“The Lord and the limbs.”

That’s what Melanie Enzor Barnes says saved her son Baylor’s life Thursday afternoon when he fell some 30-plus feet while climbing a tree.

“It’s a miracle,” she said from Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, were her 13-year-old son was recovering on Friday. “If he had free-fallen for 30-some feet, he would not have survived.”

Instead, Baylor was hospitalized with a lumbar fracture in his lower spine, “really his tailbone,” she said, and lots of scratches, bruises and pain. “But it could have been much, much worse.”

Baylor and his friends were simply “out playing when they decided to climb a tree. Baylor just shimmied up and the tree and, when he was coming down, he slipped.”

Barnes said her son recalled falling “as if it were a dream … he said everything seemed like slow motion.”

His hands and arms hit several branches on the way down, but it was one branch about six feet off the ground that broke his fall, and likely saved his life.

“He straddled that branch, but it likely saved his life,” she said.

Baylor was taken by ambulance to Troy Regional Medical Center, before being transferred to Children’s Hospital Thursday evening, where he was being checked for spinal and nerve damage.

“Hopefully, we’ll be able to come back to Troy (Saturday),” Barnes said.

“He’ll be out of school a week, and he’ll be in pain for four to six weeks.”

Baylor, who attends Pike Liberal Arts School, is a member of the 13U state champion soccer team and plays soccer for his school. He also was a member of the state champion 13-year-old Dixie Boys team which represented Troy in the World Series in August.

“We call him our ninja boy because he flips, tumbles, jumps and climbs,” Barnes said.

And, it’s not his first brush with broke bones. As a child, Baylor broke his leg in a dirt bike accident.

“In December. And it involved a tree. I think we’re going to have to keep him in the house and away from trees in December.”

Still, Barnes said, she believes the Lord looks out for her active son. “God’s got some kind of special plan for him,” she said.