FIVE WEEKS TO LIVE...
	"He sent forth His Word and healed them; He rescued them from the grave" (Psalm 107:20). "It's malignant melanoma," the doctor said. "You have five weeks to live." She was thirty years old. How could this be happening? She had so many plans. Giving up a career to stay at home and raise her children, she looked forward to each day that she could give them - teaching them how to read, playing games and baking their favourite cookies. And now this. All that she had planned would come to an end in only five weeks. My mother was going to lose her life! After visiting the dentist, Mom had used two mirrors to look at her dental work, and in doing so she found a dark spot on the roof of her mouth. Concerned, she made an appointment with her doctor, who announced, "I'm afraid I have some bad news, but I want another doctor to confirm my diagnosis." The second consultation revealed the worst. The doctor sat down next to her, put his hands on her knees and said, "It's malignant melanoma, and it's not treatable because of where it's located. We can't remove it all, and we can't do chemotherapy. We'll do surgery right away to cut out the spot and hope that it doesn't spread. The diagnosis isn't good, JoAnn. You have five weeks to live." Mom and Dad went out for dinner that night and had the gutwrenching talk about how my brother and I were going to be raised without her. Then they started making arrangements for her funeral. They quickly put plans in place for how to handle the next five weeks. One item left on the back burner was the importance of prayer during this time. Mom had become a Christian only the year before and didn't fully understand how important prayer was or how it worked. As she tells it, "This is the part where God carried me when I didn't know what to do on my own." On the morning of her surgery, before she left for the hospital, Mom's friend, Neva, called and read Isaiah 43:5 over the phone. "Do not fear, for I am with you," the verse said. Mom clung to that Bible passage all the way to the hospital and through the halls to the operating room. Once there, she quietly and repeatedly recited Psalm 23 because that's all she could recall from her childhood. "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul... even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil"... Then the anaesthesia kicked in. When Mom came out of surgery, the doctor said she would be in a great deal of pain and wouldn't be able to eat solids for several days. Miraculously, within an hour of her surgery she ate a complete meal of solid food. The doctor was shocked - and that wouldn't be the last time! A few days later, Mom went to the doctor's office for a post-operative check-up. The surgeon, normally a man with a harsh bedside manner, quietly came into the room, sat down beside her and said, "I can't believe what I'm going to tell you. There's only one answer for this." He pointed upward and turned toward her with tears in his eyes. "We got the tests back and there's no sign of malignancy or any sign that it ever was there. JoAnn, your cancer is gone. If I didn't believe in miracles before, I certainly do now." And so does my family! That was more than thirty years ago, and in those years we've read a lot of books, played a lot of games, and eaten a lot of cookies. And in those years, Mom has fully come to understand the power of prayer and the reality of miracles! - Heidi J Krumenauer, A Book of Miracles, Chicken Soup for the Soul Publishing LLC, USA