Post by MIRIAM JACOB on Jul 15, 2013 23:35:21 GMT -5
Miracle in the Mirror
Nita Edwards and Mark Buntain
WITH
Ron Hembree and Doug Brendel
CONTENTS
11 Deathwatch
12 I'll Celebrate
13 Exit
14 "Flush that Stuff"
15 Voice in an Empty Room
________________________________
11
DEATHWATCH
Her long, jet-blackhair, once a thing of beauty, had become a matted mess. It had been months since she was able to brush it herself, and weeks since she had been able to feel the brush against her scalp when anyone else brushed it for her. She could not even hold up her own head as the brush was applied.
It was a dying moment for Nita as she called for a hairdresser to cut her hair short. She had loved wearing it past her shoulders - now it had become just one more victim of the paralysis. With every snip of the scissors, Nita hurt again. As the disease progressed even the lovely little niceties of life were being cut away.
If anyone could lift her spirits on such dark days, it was Michaele, Colton's youngest son. He was Nita's favourite. The most affectionate of the bunch, he was fond of sitting on her bed, fidgeting and pinching and tickling her, delightedly exploring her areas of numbness. Nita would have been horrified if it had been anyone else, but Michaele was too sweet to be anything but engaging.
Tragically, it was Michaele who discovered that Nita had lost all feeling in her face. Nita had known it for some time - when the nurses washed her she felt nothing - and she was especially discouraged by this, for it left her practically a hunk of lifeless leather, with no sense of touch anywhere on her body. She was so deflated by the discovery that she had not even reported this final lapse to the doctors.
Her vocal cords too fell into disrepair, and her voice disintegrated into a whisper. In a matter of days it vanished altogether. Colton resolutely learned to read her lips, and he served as her interpreter when others were in the room. Nita's Buddhist attendant had to learn lipreading also. Yet every turn for the worse seemed to strengthen the bond of love between the preacher and the patient.
It became evident that Nita was dying -evident to everyone, including Nita. She could see, as her mother and others kissed her good-bye at the end of each visit, that they were not sure they would ever again see her alive. Mrs. Edwards was asking more frequently and more frantically these days if there was anyone Nita wanted to see - her brother Ted perhaps? Nita had always said no, don't make Ted fly in all the way from England. But now she finally relented. She wanted to see him at least once more.
The Singapore relatives planned to make their pilgrimage at Christmas time, and Nita's uncle from Zambia was coming in then too. Mrs. Edwards hoped secretly they would not be too late.
Heart problems began as the paralysis progressed. Each attack knocked Nita unconscious, and as she came to she could hear "Hail Mary's" and groanings and smell the antiseptic odours and see the masks and caps and ugly green gowns all shuffling about. One day she woke groggily in the intensive care observation cell, completely alone, surrounded by walls of shiny machines - one monitoring her pulse, another her blood pressure, another her lung capacity. There was a single metal door with a tiny window. In it she saw an open eye, someone whose job it was to see if she had died yet.
Nita pressed her eyes shut. It was like a gruesome movie, "The Deathwatch," and she was its star.
She had trusted the doctors. They had failed. She had prayed for God to heal her. He had not. In her secret moments, she had even prayed to die. That didn't work either. She had kept up a cool facade, but all the while, inside, her heart was breaking.
"Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver," she read in Isaiah 48:10. "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."
But why? What did God want of her? What was He doing with her life?
The physical problems accumulated, the emotional struggles multiplied, and finally the spiritual question consumed her. One day, alone with Colton, the wall began to crack, and Nita let herself weep openly. It was the first time.
Colton ached for her, and repeated words of Scripture, and prayed with her, as he had done so often.
"Oh, Colton," Nita mouthed, "why don't you just stop praying for me?"
"No," he replied, adamant. "I'm not going to let go until God tells you what He intends to do with your life."
A subtle change occurred in Nita that day. Her prayer life experienced a fundamental change.
"I'm not asking for healing any more," she told the Lord each day. "I'm not asking to be taken home to heaven. Just tell me what you created me for, and do anything you like with me."
She doggedly repeated the prayer, day after day, night after night.
"If your plan is to let me die, glory to God," she often added, her fear of death completely gone.
"If your plan is to let me lie here like a vegetable for fifty years, glory to God. I don't like it, but I'll live for you right in this bed. Just tell me what you want me to do, why you created me, what purpose you intended when you formed me in the womb. What is your plan for me?"
Almost by the hour, Nita picked up spiritual momentum, even as she physically wasted away. She had renewed her childhood covenant with the Lord - she would give her last drop of blood, her last earthly breath, to her Heavenly Father.
When she felt herself doubting that God would ever answer her, she repeated the last verse of Isaiah 40 as a counter-argument:
"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."
And for Nita, that promise - mounting up, running, and walking - made it worth the wait, even if it would only be a figure of speech.
It was a strange change, after so many months of demanding a miracle of healing. Colton and Suzanne, her mother, and hundreds of Christians all over the world, were demanding her healing, and in the swirling midst of all this, she was asking only for a word not action.
And daily, Nita's spiritual pipeline was being cleared. The earthly longings she had felt for so long were being swept away. The obsessions of her teen years, the selfindulgent prayers, the earmarks of immaturity began to be dissolved within her by a divine touch. Every day, she could sense in her spirit that her spiritual pipeline was coming a little closer to a total cleansing - a little closer to the day when it could freely transport God's answer to her heart.
The challenges continued, however, on every level - physical, emotional, spiritual. As Nita read II Corinthians 4:8-10, she saw herself in the words:
"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
"Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus."
The advance of death indeed appeared to continue in Nita's body. Her eye muscles begun to be affected by the disease, and double vision soon made it hard for her to keep her eyes open when the room filled with visitors. The tear ducts failed, and the corners of her eyes leaked salty tears continuously, stinging her eyelids. She was embarrassed. Her visitors were bound to see her tears and sympathize more profusely than ever.
With her vocal cords dead, she could no longer create the lightweight atmosphere that she had always worked for -cracking jokes and teasing her visitors, to make them laugh and feel at ease. The constant discharge from her eyes made her nervous as well. She knew her face was wet, but she couldn't feel the tears.
And now her mirror was worthless. She could no longer see as far as the parking lot. Even the ceiling slats and bolts were beyond her visual reach. To read the Bible she had to have the page held an inch from her eyeballs. The strain was crushing.
Her eyes would do her one final disservice. She had not seen herself in a mirror for many weeks. One day, as she was being unloaded off the cart, she caught a glimpse of herself. A glimpse was all she needed. The picture instantly locked into her memory. She was sickened. She knew she had been pretty -not gorgeous - but she had been satisfied. The girl in the mirror was a wench. Her hair was cut short around her puffy face, badly bloated by massive doses of cortisone. Under her eyes hung great, sunken, dark bags. From her neck down, her skeleton was evident. Her athletic muscle tone had given way to a distended abdomen after months of artificial digestives and a liquid diet. Her hands were all knuckles, her fingers so grossly deformed that they looked like bird claws.
It was this awful creature that Sandy Koelmeyer found in Ward 13.
12
I'LL CELEBRATE
Sandy had grown up with Nita. They were best friends in the classic sense of the term. They went to school and church together, played tennis and hockey together. If Nita was not around the house you could be sure she was at the Koelmeyers' or off somewhere else with Sandy.
The girls had sometimes teased each other about dying.
"You jolly well better come to my funeral sad," Nita insisted.
"Oh rubbish!" Sandy always retorted. "I'll celebrate! I'll wear a red dress and say, Thank God I got rid of the pest!"
Now Sandy lived with her husband in Australia. One of their friends had called her there and told her the medical verdict: Nita was going to die.
"If you want to see her, you'd better come now."
The family decided a surprise of this magnitude might be hard on Nita's weakening heart, but Sandy's brother-in-law Ashley, who had grown close to Nita since her return to Sri Lanka, decided to have a little fun with her.
"Santa's bringing you an early Christmas present," Ashley suggested slyly.
Nita smiled warmly, unable to talk but enjoying the game already.
"And it's a big present. It's five feet tall," he continued. Nita grinned but couldn't guess.
"Sandy's coming."
Nita's jaw dropped and her eyes rolled around in silent delight. This would be great!
The day came in early December. When Sandy arrived, all the family and friends quickly left the room so the two girls could enjoy their reunion alone.
Sandy came into the room and then paused. They had warned her how bad it was, but she hadn't been able to picture this. She walked close to the bedside and just stood there, frozen.
Neither girl had ever been the type to cry, but they cried together. Sandy couldn't find any words. Nita felt desperate. She couldn't reach out as she normally would, couldn't embrace Sandy as she longed to do. After a short while Sandy sat on her bed and leaned over her friend. In the old days they would have kissed each other, but Nita had so many tubes in the way.
They wept for a long time. When Sandy could finally talk, it was hard. Nita agonized; she wanted desperately to talk with her, to share things with Sandy that she could never share with anyone else. She strained to squeeze her voice out of her throat, but it was hopeless. Sandy had to read her lips; but she wasn't used to it.
Nita grew fatigued. The reunion had to end.
But Nita was eager to see her again, and Mrs. Edwards got Sandy a visitor's pass so she could come and go freely. The next day was better, and the next. Sandy would stay into the New Year. For Sandy, the shock soon wore off. She kept tissues nearby and mopped Nita's face, and after a day or two they could finally relax with each other, almost like the old times. Nita knew she could complain and Sandy would understand. It was the finest therapy.
13
EXIT
When Sandy left one day Nita asked her attendant to help her read a few verses in the Bible.
The strangest thought came to Nita's mind one day as she read Isaiah 41:10:
"Fear thou not; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."
And as she read further, she was stopped in her tracks by Isaiah 42:6:
"I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles."
If He had promised to strengthen her, to hold her hand, then why not trust Him fully? - leave the hospital and get an apartment?
It was absurd - she was a total vegetable, physically - and yet as she thought about it, Nita felt a deep assurance that this truly was the leading of the Lord.
Besides, she was tired of being everybody's chunk of meat: the doctors would stand outside her door looking at the records and exclaiming their surprise that she was still alive, as if she couldn't hear them, and she didn't need that kind of carelessness any more.
Still, it took her a while to muster up the confidence to tell anyone about the idea. She knew there would be opposition. Her fears were soon realized, and her mother was, by turns, frantic and angry. She had spent thousands of dollars on the finest medical care available in the country, and now Nita was going to jeopardize her very life by moving out. The cousins, uncles and other relatives thought it was ridiculous. Perhaps Nita was losing her mind? Perhaps she was becoming suicidal? Some of them advised simply refusing her. What could she do about it, after all? If no one moved her out, she had no way of leaving.
Only Colton understood.
"I feel God would have me leave the hospital," Nita said to him through silent lips.
"I'll talk to the doctors," he said compassionately.
"Nita feels God is telling her to leave the hospital," Colton told them.
"Well, tell her God wants her to stay here," one of them suggested snidely.
"I can't tell her that," Colton replied. "But if staying is the best thing for her to do, I can tell her that."
"Tell her that, then. It's foolish for her to even think about getting more than a few yards away from the intensive care unit. She's in there every other day as it is."
Colton gently relayed the message. But Nita was prepared. She had not received an answer from God as to the question of her destiny, but she knew a move like this would still give Him all the options, and that was argument enough for her: "If God's plan calls for me to die, I can die in my own place just as well," she explained calmly to him. "There is nothing much to lose. Think of this as my last request. Let me go to spend time alone with the Lord, according to my convictions. And, if it is my destiny to live a long life as a cripple, I can do that elsewhere too."
Colton smiled as she approached the third option – his favourite: "And God can certainly heal me anywhere He wants."
She attached two conditions to the request: she wanted an apartment of her own, and she wanted no visitors other than her mother, Colton and Suzanne, and Sandy.
She couldn't think of going home to her own house; it would drain the life right out of her mother. She could move into a single flat with her private attendant and learn to cope.
And she had tired of the gawking. She had been examined thoroughly and constantly by doctors and nurses for about a year, and that was enough. Besides, she had become something of a Christian tourist attraction as people heard about her condition. Every few days another group passing through Colombo would stop by to see her, ostensibly to cheer her up and pray for her - and they inevitably stared. She had seen herself now, too, and she did not care to have even her relatives seeing any more of what she had become.
Mrs. Edwards stalled. She offered to send Nita to the United States for treatment. But word came back that there was no cure available there either; they could only keep her alive for four-hundred-and-fifty dollars a day, plus medication.
Colton assumed the yoke of the argument on Nita's behalf. He knew she could never argue her case successfully without a voice, virtually without a physical body. He negotiated gently, firmly, and wisely with the family. Tension filled the room, then evaporated, then returned, as the struggle stretched into days and weeks, to Christmas. But Nita's case was won.
Christmas was a minor tragedy in itself. Family and friends brought expensive gifts which Nita could not open. There was a lot of Christmas confectionery and cake, and pudding brought from England, which she could not taste. Her room was all decorated with festive Christmas trimmings which she could barely see, and several groups came by from churches to sing carols to her, but she was self-conscious and uncomfortable.
Nita's last night in the hospital, December 30, was like her funeral in advance. All the relatives and friends turned out to cry over her body. They knew they would never see her alive again. She was going into hiding to die.
There were other tensions too. Some of them thought Mrs. Edwards must have decided that Nita would not have any visitors. Others blamed Colton and Suzanne. There would be hard feelings in the family for some time to come. Loved ones and friends felt shunned and hurt. They could not understand that it was a spiritual thing, where God wanted Nita to rely totally on Him.
Nita thought of her old English literature studies at the university. She could still quote a snatch of Shakespeare:
"There is a tide in the affairs of men
When taken at full lead on
But if omitted all of life
Is left in the shallows."
The months she had wasted when she could have been studying now returned to haunt her. She had expected to leave the hospital under much different circumstances, returning to school for more fun and frolic. Instead, she had no hope of ever again leading a normal academic life, the kind of life she had taken so for granted.
Angry at herself, she resolved to find a way to achieve the education she had begun years ago. She would strap herself in a motorized wheelchair and learn to drive a special car -whatever it took - to make good those squandered opportunities.
As her anger subsided, though, she knew her tide had already gone out the final time. She had not taken it at full.
At the farewell gathering, the nurses and doctors were as red-eyed as the relatives. They had been even closer to Nita in the past months than her family had been. Nita knew what their grim faces were saying.
She was lifted onto a stretcher and lugged down the hallway. As she was carried out of the back door of the building, she thought how different it had been the day she first crossed that same threshold. It was backwards, this story of hers: she had walked in, now she was being carried out.
A Red Cross ambulance was waiting to bear her body to its new resting place. Nita could make out its design, and see that it was a hearse, but without the nice door. As they slid her in, she couldn't help but think, "This is how it will be when I'm dead."
It was an emotional little trip. Her mother and her attendant rode with her. She could tell that her mother was thinking of the last time she had ridden in an ambulance, with her father.
Nita could barely see the tops of the trees as the ambulance sped through Colombo's streets, and she knew this could be the last time she would see the lovely little island. Her vision had failed her, but some days were better than others. She was grateful that at least this was one of her better days.
Suzanne had gone ahead. The ambulance pulled into a pleasant little driveway in a lovely yard, and everyone got out to make arrangements for Nita to be brought in. She was alone in the back of the ambulance waiting like an excess piece of luggage forgotten in the trunk of the family car. The neighbourhood kids quickly gathered around to look through the windows. They had heard that their new neighbour was a paralysed girl. This crooked thing must be her.
14
"FLUSH THAT STUFF"
It was hard to manoeuvre the stretcher up the little stairway into the apartment, and Nita imagined how much simpler it was going to be when they moved her corpse back out.
Nita's mother with Colton and Suzanne made her comfortable and then, a little hesitantly, they all left. Nita was alone with her medical attendant, the Buddhist girl.
"Bring me all the medication I have," Nita said immediately, mouthing the words carefully.
The girl was puzzled, reluctant. Nita repeated herself.
She came back with an armload - all the medication Nita had been taking in the hospital. There were pain killers, sedatives, cortisone, Valiums, phenobarbitones - a massive amount of medicine.
"Empty them all down the toilet," Nita told her, "and flush them down."
The girl's eyes widened. She was astonished and afraid. Nita was her responsibility, hers alone. There were no more doctors to call, no bells to ring, no oxygen - nothing.
"I can't do that," she finally responded, still amazed at the order. She knew what Mrs. Edwards would say when she found out. "Mistress will get very upset with me."
As the girl watched her lips, Nita looked at her squarely. "Now I want you to know something. It's just you and me here, nobody else, and I am the boss. You follow my instructions and obey my orders. Now go flush that stuff."
If God were going to heal her, she did not want medication robbing His glory. If He were not, then why not get it over sooner?
"And furthermore, this is between you and me," she added emphatically. She knew her mother would panic; she was already unnerved about the whole move.
"You dare not discuss this matter with anyone."
Besides, someone was bound to think she was trying to commit suicide. The nurse nervously flushed everything.
Sometime after midnight on New Year's Eve, after the watchnight service at Colton's church, he and Suzanne came to Nita's apartment and gently woke her.
"Happy New Year," Suzanne whispered.
Nita smiled wryly. The new year held no real promise of happiness for her, and the greeting sounded hollow.
Colton served her communion. Then Suzanne spotted the last of Nita's Christmas gifts, still unopened, so she opened them for her with as much gusto as she could engender.
But Nita was sombre.
The deathwatch continued. Nita's brother Ted, nine years after leaving Sri Lanka, arrived on a flight from London, and was met at the Colombo airport by his mother and an uncle. He had always been the essence of calm and good sense, but as he passed through customs, Mrs. Edwards noticed his hands were trembling.
Nita awoke at nine o'clock that evening and focused on a nice-looking gentleman by her bed. Ted had been there for half an hour, weeping uncontrollably, clutching her deformed little hand, methodically prying open the crooked fingers, watching them curl up, and prying them open, again and again. As she awoke, he leaned over and kissed her. Nita couldn't help but recall the same brother at her father's funeral, so solemn and sedate, so in control.
She still had the first gift he ever brought her, when she was two - a little piggy whose ears she had promptly chewed up. She and Ted had been good friends. She was a tomboy, and Ted called her his little brother.
He had followed her progress from afar, keeping tabs on her schooling, her growing athletic prowess, her victories, her travels. He had watched from England with pride as she grew into a beautiful young woman. And now he was shattered, as he watched her suffer, listened to her coughing and wheezing. She was wasting away. He hurt for her, more than he had known he could ever hurt.
Life had changed abruptly with the move to the apartment. If Nita choked for air, if her heart stopped, in every emergency, prayer was the only remedy. It was administered in varying doses by Colton, Suzanne, their boys, Sandy, and Nita's mother.
Without the medication, Nita's pain increased, and the attacks came more frequently. Surely her body would soon cave in, just from abuse.
And yet, now, as she lay here alone, hour after hour, the spirit of sadness gave way, and her spiritual pipeline grew clearer than ever before - a beautiful, wide-open channel of communication with her Lord. As she prayed and listened to God - they grew closer and closer.
It was the most splendid fellowship she had ever known, as she unburdened her heart and unleashed her sense of self, and He ministered His perfect love to her. It was as if He were her Daddy, back on the front lawn at the big house, and they were talking over some simple childhood problem ... something her daddy could solve.
15
VOICE IN AN EMPTY ROOM
"When I die, you'd jolly well better be sad!"
"Rubbish, I'll celebrate."
Nita's mind recalled the old funny exchange from her teen years as the hour approached when Sandy would have to leave. It was the fifth day of the new year, and they had spent virtually every daylight hour together over the past three weeks, precious times for Nita, considering the circumstances.
Now they were over. Nita felt a heavy load in the pit of her stomach as she looked at her petite friend, so alive and healthy, and so grief-stricken for her. In a way she would rather have died while Sandy was here in Sri Lanka, instead of waiting till she was back in Australia.
But I'll never see her again, Nita realized. As the noon departure hour overtook them, the girls repeated their opening scene, weeping without words. Sandy finally walked out of the door, and as quickly the apartment was draped in a spirit of heaviness.
Psalm 31:1 rolled through Nita's mind, as it had many times in the past weeks: "In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust . . . deliver me in thy righteousness." It had encouraged her before, and now she clung to it again.
She had leaned on Psalm 91:2 as well: "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust."
And still she was waiting on the Lord to renew her strength, waiting to mount up as an eagle, waiting for the time when she would run without weariness, and walk without fainting.
But the emptiness - the sense of hopelessness - was devastating as Sandy's absence engulfed the room.
She lay in her misery for four hours, wide awake, unable to escape into sleep. The soft sounds of the afternoon filtered lightly into her room.
Suddenly, without warning or fanfare, at about four o'clock she heard a voice. It was a man speaking to her in a soft, but authoritative tone. It was the most powerful tone she had ever heard.
"Nita, I'm going to raise you up to make you a witness to Asia."
She was startled. If she had been able to, she would have jumped. She had thought she was alone in the room. Where had that voice come from? It said further: "I'm going to heal you on Friday the eleventh of February."
Nita's heart pounded. She was sure no one was in the room. She had never heard that voice before. She felt an uncanny twinge in her spirit. But she knew better than to be fooled into thinking the Lord had actually spoken to her in an audible voice.
She rolled her eyes around the room as far as she could see. The voice had come from behind her, so she couldn't see who was there. But someone must be there!
She struggled for the call button and buzzed for the attendant. If there was a man in the room, she wanted to know.
Since Nita's voice had failed, the attendant could often guess her meaning by the way she moved her eyes. Nita looked toward the door with a fearful face. The attendant had checked Nita's room for lizards many times, here and in the hospital - they were always crawling into corners, and Nita was terrified of them - so now the nurse proceeded to look for a lizard behind the door. There was nothing there. Nita's eyes moved to another corner, then another, and eventually the attendant had scoured the room. No man nor lizard turned up.
Perhaps under the bed? Nita made the girl get down on her hands and knees and look. But no one was there.
Sceptically, but with excitement slowly mounting inside of her, Nita mentally checked off the possibilities. It could be a dream, but she was wide awake. It could be a hallucination, but she had been off all drugs for several days. It could be her own imagination, but she wasn't even in a good frame of mind - and she knew she had heard a man speak to her, as clearly as anyone had ever spoken to her.
Knowing the extremism of some of her family and friends, it could even be a set-up; someone trying to do her good, give her hope, pretending to be the voice of God - except that the lizard check had ruled out that possibility. The radio was off and there was no recording equipment around at all.
Which left two possible sources: God and the devil.
Nita had never taken kindly to people who proclaimed that God had spoken to them. She had always been suspicious of that whole realm of thinking. To her, even Colton sometimes very nearly crossed the line. But deep in her heart, she already knew she had heard from God; that He had answered her question; that He was going to heal her on Friday, February 11, and that He had answered her question in a completely unique and thoroughly dramatic way.
Still, she just had to be sure.
So she prayed a hard-nosed, practical prayer:
"Lord, I've heard this voice. If it's yours, I want a confirmation."
She felt suddenly awkward, being so bold with the Almighty Creator who had just promised to heal her and done so in an audible voice. But she thought of Gideon, laying out his fleece, and so decided to press on with it.
"I want to hear the promise again," she prayed bravely. "In public. Let other people hear it too."
It was an impossible request, especially since Nita never left her apartment.
She never mentioned the incident to anyone; never hinted that she had heard from God or that she was seeking a confirmation. But she steadily kept her heart open, worshipping her Lord alone, and with Colton and Suzanne and her mother, for hours on end, day after day.
Colton's schedule tugged him away a little more each week. His huge church building programme was drawing to a close, and the grand finale - the dedication of the new church building -was fast approaching. Syvelle Phillips, a major international voice of the Full Gospel movement, was flying in from California to preach the dedication service for Colton's church. It was to be an event of such significance to Colton and his family that they never thought to ask Nita if she wanted to go; instead, they simply presumed it. Nita was unenthusiastic when she heard their plan.
Ted flew a collapsible wheelchair in from England. When it arrived, Colton and Suzanne and the boys unpacked it with giddy excitement. Nita was morose. She had no desire whatsoever to be wheeled into a brand-new church building with fourteen hundred people peering all around. Besides, Colton had requested prayer for her so often and had spent so much time visiting her that she had become something of a joke to the young people of that church - and almost a sore point with some of the older ones.
Colton would not be denied, though, and reluctantly Nita agreed to go. She could not disappoint these people who had been so kind to her for so long. It would mean a lot to them if she would attend.
The boys had loads of fun wheeling themselves around in the new wheelchair, but Nita did not even want to look at it. To her, it was a symbol of what she had become. She could no longer control her body functions at all. The attendant had to change her bedclothes several times a day, like the ritual diaper change on an oversized baby.
"Let's try out this new wheelchair, Nita!"
Michaele pushed her around the garden a few times, then they left for the church. It was a beautiful structure, but Nita could not take much of it in. Colton had graciously arranged for them to arrive early, so Nita could be situated in the choir loft between the piano and the wall - neither Colton nor Nita wanted her to be a spectacle. From her cubicle and with her vision problems, she could see very little of what went on, but in the divine plan she was really only there to hear one thing.
A message in tongues, familiar in Pentecostal services, cut through the service like a knife, arresting the attention of the people assembled there. As the last sounds echoed into the rafters, Syvelle Phillips lifted his voice and began declaring the interpretation. Only Nita had heard the phrases before: "God will raise you up to be a witness to all of Asia. His word to you is true. Trust Him. He will not lead you astray. He will glorify Himself through you."
Nita's heart began to leap with joy. It was true. She had heard from God, and He had confirmed it - here, before fourteen hundred people, honouring her request to hear it in public! The very words God had said!
Nita was ecstatic. Long after the crowd had cleared, she was hoisted out of her little hole. She was still radiant. And in her heart, she felt the assurance of the Lord that there would be icing as well as cake: He would give her yet another confirmation.
It was in this victorious frame of mind that Nita decided to ask for more information. As the nurse changed her bed linen, the next morning, Nita was placed in her wheelchair. She sat by the window, with the sunlight streaming in on the pages of her Bible, and she thought about the day she would be healed.
"Father, you told me the day and the date," she said simply. "Please, don't keep me waiting all day. Please tell me the time too."
She half-expected to hear the voice again, but she heard nothing. Instead, a silent inner voice spoke to her heart: she would be healed at 3:30 in the afternoon.
Nita thought she would burst with excitement. She had the date and the hour now - February 11 at 3:30 p.m. She was going to be healed by the power of God, and she was going to watch it happen!
The next Sunday, Ted decided he wanted to take his little sister to church. Nita didn't look forward to this outing any more than she had looked forward to the last. But Ted was so driven to do things for her that she acquiesced. The dignified accountant had no idea how to carry a cripple so he was helpless trying to get her out of the apartment until Colton's boys, experts by now, came to the rescue. At the church, Nita was positioned in the aisle, with Ted protectively seated next to her.
Suddenly a message in tongues split the air, and again the interpretation rang clearly through the sanctuary. A message miraculously similar to the first one. Nita could hardly believe the great love of her Heavenly Father in giving her not one, but two confirmations.
Nita wept uncontrollably, riveted by the majesty of God. She was embarrassed by her reaction, real emotional tears flooding down her cheeks. She had never cried in public in all these months. She had even waited every night, back in the hospital, until the nurses made their final rounds, before she would let herself cry. But now there was no more doubt in her and she wept with joy. The voice she had heard was her Heavenly Father's. She had waited on the Lord to renew her strength, and soon she would mount up as an eagle, she would walk and not be weary, she would run and not faint. Friday, February 11, she knew without question, she would leave that bed and wheelchair forever, and walk away a free woman.
She wanted to tell the world, but she felt deeply impressed not to share the news with anyone yet. It took a conscious effort to control the urge.
Colton's boys came to lift her away at the end of the service, and Nita knew, as they jostled her down the aisle and out to the car, that it was one of the last times she would be borne like this, like luggage going where someone else wanted it to go.
( CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE )
Nita Edwards and Mark Buntain
WITH
Ron Hembree and Doug Brendel
CONTENTS
11 Deathwatch
12 I'll Celebrate
13 Exit
14 "Flush that Stuff"
15 Voice in an Empty Room
________________________________
11
DEATHWATCH
Her long, jet-blackhair, once a thing of beauty, had become a matted mess. It had been months since she was able to brush it herself, and weeks since she had been able to feel the brush against her scalp when anyone else brushed it for her. She could not even hold up her own head as the brush was applied.
It was a dying moment for Nita as she called for a hairdresser to cut her hair short. She had loved wearing it past her shoulders - now it had become just one more victim of the paralysis. With every snip of the scissors, Nita hurt again. As the disease progressed even the lovely little niceties of life were being cut away.
If anyone could lift her spirits on such dark days, it was Michaele, Colton's youngest son. He was Nita's favourite. The most affectionate of the bunch, he was fond of sitting on her bed, fidgeting and pinching and tickling her, delightedly exploring her areas of numbness. Nita would have been horrified if it had been anyone else, but Michaele was too sweet to be anything but engaging.
Tragically, it was Michaele who discovered that Nita had lost all feeling in her face. Nita had known it for some time - when the nurses washed her she felt nothing - and she was especially discouraged by this, for it left her practically a hunk of lifeless leather, with no sense of touch anywhere on her body. She was so deflated by the discovery that she had not even reported this final lapse to the doctors.
Her vocal cords too fell into disrepair, and her voice disintegrated into a whisper. In a matter of days it vanished altogether. Colton resolutely learned to read her lips, and he served as her interpreter when others were in the room. Nita's Buddhist attendant had to learn lipreading also. Yet every turn for the worse seemed to strengthen the bond of love between the preacher and the patient.
It became evident that Nita was dying -evident to everyone, including Nita. She could see, as her mother and others kissed her good-bye at the end of each visit, that they were not sure they would ever again see her alive. Mrs. Edwards was asking more frequently and more frantically these days if there was anyone Nita wanted to see - her brother Ted perhaps? Nita had always said no, don't make Ted fly in all the way from England. But now she finally relented. She wanted to see him at least once more.
The Singapore relatives planned to make their pilgrimage at Christmas time, and Nita's uncle from Zambia was coming in then too. Mrs. Edwards hoped secretly they would not be too late.
Heart problems began as the paralysis progressed. Each attack knocked Nita unconscious, and as she came to she could hear "Hail Mary's" and groanings and smell the antiseptic odours and see the masks and caps and ugly green gowns all shuffling about. One day she woke groggily in the intensive care observation cell, completely alone, surrounded by walls of shiny machines - one monitoring her pulse, another her blood pressure, another her lung capacity. There was a single metal door with a tiny window. In it she saw an open eye, someone whose job it was to see if she had died yet.
Nita pressed her eyes shut. It was like a gruesome movie, "The Deathwatch," and she was its star.
She had trusted the doctors. They had failed. She had prayed for God to heal her. He had not. In her secret moments, she had even prayed to die. That didn't work either. She had kept up a cool facade, but all the while, inside, her heart was breaking.
"Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver," she read in Isaiah 48:10. "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction."
But why? What did God want of her? What was He doing with her life?
The physical problems accumulated, the emotional struggles multiplied, and finally the spiritual question consumed her. One day, alone with Colton, the wall began to crack, and Nita let herself weep openly. It was the first time.
Colton ached for her, and repeated words of Scripture, and prayed with her, as he had done so often.
"Oh, Colton," Nita mouthed, "why don't you just stop praying for me?"
"No," he replied, adamant. "I'm not going to let go until God tells you what He intends to do with your life."
A subtle change occurred in Nita that day. Her prayer life experienced a fundamental change.
"I'm not asking for healing any more," she told the Lord each day. "I'm not asking to be taken home to heaven. Just tell me what you created me for, and do anything you like with me."
She doggedly repeated the prayer, day after day, night after night.
"If your plan is to let me die, glory to God," she often added, her fear of death completely gone.
"If your plan is to let me lie here like a vegetable for fifty years, glory to God. I don't like it, but I'll live for you right in this bed. Just tell me what you want me to do, why you created me, what purpose you intended when you formed me in the womb. What is your plan for me?"
Almost by the hour, Nita picked up spiritual momentum, even as she physically wasted away. She had renewed her childhood covenant with the Lord - she would give her last drop of blood, her last earthly breath, to her Heavenly Father.
When she felt herself doubting that God would ever answer her, she repeated the last verse of Isaiah 40 as a counter-argument:
"But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."
And for Nita, that promise - mounting up, running, and walking - made it worth the wait, even if it would only be a figure of speech.
It was a strange change, after so many months of demanding a miracle of healing. Colton and Suzanne, her mother, and hundreds of Christians all over the world, were demanding her healing, and in the swirling midst of all this, she was asking only for a word not action.
And daily, Nita's spiritual pipeline was being cleared. The earthly longings she had felt for so long were being swept away. The obsessions of her teen years, the selfindulgent prayers, the earmarks of immaturity began to be dissolved within her by a divine touch. Every day, she could sense in her spirit that her spiritual pipeline was coming a little closer to a total cleansing - a little closer to the day when it could freely transport God's answer to her heart.
The challenges continued, however, on every level - physical, emotional, spiritual. As Nita read II Corinthians 4:8-10, she saw herself in the words:
"We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
"Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus."
The advance of death indeed appeared to continue in Nita's body. Her eye muscles begun to be affected by the disease, and double vision soon made it hard for her to keep her eyes open when the room filled with visitors. The tear ducts failed, and the corners of her eyes leaked salty tears continuously, stinging her eyelids. She was embarrassed. Her visitors were bound to see her tears and sympathize more profusely than ever.
With her vocal cords dead, she could no longer create the lightweight atmosphere that she had always worked for -cracking jokes and teasing her visitors, to make them laugh and feel at ease. The constant discharge from her eyes made her nervous as well. She knew her face was wet, but she couldn't feel the tears.
And now her mirror was worthless. She could no longer see as far as the parking lot. Even the ceiling slats and bolts were beyond her visual reach. To read the Bible she had to have the page held an inch from her eyeballs. The strain was crushing.
Her eyes would do her one final disservice. She had not seen herself in a mirror for many weeks. One day, as she was being unloaded off the cart, she caught a glimpse of herself. A glimpse was all she needed. The picture instantly locked into her memory. She was sickened. She knew she had been pretty -not gorgeous - but she had been satisfied. The girl in the mirror was a wench. Her hair was cut short around her puffy face, badly bloated by massive doses of cortisone. Under her eyes hung great, sunken, dark bags. From her neck down, her skeleton was evident. Her athletic muscle tone had given way to a distended abdomen after months of artificial digestives and a liquid diet. Her hands were all knuckles, her fingers so grossly deformed that they looked like bird claws.
It was this awful creature that Sandy Koelmeyer found in Ward 13.
12
I'LL CELEBRATE
Sandy had grown up with Nita. They were best friends in the classic sense of the term. They went to school and church together, played tennis and hockey together. If Nita was not around the house you could be sure she was at the Koelmeyers' or off somewhere else with Sandy.
The girls had sometimes teased each other about dying.
"You jolly well better come to my funeral sad," Nita insisted.
"Oh rubbish!" Sandy always retorted. "I'll celebrate! I'll wear a red dress and say, Thank God I got rid of the pest!"
Now Sandy lived with her husband in Australia. One of their friends had called her there and told her the medical verdict: Nita was going to die.
"If you want to see her, you'd better come now."
The family decided a surprise of this magnitude might be hard on Nita's weakening heart, but Sandy's brother-in-law Ashley, who had grown close to Nita since her return to Sri Lanka, decided to have a little fun with her.
"Santa's bringing you an early Christmas present," Ashley suggested slyly.
Nita smiled warmly, unable to talk but enjoying the game already.
"And it's a big present. It's five feet tall," he continued. Nita grinned but couldn't guess.
"Sandy's coming."
Nita's jaw dropped and her eyes rolled around in silent delight. This would be great!
The day came in early December. When Sandy arrived, all the family and friends quickly left the room so the two girls could enjoy their reunion alone.
Sandy came into the room and then paused. They had warned her how bad it was, but she hadn't been able to picture this. She walked close to the bedside and just stood there, frozen.
Neither girl had ever been the type to cry, but they cried together. Sandy couldn't find any words. Nita felt desperate. She couldn't reach out as she normally would, couldn't embrace Sandy as she longed to do. After a short while Sandy sat on her bed and leaned over her friend. In the old days they would have kissed each other, but Nita had so many tubes in the way.
They wept for a long time. When Sandy could finally talk, it was hard. Nita agonized; she wanted desperately to talk with her, to share things with Sandy that she could never share with anyone else. She strained to squeeze her voice out of her throat, but it was hopeless. Sandy had to read her lips; but she wasn't used to it.
Nita grew fatigued. The reunion had to end.
But Nita was eager to see her again, and Mrs. Edwards got Sandy a visitor's pass so she could come and go freely. The next day was better, and the next. Sandy would stay into the New Year. For Sandy, the shock soon wore off. She kept tissues nearby and mopped Nita's face, and after a day or two they could finally relax with each other, almost like the old times. Nita knew she could complain and Sandy would understand. It was the finest therapy.
13
EXIT
When Sandy left one day Nita asked her attendant to help her read a few verses in the Bible.
The strangest thought came to Nita's mind one day as she read Isaiah 41:10:
"Fear thou not; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness."
And as she read further, she was stopped in her tracks by Isaiah 42:6:
"I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles."
If He had promised to strengthen her, to hold her hand, then why not trust Him fully? - leave the hospital and get an apartment?
It was absurd - she was a total vegetable, physically - and yet as she thought about it, Nita felt a deep assurance that this truly was the leading of the Lord.
Besides, she was tired of being everybody's chunk of meat: the doctors would stand outside her door looking at the records and exclaiming their surprise that she was still alive, as if she couldn't hear them, and she didn't need that kind of carelessness any more.
Still, it took her a while to muster up the confidence to tell anyone about the idea. She knew there would be opposition. Her fears were soon realized, and her mother was, by turns, frantic and angry. She had spent thousands of dollars on the finest medical care available in the country, and now Nita was going to jeopardize her very life by moving out. The cousins, uncles and other relatives thought it was ridiculous. Perhaps Nita was losing her mind? Perhaps she was becoming suicidal? Some of them advised simply refusing her. What could she do about it, after all? If no one moved her out, she had no way of leaving.
Only Colton understood.
"I feel God would have me leave the hospital," Nita said to him through silent lips.
"I'll talk to the doctors," he said compassionately.
"Nita feels God is telling her to leave the hospital," Colton told them.
"Well, tell her God wants her to stay here," one of them suggested snidely.
"I can't tell her that," Colton replied. "But if staying is the best thing for her to do, I can tell her that."
"Tell her that, then. It's foolish for her to even think about getting more than a few yards away from the intensive care unit. She's in there every other day as it is."
Colton gently relayed the message. But Nita was prepared. She had not received an answer from God as to the question of her destiny, but she knew a move like this would still give Him all the options, and that was argument enough for her: "If God's plan calls for me to die, I can die in my own place just as well," she explained calmly to him. "There is nothing much to lose. Think of this as my last request. Let me go to spend time alone with the Lord, according to my convictions. And, if it is my destiny to live a long life as a cripple, I can do that elsewhere too."
Colton smiled as she approached the third option – his favourite: "And God can certainly heal me anywhere He wants."
She attached two conditions to the request: she wanted an apartment of her own, and she wanted no visitors other than her mother, Colton and Suzanne, and Sandy.
She couldn't think of going home to her own house; it would drain the life right out of her mother. She could move into a single flat with her private attendant and learn to cope.
And she had tired of the gawking. She had been examined thoroughly and constantly by doctors and nurses for about a year, and that was enough. Besides, she had become something of a Christian tourist attraction as people heard about her condition. Every few days another group passing through Colombo would stop by to see her, ostensibly to cheer her up and pray for her - and they inevitably stared. She had seen herself now, too, and she did not care to have even her relatives seeing any more of what she had become.
Mrs. Edwards stalled. She offered to send Nita to the United States for treatment. But word came back that there was no cure available there either; they could only keep her alive for four-hundred-and-fifty dollars a day, plus medication.
Colton assumed the yoke of the argument on Nita's behalf. He knew she could never argue her case successfully without a voice, virtually without a physical body. He negotiated gently, firmly, and wisely with the family. Tension filled the room, then evaporated, then returned, as the struggle stretched into days and weeks, to Christmas. But Nita's case was won.
Christmas was a minor tragedy in itself. Family and friends brought expensive gifts which Nita could not open. There was a lot of Christmas confectionery and cake, and pudding brought from England, which she could not taste. Her room was all decorated with festive Christmas trimmings which she could barely see, and several groups came by from churches to sing carols to her, but she was self-conscious and uncomfortable.
Nita's last night in the hospital, December 30, was like her funeral in advance. All the relatives and friends turned out to cry over her body. They knew they would never see her alive again. She was going into hiding to die.
There were other tensions too. Some of them thought Mrs. Edwards must have decided that Nita would not have any visitors. Others blamed Colton and Suzanne. There would be hard feelings in the family for some time to come. Loved ones and friends felt shunned and hurt. They could not understand that it was a spiritual thing, where God wanted Nita to rely totally on Him.
Nita thought of her old English literature studies at the university. She could still quote a snatch of Shakespeare:
"There is a tide in the affairs of men
When taken at full lead on
But if omitted all of life
Is left in the shallows."
The months she had wasted when she could have been studying now returned to haunt her. She had expected to leave the hospital under much different circumstances, returning to school for more fun and frolic. Instead, she had no hope of ever again leading a normal academic life, the kind of life she had taken so for granted.
Angry at herself, she resolved to find a way to achieve the education she had begun years ago. She would strap herself in a motorized wheelchair and learn to drive a special car -whatever it took - to make good those squandered opportunities.
As her anger subsided, though, she knew her tide had already gone out the final time. She had not taken it at full.
At the farewell gathering, the nurses and doctors were as red-eyed as the relatives. They had been even closer to Nita in the past months than her family had been. Nita knew what their grim faces were saying.
She was lifted onto a stretcher and lugged down the hallway. As she was carried out of the back door of the building, she thought how different it had been the day she first crossed that same threshold. It was backwards, this story of hers: she had walked in, now she was being carried out.
A Red Cross ambulance was waiting to bear her body to its new resting place. Nita could make out its design, and see that it was a hearse, but without the nice door. As they slid her in, she couldn't help but think, "This is how it will be when I'm dead."
It was an emotional little trip. Her mother and her attendant rode with her. She could tell that her mother was thinking of the last time she had ridden in an ambulance, with her father.
Nita could barely see the tops of the trees as the ambulance sped through Colombo's streets, and she knew this could be the last time she would see the lovely little island. Her vision had failed her, but some days were better than others. She was grateful that at least this was one of her better days.
Suzanne had gone ahead. The ambulance pulled into a pleasant little driveway in a lovely yard, and everyone got out to make arrangements for Nita to be brought in. She was alone in the back of the ambulance waiting like an excess piece of luggage forgotten in the trunk of the family car. The neighbourhood kids quickly gathered around to look through the windows. They had heard that their new neighbour was a paralysed girl. This crooked thing must be her.
14
"FLUSH THAT STUFF"
It was hard to manoeuvre the stretcher up the little stairway into the apartment, and Nita imagined how much simpler it was going to be when they moved her corpse back out.
Nita's mother with Colton and Suzanne made her comfortable and then, a little hesitantly, they all left. Nita was alone with her medical attendant, the Buddhist girl.
"Bring me all the medication I have," Nita said immediately, mouthing the words carefully.
The girl was puzzled, reluctant. Nita repeated herself.
She came back with an armload - all the medication Nita had been taking in the hospital. There were pain killers, sedatives, cortisone, Valiums, phenobarbitones - a massive amount of medicine.
"Empty them all down the toilet," Nita told her, "and flush them down."
The girl's eyes widened. She was astonished and afraid. Nita was her responsibility, hers alone. There were no more doctors to call, no bells to ring, no oxygen - nothing.
"I can't do that," she finally responded, still amazed at the order. She knew what Mrs. Edwards would say when she found out. "Mistress will get very upset with me."
As the girl watched her lips, Nita looked at her squarely. "Now I want you to know something. It's just you and me here, nobody else, and I am the boss. You follow my instructions and obey my orders. Now go flush that stuff."
If God were going to heal her, she did not want medication robbing His glory. If He were not, then why not get it over sooner?
"And furthermore, this is between you and me," she added emphatically. She knew her mother would panic; she was already unnerved about the whole move.
"You dare not discuss this matter with anyone."
Besides, someone was bound to think she was trying to commit suicide. The nurse nervously flushed everything.
Sometime after midnight on New Year's Eve, after the watchnight service at Colton's church, he and Suzanne came to Nita's apartment and gently woke her.
"Happy New Year," Suzanne whispered.
Nita smiled wryly. The new year held no real promise of happiness for her, and the greeting sounded hollow.
Colton served her communion. Then Suzanne spotted the last of Nita's Christmas gifts, still unopened, so she opened them for her with as much gusto as she could engender.
But Nita was sombre.
The deathwatch continued. Nita's brother Ted, nine years after leaving Sri Lanka, arrived on a flight from London, and was met at the Colombo airport by his mother and an uncle. He had always been the essence of calm and good sense, but as he passed through customs, Mrs. Edwards noticed his hands were trembling.
Nita awoke at nine o'clock that evening and focused on a nice-looking gentleman by her bed. Ted had been there for half an hour, weeping uncontrollably, clutching her deformed little hand, methodically prying open the crooked fingers, watching them curl up, and prying them open, again and again. As she awoke, he leaned over and kissed her. Nita couldn't help but recall the same brother at her father's funeral, so solemn and sedate, so in control.
She still had the first gift he ever brought her, when she was two - a little piggy whose ears she had promptly chewed up. She and Ted had been good friends. She was a tomboy, and Ted called her his little brother.
He had followed her progress from afar, keeping tabs on her schooling, her growing athletic prowess, her victories, her travels. He had watched from England with pride as she grew into a beautiful young woman. And now he was shattered, as he watched her suffer, listened to her coughing and wheezing. She was wasting away. He hurt for her, more than he had known he could ever hurt.
Life had changed abruptly with the move to the apartment. If Nita choked for air, if her heart stopped, in every emergency, prayer was the only remedy. It was administered in varying doses by Colton, Suzanne, their boys, Sandy, and Nita's mother.
Without the medication, Nita's pain increased, and the attacks came more frequently. Surely her body would soon cave in, just from abuse.
And yet, now, as she lay here alone, hour after hour, the spirit of sadness gave way, and her spiritual pipeline grew clearer than ever before - a beautiful, wide-open channel of communication with her Lord. As she prayed and listened to God - they grew closer and closer.
It was the most splendid fellowship she had ever known, as she unburdened her heart and unleashed her sense of self, and He ministered His perfect love to her. It was as if He were her Daddy, back on the front lawn at the big house, and they were talking over some simple childhood problem ... something her daddy could solve.
15
VOICE IN AN EMPTY ROOM
"When I die, you'd jolly well better be sad!"
"Rubbish, I'll celebrate."
Nita's mind recalled the old funny exchange from her teen years as the hour approached when Sandy would have to leave. It was the fifth day of the new year, and they had spent virtually every daylight hour together over the past three weeks, precious times for Nita, considering the circumstances.
Now they were over. Nita felt a heavy load in the pit of her stomach as she looked at her petite friend, so alive and healthy, and so grief-stricken for her. In a way she would rather have died while Sandy was here in Sri Lanka, instead of waiting till she was back in Australia.
But I'll never see her again, Nita realized. As the noon departure hour overtook them, the girls repeated their opening scene, weeping without words. Sandy finally walked out of the door, and as quickly the apartment was draped in a spirit of heaviness.
Psalm 31:1 rolled through Nita's mind, as it had many times in the past weeks: "In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust . . . deliver me in thy righteousness." It had encouraged her before, and now she clung to it again.
She had leaned on Psalm 91:2 as well: "I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust."
And still she was waiting on the Lord to renew her strength, waiting to mount up as an eagle, waiting for the time when she would run without weariness, and walk without fainting.
But the emptiness - the sense of hopelessness - was devastating as Sandy's absence engulfed the room.
She lay in her misery for four hours, wide awake, unable to escape into sleep. The soft sounds of the afternoon filtered lightly into her room.
Suddenly, without warning or fanfare, at about four o'clock she heard a voice. It was a man speaking to her in a soft, but authoritative tone. It was the most powerful tone she had ever heard.
"Nita, I'm going to raise you up to make you a witness to Asia."
She was startled. If she had been able to, she would have jumped. She had thought she was alone in the room. Where had that voice come from? It said further: "I'm going to heal you on Friday the eleventh of February."
Nita's heart pounded. She was sure no one was in the room. She had never heard that voice before. She felt an uncanny twinge in her spirit. But she knew better than to be fooled into thinking the Lord had actually spoken to her in an audible voice.
She rolled her eyes around the room as far as she could see. The voice had come from behind her, so she couldn't see who was there. But someone must be there!
She struggled for the call button and buzzed for the attendant. If there was a man in the room, she wanted to know.
Since Nita's voice had failed, the attendant could often guess her meaning by the way she moved her eyes. Nita looked toward the door with a fearful face. The attendant had checked Nita's room for lizards many times, here and in the hospital - they were always crawling into corners, and Nita was terrified of them - so now the nurse proceeded to look for a lizard behind the door. There was nothing there. Nita's eyes moved to another corner, then another, and eventually the attendant had scoured the room. No man nor lizard turned up.
Perhaps under the bed? Nita made the girl get down on her hands and knees and look. But no one was there.
Sceptically, but with excitement slowly mounting inside of her, Nita mentally checked off the possibilities. It could be a dream, but she was wide awake. It could be a hallucination, but she had been off all drugs for several days. It could be her own imagination, but she wasn't even in a good frame of mind - and she knew she had heard a man speak to her, as clearly as anyone had ever spoken to her.
Knowing the extremism of some of her family and friends, it could even be a set-up; someone trying to do her good, give her hope, pretending to be the voice of God - except that the lizard check had ruled out that possibility. The radio was off and there was no recording equipment around at all.
Which left two possible sources: God and the devil.
Nita had never taken kindly to people who proclaimed that God had spoken to them. She had always been suspicious of that whole realm of thinking. To her, even Colton sometimes very nearly crossed the line. But deep in her heart, she already knew she had heard from God; that He had answered her question; that He was going to heal her on Friday, February 11, and that He had answered her question in a completely unique and thoroughly dramatic way.
Still, she just had to be sure.
So she prayed a hard-nosed, practical prayer:
"Lord, I've heard this voice. If it's yours, I want a confirmation."
She felt suddenly awkward, being so bold with the Almighty Creator who had just promised to heal her and done so in an audible voice. But she thought of Gideon, laying out his fleece, and so decided to press on with it.
"I want to hear the promise again," she prayed bravely. "In public. Let other people hear it too."
It was an impossible request, especially since Nita never left her apartment.
She never mentioned the incident to anyone; never hinted that she had heard from God or that she was seeking a confirmation. But she steadily kept her heart open, worshipping her Lord alone, and with Colton and Suzanne and her mother, for hours on end, day after day.
Colton's schedule tugged him away a little more each week. His huge church building programme was drawing to a close, and the grand finale - the dedication of the new church building -was fast approaching. Syvelle Phillips, a major international voice of the Full Gospel movement, was flying in from California to preach the dedication service for Colton's church. It was to be an event of such significance to Colton and his family that they never thought to ask Nita if she wanted to go; instead, they simply presumed it. Nita was unenthusiastic when she heard their plan.
Ted flew a collapsible wheelchair in from England. When it arrived, Colton and Suzanne and the boys unpacked it with giddy excitement. Nita was morose. She had no desire whatsoever to be wheeled into a brand-new church building with fourteen hundred people peering all around. Besides, Colton had requested prayer for her so often and had spent so much time visiting her that she had become something of a joke to the young people of that church - and almost a sore point with some of the older ones.
Colton would not be denied, though, and reluctantly Nita agreed to go. She could not disappoint these people who had been so kind to her for so long. It would mean a lot to them if she would attend.
The boys had loads of fun wheeling themselves around in the new wheelchair, but Nita did not even want to look at it. To her, it was a symbol of what she had become. She could no longer control her body functions at all. The attendant had to change her bedclothes several times a day, like the ritual diaper change on an oversized baby.
"Let's try out this new wheelchair, Nita!"
Michaele pushed her around the garden a few times, then they left for the church. It was a beautiful structure, but Nita could not take much of it in. Colton had graciously arranged for them to arrive early, so Nita could be situated in the choir loft between the piano and the wall - neither Colton nor Nita wanted her to be a spectacle. From her cubicle and with her vision problems, she could see very little of what went on, but in the divine plan she was really only there to hear one thing.
A message in tongues, familiar in Pentecostal services, cut through the service like a knife, arresting the attention of the people assembled there. As the last sounds echoed into the rafters, Syvelle Phillips lifted his voice and began declaring the interpretation. Only Nita had heard the phrases before: "God will raise you up to be a witness to all of Asia. His word to you is true. Trust Him. He will not lead you astray. He will glorify Himself through you."
Nita's heart began to leap with joy. It was true. She had heard from God, and He had confirmed it - here, before fourteen hundred people, honouring her request to hear it in public! The very words God had said!
Nita was ecstatic. Long after the crowd had cleared, she was hoisted out of her little hole. She was still radiant. And in her heart, she felt the assurance of the Lord that there would be icing as well as cake: He would give her yet another confirmation.
It was in this victorious frame of mind that Nita decided to ask for more information. As the nurse changed her bed linen, the next morning, Nita was placed in her wheelchair. She sat by the window, with the sunlight streaming in on the pages of her Bible, and she thought about the day she would be healed.
"Father, you told me the day and the date," she said simply. "Please, don't keep me waiting all day. Please tell me the time too."
She half-expected to hear the voice again, but she heard nothing. Instead, a silent inner voice spoke to her heart: she would be healed at 3:30 in the afternoon.
Nita thought she would burst with excitement. She had the date and the hour now - February 11 at 3:30 p.m. She was going to be healed by the power of God, and she was going to watch it happen!
The next Sunday, Ted decided he wanted to take his little sister to church. Nita didn't look forward to this outing any more than she had looked forward to the last. But Ted was so driven to do things for her that she acquiesced. The dignified accountant had no idea how to carry a cripple so he was helpless trying to get her out of the apartment until Colton's boys, experts by now, came to the rescue. At the church, Nita was positioned in the aisle, with Ted protectively seated next to her.
Suddenly a message in tongues split the air, and again the interpretation rang clearly through the sanctuary. A message miraculously similar to the first one. Nita could hardly believe the great love of her Heavenly Father in giving her not one, but two confirmations.
Nita wept uncontrollably, riveted by the majesty of God. She was embarrassed by her reaction, real emotional tears flooding down her cheeks. She had never cried in public in all these months. She had even waited every night, back in the hospital, until the nurses made their final rounds, before she would let herself cry. But now there was no more doubt in her and she wept with joy. The voice she had heard was her Heavenly Father's. She had waited on the Lord to renew her strength, and soon she would mount up as an eagle, she would walk and not be weary, she would run and not faint. Friday, February 11, she knew without question, she would leave that bed and wheelchair forever, and walk away a free woman.
She wanted to tell the world, but she felt deeply impressed not to share the news with anyone yet. It took a conscious effort to control the urge.
Colton's boys came to lift her away at the end of the service, and Nita knew, as they jostled her down the aisle and out to the car, that it was one of the last times she would be borne like this, like luggage going where someone else wanted it to go.
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