Christmas Miracles (10 page)

S
herry's mom, Lorraine Lippold, was no stranger to hospitals. Many years of intense pain from scoliosis of the spine and nerve and disc problems resulted in a series of operations that would have been difficult for a young healthy person to endure, much less a woman in her seventies. Surgeons implanted metal rods in her back, from the base of her spine to her neck, that required grafting bone from the hip and leg to use in attaching the rod to the spine. This extremely complicated and dangerous surgery was performed not just once—but multiple times! For various reasons, the rods were taken out, then others reinstalled.

Enduring a body cast for six months after several surgeries, and allowing for the healing of the bone grafts, muscles, and nerves, Lorraine found the ordeals were taking a toll on her physical stamina, as it would on anyone's! They still weren't right, so yet another surgery, taking out the old rods and installing rods of a more recent technology, seemed successful. Then, over a year's time of healing and more body casts, she was able to wear a plastic cast that enabled her more freedom of movement.

While unpacking boxes in a new home, Lorraine was standing on a ladder, putting some dishes in a high cupboard, when she lost her balance and fell onto a metal serving platter in the box beneath her, which sliced her leg in a manner that looked more like a shark attack than a fall. More than half of her calf was sliced to the bone, and as if that wasn't enough, the severe fall threw out the rods in her spine. She would eventually have to go in and have all the rods removed, once more, still another major back operation.

But that would be after the long, arduous process of mending and healing from the injured leg. Infections and swelling caused major problems and pain, nearly unbearable, but Lorraine pulled through, only to be dealt other onslaughts, of lupus disease and some rare form of lung disease to boot. So over many years, she was on massive doses of antibiotics and various medications for the swelling and pain. People around her marveled at her courage and stamina.

She had just begun to gain her strength back when pneumonia moved in, not once but four times! A period of two months saw her hospitalized three times with pneumonia so serious, they weren't sure she would pull through. Each time, Sherry's dad, Paul Lippold, rarely left Lorraine's side. He would sit by her hospital bed day and night, holding her hand and deep in prayer. Their faith pulled them both through one close call after another. Lorraine, a short and petite Swede, was now confined to a wheelchair full time. The surgeons did not want to risk reinstalling the rods in her spine after having to remove them after her horrendous fall. Paul would wheel Lorraine into the kitchen/family room area to the table where they would sit and read, eat, and watch television. On this one particular day, Paul noticed that Lorraine was somewhat listless and kept slumping way down in her chair.

“I'd pull her back up and arrange the pillows, setting her straighter, only to notice a short time later she would be all slumped down again,” he explained. Finally, Lorraine said her back was really hurting her and she thought she would just go and stretch out in bed, so Paul wheeled her back to the bedroom and tucked her in, then went back out and watched something on television for about an hour, before going back to check on her.

When he walked into the bedroom, he heard what sounded like the noise Lorraine made while reaching the last few drops in a glass with a straw. One of the side effects of lupus is a dry mouth, so she almost always had a glass of water, ginger ale, or some liquid in a glass with a straw. He started to head right back to the kitchen to retrieve her another glass of juice, when he realized that his ears heard one thing, but the quick glance as he headed toward the bed told him another.

Realizing Lorraine was asleep, so the “gurgle sound” must not be a hint that her glass was empty, he did a fast U-turn and returned to the bedroom. As he got closer, he could tell that noise was coming from her chest! Paul tried to awaken Lorraine, even resorting to shaking her, as he got no response. After several unsuccessful attempts, he frantically called 911.

“Everything arrived at once,” Paul said. “The fire department, the police, and the ambulance. The entire townhouse was filled with emergency medical personnel and they were all doing their best to revive her, but had no response. When I heard one of them yell ‘bag her,' I was terrified, thinking that meant they were to bring in the coroner's bag! Of course, it didn't, and they put a tube down her throat and rushed her to the hospital.”

“There in the emergency room, they worked on her, and then needed to put her in an intensive care unit, but there wasn't a single one available. So Valley Lutheran Hospital, where she was, called the same ambulance that brought her from home to the hospital to transport her to Mesa Lutheran Hospital's intensive care unit. Lorraine was on total life support for more than three days, when neurology scheduled an encephalogram to determine the extent of brain damage. There was no knowledge of exactly how long Lorraine had been ‘out' before they put her on life support, but it was a consensus that, more than likely, if she ever came around, she would be a vegetable,” Paul added.

Sherry and Brad were scheduled to lecture and give a seminar in Florida, when shortly before they were to leave, came the first phone call that Lorraine was in the hospital. In prayer and turmoil, they were uncertain if they should cancel and get right to Arizona. Although Mom had pulled through so many terrible ordeals, this one sounded most serious. Then came the dreaded phone call from Sherry's dad that if she wanted to see her mother, she had better get out to Arizona immediately, as it looked like the Lord had finally called her home. It was Mom Lippold's request not to be kept alive by machinery and life support, and her wishes regarding such a situation had been made clear.

After many discussions on the phone with nurses and doctors and Sherry's dad, Brad and Sherry cancelled their Florida lecture and made plans to immediately go to Mom Lippold's bedside in Arizona. Sherry was finding this to be an extremely difficult situation to bear. Thinking miracles do occur even under extraordinary circumstances, she didn't think they should “pull the plug” and was shocked to learn that was about to happen, even though it was at her own mother's request.

Both Sherry and Brad had lost close family members at Christmas. Sherry's son, Erik; Brad's dad, Erling; and now—Sherry's mom. They would, of course, respect her wishes, and they made arrangements to make the trek from Iowa to Arizona. So, once again, not long before Christmas, Sherry and Brad began bracing themselves for what was beginning to look like another sad Christmas of losing a beloved family member.

The Lippolds' faith carried them through one crisis after another, yet Sherry knew this was going to be more difficult than she could imagine for them. They had been extremely active in their church, and now the prayers of their pastor, church members, friends, family, and other churches around the country were a strong support.

“This time, she must have been covered in so much prayer that it was a shield that blanketed her, keeping her safe for the three days she was—for all practical purposes and by definition—dead,” Paul said, then recalling that a miracle of miracles had occurred.

Paul went home at the insistence of the nurses to take a shower and get at least a couple of hours of sleep, before returning to the hospital. When he came back, he thought he was seeing things as he walked into Lorraine's room and there she was sitting up in the hospital bed, reading the paper!

In just a few hours' time, she had come out of the coma, shocking the entire hospital staff! To everyone's utter amazement, just minutes before they were about to remove the life-support, a nurse who was checking on Lorraine had affectionately stroked her hand, and then holding on to it for a second, had noticed what she thought was a response from Lorraine.

The nurse screamed out that she could feel a slight squeeze back from the patient . . . so suddenly, hospital staff went right to work on her and, miraculously, she came around—and out of the coma!

After reviewing the situation again and again, all reiterated that Lorraine's coming out of the coma was stunning enough, but the fact that she demonstrated no signs of any neurological damage was something of a miracle.

Instead of another Christmas funeral, Sherry and Brad celebrated Christmas with Lorraine, who was still weak from the ordeal but gaining in strength daily, and the rest of the family. They were shown, once again, that even when the odds are “stacked against you”—as they surely seemed to be with all that Lorraine had been through—miracles can and do happen. A better Christmas gift, Sherry and her dad could not have had!

W
hen Bernadette Lopez was a schoolgirl in Las Cruces, New Mexico, she contracted polio, which she remembers as a disease that made her burn with fever and left her right leg paralyzed and her left leg painfully twisted.

“My father or my mother had to carry me back and forth to my bed from the toilet or other rooms,” Berna-dette said. “My mother was so worried about me that she would sometimes sleep with me in case I needed something during the night.”

The disease had quite understandably left Berna-dette very depressed. “I was not yet ten years old, and the doctors told my parents that I would probably never walk again. Later, I might try leg braces and crutches, but a wheelchair would be a more likely prognosis. And along with that grim malediction came my inner sadness that I would never be a wife or a mother or have any kind of normal life—ever.”

On Christmas Eve 1942, Bernadette's father had bundled her up so that she could attend mass with them. They were very poor in those days, and since most of the little money that her parents did manage to save went for Bernadette's medicines, there were few presents for her baby sister, Rosa; her parents; or herself.

“Mother said that the most important thing was that we had each other and could be together on Christmas Eve,” Bernadette recalled.

Then, after they had returned from mass and had a little bit to eat, Bernadette suddenly began to run a high fever.

“Perhaps the chilly night air had affected me adversely or the night had been filled with too much excitement for me,” Bernadette said, “but I was soon shivering and moaning incoherently.”

In order to save on their electricity bill, Berna-dette's mother would often crawl into bed with her and read to her by the light of a candle that she would set on a bedside chair. Although her husband warned her of the potential danger of such a practice, she felt that the reading of a special Christmas story would bring some cheer to their crippled daughter.

Bernadette said that she doesn't remember at all what her mother was reading to her that night. Her fever was very high, and to her nine-year-old mind, she was dying.

“When I came back to periods of semiconscious-ness, I was glad that Mama was there with me,” Berna-dette said. “But most of the time I had no idea where I was or who was with me.”

Sometime that night, Bernadette's fevered dreams became a kind of waking night vision, and she was startled to find that she was somehow out of her body and that her conscious self was floating up near the ceiling. Below her, she could see her shivering body and her mother's familiar form on the bed—and then she was astonished to see two columns of angels standing at the sides of her bed. She remembers clearly that there were six of the glorious beings on her right side and six on her left. “They began to sing the sweetest, most beautiful song that I had ever heard,” Bernadette said. “And all around them was the most magnificent music being played by an unseen orchestra. I thought to myself, truly, this is the song that the shepherds had heard on high on the Christmas Eve when Christ was born.”

But the angels began to sing louder and louder, until their mighty chorus of voices hurt her ears. And the angelic beings themselves appeared to grow larger and larger as they sang louder and louder.

Just as the song of the angels seemed to reach a crescendo, Bernadette awakened to the horror of discovering that she and her mother were enveloped in flames.

The girl jumped out of bed and dragged her mother from the flames that had engulfed them.

“I pulled my unconscious mother away from the burning bed,” she remembered, “and then I began beating out the flames, first with my bare hands, then a bath towel. The bedclothes were badly burned, as well as half the mattress and one of the pillows.”

Her father appeared at the door of her bedroom and shouted a combination of alarm and joy: “Berna-dette! You are walking! The bed is on fire!”

The miracle of it all had not struck her until her father had shouted it aloud. How could she, a small girl weakened by fever and paralysis, have managed to jump out of bed and pull her mother to safety?

Although Bernadette has asked herself that question now for nearly sixty years, she always arrives at the same answer: It could only have been due to the twelve beautiful angels who appeared at her bedside on that Christmas Eve in 1942 and accomplished four miracles.