Prodigal:  Me and my friend would like a story for today.

Me:  I got the perfect one for today.

 

This from the book  The Power of Love and sent in by Lois Olson

 

It was September, 1975, and the nights were already getting cold in the isolated valley of the North Cascade Mountains in Washington State where we lived.  My husband Tom taught school in the little village of Stehekin, accessible to the outside world only by a four-hour ferryboat ride across Lake Chelan or a half-hour flight in a pontoon plane when the weather permits planes to fly.   No roads over the rugged mountains.  No telephones.  Nothing.

Tom taught in a one-room schoolhouse built of logs where our eight-year old Sally was the only third-grader in a total of 12 pupils.  Having had some teaching experience back in Ohio, I often helped Tom around the school, and on this day I had brought along our four-year old, Amy.

The older kids were playing baseball.  Amy got excited and suddenly ran in front of the batter just as he swung.  The bat struck her on the right side of the head.  Numb with fright, I examined her.  Blood was dripping from her ear.

As upset and concerned as two parents could be, Tom and I rushed Amy in our old car to a retired physician, the only doctor in the village, who cleaned and dressed the wound.  “She should be all right,” he said.  I hoped with all my heart that this was true, because we had nowhere else to turn.

Tom went back to school, and the doctor’s wife drove Amy and me back to our home, deep in the woods, five miles from the village.  “Are you sure it’s all right for me to leave you here?”  she asked.

“I think so,”  I said.  Amy appeared alert, her head was bandaged, and there seemed no reason for the doctor’s wife to stay.  But soon after she left, when I tried to change Amy’s bloody shirt, she could not move her arms up to help.

I was terrified.  I knew that something was desperately wrong with my child.  I had no telephone, no car.  Even at the village there was no hospital, no medical facilities.  It would be hours before Tom came home.

Holding Amy in my arms, I began to pray.  I prayed because there was no other source of help or strength.  I had always believed in God, but I was not certain of the extent to which He would go to help me.  I had been told about His glory and power, but had not really felt them touch my life since my childhood, when I had had a siege with polio and recovered.  Now I called on Him with every ounce of strength in me.

I knew that I had to get help for Amy somehow.  So I began walking down the road.  The boat landing was five miles away, and Amy weighed 40 pounds.  My back had been damaged by the polio, and I didn’t know how far I could go.  As I walked, I kept praying.

Amy lay limp in my arms.  Suddenly she looked up and said, in a strange, slurred voice, “Wha a we oooing, Mama?”  Amy had always expressed herself clearly for a four-year old.  Now her speech was so blurred that I could hardly understand her.  I had worked with retarded children and I knew this might be a sign of brain damage.  I tried to walk faster.  I even tried to run, but my strength was ebbing.  “God, please!”  I cried over the pounding of my heart.

Exactly at that moment a car turned onto the road from a side road up ahead.  But it was heading away from us, toward the village.  I screamed, “Help! Help!” as loud as I could.  But the car kept going and disappeared around a curve.

I was crying now, tears of hopelessness and despair.   Then I heard the car stop.  I began running and shouting again.  I heard the car start up again; it then appeared around the curve, backing up.

It was my friend and distant neighbor, Rhoda Fellows.  “Lois!  What’s happened?”  she gasped.

“I’ve got to get Amy to a doctor.”  I cried.  As we flew along the twisty road I told Rhoda what had happened.  “It’s strange,” she said.  “I wasn’t sure I heard a call, and I almost never go into the village at this time.”  She drove us to the school because I knew Tom would want to be with us, and I needed him.  Then she sped off to the boat landing to radio for a plane to come quickly.

As she left, another car pulled into the schoolyard.  It was the ride home for the up-valley children.  Somehow the man had come early, and was able to take charge of the other students so Tom could leave.

As we drove to the landing–Tom and our daughter Sally and I–Amy started trembling.  Convulsive jerks contorted her left side and her tongue clacked against her mouth.  I fought down panic as I realized that she was having a brain seizure.  My only shred of hope lay in the fact that she was still conscious.

Tom and Sally and I began praying:  “Our Father, Who art in Heaven…”  As we prayed, I looked at Amy, lying n my lap–and I saw that she was praying, too–mouthing the words along with us in jerks and slurs and sounds.

“….Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven….”  Now Amy’s lips barely moved, but I knew that her spirit was calling to God.  I remembered how we had taught her the Lord’s Prayer when she could barely talk, remembered how she could be heard by a merciful God and answered, it was Amy’s.  I had to fight back tears as I looked at her.  Then, suddenly, Amy lapsed into unconsciousness and slumped limply in my arms.

At this moment my panic should have been complete, but somehow in that moment of prayer, my daughter’s prayer, my own faith in God had been heightened and strengthened as never before in  my life.  My heart was pounding, but deep inside there was a feeling of calm that can only come from God.

When we arrived at the landing, a gale was blowing.  Tom raced off to the radio to find out if the plane was coming and was told it was doubtful, the weather was so bad.  We also found that the daily ferry had been delayed; it should have left long ago.

“There’s a doctor on the ferry,”  someone said.  “He stayed at the lodge last night.”

“Oh, where is he?  Where is he?”  I begged.  The gusts of wind were so strong I had to brace myself against them.

Tom came running up from the landing and took Amy from my sagging arms.  “Ernie’s going to try to make it, ” he said.  Ernie was the airplane pilot, a brave and capable flier.

“There’s a doctor on the ferry,”  I told Tom.  “Let’s try to find him.”

Tom ran with Amy toward the boat and was met at the gangplank by a bearded, gray-haired man.  We placed Amy on the back seat of a station wagon and the doctor climbed in and examined her.  She was still unconscious and her breathing was now more labored and very rapid.  The doctor turned to Tom.  “I’ll be right back,” he said.  He hurried back on the ferry and returned with another man.

“This is Dr. Dwiggens,” he said.  “We are colleagues at Stanford Medical Center, and I didn’t know he was here until we met on the ferry a few months ago.  He’s just the man you need.”

I didn’t understand why he was, but in the half hour I found out. Dr. Dwiggens was a respiratory specialist who knew exactly what to do for Amy, and he worked frantically to keep her breathing.

I leaned over the seat and talked to Amy, hoping she could hear me.  Tom put his arm around her and stroked her pale cheek, tears streaming down his face.  The people from the village and the ferry passengers gathered around in uneasy little groups, many of them praying.

For half an hour we waited fro the small seaplane, bucking its way against the wind to reach us.  The ferry stayed at the landing, waiting to see if Ernie could make it.  At least we heard the sound of the plane as it broke through the scudding clouds and swooped low over the choppy lake.  We held our breaths as the crest of the waves tore at the pontoons.  The plane bounced and tossed, but stayed upright and afloat.  Ernie had made it!  One of the old-timers shook his head.  “Only a pilot with thirty years of experience could have done that,” he said.

Suddenly Amy regained consciousness and began to cry.  It was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard!  All around me I could hear people saying, “Thank God.”

Dr. Dwiggens, Amy, Tom and I squeezed into the little plane.  After a perilous flight in high winds and a 35-mile ambulance ride to the Wenatchee Hospital, Amy underwent surgery.  She had suffered a deep skull fracture.  Five bone splinters were removed from her skull, but none had penetrated the delicate membrane protecting her brain.

Today, Amy has full use of all her limbs and faculties, and speaks as clearly as she did before the accident.

No one will ever be able to tell me that those things could have taken place without God’s special intervention and guidance.  He gave our little girl back to us.  And we’ll praise Him for it every day of our lives.

 

He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

1 John 5:12

 

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org