God's Inscrutable Timing

As promised in the Quick Takes two weeks ago, here are the details on the "medical event" that took place with Fr. D. It happened partially during and then after the daily Mass in San Ignatio.

I had taken the day off from work, but that does not mean that the day was quiet. In the middle of running around, I acquired a modicum of quiet, at least initially, by taking time out to attend noon Mass.

Fr. Ed was out of town, so Fr. D, who is assigned to a parish in a town about 15 miles away, came to celebrate Mass. When Fr. D came into Mass, he seemed to be having some difficulties moving and breathing, but since he has some kind of impairment (from childhood polio, I think), we did not pay much attention to it until he could not hold the wine still. Sr. Maria was present and went forward to help him. He apologized for not feeling well, and let Sr. Maria and one of the parishioners finish the Eucharist.

He then finished Mass and disappeared into the sacristy. Two people followed him in. One was an out-of-towner who had attended Mass with a group of school children visiting the mission. It turned out that he was an EMT. He was concerned, but not local, and when Fr. D insisted he was okay, the EMT emerged from the sacristy, saying that Fr. D did not want help. He left.

Theresa was right behind him, and I was right behind her. Two mothers. They are more difficult to push away than an EMT. Theresa offered to take Fr. D to Hollister to the hospital. He declined her offer, saying that he felt okay, that it was just a pinched nerve or something that was causing the left side of his body to be temporarily paralyzed. (That is "feeling okay"???!!!)

Theresa was about to leave when I spoke up, saying that I would take his car back to his parish if he let her take him to the hospital. He said that he did not want to be a bother. Well, mothers don't listen to those kinds of answers. They have heard them lots of times before with their little boys (and big boys). "That's why you have a parish," I objected.

He hesitated at my words, and I knew I had him. I held out my hand. "Please, let me have your keys," I insisted as only a mother can. He dutifully handed them over to me, explained what his car looked like and how to work it. I left to go home to get Donnie, so that he could drive Fr. D's car and I could follow in our car so that I had a way to get home. When we got back to the mission, the ambulance had arrived for Fr. D. Apparently, he had had another episode. As it turned out, he needed surgery.

I shudder to think what would have happened if he had driven back on his own. The chances of him making it back safely were pretty close to nil. Thank God I was off work and was there to help. (Oh, that was probably God's plan all along!)

I was off because Noelle was having surgery. The surgery had been planned for Thursday, the day that all of this happened. However, the surgery had been done successfully on Wednesday (details can be found at Clan of Mahlou), so I had time to attend Mass and then visit Noelle -- and Donnie and I did, after helping out with Fr. D's needs (something we would not have been able to do had the surgery taken place on the day planned).

That kind of remarkable timing is something I have seen on many occasions. Sometimes it is on a far grander scale for God's time is not our time. His timing, however, is impeccable. This is something I have tried to explain to the teens in my catechism class who figure that a prayer not answered five minutes after it has been made is an unanswered prayer. I like to use the real life example of Shura to help them understand the scope upon which God works. (Of course, they are only teens with an even more limited understanding of time than adults, so it is difficult for them to grasp the concept of limitless and unboundaried time, but some do).

Fifteen years ago I became aware of the needs of Shura, a dying child artist in Siberia. He had spina bifida, which could not be cared for in there. So, through the intercession of many people, I brought him to live with me in the USA and found a billionaire to pay for his medical care. (Easier said than done, as you can probably imagine -- lots of miracles along the way made it possible.)

I was able to open my home to Shura because I understood spina bifida and spoke Russian. That is because fifteen years before Shura came to live us, my daughter Noelle was born with spina bifida, and ten years before that I had been somehow "drawn" to begin studying Russian, becoming quite fluent by the time Shura came into our lives.

One of the people to help Shura was the then-overseer of the INS, who just happened to show up at a pre-surgery moleibin (special Russian Orthodox prayer service) and was subsequently able to help us in some times of definite need. He was there because many years earlier (30 or so), his son's blindness was miraculously cured on the spot by a weeping icon and the whole family converted to Orthodoxy.

Now, exactly 15 years after Zhenya came into our lives, the director of Orphan Cry, an American organization helping orphans in Russia, learned about Shura's story from stumbling across it when he did a search for my name on the Internet. Now, that does not typically happen. I tried the same search and finally found the article on the 40th page of results! The director had found it right off. Odd? As it turned out, Katya, a 19-year-old orphan, was losing her eyesight to brain tumors and wanted to die with her brothers who had been adopted by a family in New Hampshire. I was able to provide some help with getting a visa -- again, miraculous timing with all key players being in Moscow on the same day in August without any one of us conferring with the others in advance -- and the director was able to find medical care for free; the doctors involved, after looking at Katya's CT scans, confidently told the director that they were pretty sure that they could operate successfully on the tumors and Katya would be coming here to live, not to die. This plan is now being put into place one step at a time.

Analyzing all those amazingly interlocked actions and people numbs the mind. If any one of them had been out of place, either or both of these two Russian teens might well have died.

And then there was today. Everyone in the right place at the right time with the right skills to take care of people God whom is watching after. What human being could ever organize such microcosmic elements on such a macrocosmic scale?