...found on my sitemeter pages. I have no idea why it was there. It's a link to a
2003 post by Sparki, in which she attributes her very existence to divine intervention, and has good cause for doing so. But it's also a sad story, because of the ingratitude of two of its witnesses, and because at the end we find a wish for Terri Schiavo that didn't come true.
7 comments:
That's an amazing story, perhaps all the more believable because the parents themselves don't seem to have made too much of it. That is, they seem to have thought of it fairly casually and are therefore the less likely to be exaggerating.
I liked the post down a ways on her main page about trying to find words little kids can say for their hinder end during potty training. Their older child suggested "coda" from his music class: "It's a little extra bit at the end."
What got me was that the mother (whose Catholic conscience would not let her submit to abortion) participated in the novena, apparently got her wish granted, then began gradually to distance herself from the Church, leading to a final abandonment (well, maybe not final). I find that amazing.
But I knew a girl like that once. My wife knew her better since they were members of a sodality (with which the girl didn't always fit in too well because of her attitude toward certain teachings - you can guess which ones, the usual stuff). She was very young, around 22, with a pious mother and a scientific heart surgeon father. As a teenager she'd been stricken with some awful skin disease (I'm sorry I can't remember what it was) that was diagnosed as fatal. It marred her appearance terribly (she was quite pretty when I knew her). She was treated by traditional means until the situation became desperate, at which the mother somehow got hold of a bottle of water from the shrine at Lourdes. They had her drink it or sprinkled it on her and said prayers, of course, and within about a week she was completely cured. The mother thought it a miracle. The father insisted that it was of natural cause. Remissions happen. The girl, the direct beneficiary, sided with the father (Daddy's girl, I guess). I put stock in the story because my wife also got it from the mother. But the girl adamantly insisted to her sodality mates that her father was right. You'd think it would at least leave her with some doubt. It made me wonder if sometimes we're afraid of being too much in God's debt.
"It made me wonder if sometimes we're afraid of being too much in God's debt."
Absolutely. If I have to acknowledge that God has a hand in my life -- and especially for something no one else could do anything about! -- then I am forced to see my obligation to Him, my responsibility to attend to His Word and His will. And that is something that most of us self-centered control freaks have a bit of a problem with. Or I do, anyway.
Addendum -- something very small and personal has been happening in my own life the past few weeks that has brought this home to me in a new, or at least deeper and more real -- way, and I am once again discovering the peace and joy that come with letting God be God. Amazing how easy it is to forget this and fail to live by it in any consistent way. Thank God for His mercy, because I am much in need of it!
You've certainly got my curiosity aroused. Hope you get that mercy.
self-centered control freaks
Have you been talking to someone who knows me?
The girl in your story, Bill, sounds like she should at least have said, "It may have been coincidence, but it sure was weird." In other words, less overwhelmingly confident.
You'd think.
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