Raise Your Line of Limitations

Raise Your Line of Limitations

As they grew up, my sons, Johny and Ronnie (who were diagnosed with CF) spent most of their time at home. Although Johny could study only up to the sixth grade in school and Ronnie up to the eighth, they both continued their studies using a home-study program called the ACE program. Elizabeth, my wife was always with them, ready to take care of their needs.

She was very alert in monitoring their condition. Both the boys would become cyanotic and unconscious (breathless and blue); both were susceptible to infection, and tended to lose sodium when they were unwell or when they perspired in warm weather. They had to be watched for vomiting and diarrhea.

Annie was doing a Masters program in Computer Applications, and so was home only during the week-ends. She was a great help to her brothers. She was the one who woke us up when the boys required help at night. It became a habit to check the boys whenever we woke up.

Everytime, they suffered an attack, we tried our best to revive them by giving them artificial respiration. Above all, we prayed. The first thing we made them utter when they became conscious was “Praise the Lord”. Very often we felt we were at the “end of the rope”; but it was never the end of our hope.

The boys never allowed their illness to defeat them. When someone commented on the thin and weak hands of Ronnie, his response was that he placed his feeble hands into God’s able hands. When Elizabeth fell ill, I was naturally concerned about her as well as the care of the boys. But they came to me and said, they had discovered that they were able to do many things that Mommy had been doing for them all these years. They even began to help Elizabeth.

Johny’s positive attitude, in particular, carried him through the most challenging of times. At one point, he had to undergo foot surgery. The wound failed to heal, and two years later gangrene set in and the doctors were forced to amputate his leg. We did not know what to do—he seemed to have so many problems to face. Yet Johny found an appropriate thought to encourage us.

“When God is going to do something wonderful, He begins with a difficulty, and when He is going to do something really wonderful, He begins with an impossibility”.

Johny put together such encouraging thoughts in the book, ‘Precious thoughts for better living’. In the introduction, he wrote “This book is an evidence of how the impossible can be made possible… my threatening illness need not be a barrier to success”.

Just before the amputation of his leg, he wrote a book titled, “Impossible… but for God”, He said that God had a plan for his life, knowing well that he might not live another day. He remarked, “While God is interested in the ‘stars’ of achievement in some people, in others He is looking for ‘scars’ – because God Himself bears the scars of crucifixion”.

To be continued…