Week of March 25
Jim lost his wallet and that affected the whole family. It happened sometime Sunday although he didn’t realize he had misplaced his wallet until he was getting his things ready Sunday night for the morning commute.
He had washed two cars and detailed them Sunday afternoon so that was the first in place he looked. The rest of us started the search inside the house, starting with the obvious places like the nightstand by the bed and the buffet in the dining room. We progressed to feeling in the crevasses of the cushions on the couch and inside the levels of the Lazy Boy chair. Soon we were trashing the house. All was for naught.
Monday morning Jim drove off to work without his wallet and of course without his license, I prayed the wallet would be found. Monday night we resumed the search perhaps more frantically than the day before. Jim and the kids went out and checked the cars again and I looked around inside revisiting many of the same places I had searched before. No wallet. I prayed some more
Tuesday Jim was obviously still upset and began grumbling about the prospect of having to apply for a duplicate license and call the credit card companies to close the accounts. As he stood by
the door he said he was going to take my car this morning because the SUV was low on gas. I suggested we pray together, something we hadn’t done for awhile. So we did.
We didn’t ask that the wallet would be found but we praised the Lord for all that we did have confessing that we didn’t have to worry about these things but just give it all over to Him. I felt better after praying.
I walked him out to the car. As he opened the door he shouted, “There’s my wallet!”
I took a step forward and then I saw it too. It was on the floor in front of the back seat right in plain sight. He and the kids had searched both vehicles twice, most recently as last night. That wallet could not have been out in the open like that.
We looked at each other in disbelief. How did it get there? What if he hadn’t decided to take my car instead of his today?
Cathy Pansa
Shorewood, Illinois
Incredible true stories that touch the heart and tug at the soul. Are they chance or destiny, coincidence or fate? Do you have your own Go Figure story? Want to share it? E-mail us at gofigureamerica@yahoo.com
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
John' Miracle
Week of March 18
On the island of Kauai, Hawaii I became very sick. I had been healthy all my 63 years and this was a new experience for me. After a week of high fever, aches and waking up with the sweats I called my doctor friend in Montana. After hearing my symptoms Dan said I needed to see a local doctor.
I did and he thought it was a sinus infection. After a few days I started getting vertigo, and seeing double. I decided if I didn’t feel better in the morning I would go to the emergency room.
In the morning, still feeling lousy, I took a cab from where I lived outside of Koloa to the hospital on Kauai where I was admitted with what was originally thought to be double pneumonia. It was not.
While my lungs sounded clear x-rays revealed two white clouds. I was transferred by air taxi to the Staub Medical Center in Honolulu. Here I tested positive for Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the organs of the body. I my case it was the lungs.
I do not remember of lot of the initial weeks in intensive care as I was drugged and in an induced coma. I was not expected to live very long and my wife and three daughters were called. They came from Montana to visit me for the last time. I did not know they were even there.
My body weight went from 167 to 132. Massive doses of steroids were given me as part of my treatment. When I awoke from the coma I was on a ventilator and had all sorts of tubes in my body.
I was literally a rag doll and could only move the muscles in my neck. An emergency button to call for help was draped over my shoulder so I could press it with my neck.
I remember thinking. How am I going to possibly come back from this. I believed I couldn’t and became totally depressed.
The bed I was in was a special physical therapy bed which could be set to do a wave like motion under the body. It wasn’t suppose to be on for me but it was. The motion caused me to move sideways and my body became lodged between the mattress and the sideboard. I was being squeezed with my arms dangling helplessly over the side of the bed. I could not move my head to press the call button. I was crying out “nurse help…nurse help!”
Then a strange thing happened. It was as if my spirit had left my body. I was sitting on the edge of a small stream with tall wet grass along the banks. A mist was rising from the water. I knew if I just lay down in the wet grass it would be over,end of struggles. There would be peace. My spirit was ready to totally give up.
Then a hand gripped my shoulder. I “sprung back.”
A voice said, “Can I help you?”
After getting me help I found out that the man who touched my shoulder was the pastor at the hospital. He told me that he received a call 30 minutes earlier from my friend Jim in White Fish, Montana who asked that the Chaplain to look me up.
From that moment on I never had depression again. In fact, during the rest of my hospital stay I was even joyful. My spirit was strong and I made dramatice progress physically. Within two weeks I was completely off the ventilator and oxygen.
I still could not mover a muscle but my physical therapist thought my muscles were ‘firing’ and I believed him. He began by massaging my muscles and moving my limbs.
I was moved from Intensive Care to the sixth floor of the hospital where they put patients who are closed to being released. I worked hard and talked and joked with almost every aide and nurse on that floor.
One day the doctors looked at me and my progress and said “John you are a living miracle.” They suggested I be transferred to a nursing home in Montana where I would be near friends and my support system.
Flying Nurses International flew with me from Honolulu to Salt Lake City and onto Glacier International Airport in Kalispell, Mt.
It wasn’t until I was back in Montana that I learned that my doctor friend Dan and Jim, who I knew from my appraisal business, had been meeting and praying for me daily throughout my ordeal.
You see, the doctors were right, I am a living miracle. And I was right, I could not come back on my own. I have no doubt that God through His grace spared my life and used my friends and that Chaplain to help me back.
John Woods
Kauai, Hawaii
On the island of Kauai, Hawaii I became very sick. I had been healthy all my 63 years and this was a new experience for me. After a week of high fever, aches and waking up with the sweats I called my doctor friend in Montana. After hearing my symptoms Dan said I needed to see a local doctor.
I did and he thought it was a sinus infection. After a few days I started getting vertigo, and seeing double. I decided if I didn’t feel better in the morning I would go to the emergency room.
In the morning, still feeling lousy, I took a cab from where I lived outside of Koloa to the hospital on Kauai where I was admitted with what was originally thought to be double pneumonia. It was not.
While my lungs sounded clear x-rays revealed two white clouds. I was transferred by air taxi to the Staub Medical Center in Honolulu. Here I tested positive for Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare autoimmune disease that attacks the organs of the body. I my case it was the lungs.
I do not remember of lot of the initial weeks in intensive care as I was drugged and in an induced coma. I was not expected to live very long and my wife and three daughters were called. They came from Montana to visit me for the last time. I did not know they were even there.
My body weight went from 167 to 132. Massive doses of steroids were given me as part of my treatment. When I awoke from the coma I was on a ventilator and had all sorts of tubes in my body.
I was literally a rag doll and could only move the muscles in my neck. An emergency button to call for help was draped over my shoulder so I could press it with my neck.
I remember thinking. How am I going to possibly come back from this. I believed I couldn’t and became totally depressed.
The bed I was in was a special physical therapy bed which could be set to do a wave like motion under the body. It wasn’t suppose to be on for me but it was. The motion caused me to move sideways and my body became lodged between the mattress and the sideboard. I was being squeezed with my arms dangling helplessly over the side of the bed. I could not move my head to press the call button. I was crying out “nurse help…nurse help!”
Then a strange thing happened. It was as if my spirit had left my body. I was sitting on the edge of a small stream with tall wet grass along the banks. A mist was rising from the water. I knew if I just lay down in the wet grass it would be over,end of struggles. There would be peace. My spirit was ready to totally give up.
Then a hand gripped my shoulder. I “sprung back.”
A voice said, “Can I help you?”
After getting me help I found out that the man who touched my shoulder was the pastor at the hospital. He told me that he received a call 30 minutes earlier from my friend Jim in White Fish, Montana who asked that the Chaplain to look me up.
From that moment on I never had depression again. In fact, during the rest of my hospital stay I was even joyful. My spirit was strong and I made dramatice progress physically. Within two weeks I was completely off the ventilator and oxygen.
I still could not mover a muscle but my physical therapist thought my muscles were ‘firing’ and I believed him. He began by massaging my muscles and moving my limbs.
I was moved from Intensive Care to the sixth floor of the hospital where they put patients who are closed to being released. I worked hard and talked and joked with almost every aide and nurse on that floor.
One day the doctors looked at me and my progress and said “John you are a living miracle.” They suggested I be transferred to a nursing home in Montana where I would be near friends and my support system.
Flying Nurses International flew with me from Honolulu to Salt Lake City and onto Glacier International Airport in Kalispell, Mt.
It wasn’t until I was back in Montana that I learned that my doctor friend Dan and Jim, who I knew from my appraisal business, had been meeting and praying for me daily throughout my ordeal.
You see, the doctors were right, I am a living miracle. And I was right, I could not come back on my own. I have no doubt that God through His grace spared my life and used my friends and that Chaplain to help me back.
John Woods
Kauai, Hawaii
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Lost Wallet
Week of March 11
Jim lost his wallet and that affected the whole family. It happened sometime Sunday although he didn’t realize he had misplaced his wallet until he was getting his things ready Sunday night for the morning commute.
He had washed two cars and detailed them Sunday afternoon so that was the first in place he looked. The rest of us started the search inside the house, starting with the obvious places like the nightstand by the bed and the buffet in the dining room. We progressed to feeling in the crevasses of the cushions on the couch and inside the levels of the Lazy Boy chair. Soon we were trashing the house. All was for naught.
Monday morning Jim drove off to work without his wallet and of course without his license, I prayed the wallet would be found. Monday night we resumed the search perhaps more frantically than the day before. Jim and the kids went out and checked the cars again and I looked around inside revisiting many of the same places I had searched before. No wallet. I prayed some more
Tuesday Jim was obviously still upset and began grumbling about the prospect of having to apply for a duplicate license and call the credit card companies to close the accounts. As he stood by
the door he said he was going to take my car this morning because the SUV was low on gas. I suggested we pray together, something we hadn’t done for awhile. So we did.
We didn’t ask that the wallet would be found but we praised the Lord for all that we did have confessing that we didn’t have to worry about these things but just give it all over to Him. I felt better after praying.
I walked him out to the car. As he opened the door he shouted, “There’s my wallet!”
I took a step forward and then I saw it too. It was on the floor in front of the back seat right in plain sight. He and the kids had searched both vehicles twice, most recently as last night. That wallet could not have been out in the open like that.
We looked at each other in disbelief. How did it get there? What if he hadn’t decided to take my car instead of his today?
Cathy Pansa
Shorewood, Illinois
Jim lost his wallet and that affected the whole family. It happened sometime Sunday although he didn’t realize he had misplaced his wallet until he was getting his things ready Sunday night for the morning commute.
He had washed two cars and detailed them Sunday afternoon so that was the first in place he looked. The rest of us started the search inside the house, starting with the obvious places like the nightstand by the bed and the buffet in the dining room. We progressed to feeling in the crevasses of the cushions on the couch and inside the levels of the Lazy Boy chair. Soon we were trashing the house. All was for naught.
Monday morning Jim drove off to work without his wallet and of course without his license, I prayed the wallet would be found. Monday night we resumed the search perhaps more frantically than the day before. Jim and the kids went out and checked the cars again and I looked around inside revisiting many of the same places I had searched before. No wallet. I prayed some more
Tuesday Jim was obviously still upset and began grumbling about the prospect of having to apply for a duplicate license and call the credit card companies to close the accounts. As he stood by
the door he said he was going to take my car this morning because the SUV was low on gas. I suggested we pray together, something we hadn’t done for awhile. So we did.
We didn’t ask that the wallet would be found but we praised the Lord for all that we did have confessing that we didn’t have to worry about these things but just give it all over to Him. I felt better after praying.
I walked him out to the car. As he opened the door he shouted, “There’s my wallet!”
I took a step forward and then I saw it too. It was on the floor in front of the back seat right in plain sight. He and the kids had searched both vehicles twice, most recently as last night. That wallet could not have been out in the open like that.
We looked at each other in disbelief. How did it get there? What if he hadn’t decided to take my car instead of his today?
Cathy Pansa
Shorewood, Illinois