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Tag Archives: miracles

No Way Outa Here -9

21 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

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Christianity, faith, Healing, Life-Changing Experiences, miracles, personal change, Recovery, Spirituality, Suffering

A year has passed since I posted my last blog entry.  And over two years since the time I was writing about.  A lot has happened since then, and much of what has happened I can only call miraculous.

There is a group of Christians in our city that offers prayer for healing in any respect where healing is needed – emotional, spiritual, relational, and/or physical.  I had been hesitating for months about asking them to come and pray for Michael.  He knew about and was very fond of this group before suffering his stroke, so I knew he’d have no compunctions about inviting them, but they showed certain theological tendencies about healing and God’s will in healing that I couldn’t go along with.  So I hovered for a couple of months – shall I call them or not?  In the end, I decided that beggars couldn’t afford to be choosers, and that I was a beggar in need of more divine intervention than I was seeing.  I called the leader of the group, whose telephone number had been given to me.  We made an appointment for her to visit Michael with a couple of other people from her team.

As soon as I saw them, I was reassured.  They were all nice, gentle people of retirement age, donating their time to pray for my husband, who just couldn’t seem to wake up out of this coma-like state!  They laid hands over Michael and we all prayed.

I think God hides the very things that God does, so that there is no proof that whatever has happened is from God or mere coincidence.  So it was here.  Michael was starting to improve on the day before the healing prayers.  But ever since the prayers, he started to improve in leaps and bounds.  I wrote in an email to friends and family, “Who knows?  Maybe Michael will one day be able to eat, talk and walk again!”

Ever so gradually, that is what has happened.

At first, after a three-month stay in the rehab hospital, Peter was transferred to a group home for tracheostoma patients.  It was a friendly, kind setting with room for only seven patients.  He had his own room which I furnished for him with some of our things and some new things I purchased.  Here the therapies continued.  Michael gradually began to be able to stand again, to eat things like bread and pasta, to walk around the home with therapists supporting him on either side, and to make little sounds once in a while with his voice.  I sang songs for him, leaving gaps in the lyrics for him to fill.  He filled the gaps.  He helped with washing himself, smiled at me, answered yes and no to my questions, and began to read the newspaper!  Everyone marveled at his amazing progress.  Was it all the prayers?  Was it the high dosage of fish oil he was suddenly allowed to have each day?  Both?   It was beautiful to behold.

Michael lived in the group home for a year and a half, making nearly steady progress, with some unfortunate hospital visits due to colds and pneumonia.  The only drawback of living in this setting was that living in a group home with other patients, some had multi-resistant germs, which Michael also contracted.

A doctor suggested Michael go back to the rehab hospital he had been in after his stroke, so he went there in September, 2016 spending five months there.  During his time there, he made enough progress so that they could remove his trach.  That very day he began talking to me, albeit usually in only a whisper.  How thrilling it was to carry on mini-conversations with my husband!  I had not had a conversation with him in over two years.  However, with his ability to speak, I began to see other things that have been lost.  For instance, he still believes that his parents, who have been dead for over fifteen years, are alive, or that he is much younger than he is.  But we can talk about things.

I have been learning interesting lessons about things lost and gained, and about things we normally highly prize.  Being able to remember the past in all its detail would be something to strive for, one would think – a stepping stone to more happiness.  But here is something about Michael that confounds all logic.  He is content with his life as it is.  For the first time in our lives, he is an absolute pleasure to be around.

Some things lost started to come back.  He began writing more and more too, signing his name.  Once he even wrote a letter to our son Chris, although most of it was illegible to me.  He played games with a tablet I had purchased for him, and I could see he still knew most of the capitals of the countries of the world.

Unfortunately, the nurses went on strike about the fish oil and refused to administer it any more, stating he had suddenly developed diarrhea and that the oil was bad for the feeding tube.  I could do nothing.  At around that time, he developed a tremor in his right hand, rendering it impossible for him to write anymore.  His gait changed to baby steps instead of solid forward step movements.  Before long, the doctor had diagnosed him with “Parkinson-like symptoms” and put him on Parkinson medications.  Fortunately for me, I was able to give him some food to eat.  Swallowing has been an issue since getting the trach sewed up.  His concentration comes and goes, and he forgets to swallow, or swallows only incompletely.  But I could give him pureed food, and with that, begin feeding him the fish oil again into his mouth rather than through the feeding tube, beginning with a very low dosage.

The Parkinson symptoms continued, or changed, from tremors to cyclical movements of his hands and arms, like chopping the air.  Otherwise, the medications have changed nothing of his symptoms.  But, the hospital decided he’d had enough rehab to be able to go home.

After two years and three months of hospital, rehab hospital and group home stays, my husband and I are finally living under one roof again!  And I am caught up now in this blog to the present.  From now on this blog will be about our daily life, living with the aftermath of the stroke.  There’s still no way outa here, but life in this place I would never have chosen has turned out to be something very precious.

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Rubies in the Rubbish – The Faith of the Sisters

08 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

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Cairo, Christianity, Copts, Egypt, Mary of Zeitun, miracles, Pilgrimage, travel, Virgin Mary

The sisters seem to be absolutely serious about their faith, but I’ve never seen such a merry group of women. This confirms what I’ve always thought, that believers should, by nature, be cheerful.

The other day, when we’d had Sister Ologaya’s favorite dish, molokhaya, plus roast chicken and rice, she told me she was stuffed. She’d had molokhaya, two servings of rice, two pieces of pita bread and two bananas. “I’m getting fat!” she wailed, smiling.

Sister Ologaya

Sister Ologaya

“Do sisters worry about things like their looks?” I asked.

“Not usually. Sometimes there is a sister who is truly beautiful in the eyes of the world, but what we concentrate on is having Christ’s beauty grow in us. Then we are truly beautiful.”

She told me a couple of stories.

“A Muslim person was complaining to someone else about the luck of the Christians. ‘Why is it that it’s always the Christians who are the most beautiful – and also so rich?’ this person asked.” I supplied the answer.

“Because Jesus blesses His children. There is blessing in following Jesus.” She nodded her head, and went on to tell another story.

“Someone went to a wise man and asked him what the best religion is. The wise man answered, ‘I won’t tell you, but you go and find the people who are the kindest, the most loving, the most forgiving, the most honest, the most generous, the most cheerful, and the most patient of all those you meet. Find out what religion they are, and you will have your answer.’

“The man went and followed the wise man’s advice. Then he went to the wise man and said, ‘It is Christians who are the kindest, the most loving, the most forgiving, the most honest, the most generous, the most cheerful, and the most patient of all.’ ‘There you have your answer’, the wise man said.”

These are the qualities I find in the sisters here. I think I lack many of these qualities myself, but these are the qualities I want the most in the world. What a wonderful world this would be if we were all kind, loving, forgive, honest, generous, cheerful and patient. That’s why it is such a joy to find this group of Christians who really seem to live Christ-like lives. At least they strive to do that, just as I do, and I see many cheerful faces here.

There are aspects to their faith that I, a Protestant, find bewildering, but also intriguing. I’m incredibly attracted to their combination of joy and gentleness. The sisters and also the staff here all have warm, loving eyes. They have no difficulty looking long and lovingly into mine. That’s nice, but also a little embarrassing. Embarrassment about such things, though, is a feeling I would like to overcome. I wonder how much of this gazing into one’s eyes comes from their gazing into the eyes of the icons of their favorite saints. Sister Elleria is overjoyed to have a picture post card from me of Joan of Arc – so that she can look long and lovingly at her picture, receiving strength and inspiration from it.

Sister Maria tells me one day in an off-hand comment that she often thinks about what it was in Mary, the mother of Jesus that inspired God to choose her, of all women, to be Jesus’ mother. She thinks about Mary’s personal characteristics a lot.

Sister (Tesoni) Maria

Sister (Tesoni) Maria

But then, she’s named after Mary. Come to think of it, so am I. Marie is my middle name. Something for me to think about.

On my last day with the sisters, we look at the photos I’ve taken. We discuss a picture of Mary, and I ask her if the church I took this photo in is the church of St. Maria of Satoun. I show her a picture Reda has given me. “Yes”, she says, “this is St. Maria of Satoun, but that is not where you were. St. Maria of Satoun is the church where the holy Mother has appeared.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“She appeared to many, many people, many, many times. Even General Nasser saw her. Both Muslims and Christians saw her. She appeared especially often during the year before Mubarek was deposed. She looked like a real woman, standing on the roof of the church, with her arms outstretched, like you see in this picture. She looked so real, people climbed up onto the roof to tell her not to jump off, but then they found out that it was St. Maria.

“Many miracles happened through her. People were healed of diseases. She was very good for Egypt. We were all blessed by her appearances.”

“Did you see her?” I ask.

“Yes, but not there,” she replies.

I am dumbfounded. Sister Maria is a woman with her feet on the ground. She is not crazy, she’s not a dreamer, and she would not lie to me. But this is confounding some of the foundations of Protestant beliefs. Protestants have always criticized what they call excessive devotion, or even worship of Mary.

“You know, she also appeared here at the Center. About a year later. Not like at St. Maria of Satoun, but she appeared here many times too. Here she appeared as light, in the sky, above the Center. She had her arms outstretched, as she did in Satoun. I saw her, as did many others. People, Muslims too, would come to the Center looking for her, thinking she was staying here. She left a scent, a perfume like none other you have smelled. People thought it might be something from relics – you know, they perfume the relics.”

I had noticed that on the day Sister Marina showed me the relics of Santa Marina.

“We had a volunteer here at the time, a French woman. She was skeptical about all of this, so she was unable to see Mary, but she did smell the perfume.”

I wonder if I’d be able to see Mary if she appeared.

These revelations intrigue and puzzle me, but they don’t discomfit me. They leave me marveling. Now I understand why Reda gave me this picture, and also a lovely picture of Jesus. He obviously meant for me to contemplate them. That seems to be what Copts do. I will hang them on the wall near my bed and gaze at them, allowing the thoughts to come. I will not let embarrassment or judgmental thoughts about the taste of the artist stop me from it. I will welcome what comes.

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