Today I am inspired by faith, hope, and love. I witnessed
all of these tonight in a family at the most trying of times, in an impossible
situation even, yet their words, their graceful movements, showed Christ’s
light as a beacon in the dark. Today it
seemed my retreat continued, as if I had never left the beautiful property
nestled in the hill country of south Texas
and all while the water fell from the sky and the earth drank its living
water. Inside the hospital walls it’s
easy to forget if it’s day or night, sunshine or storming, and as I entered the
all too familiar hospital nothing was as I remembered it fourteen years
ago.
I quickly got lost in the tiled
floor and ceiling as she led me to the floor her mom is on. I felt so disoriented in a place I once
visited everyday for months. I was
humbled to visit with her, her dad, her sister, and her beautiful mom, a true
sleeping beauty. I don’t know how long
it was that we visited in the room, well, it was until shift change. I said my
goodbye for tonight to the most gentle, soft spoken sleeping beauty, and joined
the family in the cafeteria while the nurses attended her.
I shared my father’s story with them, his
months in ICU there, his awakening and disorientation afterward. I told them how when he did wake after
numerous plays of “Back Draft” in the vcr, he didn’t quite know who we were, or
who he was even, well he couldn’t remember that he was married anyway. He
thought my sister was a star on a soap opera and that I was the best nurse he’d
ever had caring for him. I shared with
them the little sleep, the little food, and no time to do anything else those
first few weeks, and of course about the time I passed out, in the ICU room,
and really there isn’t much room for that!
We shared a lot of information, they so kindly told me how their mother
is progressing, and we talked about faith, the only kind of faith, the blind
kind.
I was telling them about little
Paige who will pray over the sick, when all of a sudden a stranger walked up in
need. We helped her, and she wanted to thank us, so we said, just pray for
Valerie please. She then told us how she
brought her dad, Hank, in two days before with his sugar over 600 and the last
time it happened he slipped into a coma. I asked her if the doctors told her
negative things about his recovery and she quickly said, yes they did. She then
tells us, but then one day, he just woke up. Sometimes God speaks through
others and tells you just want you need to hear.
In faith, in hope, and in love, I had the privilege
of watching this family tonight. I received my own message through them
tonight, I remembered that nothing is hopeless, even when we feel despair and
can’t take another step. We walk. We walk in faith, hope, and love just as this
family is doing every moment of each day until Valerie just wakes up. And if
faith, hope and love are the precursors for moving mountains, then let those
mountains move, and she will wake.
Please add Valerie to your daily prayers, for her speedy recovery to awake.