A number of years ago I was asked to speak at a women’s retreat in Alaska. The
church I was attending at the time was tiny – the congregation consisted of
about thirty people on a good day. I expected that would be about the size of
the group in Alaska. So when I walked into the school where the retreat was
being held, I was shocked to find well over two hundred women there. My knees
started shaking immediately.
I was scheduled to speak in front of this whole group on the first evening. It
was an experience I have never forgotten for many reasons, chief among them the
amazing stories I heard from other women that night. A large number of them were
native women from small villages scattered throughout the State and into the
Yukon Territory. One woman’s story has stayed with me over the years.
I don’t remember her name, though I can still see her face. It was round and
full of life. Her large dark eyes were earnest, but her smile was broad. She was
from a large family, she explained, and she was the sole survivor. Everyone else
– her parents, her brothers, her sisters, even a few aunts and uncles, had died
of Tuberculosis. When she began showing signs of the disease, she was sent to
the sanitarium. She was terrified because in her mind, if you went there, you
did not come out alive.
She was too weak to get out of bed alone. The doctors told her she had a
severely damaged lung and needed surgery. Everything was scheduled. The night
before the operation, she decided to pray. She had been told that God loved her
and that He healed the sick. Her prayer was short and to the point. She said she
was staring out the window at big fluffy clouds when God told her, “Give thanks
before you receive.”
It seemed a strange request. She was bitter about the loss of her family and
other things that had happened in her life, but she knew she needed to do what
God had said. She began thanking him for everything she could think of – the
family she had known so briefly, the people who had taken her in, the doctors
and nurses who cared for her now. She fell asleep thanking God.
The next morning she got out of bed to use the washroom. She didn’t realize what
she had done until the nurse came and chided her for doing it. She realized she
was not short of breath. She had no pain. In fact, she felt better than she ever
had in her life. She told the nurse she didn’t want the surgery. The nurse got
the doctor. The doctor took x-rays. Then he took them again. Then he told her
the surgery had been cancelled. Her lungs were perfectly healthy.
Give thanks before you receive. A good motto for us all, no matter whether we
are healthy or ill; it’s a good motto to live by.
Marcia Lee Laycock Marcia@vinemarc.com
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