It was not her headache, but mine. I quickly reported this pain to Bridget, having in the back of my mind my recent reading about the death of President Franklin Roosevelt, who complained of a “terrific headache” just before he collapsed at the Little White House in Warm Springs Georgia, so many years ago. It was not long until one of those efficient rescue trucks came whizzing up our street and well-trained medics entered our usually peaceful living room with all their equipment. Time was of the essence.
My life was in danger.
At that point, and for several days, I knew nothing of the skillful and compassionate interventions of so many physicians, nurses, technicians and other persons who labored night and day to preserve my life from the onslaught of bacterial meningitis.
I did survive the onslaught. And as I write these lines, I am much stronger, able to walk reasonably well, and have recovered most of my mental faculties. I hear more poorly, but I am told that I may receive help by way of a special ear operation for that.
On almost every day since I was taken so ill so quickly, I have thought, “Suppose Bridget had not felt that little dig in her interior that caused her to cancel her afternoon’s appointments. Suppose I had been home alone, as are many people right now.” I daresay, I would have died. Or, if I had lived somehow, I would have been severely impaired. Perhaps I would have been blind, or unable to walk.
As a child, growing up in a rather severe Presbyterian home, I was not often allowed to speak of “special providence.” God was generally benevolent, of course. The age of miracles had passed with the death of the last apostle. Our sins, however, would find us out. My mother and father were open to prayers for special favors from God, but I do not remember them offering such prayers, except once. My distressed father prayed at my mother’s bedside that she might be cured of breast cancer. Was it his anguished prayer that helped her get well and live for 36 more years?
Should I care, really, whether it was just the docs or the ambulance drivers or Bridget’s brief twinge or the prayers of hundreds of people or the holy oil spread upon me by Catholic and Episcopal priests and by a UCC minister (no Presbyterians) or the hands laid on me by an Orthodox clergyman or the entreaties made to Heaven by church members?
For now, I proclaim that special providence may be a working reality. Or, let me put it this way: the Lord, who is good, worked a benevolent purpose in my life then, and continues to do so now. In general and particular ways, the motherly graciousness of the Eternal One has been seen in my life. “In life and in death we belong to the Lord” says one Reformed creed, slightly paraphrased.
In all of this, my tendency to be serious and often skeptical must be tempered by an open eyed view of what did happen. One doctor said to me, “God must have something more for you to do in your life.”
That, my friends, is worth believing, and I am coming to do so.
When Bridget brought me home, one of the first things I saw was the sign in the yard which marks our place as Providence House. Surely, this is a place where the providence of God, both general and special is done — every day.
One day I will ask one of the docs who cared for me so wonderfully well if he or she believed that my recovery was an act of special providence, or whether my healing was simply the result of a happy confluence of medical science and the general benevolence of God. The answer might be interesting, but surely not important. I am here, and I thank God for it.
Posted May 5, 2004
Lawton W. Posey, a retired minister, lives and writes from Charleston, W.Va.
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