Copyright © 2004 by Karen Kingsbury.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Warner Faith
Hachette Book Group, USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com
First eBook Edition: May 2004
ISBN: 978-0-446-53382-9
Contents
Dedication
Author’s Note
The Most Friends of All
Double Miracle
Buckle Up
Returning the Favor
Angel in a Pickup
Back Together Again
In Need of a Friend
In the Nick of Time
Miracle of Love
A Friend in Need
To Run, to Fly
About the Author
To Donald, my knight, my prince charming, my lover. My best friend. The miracle of your love and light in my life will go on forever.
To Kelsey, Tyler, Sean, Josh, EJ, and Austin, who have always believed us when we say that your best friends are the people sitting around you at the dinner table. Also to Thayne and Justin, the newest additions to our family.
And to God Almighty, who has for now blessed me with these.
Author’s Note
It wasn’t difficult putting together a collection of miracle stories involving friends, and I think I understand the reason why. Friendship itself is a miracle.
Friends.
Two souls striving to survive in the world, each with their own battles of faith, finances, and family; two souls wondering about love and life and loneliness, but who somehow together are stronger than apart.
Friendship knits together hearts and reassures us that everything will be okay, after all. The Bible says that two are better than one, that a friend is a strength in every sense of the word. Could a friend be anything but a gift from God? A miracle?
And so in exploring miracles involving friends, I was touched by the reality that friendship is often used by God to protect us, grow us, encourage us, and build up our faith. A friend will bring us laughter and camaraderie, compassion and understanding.
Sometimes that friend even brings us into God’s territory—the place of miracles.
If you’ve journeyed with me through my other miracle collections, you know a few things about what lies on the pages ahead. Each story is inspired by a true event and then fictionalized for the purpose of this book. In each case, the miracle aspect of the story is true.
As you read, imagine the times when God has used a friend to bring about something miraculous in your own life. And be reminded that no matter how crazy and lonely and difficult life may be, we always have a friend in God.
Get ready to celebrate a treasury of miracles for friends! When you’re finished, your heart will be forever encouraged.
The Most Friends of All
Larry Bradford was a social nobody at North Franklin High School.
Yes, he was active in his North Atlanta Christian Church youth group, a high achiever in his advanced academic classes, and the recipient of an Eagle award with the Boy Scouts. But his peers barely knew he was alive. Among the books he carried in his backpack was a leather-bound Bible, a gift from his best friend—his father.
“Why don’t you have friends over once in a while?” his father would occasionally ask him.
“Because, Dad,” Larry’s gaze would drop. “The guys at school don’t really like me. Not a lot, anyway.”
Larry’s dad would smile a crooked, sad sort of smile. “Well, son. Then that’s what I’ll pray for: That one day you’ll have more friends than anyone in your class.”
“Okay.” Larry would grin and shrug his shoulders. His father was crazy to think anyone at Franklin High would ever connect with him, but that was okay. Friends at school didn’t matter. Larry was different from the guys in his math and English classes, and he was okay with that. He had his dad, after all. Someone to talk to and pray with and fish alongside on the weekends.
His dad was all the friend he ever needed.
But when Larry was a junior in high school his father was watching a football game on TV when he suffered a fatal heart attack. The memorial service brought a scant fifty people—friends from church and a few close family members. A week later, the truth hit hard. Larry had lost his closest friend—and in his dad’s absence, Larry’s situation at school became clearer than ever.
He didn’t have more friends than anyone in his class. He had fewer. Far fewer.
Thin and gangly, he was invisible, really. Not part of the preppy group or the social group, and definitely not part of the elite athletic group. At lunch he would sit by himself, reading his old leather Bible and wondering how he’d get through another day without his dad. Once in a while guys from one of the established groups would happen by and glance at Larry, sitting by himself with his ham sandwich and open Bible. Sometimes they’d whisper to each other, snickering and calling Larry a “Bible banger.” Other times someone would sit across from him and ask a pointed question like, “What’s the Bible say about hell?” or “How come you believe that stuff?”
“God’s real. His truth is real,” Larry would sometimes say. “What we believe about God doesn’t change the truth.”
The biting and hurtful comments from his peers didn’t distract Larry. He was determined to become the man his father had been: faithful, devoted, a Christian with determination to live his life and one day raise his family in a way that pleased God. The way his father had raised him.
Larry finished school and walked for his diploma with dry eyes. He’d never connected with his classmates, so the transition from high school to college was not an emotional one. He attended college and graduate school, married a woman he met his junior year, and became a pediatrician. His wife gave him three daughters and a son, and Larry never regretted the friends he didn’t have in high school. The only shadow of sorrow on the landscape of his happy life was the way he still missed his father.
On Larry’s thirty-seventh birthday he received two pieces of mail—the first inviting him to his high school twentieth reunion, the second confirming something his colleague and personal doctor had told him the day before: The flu-like symptoms he’d been experiencing for the past month were more than a weakened immune system.
He had a fast-moving, aggressive lung cancer.
“I have to be straight with you, Larry.” His doctor raised an eyebrow. “We’ll do everything we can on the medical side, but you know that prayer thing you always talk about? I’d get people praying right away.”
Larry drew his family together, and he and his wife shared the news with their kids. “We’re all going to pray for Daddy to get better,” his wife said, tears spilling from her eyes. “And we’re going to ask everyone we know to pray, too.”
Early the next week, Larry shot an e-mail off to Robert Wills, their high-school class president and the organizer of the class reunion. The two had shared several classes together during high school, and Larry was certain Robert would remember him. Even if the two hadn’t been good friends.
“Robert, I’ve been recently diagnosed with lung cancer. I won’t be attending the reunion. But if you could ask the class to pray, I’d appreciate it.”
Robert received the e-mail and was cut to the heart. Larry Bradford? The good guy, the Bible reader? Stricken with lung cancer? Shaken, Robert sent an e-mail to the entire class explaining that Larry was a
doctor now, married with four kids. And that he wouldn’t be attending the reunion because he was battling lung cancer. He included Larry’s e-mail address.
That’s when the miracle began to play out.
One by one Larry began receiving e-mails from the members of his graduating class.
From the quarterback of the football team—a cocky, foul-mouthed kid—Larry received a note that read, “Larry, you were an inspiration to us all. This old world needs you, buddy. Hang in there, and yes—I’ll be praying.”
From a pretentious guy in his algebra class: “Larry, remember all those times you read your Bible and the rest of us didn’t get it? Well, I get it today. I’m a Christian now, and I don’t know—my whole life is different and maybe it’s all because of you. Because you never backed down about your faith, not ever. You’ve got a friend here in Branson, Missouri, pal. A friend who’ll be praying for you every day.”
Larry was stunned by the responses. He shared them with his wife, his voice filled with awe. “You don’t understand, honey. I didn’t have a friend in school, not one.”
“It’s hard to believe,” she said. “Look at what they’re saying now.”
Larry started treatment and a decision was made. He would have to have one of his lungs removed if he had any chance of survival. Surgery was scheduled for the following week. During his recovery in the hospital his wife brought him his laptop computer so he could check his e-mail.
Dozens of e-mails from former classmates filled the box.
“I got married three years out of high school and a year after that my wife left me,” one guy wrote. “I was lost and alone, and I thought about ending it. But then I remembered you, Larry. Sitting by yourself every day eating lunch and reading your Bible. You had no one and you were so happy, man. I mean, always happy. It wasn’t something that changed every day; it was part of who you were—a happiness that came from your eyes. That week, when I wasn’t sure I could live another day, I bought a Bible and found a church. I’ve been a believer ever since. Fight hard, friend. You have no idea the difference you’ve made in my life.”
Another said that she’d heard about the prayer rally of their classmates and had to get involved. In the process she’d reconnected with her best friend, someone she’d lost touch with a decade earlier. “We’re both praying for you, Larry. You’re bringing everyone together.”
Against all odds, Larry began to improve. The reunion was two months away, and Robert Wills sent out another e-mail, this time to inform the class to keep praying for Larry’s recovery—but to pray for something else, too.
“Pray he can come to the reunion,” Robert wrote. “It’s time we show Larry how many friends he has now.”
And so they prayed.
Grown-ups who’d been a part of every social level at North Franklin High prayed alone and with their families and in online groups. They begged God to give Larry another lease on life, more time to grace the world with his unwavering faith.
“We need you, Larry,” wrote a guy who’d been the partying type. “We all wanted to be like you back then. But only you had the guts to do your own thing. You’re our friend and our hero; you gotta make it, man.”
Three weeks before the reunion, Larry was weak and struggling to maintain a positive attitude. But that day he received the best news he’d had since getting sick. The surgery appeared to have gotten all the cancer. Larry’s radiation and chemotherapy sessions would be tapered off, and if things continued looking this well, they’d be discontinued.
“I didn’t think you’d still be alive at this point,” his doctor leveled with him. “Whatever you and your people are praying, keep it up.”
“Have you thought about going to the reunion?” his wife asked him later that week. “They really want you to come.”
Larry wasn’t sure. He was touched beyond words by the outpouring from his former classmates, but he and his family lived in south Florida now, so it would mean a flight and several days away. He took his wife’s hand. “Go with me?”
She smiled in a way that still melted his heart. “Definitely.”
Larry continued to feel stronger, so they asked his mother to stay with their kids and they flew to Atlanta for the reunion. The night of the big event, Larry had doubts. Sure he’d received e-mails that had touched him. But his class would still see him as the loner, the nobody. They probably wouldn’t even recognize him, and with his health still a concern, he would’ve been better off staying home and spending time with his kids.
Before they walked out of the hotel and headed for the hall where the reunion was being held, Larry pulled away and prayed. “God, you allowed me to come here. Now let me make a difference for these people from my high-school days. Just let me make a difference.”
They were half an hour late when they walked into the hall that night, and only then did Larry realize how many people were pulling for him. Robert Wills saw him first and motioned to a few others. Table by table the word spread, and people began smiling at him, standing, clapping.
A chill ran down Larry’s spine, and he stopped short, staring at the outpouring. Beside him, his wife squeezed his hand and leaned close. “I thought you said you weren’t popular.”
Larry couldn’t speak, couldn’t answer.
In less than a minute, everyone in the room was on their feet, their applause filling the room.
“Larry! Larry! Larry!”
They chanted his name the way they’d once chanted for the school jocks. Robert came up to him and gave him a microphone. “Talk to ’em, Larry. Half of them wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
“What do you mean?” Larry looked from Robert to his classmates, confused.
“I mean they wouldn’t have come.” Robert shook his head. “Everyone here’s been praying for you, Larry. They came to see you, to thank you for showing them what it means to have faith.”
The night was amazing, full of conversations Larry was sure he’d remember as long as he lived. The people who had shown him no concern back in high school now felt a shared sense of faith, a whisper of wonder that indeed God had granted them a miracle. Most special for Larry were the people who pulled him aside and apologized.
“I didn’t understand you back in high school. But I do now,” one man told him. “Faith is all that keeps me going. It’s been a privilege praying for you these past weeks.”
On the way home that night, Larry and his wife talked about all that had happened.
“It’s a miracle.” His wife shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears. “The doctors didn’t think you’d be here, and look at you.”
Larry smiled, his grip tight on the steering wheel. “I would’ve had my miracle even if I hadn’t been well enough to come to the reunion.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning twenty-three years ago my father prayed I’d have more friends than anyone in my class. I thought he was crazy.” Larry chuckled, his voice tinged with awe. “But now look at me.”
Note: Two years later, Larry died. One of his final statements to his wife was this: “I love you, honey. But just think . . . one day this week I’ll get to see my dad again.” The funeral service was a standing-room-only event, attended by his family, church friends, medical colleagues, and neighbors. And more than a hundred of his high-school classmates.
Double Miracle
Despite all the vivid reds and yellows in the tapestry of Tracy Black’s life, one section was shadowy gray and darkest black. The part that represented her broken friendship with Anna Ritter.
Even though the split between her and Anna had happened five years ago, thoughts of her old friend still haunted Tracy, and that summer Saturday afternoon was no different. As Tracy worked in her garden, she wondered how Anna was doing, how her faith and family were. But mostly she wondered why Anna never called, how the two of them had let a friendship as golden as theirs fade away and die.
A sigh worked its way up from Tracy’s soul. Thoughts about Anna neve
r went anywhere. Anna had obviously moved on; it was time Tracy did the same. She picked another handful of beans and brushed a bit of fuzz from them. Other than the situation with Anna, life couldn’t have been better. She and her husband, Paul, had three children and a beautiful home on three acres outside Akron, Ohio.
Tracy pulled another handful of green beans and dropped them in her bag. The kids were at a neighbor’s pool, and Paul was working on the kitchen sink, so all around her the quiet was laced with only an occasional rustling of leaves or a buzzing bee.
I love being out here, God. Everything I see is something you made.
A sense of peace resonated within her and she smiled.
More handfuls of beans, and then a few of the bigger squashes. Tracy’s bag was half full of vegetables when suddenly a sharp pain sliced through her stomach and she dropped to her knees. In all her life, Tracy had never felt anything so severe. She was only thirty-eight, a regular jogger who ate well and took care of herself. But the pain was so severe she could barely draw a breath.
“God . . . help me!” She could hear Paul’s steps in the distance, hear the instant fear in his voice as he called her name and saw her huddled on the ground.
And in that moment she had a knowing, a sense that life as it had been was about to change forever.
Paul helped Tracy to her feet and to the hospital, where doctors gave her a shot for the pain. Their initial tests showed that she had a blocked intestine, and within the hour she was in emergency surgery to correct the problem.
When she woke up, her entire family was in the room. Her youngest son was ten-year-old Skyler. He approached her bed and took her hand. “I thought you were going to die, Mom.” Skyler rubbed a fist across his cheek. The boy was an athlete, one who never cried about anything. But now his fears were obvious.
“Sweetheart.” The thickness in Tracy’s throat almost stopped her from saying anything else. “Everything’s going to be fine. I’ll be home in a few days, okay?”