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?

7 Quick Takes Friday #11

Time again already to contribute to the 7 Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary, but first let me report on Ray's condition after thanking all of you for your prayers. The doctors told Noelle this morning that Ray's eyes were moving, and therefore they believe he is dreaming, which is a sign of brain activity even if he is not yet conscious or responsive. One day at a time. We wait and pray for what is best for him.

It had been so quiet a week, relatively speaking (all things being relative), until Ray had his heart attack that I had to consider whether or not I even had seven “takes,” quick or otherwise, to share. I finally decided that yes, possibly, I did. Here they are:

(1) Saturday evening I attended, as is typical when I am in town, the Saturday evening mass at Old Mission. Fr. Terry, of whom I am very fond and who has been my de facto spiritual advisor, was the visiting priest. I had not seen him for some time, so it was a delightful surprise to find him there; we made plans to get together for dinner after I return from Lithuania and he returns from New Zealand (planned trips for the latter part of January). After Mass, I spent some time talking with Sr. M and this other person, whose name I promptly forgot (my memory is simply not under control lately). This other person has a friend, Cecilia Willis, whose very serious problem I also promptly forgot. I just know that I was asked to pray for her, so I have been doing that. Fortunately, my bad memory is of little concern here. God knows what ails her, so it is not all that important that I remember. I would also ask you to pray for her, too.

(2) Sunday I spent some time talking to an elderly friend who has no local relatives. Donnie and I visited her the weekend before Christmas, and Donnie had to go get some lights the weekend after Christmas, so he visited her again. When I called her on Sunday, she bubbled on and on about that surprise. I try to call every day, but I only succeed in talking to her a couple of times a week at best because of my travels. When I blogged about her deteriorating and isolated condition in October (7 Quick Takes #5), Pinksy 82 (Stranger in a Strange Land), who is a social worker, suggested a geriatric assessment. Wow! Thank you! We asked her daughter for permission and were given it. The assessment was done, and now the county sends someone there every day for a couple of hours to check on her, help with the housework, and assist her with daily living needs. In addition, the family has now set up a person to check on her every evening and bring her medicine and groceries. After work, a neighbor couple, who works with me and gives me a periodic report, comes by for socialization. And then, there is my daily (uh, weekly) phone call. The situation is much better now.

3) On Monday evening our prayer group at the Old Mission met. There I learned that Sr. M was planning to travel to Idaho. I asked her about how warm a coat she had, and she said she had no winter coat at all. In fact, she had not given a thought to the fact that Idaho would have winter weather that differed from California's sunshine. I have a very warm goose down coat that I wear in places like Siberia and Lithuania, and I would not need it until the 18th, when I have to leave for Lithuania. So, after the group finished our prayers for the evening, I ran home, then dropped by the convent to give the coat to Sister.

(4) Tuesday at the end of the work day, I had an appointment with a cardiologist. There is a bit of a story behind that visit. When I went to the clinic a few weeks ago to get some medicine re-prescribed, there was a new doctor who heard a heart murmur. It is not big deal. I have had a heart murmur all my life, including the eight years I spent in the military service. I have a strong heart. The murmur is functional, not structural, and therefore innocuous. The doctor would not listen to me, however, and sent me to a cardiologist, who panicked at my EKG, and wanted me to get an echo cardiogram and a blood test to check cholesterol level. The conversation went something like this:

Beth: "My heart murmur is no big deal. It's a functional thing. I've had it all my deal. It is innocuous."

Doctor: "Well, your EKG shows that your heart is not keeping up with you." (Hah! Donnie says that nothing and no one can keep up with me! Silly guy!)

Beth: "I'm really sure it's nothing, but okay, you're the doctor; I'll get the echo cardiogram."

Doctor: "And a blood test to check cholesterol level."

Beth: "Oh, I don't need that. My cholesterol level is fine."

Doctor: "You told me your heart was fine!"

Beth: "Okay, give me the details, and I'll go." (Actually, I knew that my cholesterol level was okay because I had had a test about a year ago, but the doctor was only doing his job, so off I went.)

Tuesday I was back in the doctor's office for the results. It turns out that the cholesterol level was on the high side of normal, but the doctor prescribed a diet change rather than medicine. As for my heart, he told me in surprise, "The echo cardiogram shows that you have a very strong heart." (Yeah, I knew that -- even if it does not keep up with me!)

That experience reminds me of the time that Noelle fell at school many years ago. The story is too long to repeat here, but if you have a bit of a sense of humor about medical matters, you can find it on Clan of Mahlou: The Episode of Noelle's Wrist. Sometimes doctors know best, but sometimes patients know best.

(5) On Wednesday, I found myself on a plane once again and once again with no notice. This time I had to make an urgent trip to Washington. Donnie listened to the weather reports for Washington. Oh, oh! Unseasonably cold temperatures – and I had just given my warmest winter coat to Sister, already enroute to Idaho. Well, I did have a winter-ish jacket that would keep me from freezing, and I could use taxis, rather than the metro and walking although I generally prefer the opportunity for some exercise. Regardless of the changes in my itinerary, Sister did need the coat more than I.

I had more important issues to worry about, anyway. As the plane from San Jose landed in Phoenix, I tried to pull out my Phoenix-Washington ticket, but could not find it. I had only one ticket: San Jose-Phoenix. I involved the man sitting next to me and the people in front and back in looking on the floor to see if I had accidentally dropped my follow-on ticket. Nothing. Then I realized that I should not have the San Jose-Phoenix ticket. That should have been taken at the gate in San Jose. Ah, hah! Powers of deduction told me that the ticket agent took the wrong ticket. (I’m no Sherlock Holmes; Holmes would have realized that the first time he pulled out the San Jose ticket.) That, I was pretty certain, would be an easy fix once I got to the gate for DC. It was.

However, as in most cases where there are problems of some sort (at least, with me), a number of people had become involved in my ticket issue. As we were all standing in the aisle, waiting to debark, everyone started talking about my ticket dilemma and similar things that they had experienced. Of course, there was some concern that I had been able to get on the plane with the wrong ticket!

(6) In Washington, I had two days of meetings. On Thursday, I visited our Washington office and laid to rest some potential animosities and certainly some unbased suspicions coming from the head honcho there. It always feels good to change a potential enemy into a current friend. Then, on Friday, I visited the organization where I worked when I was an employee of the U.S. Department of State. Actually, the call was not personal but work-related. I wanted to introduce one of our new supervisors to people who had greater knowledge of some of the international issues with which she was dealing. Of course, though, I took the opportunity, being an extrovert, to renew old acquaintances. After the formal meeting with that head honcho, it was on to informal meetings, with hugs and kisses all around!

(7) And now Friday is drawing to a close. I have all my business done, and I will be off in about an hour to visit a dear friend, the person who helped me with the spiritual needs of Shura when he was having his surgeries at the University of Virginia Hospital. Oh, and it's not just a Friday evening that we will be enjoying together. My friend is on vacation right now because is Orthodox Christmas. We will have yesterday's Russian-Christmas-specialties leftovers tonight. So, I will have two Christmases this year! Now how could this week end any better even with the worries about Ray! A second chance to celebrate a special birth! How often does that happen?

So, in this case, in closing, I will wish all of you a merry Christmas -- again!

7 Quick Takes Friday #9

This has been another week of tripping. So much has sped by so fast that I cannot believe that it is time again already to contribute to the 7 Quick Takes Friday meme hosted by Jennifer at Conversion Diary. So, here goes with a quick review of this compellingly full week.

1. I spent Saturday at a conference in Maryland. In contrast to the balmy weather of the first day of the conference on Friday, where I moderated a professional discussion, snow arrived Saturday morning, enthralling participants from warm climes such as Jordan and the Philippines, but nonplussing me because I had hope to get together with Shura, who was in Charlottesville, Virginia, staying with Julie, the nurse with whom he lived there during his various hospitalizations and for a number of years following, had come from Russia for only one week. As the snow deepened and travel advisories popped up, our plans to meet mid-point in Washington DC became at first dubious and then unimplementable. Shura will be back in June, thank God, so Julie, he, and I will meet in California, where a no-snow week can be guaranteed.

2. On Sunday, I attended St. Philip Neri Church in Linthicum. Whether it was the disappointment from missing Shura, unrecognized stress from knowing that I was "supposed" to be at breakfast at 9:00 and the 8:00 mass was the only one therefore I could attend, or the discomfort of waiting a long time in the cold, I was quite impatient with the cab driver when he showed up too late for me to arrive at mass on time and immediately announced that he did not know the Linthicum area and was prepared only to take me to Baltimore. I sent him away dismissively, contacted the hotel front desk, and learned that another cab was in the area. The second cab driver, a pleasant enough person, got me to the church promptly, so I was only a little late, and I made a deal with him to pick me up afterward. I handed him a $20 bill for the $10 fare and told him I would settle the bill with him when he returned. I had some difficulty concentrating during mass because, having finally reached my destination, I realized how rude I had been with the first driver. One of the blogs I read this week (sorry, I don't remember which at this late hour) made the comment that regret is not the same as penitence. Indeed! God is wonderful in such circumstances. I got a chance to make up for my rash behavior, when, on the trip back, the second driver told me he had called the first driver and chewed him out. I admitted that I might have reacted in anger, without trying to work out a solution, that it takes two people to differ. So, hopefully the first driver did not get into trouble. Then, splendidly, I learned that the second driver was in his final week of work and was returning to Haiti to try to help develop some of the infrastructure of that country that was lacking, especially for children. Not only had God given me an opportunity to undo what I had done with the first driver, but He had also provided a second driver whom I could help. Rather than "settling" the bill for the drive to the church, I let him keep the change, and I gave him a second $20 bill for the ride back to the hotel. I am not floating in money, but I was on per diem and could eat one less meal or whatever was needed to balance my own financial accounts. One should not pass up opportunities put before one by God to help another of His children do some good in the world!

3. Monday I was back to work in California. Yes! Home is where my heart is, and being home brought a sense of gratitude and comfort. In spite of a hectic work day that left my desk piled high with documents that needed attention at the end of the stay, I did not stay to complete the work, but rather dashed off to my Monday night prayer group. I assist the spiritual director who leads the group, and he had called to let me know that he was driving in from out of town and might be late, so I would need to start the activities. However, he arrived early, as did I and Sr. M, who helped us get set up. What a pleasant ending to the day: discussion, sharing, bonding, singing (I can usually read sheet music well enough to play nearly any song), and prayer.

4. Tuesday overwhelmed me in many ways. At work, we had representatives and managers arriving from all our branch offices to take part in our annual reverse evaluation, workshops, and meetings. I believe that every single one dropped by my office to give me a hug. (We are a hugging organization.) In the evening, I had to attend a mandatory community leaders' holiday party. That made me miss the mass for Tuesday's holy day of obligation. Goodness, this week I have been rapidly building quite a confession list!

5. Wednesday started inauspiciously. I briefed a visiting Army colonel from San Diego. An easy task, the briefing simply had to be transferred from my computer to the computer in the conference room, since we had updated our organizational briefing recently. No, not an easy task! My computer told me bluntly that I was not authorized to download anything. I called the tech to work on the problem, but for the briefing I had to borrow slides from one of the managers who works for me. Thank goodness, he had them easily accessible. No, nothing thankful about that, either, it turned out. The slides were the wrong ones. Not only were they dated, but they also did not include one entire division. I ended up briefing that from memory, using markers and the easel that was in the room. Fortunately, the colonel wanted company for lunch, and the easy conversation that flowed from that not only made her 30 minutes late for her next appointment but also built rapport between us that made up for the briefing. Yes! God takes care of me. Every time that i get myself into trouble, God provides a way to crawl out of it.

6. Yesterday, Thursday, was great. I always immensely enjoy our annual reverse evaluations. While they can be uncomfortable for new managers, since they are a collection of problems that get in the way of effective work accomplishment, presented publicly by employees who are selected by their colleagues as representatives from each office, they provide me with extremely useful information about how happy employees are, what policies are needed, what practices are effective or ineffective, and how employee-management relationships are faring. I, too, am a target for complaints, but that is fine. That is what the day is all about. To keep me honest, I bring in an outside facilitator from the local community, someone skilled at facilitation. We have used the same person for three years now. He says he likes facilitating our reverse evaluation more than any other facilitation work he does because our reverse evaluation tends to be a love-in. We end up with taskings for improvement. To each task, I assign an action officer who is responsible to ensure that agree-upon changes are actually accomplished, and progress is shared with all employees at all our branch offices and our main office through an Internet site. Employees enjoy the reverse evaluation, too, because they get a chance to change the organization in ways in which they would like to see it work.

7. Friday is here! I need to go to bed! I have to get up in three hours to ready myself to attend a very important meeting at the set of offices that is 15 minutes farther away from my house than my set of offices. We have one of our most senior people arriving from Washington. At least, I don't have to do the briefing! I also have to make a lunch to take with me because we will have a working lunch. Following that, though, I get to go back to my own office where we are having a holiday party. Yes! As Doah would say, "Par-tee, par-tee!"

I hope you have had as enjoyable a week as I have had. Certainly, ending it with a party is a great way for a week to go out. I have an even greater way post-party to end the week...Sleep!!!!!

Monday Morning Meditation #8: Certainly, God Will Be With Us

Another week has passed, and in slow manner, I have finished another chapter. Moses has now grown up and is tending sheep when he sees a bush on fire but not being consumed. Intrigued, he checks it out to find God there with a tasking for him.

What is it that they say about curiosity? Well, I'm sure God would have found him one way or another, anyway. I have learned that when God has a tasking for you, there is no way out except to do it, and that seems to be what Moses found out.

Moses found out something else, too: if God tasks us, we have help. God never abandons us to carry out the tasking unaided. Obviously taken aback and feeling inadequate to the task, Moses asked God, "Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?" to which God replies, "Certainly, I will be with thee."

Reading: Exodus 3: 11-12.

Meditation: Reading this passage, I immediately recalled the moment 16 years ago that I was tasked with rescuing a dying child artist from a remote little townlet in Siberia. Shura, a young teenager with spina bifida in a part of the world that had nearly no antibiotics, was already a published author and artist when I first heard about him. He had had two exhibits of his art work at the renown Dom uchenykh (House of Scientists), and a documentary film had been made of his life. I have no idea what Shura's role is supposed to be in this world. Nor does he. However, God clearly wants him alive. The number of miracles, serendipities, and downright people-pushing that God did on Shura's behalf is mind-boggling. I cannot relate them all here because there are so many. I will at some future time (not distant future) post Shura's fuller story on The Clan of Mahlou blogspot, but that will have to wait for now because the story has so many details. The story is the framework for the first two parts (of three) of Blest Atheist; obviously, it is a complex story. (Where God gets so highly involved, I don't think complexity and mystery is avoidable.)

Here are the major ones:

1. I was introduced to Shura's plight by his godmother in a serendipitous meeting in Krasnoyarsk, where she was the head of a delegation of teachers from Shura's home town, Akademgorodok, who attended a two-week seminar I was teaching at the behest of the Siberian Regional Ministry of Education. It turns out that we had a common mentor -- my consultant at the Academy of Sciences in Akademgorodok had been her graduate advisor at Novosibirsk State University.

2. It quickly became clear that I was supposed to take care of Shura. God did not seem to care that I was an atheist at the time. He tasked me, and I had no choice but to obey. (Well, I suppose I did have a choice, but I kept getting pushed so hard that I simply became caught up in a whirlwind of miracles with no time to think about backing out -- some of that story can be found in an excerpt from my book on Mahlou Musings.) People would tell me that I was being used. When I would remonstrate that this was not possible because I was an atheist and believed that everything that was happening was a matter of coincidence, they would tell me to hush and just keep following along, and basically that is what I did, not even knowing why I did it.

3. God prepared me with the basic skills I would need: the ability to speak Russian (at one time, my major in graduate school) and the knowledge of spina bifida care (my younger daughter Noelle being a child with spina bifida). In fact, Noelle's doctor in Washington, DC was the person who was most instrumental in helping to get Shura into the US, filling out all the embassy's medical documentation. Clearly God started that preparation long before I ever heard about Shura, who was born half a world away a year after Noelle.

4. When the consular officer at the US Embassy refused to give Shura a visa, two diplomats stepped forward on my behalf (for Shura). They were my former students. More pre-planning?

5. When US hospitals would not operate on Shura without a $50K deposit and evidence that we would be able to pay the anticipated $500K bill (it turned out to be closer to a million dollars), we went looking for funds and were directed to a billionaire, John Kluge, who responded with a check for $500K (and later with another for the same amount) and tickets to the hospital of his choice, University of Virginia Hospital. We later learned that we had sent our plea to an unforwardable address in Virginia (a follow-up thank-you letter was returned to us), and yet within three days Mr. Kluge had received it at his correct address in New York. Moreover, the clinic coordinator at UVA Hospital was a former art instructor -- she recognized Shura's talent and was able to get him a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She also took him into her home when it became clear that he would be spending more time in Virginia than in California; she had a son the same age, and the two boys became friends. During his stay in the hospital and after, Shura was befriended by a cardiac surgeon from the Ukraine who spoke Russian and was on an internship at UVA Hospital. The surgeon acted as Shura's interpreter and advocate and, later, American father. He even got eventually got US residency although that had seemed impossible when we first met him. Hah! Nothing turned out to be impossible in Shura's case. I have found that when God lets you be part of His miracles, the word, impossible, disappears from your vocabulary.

6. At a Tuesday evening pre-surgery moleibin (special intentions prayer during mass) for Shura at the Russian Orthodox Church in Washington DC, we met the overseer of the INS. He had worked late, knew that there was a mass that day, and "for some reason" felt compelled to stop in on his way home. He had not been in that church for over a year because he had moved his residence to Baltimore and attended church there. I am told that since that evening 16 years ago he has not been back. This wonderful man introduced himself after the mass, gave us his card, and offered to help in any way and ultimately assisted in getting Shura the long-term permission to stay in the USA that he needed to ensure his good health. We thought that he was a very special Good Samaritan. We only learned how very special he was several months ago with the publication of a book about an unusual icon and the identification of this man's son as the recipient of an incredible miracle. The boy had become blind, and his parents, ethnically Jews and spiritually atheists, were desperate to help him in any way possible. Grasping for straws, when they heard that the icon that weeps myrrh and causes healing would be at a church nearby (the same church that conducted Shura's moleibin), they took their son there. Myrrh flowed and gushed onto the floor. The priest anointed the boy's eyes with it, and the boy saw. The parents converted on the spot. Years later, the father was able to pass on God's blessing to his blind son by helping Shura, the lame son of another man.

There is much more to the story and even a follow-on story of a blind orphan with brain tumors who will be coming to the US as a result of her benefactor learning about Shura, contacting me, and my experience in working visas through the embassy coming to the rescue. The Russian doctors had given Katya of Tula only five years to live, and she wanted to die with relatives, the only ones she has being two brothers who were adopted by a family in New Hampshire a dozen years ago. Just when it seemed that it would be impossible to bring Katya to the USA all of the key players (the benefactor, me, my connections with and at the US Embassy, and Katya's nurse) all ended up in Moscow last August 6. None of us knew in advance that any of the others would be there, and I personally had earlier had no reason to go to Moscow, but suddenly I was needed as a consultant for an educational matter there. Subsequently, when Katya's Russian doctor refused to sign the paperwork to allow her to travel, that doctor mysteriously disappeared from the clinic and a new, more helpful doctor appeared in her place. Katya will be here soon, and now, after consultation with doctors in Boston, it appears that she may be coming to the USA not to die but to live. The doctors in Boston think that they can remove all the tumors.

There is too much complexity to these stories to include all the details here. I would simply ask two questions: (1) Could anyone of sound mind claim that all of these things were mere coincidence? and (2) assuming that this was a tasking from God, is there any doubt that He kept the same promise that He made to Moses: "Certainly, I will be with thee."

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God to keep using me for these marvelous plans of His to help the people of this world for I so very much enjoy being part of those plans, to express my regret for any and all pushes, nudges, and opportunities that I have missed as a result of my sometimes contrary and somewhat obtuse nature, to give thanks for these waves of miracles which God has washed over so many people in the cases of Shura and Katya alone, and to offer praise for the unimaginably skillful way in which God works to bring good from bad, to network dozens of people and institutions to help just one injured lamb, and to make the unbelievable real.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who does not care who we are, who will use even an atheist to help the hurt and lost, who equips us to accomplish whatever task He has set before us, and who is with us every step of the way, moving forests, mountains, and every other obstacle so that we might complete His tasking successfully and in full confidence that our trust in Him is never misplaced.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Exodus 3: 11-12 or any other scripture that you choose for meditation. Feel free to export the image of the mission church; maybe some time in the near future my Internet-inept self will be able to figure out how to use the Mr. Linky buttons. In the interim, perhaps you are welcome to use the image and share the meme of Monday Morning Meditation for starting out the work week closer to God.

Have a good day and a blessed week, filled with all good things -- and may God task you with something wonderful! No need to fear: He will be with you. He has promised it.

Shura's Miracles

Next on the list of my children who have benefitted from the kindness of angels in the garb of professionals is Shura. (I don't know whether to include him among our children or not since he was with us for such a short while, but in the broader meaning of the word, he is our child even though Donnie could not even communicate with him in the beginning, Shura speaking no English and Donnie speaking no Russian.) Anyone who has read my book, Blest Atheist, knows the story of Shura in grand and glorious detail. I include it here in very brief form for everyone else and as part of the series of the positive things that other people have done for my children.

About Shura:
Shura was a dying child artist from Akademgorodok, Siberia, a place where I had done research, consulting, and teaching, and my second most favorite place in the world, the first being the little mission town I live in right now. (The picture on the left was drawn by Shura following his first surgery in the United States.) He was remarkably talented. As a very young teenager he had had two exhibits at Dom uchenykh (House of Scientists, which recognizes the leading academicians and artists in Russia, at that time the Soviet Union), poetry published in a collective volume, and a television documentary on his life. Shura was unusual in Siberia in that he was alive. Born with spina bifida during the Soviet era in a region with a paucity of antibiotics and no experience with these kinds of neurologic defects, accompanied by extremely harsh winters with temperatures dipping lower than 75 degrees below zero, and into a family of seven children (nearly unheard of in the USSR - the family required two side-by-side apartments in order to accommodate all its members), Shura grew up homeschooled by necessity in a country where such a thing was not only unheard of but also rejected out of hand. To make a long story somewhat shorter, through actions taken by Shura's godmother and me, Shura ended up in the USA for life-saving surgery. Here I was his guardian, and then he moved in with Julie Trudell (see Shura's caregivers below), and then began to live independently in Charlottesvile, Virginia as a chef and artist. While recuperating from his surgeries as a teenager, he was granted a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the youngest person ever so honored. Last January he returned to be with his Russian family, now living in Moscow in the new Russia where antibiotics are more readily available and where Shura hopes to devote full time efforts to his art.

Shura's challenges:
Shura was born with lipomyelomeningeocele, a form of spina bifida, resulting in mild paraplegia (limited to no movement below the knee). He ambulated with crutches and, when allowed, on his knees. Over time, as result of untreated ulcerations that are typically for enervated skin, he developed gangrene in both legs, requiring an amputation of both. Ambulation is now accomplished with prostheses. Although he has a neurogenic bladder, he has refused to self-catheterize. Doctors were able to improve on his bladder functioning sufficiently to allow Shura close to normal bladder control. The lipomyeloneningeocele was not repaired at birth, as is usual in the USA, and until this day remains, now by choice, unrepaired; it has so far created no health damage. Concerns are that repair would result in hydrocephalus, which Shura does not currently have.

Shura's special caregivers:

Shura's family: These were the caregivers who kept Shura alive against all odds and then, when there was no longer any hope of keeping him alive in Siberia, handed him over to a stranger (me), fully trusting God to watch over him. (That faith was surely not in vain!) Shura's mother was a teacher, and she taught Shura at home; he is highly educated in spite of never having attended a regular school. She was also the faith center of the family. She knew that Shura was God's special child, and she made sure that Shura knew: he came to me full of faith. Shura's father, wounded in the war, walked with an energetic limp. A dreamer and printing press owner, he worked tirelessly on behalf of getting his son to the USA, gathering in money from visitors to Akademgorodok world-wide. When he delivered Shura to me, he handed me a large bag of coins and bills from many different countries, not enough to pay for anything of a medical nature but enough to help with clothing and feeding Shura. (Turning that sack of foreign money into dollars took an entire afternoon at Salts Bank, where foreign meant only Mexican -- everything had to be looked up in a book to ensure that the money was real.) A third member of Shura's family was his godmother, who had come to know me when I was lecturing in Krasnoyarsk. Ironically, she herself later developed cancer, and the doctors at the University of Virginia Hospital stepped in to take care of her, too.

Dr. Ronald Uscinski. Yes, the same doctor who played a vital role in the health and well-being of Noelle. Ron read Shura's x-rays and medical records originally and gave me guidance in how to proceed and what was needed medically. He then tirelessly filled out all the paperwork that the US Embassy in Moscow required to bring Shura to the USA three times. It seems that the embassy kept losing it. I had some doubts as to why the paperwork was getting lost, and the final time I noted that a copy of the fax was being sent to a resident of Moscow who could bring hard copy if needed. That took care of that. Hard copy was not needed. After examining Shura himself, Ron also stood by me and Shura when we made the decision not to repair the lipomyelomeningeocele for fear of causing greater damage, considering that Shura had already stabilized with the sac in place.

Julie Trudell. I first "met" Julie when she called me from UVA Hospital to tell me that she had tickets for Shura and me to come to UVA for Shura's surgery and a $500K for his care, all compliments of John Kluge. A mother of a son Shura's age, after our attempt at post-surgical follow-up from California (flying to appointments, instead of driving), she offered to take Shura into her house. Instantly, we had a triumvirate of motherhood: Siberian mother, Californian mother, Virginian mother. Early on, there was transcontinental, transatlantic communication among the three of us. Over time, Julie took on most of the late-teenage parenting. She and I have become like sisters over the past 15 years since that first phone call.

Dr. Vladimir Kryzhanovski. Vladimir simply appeared on the radar one day, telling us he had heard about a young Russian undergoing surgery at UVA. Vladimir was a cardiac surgeon on some type of exchange program at UVA Hospital, and he wanted to help. He was a ready interpreter in the beginning when Shura could not speak English. He inserted himself into the medical decision-making, e.g., insisting that the best kinds of prostheses, not the simplest (considered easier to maintain in Siberia), be made just in case Shura remained in the USA for a while (which he did -- 15 years). He spent hours talking to Shura about Russian and Ukrainian literature and other cultural phenomena, making sure that Shura never forgot his own culture (something he could do far better than I). Later, he helped Julie with parenting issues. (Oh, yes, Vladimir is still in Virginia.) My most vivid memory of Vladimir is the poignant picture of him walking beside Shura's gurney on the way to Shura's first surgery (the double amputation). I had to stop at the point that all parents have to say good-bye to their children, but Vladimir did not. He walked the rest of the way to the operating room with Shura.

John Kluge. Most of John Kluge's contribution is described above. I never met him. Shura never met him. He is now 94 years old and, the last we heard, suffering from cancer. I doubt that we will ever meet him, but Shura did paint a picture just for him. To give and not expect anything in return is true giving. The only requirement that John Kluge made of Shura was that the medical care was to be given at UVA and Shura followed by the Kluge Rehabilitation Center. You see, Mr. Kluge had given money to the hospital before and quite a bit of it. Mr. Kluge not only paid for the medical expenses, he also asked Dr. Gillenwater, who had just retired from the urology staff, to return for one purpose: to coordinate Shura's care. And then, to make sure that Shura was fully taken care of as time went on, he provided periodic money for clothes and painting supplies.


Shura's life has been full of miracles. The first was that he survived. A tethered cord, highly painful and if untreated highly damaging, typically accompanies a lipomyelomeningeocele. That was the second miracle; he has never had a tethered cord. The third miracle occurred when I happened to meet Shura's godmother in Krasnoyarsk and together set into place the series of events that would bring Shura to the USA at a time when the US Embassy was opposed to granting such visas. The fourth miracle was finding John Kluge as benefactor for we had no idea where to get the $50K upfront money that hospitals were requiring, let alone the $500K estimated total medical expenses (actual expenses have been nearly double that). Finding John Kluge was not easy: I had an address given to me my someone quite by chance from Charlottesville, Virginia, home of John Kluge -- except that was not his home; he lived in NYC. Nonetheless, the package and plea I sent to Charlottesville somehow found him in NYC within 72 hours of sending. The fifth miracle was the appearance of Vladimir in Shura's life -- who would have thought that there would be a visiting doctor from the Ukraine (in the former Soviet Union) just at a time when Shura needed translator, doctor-guide, and father figure in his life. The sixth and highly potent miracle was finding the overseer of the INS after a moleibin (Russian Orthodox prayer service) for Shura, a person who no longer attended that church, did not know about Shura's moleibin, and was 100% situated such that he could help with all visa and green card issues (and did); only later did we find out that this person was a convert who had been the recipient of a miracle himself (see Miracles in Real Life).

In the case of Shura, I often wondered, given all the miracles, anyway, why they did not happen faster. (Remember, I was still an atheist at the time, so I just considered it all serendipity, assuming that if there were a God, it would all have happened instantly.) Only now I understand. The journey was clearly more important than the destination. It was not the time for miracles that was needed. It was the time for people to see the miracles and to be part of them, the time to expand Shura's blessings beyond one young man to dozens of people worldwide.

Yes, indeed, Shura’s life has been full of miracles. Where there could have been great sadness, there has been great hope and joy. There has been only one stain on all of this: me. As an atheist at the time that all of this was taking place (Boy, could I make up excuses and shaky explanations for the series of miracles that rolled out before my very own eyes!), I set a poor role model for Shura, and I was, for him, a role model. As a result, he chose to abandon his faith for my atheism. There was logic, in both our minds at the time, for his choice. I was the one, in his mind, who had pulled him from Siberia and saved his life. He really did not understand that I was only the conduit that God chose and that God could have chosen another. Why would God send a strong believer to an atheist or allow that atheist to discourage the faith of His believer? That question, I suspect, will never be answered. I don’t really need an answer. I am just trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to deal with the regret. (It is one of those situations where we know that God forgives us but we find it difficult to forgive ourselves – at least, that’s the way it works for me.) Shura knows of my conversion, and that has puzzled him. Perhaps there is hope for a reversion for him. (Please pray for that.) More important, now that Shura has returned to Russia, where care is at last sufficient for him, he will be living near his parents. I imagine that once again his real mother will take care of his faith.

Miracles in Real Life

My life has been filled with miracles. The most recent is the story of my granddaughter (see Notes from the Land of Splat!), considered by Stanford University Hospital to be its miracle baby of the year -- the university even made a special web page for her case for doctors worldwide to learn about it and perhaps to contribute to it. If you have read my postings on this situation, you know that she was born essentially unassembled and doctors had to put her lower half (or halves) back together and in the right places. She came home on Friday. She is missing some parts but can live without those. Later, the doctors may be able to bionicize some for her.

This unusual situation should not surprise those who have read Blest Atheist. I related there a series of miracles (or at least, highly implausible and unexplainable coincidences) in the lives of Shura of Siberia and Katya of Tula. In Shura's story, I told about meeting Maury, at the time the supervisor of the INS, in a very unusual way. We had requested a moleibin (Russian Orthodox prayer service) for Shura prior to his first surgery in the USA, a double amputation. Maury showed up at the moleibin, something that was quite unexpected by the congregation because he had moved to Baltimore a year earlier and no longer attended the church in Washington, DC. Although the moleibin itself had not been announced, that Tuesday when the moleibin took place was a holy day of obligation and since he had worked late at his Washington office, he decided to stop in at his old church after work enroute home. His appearance at the moleibin was the first and last time he ever came to that church after moving to Baltimore. At the church dinner that followed the moleibin, Maury asked us about our experience in obtaining a visa and upon hearing of the numerous difficulties we had encountered, he gave me his home phone number and told me to call him if we ever encountered any difficulties in the future with the INS. We did encounter them, and we did call him, and he did help immensely. That very fortunate collision of events -- one might call it a miracle -- I included in the book.

One would have thought that event and all its ramifications unique enough. However, yesterday I received an excited call from a reader of Blest Atheist. She had just read a recently published book about an icon that weeps myrrh. Many years ago, the icon was brought to the Russian Orthodox Church in Washington where Jewish parents brought their son, Christopher, to pray with the priest before the icon. Christopher had ocular tumors that had caused him to be blind. After their prayer, the icon began to drip with myrrh that splashed onto the floor in large puddles and took several days to dry up. The priest annointed the boy's eyes with the myrrh as it poured forth from the icon, and he was able to see. The parents converted to Orthodoxy on the spot. This story sounds implausible even to me, even though I know that miracles occur because they have occurred so ferquently in my life. I changed my mind about the plausibility, however, when the caller read me the name of the father of Christopher. It was Maury, our Maury, the one who showed up as if by divine inspiration and helped Shura.

As someone once said, perhaps coincidence happens at those times when God wishes to remain anonymous!