Sam was silent a moment, unsure of how to react.
“Well, that’s all settled,” Sadie said, sounding very sure of herself. “Everything will be just fine for the both of us.” She smiled at Sam and Ronni and then at the others.
“I’ll get to see Kenny on the other side,” she said, winking once. Then she shuffled away.
Laura returned from Vince’s room just as Sadie was leaving. “Wasn’t that your old neighbor?” she asked Sam and Ronni as she sat down.
Ronni nodded, still perplexed by Sadie’s unusual words. “She said the strangest thing. She’s going to pray that God takes her home tonight in Vince’s place. She’s tired of living, she’s lived long enough, and she’s ready to join God and her dead husband in heaven—just in time for Christmas.”
Laura raised an eyebrow and looked at the others in the room. “She said that?”
“Now don’t put truth into her words,” one of them said in response. “God doesn’t work like that, taking one life in place of another.”
Sam had been very quiet, staring intently at his hands. Now he looked up and spoke. “You never know about God,” he said. “He works in mysterious ways. Scripture says the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. And I don’t know many people as righteous—really righteous in the way God intended—as Sadie Johnson.”
There was silence again and Paul privately pondered the woman’s faith and her lack of fear regarding death. He didn’t expect anything to come of her strange proclamation, but he felt Sadie’s words revealed a great deal of wisdom. The thought of going to heaven was one of pure joy for Sadie Johnson, not sadness or sorrow. For people as close to God as she was, death was merely a journey to the other side. Paul felt filled with peace and decided that the woman had in some ways made facing Vince’s impending death easier.
Before midnight, Paul and Laura and several of the others returned home for a few hours’ sleep.
“We’ll be back before sunup,” Paul said, bending to kiss his mother on the cheek. “Call us if anything changes.”
Ronni nodded. She and Sam intended to stretch out on the waiting room sofas. Vince was their son, after all. They wanted to be nearby if Ruth or Vince needed them for any reason.
Three hours passed as Sam and Ronni drifted in and out of sleep. Several times during the night they checked on Vince and Ruth, but Vince’s condition remained critical. At six the next morning Paul and Laura returned to the waiting room and nudged Paul’s parents awake.
“How is he?” Paul asked.
“We haven’t heard anything since a few hours ago,” Sam said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “He must still be hanging in there.”
Paul and Laura sat down and held hands, bracing themselves for whatever sorrow the day might hold. They stayed that way for the next hour as other family members arrived in ones and twos.
Then, just before eight o’clock, Vince’s doctor burst through the door, a broad smile on his face.
“His fever broke,” the doctor announced. “Sometime in the last couple of hours he began making a turnaround and now his fever is almost down to normal. I have no way of explaining what happened—I’ve never seen anything like it before.” He paused. “Merry Christmas!”
Tears of relief flooded the family’s eyes. Sam rose from the couch and shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “Does that mean he’s going to pull through this?”
“He’s a new man today, Mr. Jacobs. I think he’s going to be just fine.”
The doctor left and the Jacobs family leaned back in their seats, thankful and relieved.
“Thank God,” Ronni said. “Thank God for hearing our prayers.”
At the mention of prayer several of them remembered Sadie Johnson and sat straighter in their chairs. They exchanged glances.
“Dad,” Paul said, his eyes wider than before, “you don’t think this has something to do with what Mrs. Johnson said last night, do you?”
“Of course not,” Sam scoffed. “God wasn’t ready to take Vince home; that’s all there is to it.”
Paul nodded, but his curiosity got the better of him and he excused himself from the group.
“I’m taking a little walk,” he explained. “Be right back.”
Laura watched him go and knew where he was headed. She hoped Mrs. Johnson would be happy with the news of Vince’s recovery.
Out in the corridor, Paul walked toward the front desk and asked what floor Sadie Johnson was on.
“She’s on the third floor, sir,” the receptionist said. “Room 325, in the observation unit.”
Paul thanked the woman and rode the elevator to the third floor. There he approached the nurses’ station and waited until someone noticed him.
“Can I help you, sir?” a woman asked. Paul glanced at the name on her badge and saw that she was the head nurse for that floor.
“Yes, ma’am, I’m looking for our neighbor, Mrs. Sadie Johnson. She’s a friend of our family’s. I understand she’s in Room 325.”
The nurse’s eyes fell. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, unsure of whether she should tell him what happened. “Mrs. Johnson passed away a few hours ago.”
Paul felt his heart skip a beat as he stood frozen in place, stunned by the news. “But I thought she was only in for routine tests.”
“That’s right, sir, she was.” The nurse lowered her clipboard and frowned. “Then a few hours ago her heart just stopped. We worked with her for some time trying to bring her back, but her body didn’t respond. I’m sorry.”
Paul thanked the nurse and turned back down the hallway to the elevator. He felt as though he were in a trance as he walked through the hospital to the waiting room on the first floor. When he entered the room, the others saw how strange he looked and the room became quiet.
“What is it, Paul?” Sam asked, worried that Vince might have taken another sudden turn for the worse.
“It’s Mrs. Johnson, Dad.” Paul’s voice was flat, void of emotion. “She’s dead. She died a few hours ago—about the same time Vince began making a comeback.”
“That’s impossible,” Ronni said. “Mrs. Johnson was only here for routine tests.”
“The nurse told me her heart stopped,” Paul added. “She went to sleep last night and died before she ever woke up.”
The room grew silent again as each of them absorbed the amazing truth. Sadie Johnson had prayed for Vince to live, asking God to let her go in his place. Now that very thing had happened and doctors had no explanation for either Vince’s recovery or Sadie’s death.
“Do you think what happened was an answer to her prayer?” Paul asked, looking incredulously at the other faces in the room.
For a moment no one spoke. Then Sam sat up straighter and tilted his head thoughtfully.
“Well, son, I don’t think there’s one of us here who can discount the truth of what’s happened these past few hours. Sure as I’m sitting here today, I’m convinced that Sadie returned to her room last night and asked God in all his mercy to take her home and let Vince live.”
He looked at the others. “And sure enough, that’s what happened.” A sad smile came across his face. “Now they’ll both be home for Christmas.
“I guess it’s like we were saying last night. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Whatever we do, let’s not forget that. Because that might just be all the explanation we’ll ever get for what’s just happened here.”
Jessica’s Gift
Nestled in the heart of the town of Cottonwood, Arizona, behind the post office in an unassuming house lived a little girl named Jessica Warner. In many ways there was nothing unusual about Jessica. She was five years old with naturally curly, golden blonde hair and blue eyes that shone with unfettered joy. She had a smile that brightened any room even in a town where the sun shone almost every day of the year. And she had a favorite doll named Molly, tattered and smudged and loved into a raggedy state.
The Warner family loved everyt
hing about living in Cottonwood. It was a town where parents visited at weekend soccer games and people waved at each other up and down Main Street whether they knew you or not. Joe Anderson, the barber, and Steven Simmons, the paint store manager, hung signs in their windows stating, “Mingus Rocks” as a way of cheering on the Mingus High School football team, which every year toyed with the idea of a state title. It was a town where doors went unlocked, children played safely on their rock-garden front yards, and teens complained about having nothing to do.
Although the seasons didn’t leave their mark on Cottonwood the way they might in a midwestern town or a seaport along the Atlantic Ocean, the Warners savored the subtle changes. Sparkling spring days when the sun played on the distant red rocks of Sedona; the heat of summer when great monsoons would sweep into the Verde Valley; and fall, when the wind kicked up and Yavapai County Fairgrounds played host to the annual Harvest Festival.
But really, the months were like a yearlong crescendo building their way to the Warners’ favorite time of all: the Christmas season, when the high-desert town of Cottonwood came to life as miraculously—the townspeople suspected—as Bethlehem had some two thousand years earlier.
The official arrival of the Christmas season was marked each year with the ritual of the city manager and his deputy climbing up the ladder on Ernie Gray’s fire truck and stringing the “Happy Holidays” garland across Main Street. Between then and the morning of the Christmas parade homeowners around town took part in an unofficial house-decorating contest that was usually won by someone living in the prestigious community at the top of Highway 269, not far from Quail Springs at the base of Mingus Mountain.
Jessica’s mother, Cindy, knew they’d never have enough money to compare with the decorating in Quail Springs, but they decorated all the same.
At least they used to.
As Christmas drew near it was clear to everyone in the Warner home that this year would be different. And so, when the garland was strung up along Main Street, Jessica began to pray a special prayer out loud in her bed at night. Long after saying good night and being tucked into bed—separately—by her parents, Jessica would close her eyes and raise one hand high above her head, reaching out to God. “Dear God,” she would whisper. “I’m not telling Mommy and Daddy about this, so please listen good. It’s Christmastime and that’s when you listen really hard to little girls’ prayers. My teacher told me so. My prayer is this, God: please make Mommy and Daddy love each other again.”
Though they were no longer churchgoers and prayer was something forgotten in the Warner home, little Jessica prayed the same prayer every night that season. And in that way, she was like many boys and girls in many homes all across the country praying for their parents to love each other.
But Jessica was also very different. This precious one could neither run nor skip nor hopscotch with her girl- friends. She could not jump rope or play hide-and-seek or run three-legged races.
She couldn’t even walk.
Jessica had cerebral palsy.
It was something the townspeople of Cottonwood both knew and understood. Something that made them protective of little Jessica, causing them to go out of their way to wave at her in the aisles of Smith’s Market or tousle her beautiful blonde curls as they passed and remind her that only angels were as pretty as she was.
Jessica was something of a fixture around Cottonwood and the people who lived there felt richer for her presence. The child was too young to understand all of that, but Cottonwood was her home, her town. And Steve and Cindy Warner knew their daughter wouldn’t want to live anywhere else for all the world.
That year, sometime after the garland was hung, Jessica asked her mother why her legs didn’t work the same as those of other children. Cindy bent down and hugged her daughter close, her chest trembling as she tried to control the tears that welled up at the question. Gently, she helped Jessica to the living room sofa.
“I’d like to tell you a story, okay, honey?” Cindy ran her hand over Jessica’s silky hair.
The little girl nodded and clutched more tightly to her Molly doll. “A story about me, Mommy?”
Cindy blinked back tears. “Yes, Jessie, a story about you. About what happened when you were born.”
Then Cindy told her daughter of how she had been born a little too soon, before she was ready. Doctors had tried to stop her from delivering but it was no use, and Jessica Marie was born ten weeks early fighting for every breath. Three months later, when she had gained enough weight to go home, it was with this warning from her doctor: “I’m quite certain Jessica has some cerebral palsy. This is not something she will outgrow; but it is something that can be worked with.”
Cindy paused. “You’re very special, Jessica. God told me so himself the day he gave you to me.”
The rest of the story Cindy kept to herself. How for that first year Steve and Cindy had refused to talk about their fears and how they’d blamed Jessica’s low birth weight when she didn’t roll over or sit up or crawl like other babies her age. How in the days and months and years since then they’d anchored deep on opposite sides of Jessica’s health issues.
The truth was they’d stopped taking Jessica to church after her first birthday only to avoid the curious comments and questions from their friends.
That was the year Steve purchased a pair of pink ballet slippers and hung them on a hook above Jessica’s crib. “You’re my perfect little princess,” he whispered to the sleeping child. “And one day you’ll dance across the room for me, won’t you, honey.”
But doctors assured the Warners there would be no dancing for Jessica. The cerebral palsy did not affect her mind but her motor skills were severely lacking. She would be doing well to be using a walker by the time she entered kindergarten.
When it became clear how great Jessica’s handicap was, Cindy quit her job to stay home and work with her daughter. She helped the child through hours of stretching routines and exercises and both mother and child were often exhausted by the end of day.
“You’re wasting your time,” Steve would tell her. “She doesn’t need all that work, Cindy. She’s going to outgrow this thing. Wait and see.”
And so they remained. Cindy’s days were spent helping Jessica live with cerebral palsy. Steve’s were spent denying she had it. Worst of all, in the midst of their miserable lives, their love for God grew cold and distant. In time the only member of the Warner household who listened to Bible stories and prayed to Jesus was Jessica, who after her second birthday went to church each Sunday with her grandparents.
The years had passed slowly and in all the ways Steve and Cindy could see, Jessica made little improvement. Days before her fifth birthday she learned to spread her knees wide and crawl across the floor in a series of short, jerky motions. It was a victory, no matter how small, and Steve and Cindy shared Jessica’s excitement.
“That’s my girl,” Steve told her. “One day you’ll outgrow that cerebral palsy and wear those ballet slippers.”
But that night after Jessica was asleep Cindy broke down and cried. “Her progress is so slow,” she admitted. “I’ve done all the exercises, all the stretches. I’ve watched her diet and read every book on the subject. I’ve done everything I can. Why isn’t she making more improvements?”
“I’ve told you, Cindy. You have to be patient. She’ll outgrow this thing when she gets older.”
“She’ll never outgrow it, Steve,” Cindy screamed at him. “If we work with her she can make progress. But you’re never going to come through that door one night and find her dancing in those silly ballet slippers. Don’t you understand?”
Steve didn’t understand, and after that their lives grew even more separate. They communicated only when necessary and began socializing in separate circles. Cindy joined a cerebral palsy support group and finally found the understanding she’d been missing. The members of the support group did not deny Jessica’s problems but rather brainstormed with her for solutions.
> Meanwhile, Steve had been given a promotion and with it the task of organizing after-work events. His office friends were cheerful and upbeat and Steve was often the life of the party. He liked them because they did not know about Jessica’s cerebral palsy and so they never talked about muscle coordination or support groups or daily exercises.
Often, entire weeks went by where Steve and Cindy saw each other only minutes at a time, silently passing each other like strangers in the hallways of the Warner home.
It was in her fourth year that Jessica had noticed something was wrong with her mommy and daddy. They didn’t kiss and hug and hold hands like other parents. And by this Christmas Jessica knew there was only one answer. So each night before she fell asleep Jessica would whisper her simple prayer, asking God to make her mommy and daddy love each other. But it hadn’t seemed to make a difference.
Finally, two weeks before Christmas, Steve took Cindy’s hand gently in his own and studied her face. “It isn’t working between us, is it?” he asked her.
Tears sprang to Cindy’s eyes but her gaze remained calmly fixed on Steve’s. “No, I guess it isn’t.”
“I’ll talk to a divorce lawyer,” Steve said gently. “But let’s wait until after Christmas. For Jessica’s sake.”
As with most children, Jessica could tell things were worse between her parents. She talked it over with Molly, her beloved dolly. “I’m asking God to make them love each other,” she said. “But they aren’t very nice to each other anymore. I’m scared, Molly. Really scared.”
At dinner one night Jessica broke the silence. “Please, can we all go to church together this Sunday?” she asked. “Preacher’s going to tell the Christmas story and he said the whole family’s invited.”
Steve and Cindy exchanged a cool glance and then looked away, embarrassed. Steve cleared his throat. “Yes, sweetheart, that’ll be fine,” he said. “We’ll all go to church together this Sunday. Like a family.”