POWER

I’m not a singer, instrument player, music composer, or record producer. But music has spoken - and will always will - speak to my soul. I believe it transforms our daily lives here on earth as well as prepares us for the eternity to come. I like all kinds of music from classical to traditional country, the oldies but goodies as well as the new streaming. One of my favorite artists is Josh Groban (an aside…he called me out in front of a packed arena as I accidently interrupted his address to the audience…quite embarrassing). His song “To Where You Are” is an absolute favorite for many reasons…the lyrics are hauntingly beautiful and remind the listener that life and death are all but a breath away from each other. This blog post shows just how that has been so true in my own life – and highlights my favorite line in the song: “Faith is believing all power can’t be seen.”

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=PXnKt3Wclzo&si=p3FprFAMpgLbyTAi

My life hasn’t exactly been easy: it’s been full of pain, disappointment, abuse, rejection, and illness. It has also been covered in grace miraculously by that unseen power that I know as God. I’m sure there are more times that I didn’t see, as we can all relate to…like leaving five minutes later than normal and missing an accident we surely would have been in if we left on time. But the point of this blog post is that these five snippets of my life remain a constant reminder that I am here on this earth until God wants me in His Kingdom. I’ve long quit asking why – I just keep saying “Thank You” for the opportunity to carry out His plan. I don’t want anyone reading to think I’m whining about some of my misfortune:  I am blessed way more than some others.

First off, I was one of the unlucky children who caught the Asiatic flu in 1957, a global pandemic that by itself claimed 1-4 million lives around the world. No one else in my family of six contracted it, just lucky me. I remember being so hot with fever and I coughed so badly. Because I didn’t get better, I was admitted to Children’s Hospital in Columbus, and it was discovered that I had also contracted deadly pneumonia. Mom always told me it was touch and go for a week, as they found scarring on my lungs as well…but after a week I got suddenly better: healed completely. No cough from the scarring (which stayed), no fever, no extreme fatigue. Someone had been praying. Power that can’t be seen.

Flash forward many years (about 35). No pandemic, but I practically crawled to the doctor’s office with a terrible fever and unrelenting cough. He sent me straight to the hospital where they took x-rays and admitted me because of my symptoms, to do a CT scan the next morning. About an hour after the CT scan, a pulmonary doctor came to my room and sat on the edge of my bed. I knew this was not a good sign. He looked at me sadly and said “I’m afraid the CT scan showed a large mass here in your chest” as he motioned to the exact spot. He continued, “They have identified it as a large carcinoma.”  Cancer – at age 40. With two young children that I couldn’t imagine leaving. My eyes must have belied my fear because he quickly continued to speak: “I know what the CT says…but I got the strangest feeling sitting here with you just now…that the CT was incorrect. I believe you have an atypical pneumonia”  He continued telling me that instead of doing a surgery then, if I were willing, he would put a port in and treat me with IV antibiotics for a week before getting another CT scan. Still frightened, I did just that and spent the next week visualizing the mass gone. I returned to the hospital in a week and got the CT – and had to hand carry the disk of it over to the doctor’s office, where we looked at it together. Not a sign of any mass anywhere. He said he had never seen a pneumonia like that. Or disappear that fast. All power can’t be seen (I think I still have that CT report).

Another early childhood memory. Occasionally, my mom would take us downtown on the bus to various stores, a treat for us all. When I was around six, she took my little brother Terry and I with her to the Boston Store on North High Street. Terry was only two, so Mom had to hold onto him very tightly, and I would always trail just a bit. This one time, she and Terry went down the steep stairs rather quickly ahead of me…I must have been looking at something. I remember looking down the long flight of stairs (there must have been at least 20 of them) thinking I could catch up with them if I didn’t hold onto the railing and hurried: but in doing that, all I did was catch my foot on the rim of the third step. I catapulted through the air, not hitting anything but certain that I would land at the bottom on my head, which would have been catastrophic. Suddenly, out of nowhere I felt strong arms around me, breaking my fall which was so peculiar, since no one else had been anywhere near the stairs. I remember seeing the outline of a woman (?) holding me: long black cloak, a veil over her face, stiff black shoes. As I felt my feet on the ground, I turned around to look again at the figure…but there was no one to be seen. Empty stairs, no one standing around. Power that cannot be seen?

A tumultuous childhood? Yes, it was. In February of 1960, I was 8 years old. We lived in an old 1926 farmhouse on Maplewood Avenue. The property had a barn where us kids played, and where Mom and Dad parked their cars religiously. Dad worked at a factory on the West side, and the factory had gone on a wildcat strike that February. Because he couldn’t go without pay, Dad crossed the picket line. That freezing cold February night, my parents took turns staying up on guard as there had been violence created by the strikers on the “scabs.”  My sister Becky and I were in the back bedroom asleep (about 40 yards away from the barn) when at 1 am, my mother screamed “FIRE!!!”. The wildcatters had set our barn on fire, and it must have gone up fast because I remember seeing orange plumes shooting across the pitch-black sky as we ran down the stairs and peered out the back window. Even today, I still have dreams about that early morning trauma. The powerful thing here? That night – of all nights – mom and dad decided NOT to park in the garage but instead, parked close to the house on the gravel driveway. They had only done that one other time in the year we had lived there: if the cars would have been in the barn, the fire chief said the whole back of the house would have exploded…as would have my sister and me. Power….

Finally, an incident from my years at Capital University. Since I was an education major, we had to attend field experiences in schools for certain classes. On this particular day, I was a passenger in the backseat of my friend’s car, as she had volunteered to drive another classmate and myself to our school (we were assigned to the same school). My friend was a chatterbox and did not pay attention to a one-way sign on one of the side streets – and we suddenly hit the side of an oncoming truck that was carrying sheet metal. It happened so quickly I must have closed my eyes…and when I opened them, there was a strip of metal that had flown through the front windshield and was what the medics calculated to be 1/8^th of an inch from going through my skull. It truly started me believing “all power can’t be seen.”

I am grateful for that power – the God Power - that has led me to this day, knowing how close I have come to NOT being here. Lest we all forget - as Josh alludes to in his song - we are but one breath away from this world to the next. And if we are here, there is a reason and a purpose. Peace be to you in your own journey!