My Way Sunday
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life is hard - a living death is harder still
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Several years ago, I went to the hospital to visit a late 50's year old woman. It was a combination of pulmonary and heart issues that had her hospitalized again.

She had endured a long hard-lived life of alcohol and cigarettes and a number of former 'husbands'. Her first husband, by whom she bore 5 children, died at an early age in an automobile accident. She worked several low-paying jobs to make ends meet.

I know one of her sons. He greatly admires his mother for the hardships she endured while trying to raise him and his brothers and sisters. He himself has suffered similar problems [alcohol and cigarettes] and has done 'hard time' in a state penitentiary.

Since out of prison, he has a good skilled job, is married, and does have several children born of previous relationships. He tries hard to enjoy the toys of the material life he's working so hard to acquire.

His family had never been 'church' people. In the past 5 years or so, he has asked me to pray for particular needs in his family several times. That's why I visited his mother. At the conclusion of our visit, I asked her if she would mind if I prayed for her.

Within a few days, she was sent home. She was placed on heart medication and had to use a portable oxygen tank. She was instructed to stop smoking and drinking.

A few years earlier she had a cancerous breast removed. Shortly before this hospitalization a lump was discovered in her other breast. She just knew she was going to lose that breast, too - she just knew it. Somehow, this seemed more significant to her than her heart and respiratory problems.

She finally went in to follow-up on the breast lump - it no longer existed. Unexplainable to her and her physician, they ordered another round of exams. They came back with the same results - no lump.

She attributed it to my visit and my prayer that God would heal her. She still had heart and lung problems, but her breast had been healed. My experience is to praise God and not try to explain the rest.

A couple of weeks ago, mom was back in the hospital ... couldn't breathe ... lungs filling up with fluids - and she had been smoking and drinking again. I visited on her second day. Her current 'husband' was there in the room, as was one of her other adult sons who had his 12-year old boy with him to visit grandma.

At the conclusion of the visit, I asked if I could pray with her. She seemed eager. Her husband bowed his head; the son did like-wise, and I heard the grandson say to his dad, "What should I do?" - dad replied to just bow his head and be quiet. When done, I told her I'd be back in a couple of days.

I went back, but the day after my previous visit, her lungs were cleared, and her heart was functioning pretty normally. They kept her an extra day and sent her home.

Medicine, or miracle? I surely do not know, but I know God loves her.

She's on medication, and oxygen, and for now has quit the cigarettes and alcohol. Life is hard - I hope she can stay off both of those, but I will not be surprised to hear she is not.

God meets us where we are. Sometimes we recognize Him and welcome Him and start to listen to Him. I don't know where she is in that part of her experience, but I know God is reaching out to her. He is 'thirsting' for her, as He does for all of us.

uncle jim
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Commentary of the day

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), foundress of the Missionary Sisters of Charity
Letter to all her community, called her “Spiritual Testament”

"Give me a drink"

Jesus’ words “I thirst” (Jn 19,28), written on the wall of all our chapels, are not something from the past but are alive, here and now; they are spoken for you. Do you believe this? If you do, you will understand and feel his presence. Let him be as intimately within you as he is in me; that is the greatest joy you could give me. I will try and help you to understand this but Jesus himself is the only one who can say to you “I thirst!” Listen to your own name. And not just once. Every day. If you listen with your heart, you will hear, you will understand. Why did Jesus say: “I thirst”? What is its meaning? It is very difficult to explain it in words… Nevertheless, if you could grasp one, single thing from this letter, let it be this: “I thirst” is an even more profound word than if Jesus had simply said “I love you”. So long as you fail to realise, and in a deeply intimate way, that Jesus thirsts for you, you cannot possibly know what it is he wants to be for you, nor what he wants you to be for him. The heart and soul of the Missionaries of Charity consists entirely in this: the thirst of Jesus’ heart, hidden in the poor. This alone is at the origin of all that makes up our life. It sets before us both the goal … and the spirit of our Congregation. To quench the thirst of Jesus living among us is the entire justification for our existence and our exclusive goal. Is there anything more than this we could say about ourselves, namely, that this is our sole motive for living.

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The 'Eyes' Have It - It's A Miracle

On a Saturday evening around 11pm, one of our adult sons and his compact car were run-over by a full sized pick-up which had run a red-light at a major 5-way intersection near the University of Michigan campus. Our son was on his way home from work as a waiter and wine-steward at a 'better' restaurant in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Now, start counting the 'miracles'...or close encounters with the divine, if you will.

1 - Setting at that intersection, at two different directions of approach, were two Ann Arbor Police cars. They witnessed the accident and radioed for ambulances for a 'possible fatality'.

2 - Expecting the worst, the first officer getting to the compact car found the occupant conscious, talking, and trying to get out. They got him to the U of M Medical Complex about a mile away.

3 - During the extrication process, the officer noted the occupant had lost an eye. He searched and found it. The ambulance had a solution cup in which to store it, and took it with them.

4 - In the ER, the staff began calling in special personnel. They don't normally have an eye surgeon setting around ER on a Saturday night. Their first call was to the Kellogg Eye Institute, part of the U of M Medical Complex. COINCIDENTALLY, the head of the surgical department was there in the building. On hearing the nature of the injuries, he said he and his team would take the case. He advised ER his people would be ready to go by the time they could get the patient to the Eye Institute building.

5 - Our son's wife woke up about 11 o'clock - about the time of the accident. He wasn't home yet. At 11:40pm, she called his cell phone. The person who answered asked who was calling, then identified himself as a Doctor at the U o M Medical Complex ER and advised her that the person who had the phone on him had been brought into ER about 15 minutes ago after an automobile accident. On learning that she was his wife, he advised her to come to the ER as soon as possible.

6 - We were just getting into bed when the phone rang - 11:50pm. An almost hysterical daughter-in-law tried to tell me what had happened. She was getting the baby ready to go to the hospital, BUT she didn't know where it was located - they had just moved to the area 5 weeks prior. I assured her we were on our way. We advised her to call the police for directions. When she arrived, her husband was already in surgery.

We arrived about 4:30am. He was still in surgery. Around 8am they were finished and the Doctor talked to us. They had re-implanted his natural eye, and did reconstruction surgery to surrounding tissues and the eye socket. There would be a 50/50 percent chance of the natural eye surviving, but NO VISION, as the optic nerve had been severed.

7 - We took the baby to their apartment and let her sleep awhile. By mid-afternoon we were headed home with the baby. Our daughter-in-law was there to help her husband through the recovery. We arrived home safely after having no sleep for 37 hours.

The natural eye did not survive. After a couple of months a prosthetic was implanted. It has been replaced twice since.

I hope this story has enough 'miracles' for you. Use them to build your faith - but don't just call them all coincidences.

Do you have 'a second chance' story to share? Write it in the comment box.

Let him die

This is a real story. Real names are being used. Real people are involved.

His name is Mitch. He's in his early thirties. He is a nephew of close friends of ours - Cindy and Tim. Mitch lives in Ohio. His aunt Cindy is a sister to his mother. Aunt Cindy and uncle Tim live in Oklahoma. My wife and I live in Indiana.

Two or three years ago, our friends, Cindy and Tim, put out a request for prayers for their nephew Mitch in Ohio. He had been in an accident and had been transported by helicopter to a major trauma center in Ft. Wayne IN. The town Mitch is from is about half-way between Ft. Wayne IN and Toledo OH. He suffered some very bad injuries to the head.

Many people prayed. Mitch eventually got better. Mitch returned home to NW Ohio and all seemed to be going OK.

This past spring, March 2007, another plea for prayers went out from Cindy & Tim - Mitch again - major head trauma again - this time brought on by a blow to the head by an iron bar.This time he was taken to a major trauma center in Toledo OH. Again, people prayed.

A couple of weeks passed and word went out that Mitch had been in a vegetative state since arrival at the hospital. Doctors were not optimistic at all. For a couple of weeks, every medical test and procedure they tried failed. Brain activity was apparently very much non-functioning. Mitch was on full life support. The prognosis was terminal.

My wife, aunt Rozann, is a middle-school science teacher. On the weekend in late March that she was starting her school's Spring Break, we received more word from Cindy and Tim about Mitch. Cindy's sister, Mitch's mother, notified Cindy that she was considering having Mitch removed from life-support. The doctors held no hope of recovery. She asked Cindy if there was anyway she could come to OH and help her make funeral and burial plans. Since Mitch was on full support and it would take Cindy a few days to make arrangements to come to Toledo, her sister said she'd wait a few days before pulling the plug. That way Cindy could be there and help her with all that would be needed.

Aunt Rozann is from a small farming community in southeastern Michigan, just across the state line from Toledo OH. Her father was in an assisted care facility just outside Toledo. We were already planning to go visit her dad during Spring Break. We advised Cindy and Tim that we would be in Toledo on Tuesday morning, not only to visit Rozann's dad, but to have lunch with a brother and sister of mine. We asked for information on where Mitch was, including room number if they had access to that info, and said we wanted to stop by and pray with Mitch and his mother.

We come from a very Catholic Charismatic background and when we say we want to pray with someone, especially like Mitch, we intend to ask for healing and expect things to happen. Of course G-d is G-d and He calls the shots - all we can do is ask, albeit rather intensely.

We arrived at the hospital around 11am. We found the room in a critical care unit. His mother and a younger niece of about 11 years of age were there with him. We talked with his mother at some length [we had met her before several years ago]. Mitch was still all hooked up. His mother told us that the orders had been issued. He would be removed from life support as soon as a room on another floor became available. She added that she reneged a little in her instructions - she wanted the feeding tube left in. For as long as his body was alive, she wanted it to be fed. We prayed ... then we left.

Mitch was moved to another floor. All life support equipment was removed, except the feeding tube. They did continue to leave telemetry equipment on so they could monitor his condition. Aunt Cindy was to arrive in the next few days from Oklahoma to help her sister with funeral arrangements.

When they placed his flaccid body in the new bed, they kind of propped him up. While they were doing this, his body 'twitched' and his hand 'grabbed' the nurse's arm. This was explained away as an involuntary muscular reflexion. Sometime later, he coughed. Sometime after that, he 'fell out of bed'. Things were happening. His body was moving in ways that could not be explained.

It was during this that the little sister, whom we saw standing next to the bed stroking her uncle's arm and holding his limp hand when we were there, told her mother that after we left she thought she felt Mitch try to squeeze her hand a couple of times.

With the onset of the following events, Aunt Cindy didn't have to make the trip to help with final arrangements. She did come a week later to much happier circumstances.

Within the next days, Mitch was being helped to walk the halls. Soon after they moved him to a rehab unit. In another couple of weeks he went home.

Mitch was not a 'churched' individual. His aunt Cindy told us afterwards that he is now a 'believer'. He still is not a church goer, but he is willing to tell everyone and anyone who will listen that G-d performed a miracle for him. He also claims [and some scoff at this] that shortly before he remembers opening his eyes, he 'died' and met his deceased grandfather, who told him it wasn't his time yet, and he'd have to go back ... and he did.

Mitch has been given a couple of significant second chances in his life. This one seems to have been miraculous. I don't know what G-d has in mind for this young man, but I hope he's able to find it and do it. It would appear the miracle was not because of anything Mitch did or said but because others interceeded for him and G-d answered.

Do you have "a second chance" story to share? Write it up in the comment box. It could end up in a post.