"Every day God has the rain fall, a plant's roots drink it and turn it into fruit, and men collect the fruit of the plant, crush it, and ferment it into wine. Every day, God slowly turns water into wine. Once He bypassed the process. Every day, in grains of corn that are planted and produce more than themselves, God makes a little bread into much bread. Once He did it instantaneously and fed five thousand...the miracles are in the same style, so to speak."
--C.S. Lewis
It wasn't at all like this:
It was much more like this:
On the other hand, something sort of overwhelming and amazing happened yesterday, and I feel I should, like, tell people. So here goes.
The Husband and I have had a busy summer and a busy vacation, as have my Mom and Dad, so the Husband decided to take the day off yesterday and invite Dad for a round of golf. Mom came up too to see the kids, visit me, and have some She-Shopping with me. (She-Shopping, where you look at lots of things without really wanting to buy any of them, just for the pleasure of browsing, as opposed to He-Shopping. He-Shopping has been defined as "I'm cold. I go in a store and buy a coat. I'm not cold anymore.")
So the boys had a blast in the morning golfing 9 holes, and we had a blast She-Shopping (and I found some instruments for the kids, which Miss Boo calls "Racas"--otherwise known as maracas and drums). The menfolk decided, after lunch, that they were up for another 9 holes, and we decided to stay home.
While we were shopping, Mom had mentioned that her bad ear has been sore, and could I look at it when we got home. I have a cheapie, $14 otoscope from Walmart that is designed to check for toddler ear infections, so I said sure.
(This is the ear, by the way, that Mom hasn't been able to hear out of since, in 1990, a series of infections and traumas burst her eardrum and, according to the specialist she saw, dissolved the small bones in her ear that vibrate behind the eardrum. The specialist said the only way to fix the ear was to have expensive surgery to put in prosthetic bones, which for many reasons Mom elected not to have.)
I look in the ear and see what looks like an infected sore, which looks painful as all get out, and a perfectly intact (though opaque) eardrum. I've seen Mom's eardrum in this ear before, and it's always opaque. We assume this is one reason she doesn't hear. I offer to try to clean up the infection, and Mom says sure, it's hurting all the way down into her throat, and she's ready to stand getting the ear washed out if I think it'll get rid of the infection.
So I looked around the house, because I don't have any proper tools at home--no nice 30cc syringe, no ear tips, no ear spoons, no catch basin, nothing. We end up trying to sop up as much of the drainage as we could with q-tips (evil as it usually is to put those in your ears), and then I found a 2cc syringe from an old bottle of Baby Motrin that I washed out. I mixed up a solution of hydrogen peroxide and water and commenced to squirt out Mom's ear, hoping to get the junk to come out.
Well, a tiny scab did come out, but as we're flushing, Mom goes "I can hear."
(I'm still peering into her ear periodically with the $14 otoscope, wondering if there's not an infection in the ear at all but rather in the eustachian tube, since she can pinch her nose and blow and I can see bubbles in the area of the sore.)
We keep flushing until we're not getting any more junk out, but now Mom is feeling drainage inside her head and periodically saying "I can still hear!"
She got a little dizzy, laid on my couch for a bit until the men got back from golf, and keeps saying, dazedly, "I can still hear!"
We go to dinner and she could barely eat because the restaurant was so loud-- "Sound, all around!" (She hasn't been hearing in stereo since 1990, mind.)
They drove home over the pass. Her ear popped as they changed pressure and she could still hear. She could hear everything, she said, even her hair rustling.
This morning she can still hear, and I am as overwhelmed as she is, because listen closely:
There is nothing about flushing out a sore ear with a baby motrin syringe and peroxide that should have made a ear with no bones there to vibrate hear again.
There's no explanation I can think of. If the ear healed on its own, like the bones grew back or something (which doesn't seem likely), then why did it suddenly get better, instead of gradually? If there was some kind of blockage, for twenty years, it doesn't seem likely that a 2cc syringe and a quarter cup of warm peroxide water would dislodge it, does it? Especially when specialists looking at the ear detected no such thing? And again, if it was some other structure in the ear that healed on its own, why did the hearing come back suddenly?
It's Mom's opinion that God did a miracle. After thinking about it all night, I don't have a better explanation--one that covers more of the facts with fewer assumptions; but I emphasize again that I didn't do anything. I'm not just speaking medically, when I did the equivalent of putting a bandaid on a broken leg. I mean I didn't pray, or get a sense of holy power, or glow, or anything. I had two toddlers in the house playing their new drums and Racas for Pete's sake. I didn't do ANYTHING.
So here is my explanation:
ALL healing comes from God. We like to assume a paper cut "heals itself", but of course that's nonsense; He has created and sustains our bodies in such a fashion that, most of the time, they heal without our thinking about it much. While Christ was on earth, and frequently through the Apostles afterward, God chose to heal instantaneously. I don't believe there's evidence in Scripture to say that God has limited Himself in modern times to only healing through "natural" means; why should He?
That said, until now I've never personally experienced clearly miraculous healings--I've never spoken in tongues, never had holy laughter, or any of those Charismatic experiences, k? I don't knock them, I've just never experienced them.
I didn't do anything. I happened to be standing there when my Mom's ear was miraculously healed.
Glory to God!
Breanna
P.S. Did I mention she can still hear this morning?
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