Built on Nothing Less | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Built on Nothing Less | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lynn Kowal
03/06/15
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Built on Nothing Less

“Mom … please wake up … Come back to us ….”

It was December 1979, and I was standing in the Intensive Care Unit, patting my mom’s hand and urging her to wake from the coma that had been produced by the 12-hour surgery on her brainstem that she had endured the day before.

This was the second time that my mom’s existence had hung in the balance between life and death, and we were building our hope on the assurance that she would pull out of this situation, just as she had done twenty years earlier.

Back then, the doctors had given us no hope of her recovering from the savage effects of the brain tumor, and they had sent her home to die.

In death there is no hope (Isaiah 38:18;Job 17:15)**

My father had refused to give up hope, and had walked the streets praying, “Lord, if you will just let my wife live until my two small children grow up, I will believe in you.”

The righteous who trust or put their hope in God will be helped (Psalm 28:7),

The Lord heard my father’s cry, my mom lived, and for the next twenty years she raised my brother and me, and returned to her old job as a much-loved social worker.

They who have hope will not be confounded, put to shame, or disappointed (Isaiah 49:23)

As part of her recovery, however, my mother had to learn to talk all over again, and she did this by joining an organization called Toastmistress Club, where she not only regained her ability to communicate, but she even won the International Public Speaking Competition in 1968.

Hope is produced by endurance through suffering (Romans 5-25), and is the inspiration behind endurance (1Thess1:3, Heb 6:11).

And so now here again in 1979, we were being told that if my mom did not wake up within the next 12 hours, the chances of her ever coming out of this coma would be severely diminished.

I asked the doctor if I may anoint my mom with oil and pray, and as I stepped closer to her shaved head that was criss-crossed with tubes resembling a barbed-wire fence; I touched her face and proclaimed, “Arise, shine for thy light has come and the glory of God has risen upon thee….”

Hope produces joy and peace in believers through the power of the spirit (Romans 12:12, 15:13)

Three days later, my mother did indeed awake from that coma, and for the following 10 years, even though she could no longer walk or see very well, she took comfort in the simple joys of life – her abiding husband, her loving children, and her grandchildren.

Finally on the 25th of January 1989, my mom entered into the hospital and slipped into eternity. She knew she would have to leave us a final message of love, because we just weren’t able to get to her bedside in time, so she grasped my father’s hand and said …

“Tell Lynn …. thank you…”

And now, because of my hope that is built on Christ Jesus and nothing less…I am free from fear and anxiety (Psalm 46:2-3), and it is because of the future hope of the resurrection of the dead, that I believe I will see my mother again. (Acts 23:6)

**All scripture is taken from the English Standard Version.

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