I always enjoy hearing from those who have chosen to subscribe to receive my monthly newsletter*, but I particularly love it when they choose to share their own ‘light through the cracks’ stories with me.
One that arrived, just recently, was from a lovely lady called Susan.
“Receiving your newsletter has reminded me that I have my own ‘light through the cracks’ story,” she told me. “It’s from quite a while ago, but I don’t think that matters.”
I agreed with her, and here it is, shared with her blessing.
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Susan and her parents are living 350 miles apart and keeping in touch through twice-weekly phone calls and occasional visits. Susan has two school-age children, and her husband is frequently working away from home, so family life feels busy.
One evening, as Susan chats on the phone with her mum, she starts to feel uneasy.
“Mum was clearly not herself,” she tells me. “Her voice sounded different and she wasn’t as coherent as usual.”
During the course of their conversation, it gradually emerges that Susan’s mum has had a routine blood test appointment at the nearest hospital. Unfortunately, however, while walking to the bus stop, she has fallen flat on her face in the street.
“Nobody was around to help me, so I just picked myself up, carried on walking, caught the bus and got to the hospital,” she tells Susan. “When I got there, they said, ‘We haven’t got an Accident and Emergency Department here’.”
Susan expresses her concern. Her mum’s face must be a mess. She knows how difficult the journey is to the hospital from her parents’ house; she knows how exhausted her mum is getting, caring for her dad; and she is worried about her mum now having had a fall, combined with the symptoms of a possible stroke.
“They called a taxi to take me home,” she reassures Susan.
***
After a sleepless night, interspersed with prayer, first thing the following morning, Susan calls her mum’s doctors’ surgery.
“May I speak to her doctor?” Susan asks the receptionist.
“I’m sorry,” the receptionist replies, “but data protection means I can’t put you through to him.”
“But I don’t want to ask him anything, or discuss anything with him,” Susan says. “I just want to tell him something.”
The receptionist is adamant, and Susan puts the phone down, feeling frustrated.
Pacing up and down the hallway of her home, she starts to pray, wondering what to do next – while acutely aware of the 350 miles between her and her mum.
“Suddenly I realised that the phone was not the only possible means of communication,” she tells me. “It was before we had Internet access, but I knew I could write the doctor a letter.”
So she sits down, types a strongly worded, business-like letter, for the attention of her mum’s doctor, prints it out, marks the envelope ‘URGENT’, and puts it in the post with a first class stamp.
She also phones her aunt, her mum’s sister, and explains the situation. Free to travel 200 miles at short notice, her aunt sets off as soon as she is able, more than willing to provide practical support where needed.
“The next day, the doctor phoned Mum and quickly established that the information I had sent him about her was correct,” Susan tells me. “I was also still praying.”
It proved to be crucial.
***
Going with her sister to see the doctor, Susan’s aunt offers to pay for a brain scan, but the doctor decides it can be done, free of charge, within the NHS. A few days later, the scan reveals she has had a bleed to the brain, and she is referred to a specialist hospital, not far away, where she has a procedure to relieve the pressure on her brain.
“Afterwards, she seemed proud of the hole in her head,” Susan remarks, “as she invited me, on at least one occasion, to feel it with a finger!”
Sadly, her convalescence is not completely straightforward. She is transferred to a general hospital, but feels continually nauseous and has no appetite.
During this time, Susan manages to visit her parents for a short time, to enable her aunt to return home.
“All of us were concerned about her lack of appetite,” Susan tells me, “but then I remembered how one of the ladies in my prayer group had taken some melon to her husband in hospital.”
The next time Susan visits her, she has some diced melon with her. Later, while completing a questionnaire about what she has eaten, her mum mentions this delicacy, even though it’s never been on the hospital menu!
When her mum is ready for discharge, Susan and her dad collect her in a taxi, and she is soon completely back to her normal competent self.
“It was never clear whether her fall had caused the bleed, or whether the bleed had caused her fall,” Susan muses. “But when her vicar visited her after her discharge, having seen her between the fall and the procedure, he described the difference as ‘like a miracle’, and I’m inclined to agree.”
***
As you think about Susan’s ‘light through the cracks’ story, I have two trains of thought for you:
Firstly, have you ever felt a long way away from a loved one facing a crisis? If this is you, what have you done, practically or prayerfully, to support that person from afar?
Secondly, have you ever been in situation where, with the benefit of hindsight, you can see how God has dovetailed together the right people, to be in the right place, at the right time, to be able to support you? If so, how did he do it?
As ever, constructive comments are welcome.
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*Please note: If you have read this blog post and, like Susan, you would like to subscribe to receive my monthly newsletter, you can sign up here.
4 Comments
I have a testimony story about a time when my son and had been threatened with eviction from our home. God had said, some years previously, that we would never be without a roof over our head, and the way he provided for us was incredible. I did not expect it to be under such circumstances, but every word of God proves true.
I’m so pleased to hear this, Esther. I will message you privately to find out more about your story.
Thank you for sharing Susan’s story. Testimonies are always so encouraging. God is faithful.
Thanks Dawn! I love sharing testimony stories that reveal God’s faithfulness.