I've been talking about my sister in Utah who's been very sick. After ignoring an infected tooth for over seven years, she developed multi-system sepsis. The doctors have been running all kinds of tests on her over the last few days. She saw a dentist and facial surgeon yesterday.
I've admitted that my relationship with my sister is, at best, strained. We haven't been close for a long time. It's not that I don't love her. I do. However, distance is a good thing for us. If we lived in the same town, we probably wouldn't be speaking to each other at all.
My sister's illness has made me regret the rift that has developed between us. I haven't allowed our bad blood to be passed on to my kids. My son and daughter love their aunt and cousins. That's something of which I'm proud. And it's a little bit of a miracle, too. There was a time when I wanted simply to cut all ties with them. I'm not sure we will ever be close again. It would take an act of God for that to happen.
But God can do some pretty remarkable things. Dr. Dorian, in Charlotte's Web, tells Mrs. Arable:
"...A young spider knows how to spin a web without any instructions from anybody. Don't you regard that as a miracle?"
Dr. Dorian is right. Miracles are everyday occurrences. Spiderwebs. Lightning storms. Hummingbirds. Snowstorms. Human beings are just too busy to notice them. Maybe animals really do speak to us, and we're too busy to listen to them.
My sister is being sent home from the hospital this evening. Her heart wasn't harmed. Neither was her brain. Her jaw bone and muscles are fine. A dentist pulled the crown in her mouth and cleared out the entire area. She's going to be on massive intravenous antibiotics for several weeks. But she's going to be fine.
That's a miracle.
And Saint Marty thanks God for it.
Now, to lighten things up a little bit...
Confessions of Saint Marty
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