Do You Believe In Miracles?

Miracles!

Some may believe in them, and some may chalk them up to coincidence. I choose to believe that God has a plan for my life, and when I am following with His plan, miracles do happen when there is a need for them.

 

This is the story of the miracles that happened to us in 2014 that led me to be able to hike the PCT this year.

Oct. 2013

My plans for thru hiking in 2014 were coming along, I just had to attempt it one more time on my own terms, by myself. I had to see if I could get my long time dream done. Then Mark (my husband) started experiencing deep depression, and after a fight, he decided he couldn't go on with life another day. He took our gun, and went down to the railroad tracks to end his life. When he wouldn't answer my frantic phone calls, (I didn't know at the time he wanted to kill himself, he just left the house after giving me the keys to the safety deposit box and I knew he had the gun with him) I had a good friend call him, they talked a while, then Mark simply hung up. He just ran out of things to say. Another hour passed; then he returned home. I convinced him to go to the emergency room and my heart sank when he looked over at me and said, "You know this means the end of your thru hike, don't you?" I nodded my head, it sure appeared that way. The hospital bills would be enormous. We didn't have that much left from our savings. Miracle #1- The doctors released him that night into my care. They never do that for someone who might kill themselves from a gunshot. We didn't recognize the miracle at the time, it would be three more months before we discovered the full extent of this miracle.

 

We only had to pay the hospital $1,000 for this night, but we needed to keep as much of our savings as we could since we were both out of work. It was suggested to us that we apply for charity care through the hospital, so we did, though we didn't believe we would qualify with the amount of savings we had. Miracle #2- We qualified! The hospital bill was paid in full, and my hopes rose again that I was PCT bound.

 

Jump ahead to Jan. 11, 2014

My phone rings. Mark is on the line telling me he is headed to the hospital, this time with a heart attack! The hospital is just minutes from the house, so I head there, all kinds of fears rising in my mind as my traveling companions. Miracle #3 occurred at the church were the Salem Free Clinic was holding appointments for health exams. Mark didn't have a doctor or health insurance at this time, so the free clinic is where he went when we discovered that a routine blood test for Life Insurance showed that he had abnormalities in the blood work, and that he couldn't get his insurance raised.

After examining Mark, the doctor mentioned to his nurse that he wished he had an EKG machine around. To which the nurse replied, "There is one right around the corner." Sure enough, they had an EKG machine, (which had never been there before) and they promptly connected it to Mark, then told him he needed to get to the hospital right away, Mark was critical. Since Mark had driven himself to the Free Clinic, the doctor did not want Mark to drive to the hospital, so he took it upon himself to get Mark there.

 

As we went through the normal emergency room procedures, we were discussing how we were going to pay for this visit. Miracle #4- The nurse who was in the process of checking insurance heard us, and let us know that since we applied for Charity Care in October, just three months earlier, we were covered 100% for this visit also. (Charity Care at this hospital covers 100% for six months, we had no idea) What an amazing turn of events. I think I just stood there with my mouth open, not able to comprehend what had just been handed to us. The cost of an intensive care room for a week, 5 bags of blood to replace the 2/3 of the blood he had lost due to ulcers, plus the nursing care, meals, medications and the angiogram and a second heart attack in the hospital, well, it adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mark decided to apply for disability while he was still in the hospital. We were warned that people rarely get approved on the first try, usually it takes multiple tries before someone gets approved. But we had to try. And we didn't think we had a shot.

 



Feeling Much Better



Miracle #5- Mark is coming home from the hospital, time to get his medications filled from our pharmacy. Oh no, the cost will be over $200 a month. We just don't have that kind of money anymore. "Wait, let me enroll you into a pharmaceutical plan, and we'll see what happens," said the pharmacy technician. What happened, was that our medications now cost us $50 a month! Still expensive for us, but much more doable now. And on top of that, friends from church got together to put a care basket together for us, which included 3 checks for, you guessed it, $50 a piece. We now had the first 3 months paid for. Thank you all for being part of our miracle.



This is the time when I realized my plans for thru hiking in 2014, and probably for ever, was over. My thoughts now had to turn to finding a new permanent job, and my dream as far as I knew was completely over. I cried some bitter tears for my loss, (dreams die hard) then got on with my job hunting. I was very busy taking Mark to all his various doctor appointments in those first couple of months, and filling out job applications. I have a wonderful job record that reaches back for ever, but I kept coming up empty when applying for anything and everything that even remotely looked like something I was qualified for. Even praying over every application didn't seem to be helping. I had a friend help me with my resume; still nothing came up. I had a terrific job interview over the phone with not 1 vice president, but 2, of a company in Phoenix, but it didn't pan out. All of this actually turned out to be Miracle #6, but I wasn't aware of it at the time. Which goes to show you, even the times God says no can be part of your miracle.

Summer of 2014

Miracle #7 was probably the hardest set of circumstances we would have to go through, but it was also the miracle that seemed the most powerful in our lives. At this time, I had no job, was taking care of Mark, and our savings were dwindling fast. We were soon down to the point where we weren't going to be able to make next months mortgage. Mark's brother Vern, had lent us $5,000, but that had already kept us afloat for the last few months. Throughout the summer, we were both leaning heavily on God through prayer and thoughts. My prayer was always the same, whatever you want us to do or go, let us know and we'll do it. The hardest part was not knowing what that answer would be. Are we going to be able to keep the house, or are we going to have to sell? If we sold in order to keep our equity, it would mean we would be homeless. Our plans at this time would have been to live in campgrounds for a while, as we sorted out what to do next. We both love our house, but if the answer was sell, we were willing to do it. A great peace came over us, we knew God had the future, He just had to reveal to us what it was that He wanted done. That was the part I had trouble with, just having to wait to see what was going to be required of us.

Towards the end of the summer, we got together with a real estate agent, and had a listing drawn up. At our last meeting with her, we were still up in the air about what to do. She suggested that while she was gone on vacation for a week, we could figure it out. The week passed, and we knew we had to make the phone call to put our house up for sale. Nothing had changed. Remember the disability we had applied for in January? We still had no word of approval or disapproval. Mark was on the phone every week it seemed, trying to find out. But just before he called our real estate agent to give the go ahead and list our house, something made him call the disability people and they said, "Weren't you told? You have been approved!" We were now going to receive $1,800 a month. Our mortgage is $1,000/month. We were going to be able to keep our house, plus have some left over for living expenses.

It became very obvious to us that God had a plan and work for Mark here in Salem, Oregon. Mark is involved with prison ministries here, and that is what God wants him to continue doing. But what about me? I still didn't have a job, and no answers seemed to be coming up. I then thought of the Bible text of Matthew 7:11, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"

So I thought I would give it a try, and my prayers changed from asking for a permanent job, to asking to attempt to hike the PCT one more time. It seemed like a good gift to ask for. I need to do this for a multitude of reasons, and God understands what those reasons are. I asked that I be led to a temporary job for the winter, so that I could finance another hike. And after almost a whole year with no job prospects, and having hit up all the temp agencies in the area, two days after that prayer, I had a temporary job lined up with a temp agency. It was the perfect job for me as temp jobs go, God gave me many good gifts. Now I was free to plan for my upcoming hike with God's blessing.

 

 

I though you would like to know the whole story of this miraculous year we have had. What we take from this is: God is Good all the time, and All the Time, God is Good. No matter what circumstances appear to us to be, if our faith in God is strong, "Everything works together for good, for them that love God, who are called according to His purpose." Romans 8:28

Since I have a little less than 3 months to go until I hit the trail again, the posts will be coming fast and furious now as I get ready to hit this crazy trail one more time, and finally achieve this long time dream. Hang on tight, it will go fast!

My Tribute to Mark