Total Confidence in God eliminates this lady’s fear of cancer

I sat at the nurse’s station reviewing my first patient of the day. I flipped through her chart as the techs prepared her for the procedure. Nothing special. She was a 56 year old lady from Bradenton, Florida, who had a coin size mass seen in one of her lungs on a routine chest x-ray. Using computed tomography I had been requested by her referring physician to get a piece of tissue from the nodule to be examined under a microscope, by the pathologist to determine histologically if the growth was benign or malignant. Having reviewed her history and her routine chest films, I walked into the procedure room to introduce myself, explain the procedure and answer any questions she might have. I found a pleasant 56 year old female, who seemed quite calm and answered all my questions with a calmness not ordinarily seen in these situations. Most people have a deadly fear of cancer and death and both anxiety and barely suppressed fear are usually the norm.

I explained what I was about to do and that the tissue sample would confirm or exclude malignancy. I explained how I would numb the skin over her chest and then using CT imaging for placement, I would attempt to insert a cutting needle in the middle of the soft tissue mass in her lung and obtain a core of tissue for the pathologist to examine. She listened carefully as I went on to describe all the possible complications associated with the procedure. She smiled and nodded her assent, asked no questions and signed the consent form with the same degree of concern as if signing a letter to her best friend.

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

A true story as related by John T. Spencer MD,
a recently retired physician, after almost 40 years of practicing Medicine. 

 

It was like there was an orchestra conductor in the sky

In the first blog post of March 13,  I mentioned that I’d write two stories about real-life coincidences that indicate to me the love of Jesus in the days before my Mom's death, because someone was provided exactly what they needed in a surprise way.  This is the second of those stories.

It was on the day that, looking back, was the first day of my Mom’s one-week-long dying process.  Things started happening very quickly and very unexpectedly. People normally describe a day like that as a day when ‘All hell broke loose’.  But above it all, it became clear to me that also on that same day, ‘All heaven broke loose’.   

 
It was Monday, Feb. 27, 2012.  My Mom had revealed to us a week earlier, when she could no longer hide it, that she had developed breast cancer about nine months earlier, and wanted no doctor’s involvement.

I was at work. At a pre-agreed time (11:20am), I called my Mom to see if she was OK.  No answer.  She told me not to worry if that were to happen, since she may be in the bathroom, and to call back in an hour.  So I did.  No answer.  I started cancelling my afternoon appointments and called a third time to tell her on the answering machine I’d be there in 30 minutes. That 30 minute drive started out a mental maelstrom for me, imagining my mother crumpled at the bottom of her stairs, bleeding from a horrible fall, and other unpleasant possibilities.

I began to pray out loud to Jesus, saying, “Lord, help me be able to handle what I find.”...

 

 (Read the rest at Wtness.org)

My Mom died 10 days ago. Why do I love God more?

On March 3, my mother died.  It rocked me. This woman who raised me from an infant; who poured herself into the care and formation of her four children… was no longer on this world.  We each need a mother.  I no longer had mine.

For many days prior to her passing and many days after her passing, I found myself overwhelmed by the quickly rising waters of sadness.  On three occasions, I broke down while other people were present.  Once it was in the middle of church. (I think it embarrassed my wife, who simultaneously put her arm on  me to show her support). 

I could keep the sadness at bay a number of ways:  By working to increase her comfort in her final days; by working to arrange the funeral with my siblings immediately after she passed; by working on cleaning the decades of accumulated flotsam out of her house while all of us were still in town; by eating more; by sleeping when I couldn’t get mental relief; by trying to have some laughs with friends about nonsense.  But none of these controlled the sadness for long.  Before long it found a new way in.

Why in the middle of this sadness do I find I’m closer to God?  Isn’t my belief in God grounded in the idea that he will remove all sadness, and will replace it with a mindless sickeningly sweet joy?  No. I’ve gotten to know Him now for a few decades, and I know Him better with each passing year and with each passing difficulty and success...

(Read the rest at Wtness.org)

Woman inside collapsing 9/11 North Tower Survived

Josephine Harris was inside the North Tower of the World Trade Center at the moment it collapsed, and survived.  There was only one small pocket of Stairway B between the second and fourth floors of the building that did not get destroyed despite the fact that entire mass of the building above her just came rumbling down. 

Here's how it happened:  Josephine worked on the 73rd floor as a bookkeeper, and after the terrorist plane hit the North Tower, she started down the long stairwell, and had made it to the 15th floor and was exhausted. Above her, six firefighters from Ladder Company 6 had decided to leave the building as fast as possible and were quickly descending the same stairs.  They found her on the 15th floor and decided to slow down to her pace so that she could get some help making it the rest of the way.

Firefighter Bill Butler supported her weight, but Ms. Harris collapsed around the fourth floor and "was yelling at us to leave her," Chief John Jonas explained.   "We weren't going to leave her".  So they stayed with her.  A short while later, while they stayed put, the entire building collapsed above and below them, but they were saved.

Chief Jonas said, “You cannot say that something that happened to you is a miracle. But we had the courage to do what we did, and you can say that if she was not there for us to save her, we probably would not have made it.”  (They later gave her a t-shirt with the phrase "guardian angel")



Josephine Harris with Firefighter Bill Butler 



They survived this



Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said “On a day that will always be recalled for its inconceivable devastation and unimaginable loss, the story of Josephine and the firefighters of Ladder 6 was nothing short of miraculous. One hundred floors of a high-rise building came down on them, and, huddled together, they managed to survive.”

Can we know for sure that God played a hand in this unusual coincidence?  Impossible to know for sure.                   
                                          
See video of this story here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paffg3F83q4

The Cross found in the debris of the World Trade Center, 9/11

See a video discussing this unusual coincidence, and the reactions shown by the rescuers when they first saw it.  What it apparently communicated to them. It was exactly what they needed to feel at this time of horrible tragedy.  According to the speaker, the two girders were not constructed in this relative arrangement, but met by chance and were fused together into this perfect shape of a cross.  On the left arm of the cross hangs a large piece of melted metal sheathing.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2YGFCeRfL4.