Christmas Headwinds

I had a break in my residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC and I was looking forward to spending Christmas with my family in Phoenix.

When I arrived at the airport, I discovered that my flight had been canceled because of weather. Like hundreds of other disappointed travelers I stood in line to get help getting out of Washington.

My hope faded when the airline attendant behind the counter looked like a teen ager filling in during his holiday break. When I explained my situation, he quickly suggested an alternate route. He told me a flight was leaving for Pittsburgh and from there I could take a flight to LA.

I said something about my destination being Phoenix. He explained that the LA flight would have to refuel in Phoenix due to headwinds and I could get off there.

In Pittsburgh I told the flight attendant my situation and she said she would inform the crew. While we were waiting to take off the pilot came on the PA, "would the guy who thinks he is going to Phoenix please come forward."All eyes were on me as I walked forward. Everybody had a good laugh at my expense.

The crew was adamant. They were not stopping in Phoenix but I could go to LA and then catch  a flight back to Phoenix. I agreed to do this and returned to my seat in the main cabin.

Everyone settled down for a quiet flight. Well into the night, the captain came on the PA with an apology for disturbing us. He announced he had good news for one passenger and bad news for everybody else. He explained fuel was low because of headwinds so we were stopping in Phoenix.

I wanted to gloat but held it to a smug grin.

We landed in Phoenix and parked on the tarmac. The rear staircase was lowered and I was taken to the terminal in a service truck.

I never found a logical explanation for how the young counter worker in Washington knew the plane would have to refuel in Phoenix when the flight crew was so certain it would not.

That leaves the illogical, the mysterious, after all it was Christmas.

Was he an angel? I guess I'll never know.

Gerald Knighton

Phoenix, AZ

Lori talks with God

Lori's  first serious dating with a man lasted six and a half years. He proposed, she accepted and a wedding date was set. He cheated on her and that's when Lori moved from Wisconsin to Florida on what was supposed to be her wedding day.

Her second relationship with a man was more of a friendship but it ended tragically when he died of a diabetes complication.

Years passed as Lori  focused on a career as a certified hand therapist with a leading orthopedic practice. One day driving to work there was a particular beautiful sunrise. She was praising the Lord for this special moment and then audibly talked to God in her car.

Lori says her end of the conversation went something like this: "God it would be nice if you could provide me a husband who knows you, is six foot, about 200 pounds, has blue eyes and would be my protector, provider and make me his priority."  She doesn't know why but she added, "and it is ok Lord if he doesn't pickup after himself."

A few weeks later Lori met  Ryan  while working out in the gym.  He is a Godly man, 6'5", weighing 250 pounds and has blue eyes. After weeks of casual conversations at the gym he asks her out.

They were married  two and a half  years later and as the saying goes the rest is history. Oh yes, he doesn't pickup after himself. (Be careful what you ask for in prayer)

 "He takes after his dad," Lori says, "but he is getting better, although I still keep the door to his office closed when we expect company."

Lori and Ryan happily celebrated their tenth anniversary in 2015 each surprising the other with a ring purchased from the same jeweler.

Lori  Frailing                                                                                                                              

 Lakewood Ranch, Fl.

John's Miracle Recovery

John's Miracle Recovery

 

In mid July 2009 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, in my case 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. I had 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  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. No more struggles. There would be peace. My spirit was ready to totally give up.

 

Then a hand gripped my shoulder. I “sprung back.”

 

I heard, “Can I help you?”

After getting help I found out 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  Montana who asked that the Chaplain 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 dramatic progress physically.

 

 Within two weeks I was completely off the ventilator and oxygen. I still could not move a muscle but my physical therapist thought my muscles were ‘firing’ and I believed him. He massaged my muscles and moved my limbs.

 

I was relocated from Intensive Care to the sixth floor of the hospital where they put patients who are recovering.  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.

 

The 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, care givers and that Chaplain to help me.

 

John Woods

Kauai, HI

God's Sense of Humor

A pastor was telling me that he and his wife were dinning out with her best friend and her atheist husband who was also a cynic. The waiter came to their table and asked for out drink order.

Three of us ordered ice tea and the skeptic orders a class of the house wine. When the waiter leaves the man says, “Reverend too bad Jesus isn’t here, he could turn my cheap glass of wine into the best vino.The pastor says to himself, I’m not going there. He ignores the comment and the ladies engage in a conversation while atheist smirks.

The waiter returns with the beverages and says to the man, “ I’m sorry sir but we are out of our house wine. My manager apologizes and said to give you a glass of our best wine with his compliments.”

“Answer a fool as his folly deserves, that he isn’t wise in his own eyes.” Proverbs 26:5

A Mother's Prayer

My daughter Sandy was on her way back to college after a weekend home. About 45 minutes since she left our home, I was on the phone talking to a friend. I suddenly felt a strong prompting to pray for my daughter's safety.

"Gotta go! Gotta go! "I told my friend, "Call you later," I said as a hung up.

I dropped to my knees and asked God to protect her and keep her safe. I prayed for a hedge of protection around her. I added, "God I don't what is happening, or about to happen, but you do. Protect her please."

After Sandy arrived at Taylor University she called me. "Mom, we had a huge tire blowout on I-94,(the busy interstate between Detroit and Chicago). "We were all over the highway in heavy traffic. I didn't think we were going to make it.

I asked her when that happened and It was when God prompted me to pray for her safety.

God is so faithful. I thanked the Lord and praised him for keeping my daughter and friend safe.

Erika Lewis                                                                                                                                 

 Detroit, MI

Chance Meetings?

 The beginning of the year is a good time to look ahead and to make some changes. In my case I decided that twelve years working in the same piano store in Poughkeepsie, New York was long enough.

 

 I had gone about as far as I could go working in this family-owned store. Besides, twelve years of upstate New York winters was enough. It was time to move to Florida. When I informed Jon Vincitore, the owner of the store, he urged me to stay one more year. I agreed to stay until the fall.

 

In the spring I attended a national conference and met the owners of a piano store in Sarasota, Florida. They invited me down to Florida for an interview. I told a regular customer and former employee of the Poughkeepsie store, John DelVecchio, that I was going to Sarasota.

 

“Maybe you’ll bump into my cousin, Ray White. He can play the drum, guitar and he can sing. You’ll like him. He is doing construction right now somewhere in the Sarasota/Bradenton/Venice area.”

 

“Do you have a number I can call or an address?”   He had neither.

 

In July I flew to Sarasota for my interview with the principles of O’Lynn Callahan Piano and Organ at the Corner of Bee Ridge and Tamiami Trail. The interview went well and I followed them to look at their new store in Venice, a twenty minute drive south. Before the morning was over we agreed I would manage their Venice store in the fall.

 

On the way back up Route 41 I was driving through Osprey when I saw a sign “Condo for Rent.” I stopped and within an hour I had made a deposit on it. I now had a job and a place to stay when I returned. I had accomplished in a half day what I thought would take me several days. Now it was time to look around.

 

I drove into Sarasota Square Mall. Walking through that mall I ran across a piano/organ store with several young men taking turns playing an organ set up in front of the store. As I lingered to watch a little guy walked up to me and asked, “Can I help you?”

 

“Oh,” I said, “ I’m just looking around. I just flew down from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. for an interview,”

 

“Poughkeepsie Huh?   Do you happen to know John DelVecchio?” he asked.

 

“RAY?  RAY WHITE?”

 

 I don’t know who was more surprised, Ray. or me.  Turns out he had left construction recently and that this was his second day at this store. While neither of us was particularly religious at that point we both agreed our meeting this way, “Must be a God thing.” I still get goose bumps up and down my arms when I recall that moment.

 

Before moving to Florida I set out to say goodbye to family and special friends living in New York and New England. However, saying goodbye to Uncle Dennis was going to be a challenge. No one knew exactly where he was living, somewhere in the Berkshires was what I was told.

 

One day while driving the Mass Pike to return to Poughkeepsie I intentionally pulled off at the Lee/ Barrington exit for the Berkshires to see if I could find a phone book and locate Uncle Dennis. Besides I was hungry and wanted something to eat. Coming off the exit there is a town to the left and one to the right. It didn’t seem to matter which way I went but something made me feel I should go right. I drove passed several fast food drive-ins that I normally would have driven into and continued down main street to the end of the business district. There at the end was a diner with a single parking space open right in front.

 

 

As I walked up the steps to the entrance I saw there was one man sitting at the counter. The back of his head looked familiar. Could it be? It was him! I slipped in and sat beside the man at the counter and said casually, “Hello Dennis.”

 

 He told me he lived in the town to the left of the exit but he often came to this diner. He especially liked the pies here. If I had tried to look him up in the phonebook I would not have found him. He didn’t have a phone.  I had a nice visit with Dennis that day and actually returned two weeks later to his home where I presented him with a guitar that I knew he wanted.

 

Ray White and I became partners in a band and played together for several years in Florida. We also both became Christians and Ray is now a worship pastor at a church and goes on frequent missions trips to Africa.   I play regularly at worship services for a church and I have also started my own company Worship Media Solutions helping churches with their sound and video needs.

 

As busy as I am, I try to stay attentive to any unexplained prodding or feelings. For example, the other day I left my house to get a haircut when I felt a strong urge to stop at the Living Word Book Store and see Jesse Ramos. So I drove out of my way to the bookstore. In the parking lot I passed a woman walking to her car. I felt I should speak to her but I didn’t know what to say and being basically shy I walked by as she stopped and opened the trunk of a car. As I walked into the store there was Jesse at the counter holding my calling card in his hand and waving his arm at me.

 

“Hey Rick, what timing. There was a gal in here whose church needs your services. She just left.”

 

“She’s there putting something in her trunk,” I said.

 

He looked out the store window, “Yeah that’s her how did you know?”

 

How did I know? How do I explain my bumping into Ray White out of the thousands of people who live and work in Sarasota County? What directed me to that diner in the Berkshires that afternoon I found Uncle Dennis? Why did needing to see Jesse Ramos come to my mind when I started off for a haircut?

 

Were these all chance meetings? I don’t think so, not for a minute.

 

Rick Furrow

Formerly Poughkeepsie,NY &Sarasota Fl.

now Phoenix,AZ

Paul and "Bob"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love and Grace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I was going through a really difficult time. I was recovering from a divorce, my daughter was living away from home at school and the bank I was working for was going under due to big mistakes in real estate lending.

 

Then the unthinkable happened. My male friend committed suicide. I found his body slumped over in his garage still in his car. He was a colleague at the bank and I cared for him deeply. I never felt more alone.

 

The following evening a dear friend from the bank, Noreen, came to my apartment with her husband David.  They gathered up a few of my things, literally carried me to their car and drove me to their home.

 

Noreen made a wonderful bed for me out of the couches in her living room, make a fire in the fireplace and brought me all her frilly hankies. She also made a pot of my favorite tea.

 

While Noreen and I talked about our deceased friend and some of the times we spent together, her son Paul, who was probably five or six at the time, kept coming in and out of the room. Each trip he brought a handful of toys or stuffed animals, which he lined up next to me on the couch. The more I thanked him the more things he brought me. Eventually the couch filled. In his little boy way he was bringing everything he had to comfort his mother’s friend. Lastly he brought in his most precious possession-his baby blanket.

 

I’m a major baby blanket person. When I was a child I had

a crib-sized blanket that was very much a part of my life until I was fourteen. I would hold it to my nose; suck my thumb, especially in turbulent times. That blanket brought me comfort. It had been loved to death and by the time I was 14 it had been reduced to the size of a silver dollar.

 

I understand all things baby blanket. Those of us who were baby blanket people have a way of finding each other. We have a language that only we understand. So little Paul and I immediately had this bond and he showed me his baby blanket that looked like a large blob of shredded rags tied together in large knots.

 

He called his baby blanket, “Bob.” We agreed that the  worse thing that can happen is when well meaning moms wash our baby blankets. It takes weeks to get them back in shape and to properly smell again. After a while, Paul and “Bob” went off to bed.

 

When the house was quiet I began reflecting and I began to cry and even sob. My shaking with grief was interrupted by the sound of shuffling little feet. It was Paul walking towards me carrying “Bob.” Without saying a word, he gently laid “Bob” in my arms, turned and left the room, closing the French doors behind him.

 

 At that moment, I knew that God was using this child to comfort me in my time of pain and sorrow.

To this day, I am blown away by that precious little one obeying the prodding of the Lord and lending me his most cherished possession that evening. God manifested his love that night to me.

 

 Joy Holloway

      West Hartford, CT