I’ve heard a lot of sad stories lately, stories of loss, betrayal, disappointment, threat, jealousy, hatred, hopelessness….
It’s so easy for someone like me (a person who seems to attract I’ve-never-told-anyone-this-before confidences) to start to take on those feelings as if they were my own.
Joy, real joy, is not dependent on circumstances -mine or the many other situations I hear and read about. Joy doesn’t need to wait until that illusive when-this-is-over moment to well up inside the heart where Holy Spirit lives.
Hope, true hope, glows in the dark, and grows stronger with perseverance. True hope does not disappoint because it is based on something greater than relief of everything from annoyances to agony.
As I walked on the edge of the fog by the lake just after dawn this morning the song “It is Well With My Soul” was going through my head. I wondered why. Some parts of the woods were hidden in the mist, and others caught the sun. I was reminded that sometimes we can see the light and sometimes we walk by faith, but growth takes place no matter what the circumstance.
My daughter and son-in-love invited me to help them write their story. God did a miracle after our daughter’s much-loved husband had a 0% chance of survival from flesh-eating disease and was on life support. We have learned so much in the process about the importance of thanksgiving, of unity, of repentance, of perseverance, and of love. The book is now in the hands of the publisher (which feels somewhat like sending your child -or in my case, grandchild- off to college). More than anything all the writers involved, including a physician, a pastor, and many of the people who followed the story online, want to give all the praise and thanks to God.
But at one point or another, all of us involved have felt the burden of the pain of those whose stories did not end with miracles. Each of us have questioned whether or not sharing our joy will increase another person’s sorrow and wondered if we should talk about it so publicly. We have felt bad about feeling good.
There is a young couple who helped us. They said goodbye to their precious little girl in an ICU just like the one where we spent many days and nights. Their sorrow was still fresh, because such sorrow lasts a very long time. They did not have to sit in the hospital waiting room day and night praying for their friend, but they did, because in spite of their own profound disappointment, they believe that no matter what, God is good. They refused to let the darkness win and rob them of hope and joy and pushed through their pain to find the God of all comfort. They dared to trust. They are gracious enough to also tell their story in the book.
There are plenty of sad stories in the world. I could tell you a few myself. But joyful stories of hope also need to be told, because like the trees in the forest, real joy, and true hope continue to grow, whether in the sun or in the fog. No matter what, God is good, and it is well with my soul.
We enter Your gates with thanksgiving in our hearts and into Your courts with praise, Lord -no matter what.
Today is a day of celebration, not only because it is our precious granddaughter’s birthday (a miracle herself), but because it has been one year since the disaster that struck her family led to a miracle and taught us so much about the abundant love of God.
For those who have not read the story here before, her Daddy went to the hospital with what he thought was the flu and a pulled hamstring. It turned out to be necrotising fasciitis –flesh eating disease. After surgery his blood pressure crashed and he experienced multiple organ failure. He was on total life support and bleeding out. Privately, a team of highly skilled physicians treating him gave him 0% chance of survival. One of them said, “If this guy survives it will be the biggest miracle I have ever seen.”
Our daughter’s Facebook posts, intended to save time and answer friend’s questions, went viral and tens of thousands of people around the world joined in the effort to pray for him. On Good Friday last year he bled into his lungs and his condition was so unstable he couldn’t be moved across the hall for more surgery, so it had to be done in his room. Within half an hour of hearing the news a hundred people showed up in the hospital to pray for him (many more met in homes) and he survived that day. On Easter Sunday morning he responded to his wife’s voice and opened an eye.
Defying predictions that if he survived he would lose limbs, suffer brain damage, need dialysis indefinitely and be in rehab learning to cope with multiple disabilities for a very long time, he was pronounced medically cleared forty days later, and ten days after that walked into his church unaided -on Pentecost Sunday. He stood and gave the sermon the week after that. One of the specialists said to another, “You know it’s a miracle that guy is alive.”
Throughout the experience we saw a demonstration of love as God raised up an army of praying people -in his room, in the waiting room, in groups in homes and in African, Mexican, and Inuit villages and churches across the country. In the process He healed the hearts of many of those people who had suffered the pain of disappointment and moved many other Christians to reconcile their differences that they might come in unity to pray for not only our son-in-law, but a broken big C Church universal. God showed us that the church is like a sleeping giant who needs healing from hidden corruption with broken dysfunctional parts that do not communicate with each other. His desire is to restore the church and see it raised up to be the influence and demonstration of love He intended.
Like Ezekiel or Hosea in the Bible whose lives were a picture of what God wanted to do, our son-in-love gave God permission to do whatever it took to get him to a place where God wanted him to be, and was willing to lay down his life for his friends, and for the church. God took him up on that offer, and while he slept in a coma, accomplished everything our son-in-love had been striving to teach others.
This past year has been quite the ride. Our son-in-love is back to playing the sports he loves and except for a bit of decreasing pain in his feet that was a side-effect of the medications, and an impressive scar that covers most of the back of his leg, is in better physical condition than before he became ill. God has been faithful and kind beyond anything we understood before.
Our little granddaughter says, “I think Jesus healed my Daddy because he knows we like to jump on him and He is good.”
With her we celebrate and sing. God is so good! This is going to be a great party.
Just after I posted my last blog about steeping in God’s reality I looked through other photos I took this week. The significance of this simple photo of a grandfather carrying his grandson on his shoulders suddenly hit me.
Five and a half years ago we had a tough week full of bad news:
-Our daughter learned that damage from the disease that had already given her so much pain was more advanced than the specialist had thought and it was highly unlikely she could conceive a child.
-My husband learned he had a serious degenerative bone disease that affected his spine so severely that the strange malformation was threatening his spinal cord. He had to give up all sports and stressful physical activity immediately.
-A business coming out of a research project he had dedicated years to was pronounced dead, done, and defunct.
I had a vision of babies for my daughter, health for my husband, as well as a satisfying post-retirement business for him. It seemed like an impossible hope at the time, but I felt the Lord was asking us to be patient while he worked things out.
This is a photo of one of the children born to that infertile mother, conceived, like his sisters, without medical intervention.
This is a photo of his grandfather, not only able to walk and have full use of his hands, but able to carry the weight of that child on his back without pain despite missing a vertebra. (It’s been replaced by some sort of vascular tissue growing there now which doesn’t pinch his spinal cord.)
This is a photo of a visit brought about by God-coincidence. As for the business, he has been able to apply his expertise to a new venture -and he and son-in-law sat together working on it this week beside this beautiful lawn.
This is a photo taken by a photographer who was smiling so much that day, her face hurt.
Our son-in-law (miracle # 4 in this story) survived a bout of flesh-eating disease which took him as close to death’s door as his doctors had ever seen someone come and still be restored to full health, with all his limbs, organs and brain intact and fully functional.
“You know it’s a miracle that guy is still alive,” one of them told his colleague.
“What? That guy should be f…. dead!” exclaimed another of the first specialists to treat him, upon hearing reports of “John’s” recovery after he returned from a long trip.
Their generous friend gave our daughter and son-in-love the gift of a week at a time share in Montana to celebrate. Now we have only been to that part of the world two, maybe three times in the past 20 years, but my husband just happened to have an appointment in the same area this very same week so we joined them for a couple of days.
Miracle # 5? The golf course closed for the season just before we arrived, but it was open to guests to stroll around on the green, green grass, beside still waters and brilliant autumn-coloured trees in warm sunshine (60 degrees F in late October is warm to Canadians!) without having to take turns hitting or chasing or losing those silly little balls. In fact our grandchildren made a profit selling 27 found balls to their Daddy.
I’m looking at the photo and steeping in the reality of God’s goodness.
Wow! The little counter over on the left says this is my 500th blog entry. And I was worried I would have nothing to say after the first month.
I never knew, when I dared to overcome my technophobia to find an outlet for my poems, paintings, photos and musings, that God would have so much more to teach me than overcoming fear of computerese. I sometimes questioned the wisdom of writing about events of this annus horibilis before there was any evidence of it becoming annus mirabilis. And who knew it was going to be an annus horibilis anyway?
What if things don’t work out? What if I die of ovarian cancer? What if the depression comes back? What if our miracle grandbaby doesn’t make it to term? What if our son-in-love dies of necrotizing fasciitis? What if our son and his family never recover losses from the flood? Maybe I should wait before I write about them, to make sure God answers our prayers.
Then it occurred to me that I am not in charge of God’s P.R.. This is what it is like to walk in faith, not knowing how the cliff-hanger ends. (And honestly I did not make this stuff up. It has been a horrible time -and a miraculous time.) I have also noted that my anxious questions starting with “what if” seldom come in God’s tender voice.
So to celebrate 500 posts I have chosen not the five most popular blogs but five with the most meaning to me -some of them written in blood and some of them written in tears of joy. Five, because the number 5 is symbolic of grace, and Charis, my chosen name, means grace in Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament. (Psallo means song, and since I have lived a life full of songs it seemed appropriate.)
Right off the bat I’m going to cheat on my own rules because these two posts are part of one story that cannot be separated (and I can do that -my blog, my rules, and my bending of rules) This is about how God took something utterly horrible and turned it into something miraculously wonderful. These were written during the time many excellent doctors expected our son-in-love to die from multiple overwhelming complications after contracting an extremely severe case of flesh-eating disease. He has been restored to full health and the story is just too too too good not to tell over and over -so it goes first. Love is Louder and Love is Louder part II
For the second I am going back into history. After spending decades drowning in soul-crushing depressive mental illness, I was raised up out of the depths. Bluer than Blue
One of the hardest parts in co-operating with Jesus’ healing work and recovering from the prison of the past is the struggle with forgiveness. Letting Go is a poem about stepping away from practised anger and entrenched bitterness.
Red Button, Yellow Button is one of my favourites because the older I get the more I appreciate the insightful wisdom of children before we educate it out of them.
Today as I was reading in Corinthians about pulling down strongholds I remembered this stronghold I saw in Sepphoris/Tzippori in Israel. It would be very hard to pull down. It has been there for a very long time. You can see from the depth of the window openings how thick the walls are.
Our guide told us it was built by the Crusaders on the top of the hill the Roman city sat on (about an hour’s walk from Nazareth) and later rebuilt by the Ottoman Turks. What fascinated me was that the builders scrounged stones and sarcophagi (stone coffins) from previous dynasties to use in the construction.
Stronghold at Sepphoris/Tzippori
A cornerstone is the most important stone in a building because the other walls line up with the angles it establishes. In the photo the long rectangular stones are sarcophagi. These walls aligned with receptacles for the dead. Soldiers holed up inside fortifications like this would rain down arrows, and later bullets, on anyone daring to approach.
In 2 Corinthians Paul talked about the believers’ need to rely on different weapons than the ones used by human armies to tear down these seemingly impossibly strong fortifications.
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. (2 Corinthians 10:3,4)
He explains the metaphor of stronghold in verse 5: We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…
The Greek word translated “arguments” here is logismos, which means just what you think it would: reckoning, reasoning, computation, conclusion –all the things those of us educated in the West hold as the gold standard for decision-making. We gather data observable by our physical senses, make logical deductions, theorize, debate and come to a conclusion. Some of us hold this process in such high regard we require faith and the ways of God to pass through the same intellectual sieve. We have so elevated logic and our own intellect and reasoning ability that anything God does outside of the every day observable repeatable data-gathering experience is often rejected as myth or explained away as a re-telling of a misunderstood event by the superstitious.
Any theory is only as good as the presupposition it is built upon. Sometimes some of the old false ideas we have as foundational beliefs are so protected by thick-walled strongholds that no amount of argument, or ridicule or cannon balls or plastic explosives can tear down our defences.
Sometimes the behaviours based on these assumptions are the result of our acceptance of the death of dreams or an expectation of disappointment as the norm rather than on life and hope in the goodness of God being normal. Sometimes the strongholds of our own personal brand of logic and our ability to reason away experiences that are outside our dismal expectations are lifted higher than God’s word –especially when He says “Nothing is impossible for Me.”
Shortly after we visited Sepphoris we explored the ruins of the ancient city of Samaria. The fortifications in the photo were built by Herod upon the foundation of the city where control-freak Jezebel’s left-over bits were buried after zealous Jehu convinced disgruntled eunuchs to toss her out the window and the dogs had her for breakfast.
Herod’s tower at Samaria
The story is told in 2 Kings 7 that when this city was under siege and the people were desperate with fear and hunger, to the point of killing and devouring their own babies, the prophet Elisha told the king’s right hand man that the next day food would be cheap.
The king’s officer replied, “That couldn’t happen even if the Lord opened the windows of heaven!”
Elisha told him he would see it, but not get to eat it because of his unbelief. The next day he was trampled in the gate when the inhabitants rushed out to grab the provisions the confused enemy had left behind when they heard frightening noises in the night. God arranged the impossible.
I wonder if we miss out on a lot of provision because we exalt our past disappointments and reasoning ability above the promises of God. Unlike the lepers in the story, we never bother looking beyond the gates.
I wonder if the spiritual armour offered for our use in this war of the mind — the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the shoes that come from the preparation of the gospel of peace, the sword of the spirit of the word of God, and the shield of faith– free us up to recognize God’s way of thinking. What if our most effective weapons are the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith gentleness and self-control?
I wonder how much more of God’s perspective we would be able to perceive if we pulled down those thick walls that make “It couldn’t happen,” look like the only reasonable premise.
Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.”
True. But He didn’t stop there, as we often do.
“But I have overcome the world,” He said.
Edited to add: In the process of checking the spelling of the plural of sarcophagus (everything looks good until I hit publish) I had a surprise. The word sarcophagus comes from sarx meaning flesh and phagein meaning to eat. The word means literally flesh-eating. It was a pay-attention moment.
Some of you may have followed the story of how our son-in-law was on the brink of death from flesh-eating disease and how many people, some of whom had never done this before, took up the call to pray for his healing.
I will never forget the day (Good Friday) when he was too unstable to be moved into the O.R. for his second surgery, the day his doctors now admit they thought his chances of survival were 0%, the day his little four-year old daughter asked me for a different song to be played other than the favourite she had wanted for the previous three weeks. I will never forget that as fear of what looked like his certain death nearly engulfed me she sat in the van singing, “I believe that You’re my healer…Nothing is impossible for You! Nothing is impossible! Nothing is impossible for You, Jesus!”
On Pentecost Sunday, amid cheers and spontaneous outright bawling, our son-in-love walked into church on his own two legs, with his feet and all his toes attached and with kidneys and lungs functioning like a healthy twenty-year old.
I stood outside the door of our son-in-love’s room and listened to the most beautiful sounds I have ever heard yesterday.
“Look at me, Daddy! Look at me!”
“I love you, Daddy!”
“Tickle me again, Daddy!”
Then laughter and fake groaning and the sounds of a daddy and his little ones wrestling.
Later I watched as all three little ones cuddled their daddy and watched a movie. The baby was smiling in his lap, the two-year old flopped over daddy’s shoulders and the four-year old leaned her blonde head on his chest and asked her hundreds of why questions.
I watched mommy and daddy and the three little ones share a dinner of steak and chocolate -except for baby, of course.
I sat and talked with “John” about the journey we have been through since March 23. When I told him the stories of how people who had never prayed much were woken in the night with a burden to pray, of how people who had never seen God heal were following every report on Facebook, of how some were hearing the voice of God for the first time, of how a student’s mother told my daughter-in-law that she was receiving prayer updates from her mother in Vegreville who was receiving them from someone up there who knew the mother-in-law of this guy, of how friends stood by his bed and filled the waiting room day and night , of how his mother and I took turns holding each other up, of how his wonderful, quiet father was a bulwark of faith who said in his delightful German accent, “We will have no negative words here. We will only speak truth,”, of how his father-in-law wept as he cried out to God, of how his wife gave thanks in the middle of the worst days of her life and was a beacon of hope to everyone else herself, of how hospital staff from other wards found excuses to come by ICU to see what was happening, of how my friend told me she had renewed faith to pray for her own sons, of how the church is waking to come together, to pray together for healing of this land….
He cried. He cried tears of sorrow for what his family and friends endured and of joy for the kindness of strangers and for what God has done.
He said, “He didn’t have to do it. I could have died, and I would have been okay to go to be with him, but God healed me. He has given more years to be with my wife and my children. I have always loved Jesus, but now there is something much deeper.”
“Do you know how much of your effort, how many of your outstanding natural talents and abilities God used to do this thing?” I asked him. “Nothing! None. Not a thing. Boy, you were the most helpless a man could be. You couldn’t even breathe on your own. You had no blood pressure without a constant drip of medication. You had no kidney function without a big machine to clean your blood. You couldn’t move without a nurse doing it for you. You couldn’t say one charming, intelligent thing. You couldn’t move a single athletic muscle. You even needed other people to give up their own blood to replace yours. And let me tell you, the handsome thing wasn’t working for you much in those days either -and when you finally opened your eyes they weren’t even going the same direction. God used other people in the process, but none of this came about by a single effort of yours. Not one.”
He cried some more. “There is something much, much deeper about God’s love that I know now that I just can’t explain,” he said softly.
Then we received a text message from someone who had been speaking to the physician who headed the large skilled team of specialists who treated “John.”
“You know it’s only by a miracle that guy survived,” he told him candidly. Another physician dropped the f bomb and said, “That guy should be dead.”
We know.
So this is love. This is what a miracle feels like. He still has rehab work to do, but in the meantime, we laugh, we cry, we praise God. Mommy and Daddy and the kids cuddle together and we pass the popcorn while we watch a movie.
The words of an old song taken from Isaiah come to me as I write this in the early morning hours before the baby wakes up:
After being in a coma from flesh-eating disease and sepsis, our son-in-love is breathing on his own, talking and joking, starting to eat, and standing up (with assistance).
Thanks to those of you who prayed for him. He has a long way to go to fully recover, but we shout joyfully and thank God for the miracles already received.
When they received bad news from the fertility specialist my son-in-law (I’ll call John, as in John the Beloved) said to his young wife, “You know, the bigger the problem the bigger the miracle God can perform -and you know He can’t resist a good miracle.” They now have three beautiful little miracles to love and cherish.
This week we petition the Lord for another miracle -that these precious children would be raised by their healthy daddy.
When we arrived for our granddaughter’s fourth birthday he was already feeling very sick with what he thought was the flu and a pulled hamstring. Twenty four hours later surgeons were desperately trying to remove “brown gunk” from necrotizing fasciitis -flesh eating disease. They left an open incision from his knee to his waist and he has been on life support since Sunday morning after his blood pressure crashed.
But the most amazing things have happened as we trust God moment by moment.
When he heard the news shortly before the main morning service started, John’s pastor walked away from the pulpit of a large church to be at the side of his friend and a family in need. He has stayed with him in ICU, with several of John’s friends all night, every night since. The waiting room is filled with friends and people walk the halls nearly twenty-four hours a day praying for our beloved John. When the doctor’s reports grew more pessimistic they prayed harder.
Requests for prayer went out over social media and we are hearing from literally thousands of people around the world that their church, or home group, or school, or personal network is praying for this young family. We have never felt so loved.
God is doing something highly unusual here. As people come to pray they are themselves being touched by the love of God, repenting (choosing to change their thinking) and encountering a love and peace that does not make sense under the circumstance. People are being healed of deep wounds. Relationships are being restored, and more and more people are following the story on the media.
I’m mostly at home caring for the children with their other grandmother, while our daughter is at the hospital 20 hours a day. I went with her one night and was totally surprised by the atmosphere of peace in John’s room and the shouts of joy in the hall as the team prayed for the numbers on his monitors to change -and they did.
On Monday our little two-year old grandson was chattering to his distracted mommy who came home long enough to cuddle them herself, before returning to the hospital. Suddenly he changed the subject and said, “We don’t have to be afraid because Jesus is with us. Jesus is with us. Mommy, we don’t have to be afraid because Jesus is with us.”
Today she and I took the children for a walk, to take a breather. I had my camera with me (It’s a habit.) The little guy ran ahead and squatted down to trace “alphabets” that someone had written on the pavement. When I got closer I could see that it said “BE FEARLESS.”
The words on the other end of the bridge said, “LOVE IS LOUDER.”
I have no idea who wrote those words, but they felt like a gift from God.
The reports up until today have been quite negative. But God…
The love of God shining through people we have never met, through friends, through family who have travelled to be with John even though he is unconscious, have shouted down those dismal reports. Today we see improvement. Today the doctor said he was dying, but now he will live.
There is something more going on here than our limited human vision can see. John is a man who is willing to lay down his life for the Jesus he loves –and the people God loves. The love surrounding him is palpable. Some people are seeing angels in the room as they pray for him. He is the kind of man whose whole life is a message about God’s love and goodness. I know that if the Lord asked him to give his life to save the church, he would do it.
God is up to something. When his Holy Spirit surrounds his church His holiness reveals weaknesses where we have relied on the flesh and where it has become corrupt. He shows us how parts of the body of Christ have been without blood supply or functioning in the way God intended and other parts are not communicating with each other. Impurities that have failed to be removed by non-discerning “kidneys” can all be healed in the light of Jesus’ relentless love. He tells us we are in a war for unity and purity and love in the body of Christ and we have not been taking this fight nearly seriously enough. It takes a willingness to turn, to change, to seek the Lord. Without serious day and night prayer the church in this part of the world will succumb to hidden decay. We need God’s light and his love that shines and burns like a laser.
Love is louder!
Love is Louder
“John” is very much loved by many, many people. If you would like to pray with us for him we are asking right now for his blood pressure to rise on it’s own so he can get off the medications that restrict circulation to his feet, for restoration and preservation of his toes, for an increased platelet count, for his kidneys to start to function and for rapid healing of a massive open wound.
But more than that we want to give thanks to a God who is good, who tells us in writing on the sidewalk that we don’t have to be afraid and who tells us that love is louder than fear.
Peggy Lee’s song from the 60’s, “Is that all there is?” came to mind this week when I saw many of my young friends post pictures of graduation and the prom on Facebook. A former grad admitted to me that the whole thing was a little disappointing. After looking forward to it her entire school career as a magical night of glamour and celebration (and possible romance) in the end it was the same old people standing around in expensive, uncomfortable clothes saying and doing the same dorky things they said and did last week –and the week before, and the year before.
Dare we admit that some of the moments we were told would be the highlights of our lives were not all that brilliant? I came away from my high school grad party thinking like Peggy, “Is that all there is?” (Mom worked so hard to put together the perfect evening, but I was not permitted to go to the prom dance and since my dress was a gift, I never got to choose it. The guy I had just broken up with turned up with his fiancée and the last minute substitute escort was called home by his mother because she needed help getting his drunk uncle out of the bath tub.) Even if everything had turned out as planned I think I would have been disappointed.
The problem: I have an imagination.
Sometimes I feel like asking people not to give rave reviews to a movie or book or performance –or even a cleaning product that sounds like heaven by way of a sparkling shower door. I almost wish people hadn’t told me how wonderful life experiences like a wedding or childbirth and breastfeeding or a vacation in Mexico or a standing ovation after a performance were because although there were wonderful moments in all of them, secretly my imagination took liberties went a step further than reality. As great as many experiences have been there was usually a bit of “Is that all there is?” when they were over.
Solomon said it first in the book of Ecclesiastes, the book that epitomizes is-that-all-there-is disappointment and the limits of human’s wisdom and logic. He wrote, “I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.” and “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” (He ends the book of his experiences with this: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”)
Peggy’s song repeats Solomon’s observation of vanity:
If that’s all there is my friend, then let’s keep dancing.
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.
Peggy’s song also dared to address fear of the final disappointment:
I know what you must be saying to yourselves.
If that’s the way she feels about it why doesn’t she just end it all?
Oh, no. Not me. I’m in no hurry for that final disappointment.
For I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you,
when that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath, I’ll be saying to myself,
Is that all there is?
Perhaps disappointment is our greatest fear. Perhaps this is what motivates so many sermons and pop theology books. They are less about hope and faith than the pragmatic guarding of our hearts against the possibility of disappointment. Like King Saul before his first battle we take things into our own hands when it looks like God may not show up in time to make our party a success.
I think the best moments in my life have been surprises:
-coming around a corner on a logging road to see an entire hidden valley of golden tamarack aglow in low evening sun,
-my wee little grandson this week, bringing me a grocery store flyer and pointing to a photo of watermelon to show me what he wanted when he is too young to have the words (Yes, I gave him some.)
-my “barren” daughter announcing her pregnancy
-my precious son, held prisoner in a dark basement of depression, coming up the stairs into the light saying he wanted to be baptized
-my four-year old grandson telling me he had a dream of sitting on Jesus’ lap and being hugged and hugged and hugged
-my husband covering my desk with Lindt chocolates on our fortieth Valentines Day together
-hearing a voice say “Run!” when I was up in the woods praying, then discovering that when I dared to attempt it the asthma and arthritis that had crippled me for so long were gone
-my mother with a broad smile and look of recognition on her face toward someone we could not see as she stepped into eternity from her hospital bed
-and so many more.
I believe this is not all there is. I believe God gives us promises that will not be disappointments. I believe that my imagination will not spoil the surprises he has for me because I am not capable of going a step beyond the greater reality. My imagination is no match for his.
“Is that all there is?”
No! Not by a long shot!
Now to him who by his power within us is able to do far more than we ever dare to ask or imagine—to him be glory in the Church through Jesus Christ for ever and ever, amen! (Ephesians 3:21, 22)
Oh, dear children of mine (forgive the affection of an old man!), have you realised it? Here and now we are God’s children. We don’t know what we shall become in the future. We only know that, if reality were to break through, we should reflect his likeness, for we should see him as he really is! (1 John 1:3)
I was with my daughter when the doctor who performed emergency surgery to save her life, in a tiny hospital on a tiny Caribbean island, told her she would probably have a lot of difficulty having children. She had been hemorrhaging from a ruptured cyst. The lining of her womb, that which should have been sacred and set apart to nurture new life, was growing throughout her abdomen and damaging other organs like some blasphemous invader.
My heart ached for her. I had difficulty conceiving myself and I remembered weeping month after month, year after year as disappointment flowed out of my body.
Four years later she called me after a fertility specialist delivered his final verdict to her and her wonderful husband. Too many blockages, too many malformations, too much damage from surgery. A baby conceived by natural means was extremely unlikely to happen. The best he could offer was powerful medication that put her into menopause to slow down the course of the disease and gave her respite from the intense pain. Perhaps someday she might be well enough to try in vitro.
I cried.
She didn’t.
Somehow the two of them had faith that God would hear their prayers. In fact they treated the specialist’s report after exploratory surgery as proof positive that when God gave them a child it would be a miracle. It was officially documented.
A few weeks later while at some meetings in Florida, five different men spoke to her over a period of several days and told her God was giving her “the desire of her heart.” One (named Bob) said he saw “sperm meetin’ egg” and another (named Bobby) even nudged her husband and joked in a Texas drawl, “You know faith without works is dead.” These were not the kind of ministers I was used to.
I had heard about people who were supposedly prophetic and seen reports of those said to be endowed by the Holy Spirit with healing gifts from God, but it was all theoretical. I believed God could do it in His sovereign will, but He didn’t seem to want to much. I have been attending a decently-and-in-order mainline church and some of the stuff she was telling me about witnessing was so far out of my comfort zone I ran up to the hills to pray that they would not be hurt by deception. I was the one who needed prayer that I would not allow my own cultural blinders and judgmental attitude to limit faith in the goodness of God.
Within a month she was pregnant.
The fertility specialist was shocked!
So was I!
Our precious, extremely unlikely granddaughter was born almost exactly one year after the doctor’s pronouncement. There is no doubt in our minds that she is a miracle.
My daughter had hoped she was healed, but the old pattern of severe pain and ruptured cysts began again when the baby was weaned. Her doctor cautioned her against getting her hopes up, saying conception again was unlikely, but suggested that they not postpone trying to have another child if that’s what they wanted. Within two weeks she was pregnant. Our precious highly unlikely miracle grandson will be two years old later this summer.
A while ago our daughter had surgery again to routinely “clean out” more patches of endometriosis. They found none.
Today she and her husband officially announced the expected due date of the arrival of their third child – New Year’s Day. She gave me a gift last time I visited — a pregnancy test with a + sign on it. Attached was a note: I guess you could say we’re addicted to miracles!
It’s the best gift I’ve ever received that somebody peed on!
God is good –and He is still in the miracle business.
As our little grandson would say, “ALLAYLLOOLLAH!”
Charis: Subject to Change 