The Angel at the Well

There once was an orphan named Bette who was adopted as a child by a farm couple. From the beginning, there was no pretense of love. She was there as free labor, nothing more. Worse, the couple lived in their own cycle of violence and their cruel abuse regularly found a focus in the little girl.

When Bette was twelve, the couple went away and left her to tend the farm. The next morning she rose early. After feeding the animals, she went to the pump to draw water for them, but the pump was broken. When this had happened before, she remembered seeing her “father” open the cover off the well and draw water up in a bucket. She found the bucket and a brand-new length of rope the farmer had just purchased. Fastening it tightly around the bucket handle, she stood by the well and lowered it into the dark hole in the ground.

Unfortunately, the water table was very low, and by the time the bucket hit water, Bette could hardly keep her balance. The bucket filled quickly and began to sink. Although the girl tried desperately to get control, the weight of the bucket and water was too much for her.

Bette immediately knew she had two choices: be pulled down into the well to drown, or let go of the bucket, lose the farmer’s brand-new rope, and suffer the consequences. The answer was simple. She would hang on.

But as the weight jerked her muscles and the pulling rope burned her hands, an unexpected thing happened. A voice spoke audibly and clearly: “Lie down on your stomach!”

Bette heard the words, but she was so surprised by them that she didn’t have time to process the command and obey it before she was pulled head-first down into the dark well shaft. Down and down she fell, bracing herself for the icy splash of the water. It never came.

For somehow, something even more unexpected happened—she ceased falling down. Then she began falling up. She “fell” all the way up the shaft, and found herself seated neatly on the ground beside the well. But before she had time to question what had happened, the most incredible thing of all took place. The shaken, terrified twelve-year-old girl felt herself surrounded by a presence. And then she felt something she had never felt in her entire life. She felt totally, completely loved. It was a feeling that bathed her inside and out. She felt peace and happiness—but overriding it all was love. Someone loved her. Someone was watching out for her.

“At the time, I had never heard of angels,” Bette told me. “I had heard a friend of mine mention God, and I somehow knew God was behind my rescue. Only later, after I heard about angels did I recognize that it must have been an angel who saved me from the well.”

Like thousands of people—from peasant girls to famous painters—who have experienced angelic encounters through the centuries, Bette Fetters’s life was forever marked by that experience. Beyond gratitude for the physical rescue, the sure knowledge of such overwhelming power and love dramatically changed the abused girl and prepared her for a life of hope and wholeness of which she had never dared dream.

Continued on page 2: Should we hope to encounter angels? »