“Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 ( NIV)
My grandmother’s first born, my mother, was a perfectly healthy baby, until around 9-10 months old. She developed a sore on the shin of her leg, which got worse until it turned into a festering ulcer. The medical diagnosis was some type of TB osteomyelitis of the bone.
In that year, 1914, the medical recommendation was amputation. Once the bacteria spread to the bone, it would cause swelling of the surrounding tissue, cutting off the blood flow, causing nearby tissues to die. To prevent this, doctors preferred to amputate as soon as possible.
My grandmother was not a meek personality, and she was pretty outraged at the thought of amputating her baby’s leg. When she emphatically said “NO !” to amputation, the doctor referred her to Evanston hospital, where a research study was being done for TB of the bone, at the time.
My grandmother took her baby there and my mother became a test patient in that research study. I don’t know all of the details, but it may have involved a treatment combining medicine with a new surgical procedure of scraping the bone clean of the infection. They did the treatment and as a result, my mother was totally cured.
She grew to adulthood and lived a full life, all because she had a strong willed mother and a faithful praying father. My grandfather was the one person in the family that I never met, since he died before I was born. My mother always spoke of his gentle nature and his steadfast faith in God. He took all three of his three children to church every Sunday, and the faith they grew to live by, was learned from him.
I’m sure my grandfather’s prayers had a huge effect on how everything turned out, and my grandmother’s immediate resistance to amputation, made the two of them, the perfect parents that my mother needed, at that time in her life.
It took the spunkiness of my grandmother, which led to learning about the research study, as my grandfather’s prayers and trust in God, led to a successful outcome. Whatever our personalities are, we are the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles or godparents that we were created to be, according to God’s perfect plan.
I remember the deep, ugly scar in my mother’s leg, but she never had any deficits or weakness in her leg. I thank God for a trial procedure that saved her leg from amputation.
Medical professionals do all they can do, but we always need to trust God to do the rest.
God gives the wisdom to those professionals who develop cures, and He gives us the faith to entrust our Iives and our family’s lives, to Him. Trusting in the Lord, not leaning only on our own understanding, always directs us in the right path.
Lord, we submit every problem or decision in our lives to you. Lead us in the path of wisdom, as we put all our trust in you, more than on our own understanding. Amen
My grandmother holding her first born, my mom, in 1914