Saturday, September 6, 2008

SUNDAY SCRIBBLING / MIRACLE

A miracle is divine intervention in the universe in which the ordinary operation of nature is overruled, suspended, or modified. The term is derived from the Latin word miraculum meaning "something wonderful".

My something wonderful was in the year 1998. My husband went into the hospital for a gall bladder operation Thanksgiving week 1997. The family had to celebrate the holiday without him. The next week he came home, but he didn’t seem to recover. By Christmas Eve he was so sick that I had to take him to the emergency room. They told him that he just had the flu and sent him back home. On Christmas day he was so sick that he couldn’t participate in the celebration with our family. The next day I insisted on taking him to a different hospital. They did a CAT scan and found a 2 liter size cyst inside his pancreas. When they biopsied the cyst it was discovered that it was filled with a staph infection. The staph had been introduced into his body when they did the gall bladder operation. The doctors told us to say our goodbyes because they had to operate immediately and that the operation was very dangerous and that he might die.

Well, the cyst exploded and he went into septic shock. After the operation they put him in ICU. All of his organs shut down and for the next 5 weeks he was on a respirator. After the 5th week the doctors came to me and asked me how long I was going to let all of this go on. They knew that people rarely survived a necrotized pancreas. The insurance company was starting to press them. The dialysis and all the intensive care that he was receiving was very expensive. Then the doctors talked to my children and asked them to help me to make the BIG decision of letting him go.

That night I went home and cried out to GOD – “I know we all have to graduate into your kingdom but I need to know what to do!” As loud as I have ever heard anything my life I heard the words “It is not his time. He has things to do.” The next day I went into the hospital and said “NO, it is not his time, he has things to do.” Of course they thought I was a looney tune and they sent a hospital chaplain into his room to talk some sense in me. The Chaplain said “Your husband is tired and he doesn’t want to go on.” I immediately got angry and said “How would you know that? He is in a coma and he can’t talk.” As we were arguing across his bed, my husband woke up for the first time in weeks and mouthed the word “PRAY”. (He couldn’t talk because he had a trachea) The chaplain’s eyes got huge and I said “He wants you to pray.” Of course he didn’t have a choice but to pray at that point!

The next day a priest came into to the room to give him the Last Rights. I hadn’t called for a priest yet so I don’t know who sent him. I asked him to please pray a prayer of healing for my husband. He said the most beautiful prayer that I have ever heard. The dialysis nurse was crying. I looked over at the dialysis machine as it was cleaning my husband’s blood and said “Oh the blood of Jesus washes away our sins.” Three days later my husband came out of the coma and a week later he was out of ICU. One week after that, my sons carried him into our front door. He had to learn to walk again and the doctors said that since 90% of his pancreas was now missing, things would be very difficult. Despite this, he has fully recovered!

We tried to find the mysterious priest but none of the local Catholic churches knew who he was, perhaps he was an angel. That is my miracle story.

8 comments:

paisley said...

and what a miracle it is!!! my goodness.. i love these stories about things that are so extraordinary,, what else could they be???

Linda Jacobs said...

This gave me goosebumps! Quite the miraculous story! Well told!

Terrie said...

Thank you! But as we all know someday we do have to graduate to our eternal life.

Jennifer Hicks said...

eerrily miraculous! I'm shivering right now! so happy for your family.

GreenishLady said...

Terrie, what a wonderful story! And reading it, I realise that I've met many people who have had miracles like that in their families, (in ours, 10 years ago, my nephew was written off as about to die unless he had a heart transplant, and he recovered completely - we beleive through the power of prayer), and yet there is such scepticism about. I'm so glad you held fast like you did!

Karla said...

Joseph was just preaching on the power of prophetic declarations. It's awesome that you spoke that in his room that "it was not his time."

Actually we are in our eternal life now. Eternity is within us because the fullness of the Godhead lives inside us. We are seated now in heavenly places for we are in Christ and He is in heaven. We are citizens of heaven now. So while we will physically enter that place one day, we live with that reality now.

It is because of that reality that miracles happen. Earth aligns with the reality of heaven when we see a miracle.

Anyway, that's me getting theological, but it does have practical application as you can attest by your miracle story.

Nita Jo said...

Thank you for sharing your miracle. It's an amazing story.

Blessings!
Nita Jo

Unknown said...

It's really great that you put this up here. I don't think I could deal with this while it was happening. I'm so glad that God was with him, even when we can't be.