by Andrea D. Hutchinson

Created on: August 16, 2010   Last Updated: September 15, 2010

She realized she was at a crossroads, the one everyone talked about.  Hope never imagined hers would be on a gurney, on the packed hallway of the local ER.  As the attendees of the sick and dying bustled about, she felt much more than her forty five years. A young doctor, a decade her junior, came to her bedside, to tell her of her fate, she assumed.  Instead he unceremoniously introduced the Cardiologist. Great, she thought, I handle this alone, too. Her husband had not arrived yet.

Astonished, she saw from the young physician’s expression that her green eyes were as wide as they could go and glistening with the tears she was holding back.

“We want to admit you. You are in congestive heart failure and waist deep in fluids.” the doc said. The rest of what Dr. A. said sounded as if it were moving away from her in a tunnel as she began to pray.

In her head she heard a soft, familiar voice say, “This is what I am going to do. I am going to give you a new heart. I am going to give you a new spirit. I am even going to remove that stone heart from your body and replace it with a heart of flesh, which is a heart for God. I am going to make it possible for you to live according to my will, you are no longer your own. I promise you will find it easy to be obedient to my commands with this new heart.  You will live. You are mine, and I AM yours!” With that, her hearing surfaced and she heard the doctor explaining the condition of her heart.

“…so your heart is enlarged, and like any overworked muscle it is thick and hard. Therefore it cannot pump adequately enough to control the fluids in your body…” Dr. A. said seriously, yet with a soft kindness that endeared him to her.

Hope listened intently to everything the doctor said, she was enveloped in an unspeakable peace. Even as he spoke she heard, “I have removed the stone heart.” in that still soft voice.

This was the last chance Hope found she had been looking for.  Hope listened, because that is how hope  grows into faith.

Ezekiel 36:26

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