I’ve been working on my relationship with God. Started going to church again on a regular basis. I began taking the grandkids and my young daughter as well.
There is something about walking through the lobby of a church and being greeted with smiles and nods that is refreshing. Sometimes when I’m there I think “Wow, everyone here is nice and welcoming.” Yeah, I know. A “duh” moment. Where else but church would you expect that to be true?
Truth be known, it is refreshing. I, personally, have been dealing with a person who has problems that cause him to steal and lie and generally waste his life. It is exhausting to face that person every day. It wears on my mood, at one point it even made me into an angry woman. I was resentful and nothing seemed normal anymore.
Addiction does terrible things to a person. It’s very cliché to hear “Just say no”. It was a national campaign at one time in an attempt to keep kids off drugs by preventing them from even starting.
I think drugs and alcohol sneak up on a person and once they have him/her, the struggle begins. The person using may not be struggling, but everyone around him/her is. Their judgment is off, you can’t trust them. Their drug demands their attention or it will hurt them, physically and mentally.
So we on the outside find ourselves scratching our heads and not knowing what to do.
I’ve been praying a lot for the person in my life who had the addiction. I asked God to reveal Himself to this person, hoping if God can get his attention, he will change and get better.
So, an older woman we all know had a heart attack a week ago. She was at Sacred Heart Hospital, in surgery. Something miraculous happened.
I got my information secondhand, from the addicted person in my life.
He called me to tell me the story. This lady who had the heart attack was in surgery. She had a blockage. The surgeon made an incision in her arm, into the artery to do the procedure, and the blood clot in this woman’s body, right in front of the doctor, passed into her heart, back out, through her body and flew out of the artery that was cut. It flew across the room. Projectile.
The doctor told her family it had to be God because he had never, ever seen anything like that before and never heard of it.
The lady is fine and home, recovering.
I told the addicted person I’d been praying for him and maybe this was God’s way of letting him know He is there.
I was told, “I know He’s there.” And I told him it might be a good time to ask God for help in his life.
He told me, “I think I’ll give him a rest first, after this,” referring to the heart attack healing.
I laughed and told him, “He’s been waiting to hear from you. He can handle it.”
I hate to say it, but I often wait until I have no other answers, THEN I ask God for help. He really wants to hear from me first, not last.
I am nothing without HIM. People can argue and say there is no God. But I know there is and that my life is much better when I’m in sync with Him.
There have been two other healings of people in my life. Our co-worker who was hospitalized for three months is off the respirator, dialysis, and is out of the hospital after we were told she’d never leave. The other is my aunt whose body was filled with cancerous tumors a few weeks ago, but after prayer, they were all gone.
Church is not for everyone. But God is.
Pray from where you sit, even if it is to just say, “Help.”
He’s listening.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Woman on the Edge: Just ask