Last summer we travelled south to Myrtle Beach in Carolina to see Joe’s mom who’d had a stroke a few weeks prior. We wondered how our vibrant active “Sand Grandma”(as the children named her) would change. She couldn’t remember all of our names and began to cry when we greeted her. We reminded her(many times and again) how to do word searches to improve her vision and memory. Everyone in the family knows that I like to study the brain so they were asking me lots of questions that I really couldn’t answer well. How long would she be this way? Would she improve? We studied my brain book and found that everyone’s brain adapts differently and some people improve –others don’t. Time would tell. (Her stroke was in the occipital lobe affecting–vision, short term memory and her naming center)
Late one night –when everyone else was sleeping–I went out on the balcony of our place on the beach and prayed for reassurance. I prayed for God to send me a signal that I would give me hope that she was going to get better. The next day she came to our place on the beach and came out on the balcony to watch huge schools of fish traveling across the water. We were thrilled as Joe was having trouble getting her to do the exercises that she needed to do to improve her vision. (Her eyes could see, but her brain wasn’t receiving the needed messages–she had lost almost 70% of her visual field) . She was delighted to be able to see the big dark spots on the water and she began tracking them. She grew tired and went away to rest. It stormed a bit.
That afternoon we went out on the beach to find more shells than we had ever found. Thousands of them. And the majority of them were perfectly intact. I was delighted–so many different kinds in every size! When Joe’s mom returned to the beach I handed her 5 shells —all the same kind and graduated in size for her to put in order smallest to largest. When I handed her the shells she smiled a big smile–one we hadn’t seen in a while and said, “Of all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never seen this many shells like this.” I knew my miracle had arrived. I was reassured that she was going to get better.
She has improved! In fact, last time Joe visited a few months back she drove the car to church!
In this season of hope may we celebrate and give thanks for the gifts and grace of God!
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