Author: nowwhat

What grit, determination, and radical faith can do. by Angie Davis-Beyer as told to Karen Foster   My lips trembled as I stared into the deep end of the indoor swimming pool. It was inches from my face; I could smell the chlorinated water. But when the dive master asked me to lower my head…

by Donna McDonnall   “Mom, my shoulder hurts again,” Danny, our ten-year-old son, announced. Our packed suitcases waited by the door. Crossing things off my “to do” list, I nudged my family closer to the door to leave for our summer vacation in Canada. “Now I can feel a bump there,” Danny added. Concerned by…

Learning the hard way what God saysabout sickness and health. by Rebecca Schrader as told to Esther M. Bailey   Never have I considered myself a gullible person. When I held a top executive position in business, I readily recognized the difference between ethical and fraudulent schemes. Since then, my life has undergone drastic changes….

One woman’s battle with HIV. by Kathi Winter   The strength and stamina I used to have are diminishing. This may be a result of simply passing the age of 50 or of the numerous pills I have to take daily to keep the HIV virus under control. Often I have to change my short-…

by Nancy Merical   “Have you ever heard of multiple myeloma?” My doctor sat across from me in the examining room, relaxed and smiling. She could have been telling me I’d caught the common cold. Her easy manner relaxed me. I accepted her prognosis with odd composure, as an onlooker. I hadn’t heard of the…

In sickness and in health. . . . by Brenda Blanchard   “Right, two, three, four; left, two, three, four,” the step aerobics instructor counted. “Keep those hands moving in unison with your feet.” The feeling of pins and needles started in my fingers, traveled to my hands, then on up to the elbows. I…

The long road back from brain injury. by Alvin Robert Cunningham   A month after my near-fatal, one-car accident in early 1990, I first began to understand what had landed me in a large trauma hospital. I had been too tired to drive back to my country home that night. Falling asleep at the wheel,…

A troubled soul finds anchor in the Onewho controls the troubled seas. by Carolyn L. Wade   I pulled off the freeway when my buzzing phone showed the medical clinic’s ID. Probably last-minute information about Thursday’s surgery. “Your recent mammogram shows suspicious areas, and we’d like you to come in as soon as possible for…

by Margaret Saylar   Mark O’Brien depends on an iron lung for breathing, which he has done for 42 years. Yet while restricted to his apartment most of the time, he writes poetry and books. In 1997 the film Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien won an Oscar. Before he became ill…