The Miracle that Brought Miracles

This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.

~Proverbs 3:8

We were the couple living our dreams. My husband Bryan had a successful masonry contracting business and I worked with The Christian Broadcasting Network. We had a family, the home we always wanted, and life was great. We were so busy with our work that we took little time off to visit loved ones or really talk to each other like when we first married. But time has a way of eluding that thought as it races on. But then I began to notice a dark feeling I could not shake. I'd be at my desk and suddenly a sad feeling would wash over me, as if waiting for something awful to happen that we could not stop. I mentioned it to Bryan and he simply said, "Pray about it."

And so I did. I didn't really think about it again until we sat in the doctor's office a few days later. Bryan had been having back pain and the doctor ordered a routine MRI, predicting he'd probably need surgery. After reading the results the doctor said, "Well you won't need surgery." He paused with a grim look. "You have inoperable cancer in three places -- on your sternum, backbone and pelvis."

My Running Partner

In May of 1988, I started a new job and met Paul. He found many pretenses to come to my office, usually bringing an entertaining story or joke along with the ostensible reason for his visit. Six weeks later, at a Friday night gathering at a local pub, he finagled a seat across from me. In case I didn't already understand, he made his romantic interest perfectly clear. I enjoyed no similar interest in him, but something kept me from rejecting him completely. I settled on the old line, "Let's just be friends."

During that same summer, another co-worker walked into my office with an application for a road race. He knew I ran but had never entered a race. Apparently he thought I should. I didn't consider myself an athlete, but the application refused to disappear. It lay there -- taunting me. Three days later, I mailed it in.