The Blessing that Had Thorns

I will now tell a story from the ninth year of my life which is a good metaphor for a lot of things in my life — including the recent catastrophic failure of a friendship with a beloved friend.

One day when I was nine years old, I was playing at the house of my best friends in those days — the brothers B and C. I was often at their house, as they lived only a few blocks from us, their father was the senior minister of the church we attended, and my parents and theirs were also best friends.

On this day, though, I got careless — no, stupid would be a better word for it — and started leaning out of a second-floor window of their house while playing handball with B and C, who were on the ground. Well, as you can probably guess, after a little while playing handball I slipped and fell out of that window, which was probably about 15 feet above the ground.

That window faced on a cement-paved driveway. This was a recipe for disaster.

Fortunately, however, there was a two or three foot wide unpaved dirt strip between the house and the driveway. And, even more providentially, B and C’s parents had planted bushes in that strip of dirt. Rose bushes.

Only a few seconds after I slipped, I met one of those rose bushes up close and personal. The bush was a great blessing, because it broke my fall, and I only broke my left wrist in the fall, not my skull or my spine.

But even though it broke my fall and possibly saved my life, my relationship with the bush was not pleasant. We did not become good friends. Indeed, our relationship could best be described as very thorny. And they weren’t the thin, fuzzy, needle-like thorns some roses have. No, they were thick, sightly curved, inch-long thorns with hard, sharp points. Yes, I still remember the thorns I landed in 60 years later!

But I survived the fall with only a broken wrist, minor scratches all over, and one very serious cut which required stitches. One of those long, hard, sharp thorns cut a roughly three-inch long, deep, semicircular gash in the right side of my forehead just above and below the hairline. If you look very carefully at all at my face, you will still see the scar. It is very visible.

Even today, all I need to do is look in a mirror — and I remember that I shouldn’t play handball while hanging out of a window. In fact, ever since then, I have been quite reluctant to do anything which requires me to be very far off the ground at all without taking safety precautions others think are silly.

Other especially painful events in my life tend to have a similar effect.

I still love roses. The flowers are beautiful and fragrance heavenly. But I try not to gravitate toward them like I did 60 years ago. And I’m careful with the thorns.

Overall, I have to call that rosebush I met so rapidly a blessing placed by God. A blessing with thorns!

Text © 2025 by Ian Bruce Johnson.

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