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…
