Forward
I am convinced that miracles occur far more often than most people know or recognize. Not all of them are performed for Christian believers; a fair number are given to people who are downright rapscallions and heathens. But all of them come from a God who remembers that He made us out of dirt, loves us earthly folks, and knows we need His help and lots of it.
Daily, all over the globe, Christian believers and people in need ask God to intervene in their lives. And He does! It happens so often that many consider it an ordinary, everyday experience. An ordinary miracle, if you will. They ask. He answers. And like 9 out of ten lepers, they forget to thank Him or share their experiences with others.
The stories in this book are from a group of Tenth Lepers who have shared their spiritual adventure courtesy of God in this book and want to thank Him.
Their gratitude and experiences are to be shared, with devout believers, dyed-in-the-wool infidels, and all of those in between. Miracles encourage faith in God. They prompt people to think, “If God will do something miraculous for that rather commonplace person, maybe He will help me, too.”
And He will.
For many Christian believers, miracles are such a daily experience that they downgrade them to the “answers to prayer” category instead. They may consider miracles an experience that is a cut above where lightning flashes across the sky, thunder rolls, and the voice of God audibly says, “Pay attention! I’m going to do more than you ask or think here!”
Or they may be embarrassed to admit that they were in such a seriously troubled situation that it took a miracle from God to bail them out.
Or they may fear someone will brand them as a religious extremist if they claim God worked a miracle in their lives, although it might not hurt them if someone did.
However, every time God breaks into our lives and supplies a need, arranges a circumstance, or sends help out of nowhere, these are miracles as surely as when the dying child is restored to health, the barren woman conceives, and 5,000 hungry people are fed fish sandwiches from a kid’s snack.
Also, some people, even Christian believers or religious folks, do not recognize miracles when they see them. They are like the bystanders who watched John baptize Christ, saw the dove descend, and heard the voice of God say, “This is my beloved Son,” and thought, “Oh! It thundered!” They missed the moment, perhaps because they don’t expect — or don’t want — God to do anything supernatural. They would rather He stayed up in heaven on His own turf and not muck around on theirs. It messes up their tidy little world and makes them ask uncomfortable questions. One wonders if they would accept that a miracle was taking place before their very eyes if a neon sign were dropped from the heavens flashing on and off “Miracle in Progress!”
It also rather surprised me to see that miracles do not always change the minds and lives of the people who witness them. They may recognize an event in their lives as a miracle from God but remain very resistant to surrendering their lives to Him. Like Judas who witnessed Jesus restore the dead to life, they still have fatal doubts. I’m not sure what they’re waiting on. Perhaps for God to reinvent Himself in such a way as to be more acceptable to them or to be not quite so demanding. But it does not negate the miracle.
I am further convinced that God performs a lot less miracles than He wants to. Many people simply don’t ask God to bare His powerful arm on their behalf. I suspect that with His penchant for doing good things for His children and His love of surprising them with good gifts, He’s disappointed when they don’t ask.
I don’t have a pat explanation as to why God performs miracles in some situations but not in others. I have seen some saints die horrible, wasting deaths while certified sinners are miraculously healed — and wondered at the seeming unfairness of it. I have also witnessed people who believe that God performs miracles and have even been a conduit used by God to bring a miracle to someone else, and yet go without one when they asked for Divine intervention.
The Apostle Paul was one of those individuals. He believed in God’s miraculous power. He was used by God to perform healing and even a resurrection or two. But when he asked for healing for his “thorn in the flesh,” God said, “My grace is sufficient,” which can be translated to “You need the problem. It forces you to rely on me.”
And that, perhaps, is a partial answer to the why and why not.
If you’re reading this book expecting statues to bleed or signs of the stigmata to appear, this is the wrong book for you. I don’t know anything about those things and I don’t find any Biblical examples of them. All of the stories you will read in this volume have a counterpart in Scripture. Someone mentioned in the Bible experienced something similar.
Even then, people doubt that miracles happen and that God still does them. But take note: The 20th and 21st Centuries have not been marked by God’s dotage. He’s still very active and competent.
Despite rampant disbelief, incredulity, simple doubts, and folks hiding miracles performed for them under bushels, word of them still leaks out. They’re a poorly kept secret. They don’t prove or disprove God. They only confirm in life what the Bible states using every literary device from miracles to stories to poems to songs to salient quotes: God loves sinful man. And He sent His Son to prove it. That is the extraordinary miracle. For God, everything else He does is an ordinary miracle.
On more than one occasion, God used the announcement of a pregnancy to certify that His word concerning an impending miracle was true. He was going to do something supernatural in someone’s life. He or she should expect the miracle. The news that a baby was coming was offered as proof.
Sarah was told she would bear a son as evidence that God would make a great nation from her and Abraham’s descendents (Genesis 7:15, 8:10-15). Through an angel, He told Mary that her aged, formerly barren cousin Elizabeth was expecting a child. This was offered as proof that with the power of God, even a virgin could conceive (Luke 1:34-36).
For the Miller family, God’s message that Jenny was expecting a child bore proof that He was going to provide healing to their gravely ill little girl.
Anna’s Cure
Late Autumn 1994
As a mother, Jenny Miller couldn’t quiet the nagging feeling that something was very seriously wrong with three-year-old Anna, the next to the youngest of her five children.
“I had taken her to the pediatrician several times, and each time he said she was fine. But it wasn’t just her thin arms that made me think she was sick,” said Jenny. “When I would give her a piece of candy, she wouldn’t eat it. She’d put it in her pocket and I knew there was something wrong with that!”
October 13, 1994
As evening fell, Jenny attempted to stifle her fears for Anna.
Earlier that day, Jenny had again taken Anna to the pediatrician. He had looked at her distended abdomen and skinny arms, and once more pronounced her healthy. He thought that perhaps she might have a kidney infection or bronchitis.
But Anna was so weak she could barely walk. Her stomach didn’t seem merely pudgy to Jenny. It seemed swollen and she was coughing so hard that she had trouble catching her breath. Jenny wondered if the child would live through the night.
In desperation, Jenny took Anna to the home of a physician friend from their church. When he examined the gravely ill child, he shared Jenny’s concern.
“As a doctor, I can’t tell you that your pediatrician is all wrong,” he said cautiously, unwilling to criticize another physician. Then he gave Jenny the name of different doctor and urged her to take Anna to see him in the morning.
The remainder of the evening was a nightmare for both mother and daughter.
“I propped Anna up on the couch, but she could hardly breathe. I saw fear in her eyes,” said Jenny. That fear matched the terror in Jenny’s own heart.
The next afternoon, the new doctor temporarily put Jenny’s mind at ease. However, he admitted Anna to the university hospital for tests and observation. Jenny went home to care for her other children while her husband, J.P., stayed by Anna’s side.
By 10 p.m., their newfound confidence was severely shaken by the results of a CAT scan.
“It might be cancer,” J.P. told Jenny over the phone. “They’ve put chest tubes in because she is drowning in fluid.”
As quickly as she could, Jenny drove back to the hospital. Attached to all kinds of tubes and machinery, Anna looked small and pale and vulnerable.
“I wanted to scoop her up and run out of the hospital,” said Jenny, but she knew there was no way to shield her beloved child from an uncertain future or to protect her from the terrible disease that unbeknown to them lurked inside her tiny body.
Jenny recalled that she and J.P. held one another and prayed for their small daughter.
“God,” they prayed, “Anna is yours. You can heal her or You can take her home. You know what is best.”
“At that moment,” said Jenny, “I realized that she was in God’s arms and anything was possible with God.”
Jenny said that over the next weeks God continually gave her confirmation that He was holding Anna in His arms.
“Card after card came with Isaiah 40:11 on it,” said Jenny.
That verse reads: He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young. (NIV)
Still uncertain what diagnosis tomorrow would bring, Jenny and J.P. went home to their other children and spent a sleepless night. Jenny said that she lay in bed dreading the dawn, and when it finally came, she told J.P., “It’s so hard to face today. I want to just stay in bed.”
Jenny remembers that J.P. quietly told her, “Anna has to face the day.”
“It put everything back into perspective for me,” said Jenny. “I thought, ‘This might be hard for me, but it will really be hard for Anna.’”
Worse moments were yet to come.
Back at the hospital that morning, Jenny and J.P sat down with the doctors who told them the awful truth: Anna had stage four of a form of cancer called neuroblastoma. Her tumor was the largest of this type that the hospital had ever seen and was very progressed.
“What is beyond stage four?” Jenny asked.
The doctor was brutally honest.
“Death,” he said. “She has less than a five percent chance of survival.”
However, the doctor outlined a rigorous regime of chemotherapy and radiation.
Knowing how difficult chemotherapy could be, J.P asked, “Is this prolonging something that’s going to happen anyway? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?”
“There is a light,” said the doctor, “It’s a very small light and it’s very far away.”
As long as there was a chance, Jenny and J.P. decided not to give up.
“We’ll go ahead (with the treatment plan) and see what happens,” they told the doctor.
Although she was in the intensive care unit for the next six weeks, Anna immediately started radiation and the first of eight courses of chemotherapy. After that, she was in and out of the hospital so much that the Miller’s four other children — all home-schooled — went intermittently to stay with their grandparents in Indiana.
March 1995
It was a quiet time at the Miller house, too quiet for Jenny. Her other children were with their grandparents and only a gravely ill Anna was in the house.
“I had been praying that God would give us some hope for the future,” said Jenny. “I was praying that life could get back to normal.” But even Jenny was surprised how God supplied that hope.
“I was holding Anna on the couch,” said Jenny, “and she said to me, ‘Mom, you got a baby in your tummy.’”
Jenny and J.P. were shocked at the child’s matter-of-fact announcement.
“How do you know?” he asked Anna.
“God told me,” said Anna. “He stood by my bed in the hospital and said, ‘Your mommy has got a baby in her tummy.’”
Although Jenny had no suspicions that she was pregnant, the next day she conducted a home pregnancy test. It was positive.
Jenny greeted this news with apprehension.
“I was anxious about having a new baby on top of (my responsibilities for) Anna and the other kids,” she said, until she heard the other message God had given Anna in the hospital.
Shortly thereafter, JP and Anna were looking at a Bible picture book.
“Daddy, that’s what I saw!” Anna pointed excitedly at a picture of Christ. “Jesus in the sun! He said, ‘Don’t be afraid. You not gonna die!’”
Jenny said she then realized that God had given comforting knowledge to Anna that she was going to be okay plus He had sent a message to her, too.
“I had a peace that this was a sign from God. It was as if He was saying, ‘You don’t have to worry about November when the baby is due. Everything is going to be okay.’”
Jenny said there was a great outpouring of love and prayers for Anna and the entire Miller family.
“People at the grocery store would tell me that they were praying for Anna every day,” said Jenny.
Then in June 1995, with a flood of prayer support, Anna had a stem cell transplant. She recovered and was able to go home in only three weeks time, a record for a transplant recovery.
Anna began to regain her strength with amazing speed. She did well until October 1995. Two weeks before Jenny was due to deliver the new baby, Anna was stricken with shingles, a typical malady for a stem cell transplant patient. She made a complete recovery although her eyes remain sensitive to light.
This was the last time Anna was hospitalized.
A son, Avery, was born November 6, 1995.
Postscript:
Jenny said that Anna’s life is a witness to the healing power of Christ. As a result of Anna’s illness combined with the witness of other believers, the doctor who diagnosed Anna’s cancer came to commit his life his Christ.
At Anna’s last follow-up CAT scan, December 1998, Jenny said that a substitute doctor handling Anna’s treatment was overheard remarking to one of the nurses, “Boy, she is a real miracle! It’s a miracle that she made it!”
Anna has had no reoccurrence of the cancer, and if this continues, she will be considered cancer-free in another year.
Anna remembers little of her ordeal, but she has remained friendly with many of the nurses.
Jenny, J.P., and Anna Miller live in Columbia, Missouri, where J.P. owns a pest control company. Jenny still home schools her children, and they’ve had another recent addition to the family, new baby girl, which brings the number of children to seven.