The Ultimate Surgeon

Some of you are expecting a story from last Saturday's Highland Ball. However, I do not have a story for you, at least not one of the sort you're used to reading.

While I was dancing a spirited Highland Jig or Highland Fling, I slipped in my buckled shoes, fell onto the floor, and shattered my right arm. After four hours of surgery, two steel plates, and two days in recovery at Flagstaff Medical Center, I'm back home in Tucson, learning to type with one hand. I can wiggle all my right fingers and thumb, and I have feeling in all of them. And miracle of miracles, I'm pain-free in my right arm. This is not due to heavy medication or sedation.

One of the best surgeons in Northern Arizona wired my limb back together, and I strongly suspect he learned a few new things on the job. He told me he'd never seen anything like what the x-rays showed him. I haven't seen those x-rays, and I don't want to see them. But for the recovery I am now making and the healing I am experiencing, that credit goes to God, the Ultimate Surgeon.

Dozens of people have been praying for me since the accident. They prayed as I was led off the dance floor in a stretcher. They prayed after the dance and the next day after that. And they continue to pray. I am grateful to all my friends beyond words, as those prayers are being answered in remarkable ways. Only one explanation will suffice for my pain-free recovering status so quickly after the accident: God's Healing Touch and Love. Romans 8:28 (NASV) tells us: "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." That power of massed prayer certainly worked together for good.

Let me leave you with another communal moment of good. When Flagstaff's EMT's were carrying me out of the ballroom in the stretcher, as they were pumping my arm full of morphine, I gathered the God-given strength within me to shout words of jubilation for which I have become well-known:

"HUZZAH!" I shouted with all my might.

"HUZZAH!" returned my friends and family of We Make History on the dance floor in unison.

"HUZZAH!" I shouted again.

"HUZZAH!" they returned with equal enthusiasm.

I begged the dancing continue, and it did, after a pause. Joy emerged from shock and sadness, happiness from sorrow. Now my joy emerges too from the pain of the injury and the sadness over missing out on part of one of my favorite dances of the year. I shall dance again in full Scottish attire, and I won't wait a year to do it. For God has Blessed me with so many gifts, and to Him I owe my happiness and healing.