Walking into the room last night I was feeling a bit strange about missing Crosswalk. I really enjoy filling my week with “church” activities, or at least activities that put me in close relation to the Body of Christ (the true Church). But last night I found myself surrounded by familiar faces from a different crowd, not to mention the plastic friends who also accompanied us. That’s right; it was a good ole four hour CPR class.
I looked about the room, studying the familiar and vaguely familiar faces. My eyes were met with smiles. I have to jump off on a tangent here and tell you, it’s so neat to work at a church. Yeah the kids are just as crazy (if not crazier, I tell ya) and I seem to have no hope of free time from 8am to 6pm because every hour I’m not in class and our center’s open seems to be on the market for the BCLC. But despite the minor complaints that I am very good at over dramatizing into life crisis (I really need to work on that), I really do enjoy my work much more than my previous job.
So I had this CPR class instead of attending my campus ministry meeting. There was the regular dramatized film about proper CPR technique, compulsion and breath rates, and such. Then after taking a state test of our newfound CPR knowledge, Sheila, our instructor, shared a story with us on the importance of knowing our stuff.
Last year Sheila suffered from a series of heart attacks. No words that I could ever write would ever be able to reproduce the extent of her struggles with medical staff in order to prove that she was indeed having a heart attack. EKGs and other such heart testers that are designed for men’s bodies and not women’s continued to turn up negative results. So, the medical staff kept sending Sheila home with various pulmonary (lung) infection medications, but refused to believe that Sheila was dying. Sheila, being well qualified to detect life-threatening situations (having been a registered nurse for well about 50 years) told her husband one morning after three weeks of heart attacks, trips to the hospital, and returning home with pulmonary infection meds, “This is my last day. I’ve heard people tell me time and time again in the hospital that it was there last day to live, but I never knew how they knew. But now, I know. This is my last day.” Her husband took her to the hospital and demanded to have an angiogram (or however you spell it) test on Sheila. While the test results were in process, a cardiologist from out of town who knew Sheila drove all the way in from his vacation, took one look at Sheila and said, “This woman is having a heart attack!” The tests came back. Sheila’s main artery to her heart was 98% clogged.
She was rushed into open heart surgery, where after opening her up, the operator came over to Sheila, who had refused sleeping meds during the procedure, and said, “I am so sorry, Sheila. [The front section of her heart had stopped beating all together at that point.] I am so sorry. What do you want me to tell your family? Is there anything you want to say to them?” It was at that moment that Sheila realized that nothing she said now would ever be enough. If her family did not know by now how she felt about them, it was too late. “Tell them I love them. But they already know that,” she responded. “Is there anything I can do for you?” asked the operator in sympathy. “I want you to pray with me.” Sheila spoke.
The doctor looked around uncomfortably because he was Jewish. Regardless, the whole operating crew got together and Sheila prayed. To this day Sheila has no idea what she said in prayer, but she does remember ending the prayer, “in Jesus’ loving name.” and thinking to herself, that’s funny, this Doctor doesn’t even know Jesus. He is Jewish. “Just maybe that’s what he needed to hear” She later commented.
Sheila remembers looking at the clock at five minutes till 9 and knowing inside of her that she would be meeting God in 5 minutes. That is when a wave swept over her (tears filled Sheila’s eyes as she told this part of the story). “But, Lord,” she remembers speaking to God, “I have nothing to lay at your feet. I am dirty filth.”
“Now I don’t care what anyone says to me,” Sheila spoke boldly through her tears to our class, “But I know what I heard and God spoke the loudest I have ever heard Him before and His voice filled my head, ‘But Sheila, I AM WORTHY!”
Sheila’s story ends as she watched a miracle before her very eyes as her heart, not once being touched by any Doctor’s hands, began filling with blood once again and started beating. [She was watching on the monitor that the operator looks at because she had asked him to turn it so she could see it too.]
“I told you this story for two reasons,” Sheila explained to us. “Number one, to tell you women to have an advocate for you if ever you get into a situation that you cannot speak for yourself in and number two,” She said with tears in her eyes, “to give Honor where it’s due.”
Little did I know that in going to a CPR class I would be flooded with the Holy Spirit. CPR Church was awesome last night with the Body of Christ.
Praise be to the Lord on High…
All Glory and Honor to the King.
Leave a Reply