By this time I have told the story of our little “miracle” countless times.  In case you haven’t read my blog posts in December because you were busy with your holiday obligations and preparations, we experienced an unexpected healing.  That was our miracle.

My husband was diagnosed with hypertension, coronary artery disease and diabetes in 2008.  He was a hair’s breadth away from a heart attack what with three blood vessels malfunctioning and enlarged.  We prayed to God for a total healing but ONLY if itwas His will.  We surrendered the matter of his healing entirely to God.  We just asked for wisdom to know what to do; we asked to be led to doctors who can help us; and we asked for grace to finish the course and to keep the faith.  My husband went on a diet and he took his medication regularly.  We monitored his blood pressure and blood sugar.  We lived with the condition as best we knew how, living by God’s grace one day at a time.  It was a bumpy ride, full of twists, turns and sudden dips in the road.  But, four years later, the doctor ordered him to go for a 2Decho: we found out that the three blood vessels that had been malfunctioning and which had been enlarged are now “normal”.

We were shocked.  We didn’t know if the people at the Heart Center just made a mistake.  Even the doctor was scratching his head when he read the results before his face split into a wide grin and he said, “I think you have just received a miracle.”  The doctor asked us four years ago to consider a heart bypass.  Late last year, he asked us to consider an angioplasty.  We said we’d pray about it.  And then the results came.

People’s reactions and responses to our “miracle” were varied.  Most of the people I told were genuinely happy for us: they had been praying for us and so they were happy that God had answered our prayers.  Some people were amazed.  Others were skeptical.  There were a few who knew my distress the past four years and they were as relieved as I was. There was one person who looked at me blankly unable to process the news just as I was initially unable to process what happened or how it happened.  All of these people, though, after their initial reactions, had the same question: how did you do it?  By this, I took it to mean that they wanted to know what we did to obtain the miracle of healing that my husband got.

We prayed.  There was nothing anyone could do but pray.  I had a friend, a medical doctor, who said to me, “coronary artery disease, ba?  By-pass lang ‘yan”  but not everyone can have a bypass.  And not all by-pass surgeries work.  Some patients die during the surgery.  Even my husband’s cardiologist said that my husband was not a good candidate for a bypass.

We turned to the Scriptures.  We read the Bible to make sure that we were clear on the doctrine of healing. God is Jehovah Rophe:  He is the God who heals our diseases.  Jesus Christ healed the sick during his earthly ministry.  So, healing is possible, but it was not a matter of course.  There is no promise that God will heal all diseases.  The prophet Elisha died of a disease.  Apostle Paul lived with a “thorn in the flesh.”  Sometimes, God doesn’t heal because it is not His will.

We surrendered totally to the will of God.  We did not bargain with God.  We surrendered to God the right to choose if He would heal my husband or not.  We simply asked that He show us what His will was.  We asked for discernment and guidance.  We asked for God to give us grace to live with the condition if He chose not to heal my husband.  We also asked that the situation drive us closer to Him.

We always asked God “what next, Lord?”  At each and every turn, we knelt and asked God “How should we approach this?”  When things got bad, we asked “What do you want us to do, Lord?”  When things got better, we asked “where should we go?”  When doctors told us something, we always asked “But what do you say, Lord?”  We never believed anything until we had prayed “Lord, is this true?”  We never accepted anything until we prayed “Lord, is this from you?”  We prayed so much and so often, our prayer lives were altered:  we no longer had scheduled dialogues with God, we had a running stream of consciousness conversation with Him.

We quoted Scripture to ourselves.  Whenever my husband felt wobbly, he asked God to walk with him, to lead him in the “path of righteousness for His name’s sake.”  He prayed for God to walk with him “through the valley of the shadow of death.”  When he was so tired and he felt like a candle that was slowly burning out, he would say, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength… they shall walk and not be weary, they will run and not faint.”

We learned all we could about the medical condition.  We looked up each and every test and medication that was prescribed.  We asked questions.  We gathered information about the kind of food we need to eat to strengthen my husband’s heart and overall health.  We determined to be wiser for our woes.  The best way to deal with adversity is to learn from it.   I am reminded of a poem by Robert Browning:  “I walked a mile with Pleasure/ she chatted all the way/ but  left me none the wiser /for all she had to say.  I walked a mile with Sorrow/ and ne’er a word said she/ but oh the things I learned from her/ when sorrow walked with me.”

We followed doctor’s orders.  My husband decided to go on a diet and he stuck with that diet.  He decided on an exercise regimen and he stuck with it.  We established routines to monitor vital signs.  We learned how to take blood pressure.  We learned how to check blood glucose levels.  We learned how to harvest urine and stool samples. We measured liquid intake and liquid output.

We began praying for others who were also sick.  We became more sensitive to other people’s sufferings.  We comforted others who were also undergoing similar physical distress. When I see people whose symptoms are similar to my husband, even total strangers, I would tell my husband’s story and plead with that person to go see a doctor.  We began giving out our doctor’s business cards.  When people ask me for prayers, I pray right there and then.  I begin my prayers with, “Lord, how should I pray for this person?  He asks me to pray that he might have money for his wife’s operation.  But how do you want me to pray for him and his wife?”

We thanked God for the sickness; we thanked Him for the gift of each new day.  Every morning that we woke up, we started it with a thank you to God.  My husband began playing hymns on the guitar.  Later, I sang to his accompaniment.  Pretty soon, my son and my daughter joined us and we would sing.  Later, we acquired a piano and I played hymns. We praised God.  We probably couldn’t go and teach the same way we used to, but we can sing and praise God.  We can pray and we can read the Bible.  We can pray for others. Life, we decided, would not be a total loss.

We laughed a whole lot.  When we went to the emergency room, after the emergency was over, we’d laugh all about it.  We’d laugh in the car.  We’d laugh while people were drawing blood.  We found humor in the questions the residents and interns asked us.  Even the residents and interns laughed.  We went to the hospital so often, we had struck a friendship with the security guards!

We always counted our blessings.  We celebrated even the little everyday things.  We appreciated each other and we told each other how much we loved each other.  With death so near, we couldn’t afford to waste time by being less than candid and forthright.  We talked about everything.  The kids opened up to us, thinking out loud, asking our opinions, and we began to open up to them, disclosing ourselves to them—we didn’t have much time. We lived one day at a time—we can only live one day at a time.

There was no formula, no incantation, no magic.  We did nothing to get this miracle other than to pray and let God do what He wanted to do.  We learned to be still and to know that He is God.