My New Faith  - Coincidence or Miracle ?

My wife, Lynn, and I are Baby Boomers.  Lynn is an RN and my main work has been managing several hi-tech companies to improve performance. We were married in October of 2000, and for each of us it was our 3^{rd marriage} (Lynn says we should say our last marriage).

We’re both retired, but due to the economy and my losing my retirement we’re both working again, trying to get to a point where we’re not struggling from paycheck to paycheck.

We had to sell our beautiful Spanish home in San Clemente, CA, and move out to Corona, in Riverside County, where there is a lower cost of living.

We have a boat that we purchased when my last engineering company was sold. And the two of us recently completed a 15,000 mile voyage with the boat. But we have to sell our boat too. I'm starting to get depressed.

Spiritually, I have been one of those who thought, “I hope there is a God, or we’re all in a heap of trouble.”  But I thought of those pushy, born again Christians as an annoyance. I was baptized in the Baptist Church when I was 9, but I don’t remember attending church regularly. I converted to Lutheran for my first marriage, but I was attending for her, not really to seek faith. I attended a Catholic Church a few times in my second marriage, but not consistently.

Looking back, I started to become depressed after losing my retirement money. The last business where I earned part ownership was sold. That was to be my retirement. But our parent company was subsequently bought out by a Multi-Billion dollar company in Germany who just stopped all payments to us. Our attorneys just said, “Forget it, litigation over both sides of the Atlantic, they’ll just bleed us dry.” So, no retirement. And I found out at age 60 no one wants to hire you for anything other than flipping burgers.

On the brighter side, we have children ranging in age from 27 to 42. Between us we have 6 children and 6 grandchildren. We love them dearly, as parents and grandparents tend to do. They have been the major focus of our lives. Even during our long voyage they were sorely missed. It's unfortunate, but faith in God was not our focus during the voyage, just adventure and self confidence.

None of our children have attended church regularly that we were aware. But when I turned 60 I began thinking about death. "Soon I will just be gone and then nothing."  More and more the depression was setting in. Every day I would think, "This just can’t be all there is. I’m here a short while, and then nothing? There’s got to be more to this complex series of events in a person's short life span!"

As far a prayer goes, I'm one who may have asked for help at crisis time, just as a good measure.  Then one sunny day, in the back yard, I stopped, and looked up and said, “God, if your there, help me to find peace, or something I can believe in to make me significant. I’m not doing so well here on my own.”

And then a few days later I said to Lynn, “Honey, would it be alright if we found a church and attended for a while and see if it helps my depression?" She said, "Yes, she thought that was a good idea." I was not being the most positive, attentive husband.

Now, let me say something about coincidence. I’ve been involved in engineering my whole life, and I know the probabilities of coincidence. When it comes to apparent coincidences, I’m a skeptic first.

Well, just a few days after discussing church with Lynn, and, having never discussed church or religion recently with any of our grown children, our daughter, Erin calls and says, “Pete and I have just found this really neat church." (Well, she might not have said Neat, that’s from my youth). Anyway, she says, "Would you guys like to come with us and check it out?” I looked at Lynn, “Did you talk to Erin about us looking to attend church?"  "No," she says. "But the timing is amazing." So we told Erin, "Sure, we’ll be there on Sunday.”

Mmm? Possible coincidence? 60 years of not seeking faith, then 2 days after deciding to attend church, an invitation? Kinda spooky.

So, even though it’s a 50 min. drive from our home in Corona, CA, we attended this church, Eastside Christian, for several weeks.

 I cried like a baby at every one of Pastor Appel’s sermons.  I just could not understand my strong emotional response.  OK, I tear up sometimes at movies, but that’s it. And I thought, he’s good, but that good? But the Pastor’s messages kept coming across to me so strongly; I actually looked forward to Sundays with the Appel! I read the Bible cover to cover. The most significant thing I found was that the first four books in the New Testament told the story of Jesus from four different people, at four different times, but they all had the same significant events of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. I thought, "Hmmm, this is scientifically significant."

Then I hurt my back working on our repo house we had bought, and after a few visits to the chiropractor, and several visits to UCI Medical Center, and spending weeks on my back on the floor where ever we found ourselves, we scheduled surgery to correct two herniated and ruptured disks in my back.

I also went in to our primary doctor to get my routine physical just to make sure nothing else was in progress. I’ve suffered from migraine headaches and kidney stones for years.  As I am leaving the hospital from a migraine follow up, my cell rings. It was my Urologist. I thought "Ohhh no, I bet it’s kidney stones again." I had passed several and they are really painful! But no, he says, I tested positive for prostate cancer! And could we come in to discuss options? I just kind of slid down the wall and sat there, on the floor, in the medical building. I don’t remember hanging up or putting the phone in my pocket, or how long I sat there.

As I'm driving home I thought, is this the end already? I’m not ready, what about our kids, how am I going to tell Lynn?

Significantly, I didn’t think of prayer.

We scheduled the back surgery in December, and with a short recovery, scheduled my prostate surgery for January.

A couple weeks after the 2^nd surgery, I’m still recovering at home in bed, when I begin feeling very sick, dizzy, and short of breath, shaking violently. I called Lynn at the hospital in San Clemente, an hour and away, and she comes home to check on me. She says I wasn’t very coherent by then. She checked my vital signs and decides there is no time to go to UCI Medical Center where all our records are. So by ambulance we go to the nearest hospital in Corona.

I wound up with 7 doctors on the team trying to figure out what could have gone wrong after the surgeries. I just keep feeling worse and worse. My blood pressure was going down. They couldn’t find a medication that would stabilize the pressure.

I just remember a tremendous struggle to hold on. I felt I was all alone in this dark hole, and it was like having the wind knocked out of you. I just couldn’t catch my breath. With every ounce of energy I was trying to breath. It seemed like days. It was the most frightened I have ever been. After what seemed like an eternity of struggling I clearly remember just giving up and letting go. And in my head I said, “God, if you’re there, I have nothing left to fight this, if its my time, take me the way I am," And then, nothing.

 Lynn was there just outside the ICU. One of the team doctors comes out and says to Lynn, “We can’t get his blood pressure to stabilize enough to determine what the root problem is. But I think I see a kidney stone lodged in the ureter. It could be backing everything up and causing the sepsis infections. His pressure is below 50 and dropping. We need to do something now. I’m his team Urologist, and I have experience feeding a special stint bypass through the bladder and up and around the kidney stone to relieve the ureter stoppage. I want to do it right now. Lynn said, "Go, do it."

After he left, She looked to one of the nurses there and asked if they knew how long this procedure normally takes. She was told probably 30 minutes to an hour or more, depending on how many tries it takes. Lynn, with her ICU experience and over 30 years as an RN, began to prepare herself to go home alone.

But just a few minutes later, the same doctor comes out and says to her, it went in the first try and is draining! Lynn sighed at the hope of a possible recovery. The doctor said, "Now we give him antibiotics and monitor and wait."

Well, he was right. It had been a lodged kidney stone. It had nothing to do with the two surgeries I was recovering from. It was a totally unrelated event, out of the blue.

Some time and medications later, I came back to the living. When I finally woke up, there was my Lynnie, a tentative smile on her face, and she began explaining what had happened. As I looked around, up on the wall next to my bed, without my glasses, I could just make out the many hand painted signs of love from my family. The first one I could focus on was one Erin hand sketched, in color, which said, “Miracles happen every second!” So, I looked over at Lynn and I asked, “OK, who is this Doctor "House" (from TV series "House") who came up with the last minute solution? With tears in her eyes she says to me, “His name is Doctor Shepard!”

The breath caught in my throat, I closed my eyes, tears coming again. And I said, “Thank you Lord for sending me a Sheppard to guide be back.” Lynn and I knew then and there we were believers. There were just too many coincidences to be a coincidence. The Lord obviously had something for me to do.

Following my recovery we attended church again and Pastor Appel presented his sermon, "Christ: Lord, Lunatic, or Liar." And this sermon spoke to us personally about the proof of Our Savior. Lynn and I have now accepted Jesus as our Savior and look upon life with a much more positive attitude. We were baptized together in June by Pastor Appel at the Eastside Christian Church in Fullerton.

I truly believe the Lord sent me a miracle. He still has plans for me. I guess He just wanted to get our attention before leading Lynn and us to faith.

Miracles do happen, somewhere, every second. And I now look around me all the time at this amazing Earth we live on and think, “This is no coincidence.”

Return to Home Port