clear Chrys was not fine but had, in fact, sustained
a skull fracture. Stranded in Scotland, her medical care uncertain
and ultimately wrong-headed (thanks to what Chrys now blames on
socialized medicine), her stamina nearly gone and her looks more
unsightly than anyone has a right, Chrys realized her plight was
desperate.
Nevertheless, she kept her head — what was left of it.
Initially, she refused to even call her parents about her fall.
“I’d put my parents through so much the last time,
I just didn’t want them to go through this again,” Chrys
explained of her mom and dad, the latter a veteran Reporter-News
staffer. “I was so far away and there was nothing they could
do. I was at least coherent enough to know that.”
As for the medical care, she quietly took stock of the poor
quality of doctoring she’d seen and wondered what would befall
her next.
“In retrospect, I look back and say it was really a blessing
they didn’t do surgery on me. There are so many things about
my condition they just didn’t have a clue about.”
Silver lining
If there was a silver lining to this particular cloud, it was
the agreeable but faceless fellow she’d met over the Internet
just days before her summer trip to Europe. Much to her embarrassment,
she and Michael Robinson Davies hit it off on-line even before
they knew what each other looked like.
Michael was a 31-year-old data communications engineer in Corona
del Mar, Calif., who, like Chrys, had never married and was guided
by staunch Christian values. As a result, he was immediately attracted
to the Abilene native.
“He called me two days before I left for Europe and we
talked for seven hours,” Chrys said. “And I thought,
‘Oh, gosh, I thought it was closer to three hours!’
I mean, we just clicked. You could really see into this guy’s
heart. He wasn’t any sort of impostor.”
So when Michael received a general e-mail dispatched to all
of Chrys’ e-mail friends by her dad, who had by now become
all too aware of her situation in Scotland, Michael immediately
decided what to do. He rearranged his workload, obtained a passport
within mere hours (another miracle!) and booked a flight to Scotland
to find Chrys and bring her home to Texas.
He also contacted Chrys’ parents, gave them references
to phone who could testify about his good character, then reassured
them he would send Chrys back.
The first time Michael laid eyes on Chrys, on June 19, would’ve
tested any man.
“He’s really good-looking and he put his arm around
my back when we first met,” Chrys said of their first meeting
in Edinburgh, when she was up but hardly around. “Of course,
I looked like a monster. If I’d been him, I would’ve
run away. I really would’ve. My arm was in a sling and one
eye was all blood and I had awful stitches. But the first thing
he suggested we do was pray.
“Then he asked if he could take me to get something to
eat.”
Michael says he never had any doubts about his course of action.
“It was almost a surreal type of thing,” he admitted
to me later. “But rather than sit back and wonder what it’d
be like to do this, I thought I’d just make it happen. She’d
made me feel better about myself when we’d talked and I wanted
to give back to her.”
Since then the couple has gotten past Chrys’ many surgeries
and looked at rings. Michael has relocated to the Dallas area
to be near her. As for Chrys, she says that for many years she
prayed to God that when she finally found the man she wanted to
marry, the situation would come about in such a way that testified
to the strength, mystery and divine vision of God.
“I asked the Lord to make it a good story, so that if
I ever told how I met my husband, I could tell a story that would
also bring glory to God.”
By all accounts, Chrys’ tale brings glory not only to
God but to some remarkable mortals as well — herself included.
Bill Whitaker can be reached at 676-6732 or whitakerb@abinews.com.
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