Miracles Still Happen!

Memories of God’s Divine Interventions

When I was two weeks shy of being eighteen years old, Paul and I were involved in a car accident . The driver of the car we were riding in lost control of the vehicle and we left the road going over a 15 foot embankment, landing in a river.

Although the car should have rolled end over end down the embankment, it appeared to have grown wings and floated out over the river and sat down right side up on a boulder. (We were told that if the car had landed 6 feet in either direction we would have been in water over our heads.)

I received a compound fracture of my left upper arm. The bone was so shattered and the arm so mangled that the doctor felt it was impossible to save it and wanted to amputate it immediately. Due to the fact that my parents weren’t in town and couldn’t get there for several hours and I was not yet of age (18 years old) to sign my own surgery release papers, my father had to send a Western Union to the hospital to give them ‘permission to operate’ on me. The doctor was disgusted when he received the telegram because the word ‘operate’ didn’t give him the authority to ‘amputate’. (Again, the Lord had divinely intervened in the wording of that telegram so that my arm was saved!)

I was taken to surgery where steel plates were bolted in my arm to hold the bone together and several stitches were done to close up some of the torn flesh (although a gaping 3” hole was still left). Also, I awoke from surgery to find myself in a body cast from my neck to my waist.

I remained this way for two weeks, when one night my arm began to hurt in a way it had not hurt before; all the while a smelly, greenish-black fluid started running down my side under the cast from the open wound in the arm. When the doctor took off the body cast, there was my arm three times its normal size and the open wound stinking of gangrene! The doctor told my father, “I told you two weeks ago that arm could not be saved. Now, we must amputate it or your daughter will die.”

Surgery was scheduled for 8:00a.m. the next morning. My parents, Paul, and the church that Paul attended began to pray - - - and by the time the doctor came in several hours later to check me before surgery, my arm had regained its natural flesh coloring, the swelling had gone down, and the stinking gangrene fluid had vanished!

Needless to say, the doctor was surprised with what he saw and upon realizing that my arm was all right, except it being broken, he elected to put a body cast back on it and let it heal. There was no need to amputate! (For the third time, a divine intervention was made in my behalf and my arm was saved!)

Is this the end of the story? No! After three months no bone had grown to close up the gap where it was shattered. The only thing to do, I was told, was to take bone from my leg and graft it in my arm and see if it would start the process. Again, the saints in Paul’s church were called to pray in my behalf......and, in less than a week, X-rays showed a ‘sprout’ of bone starting to grow and that surgery was cancelled! (Another visit from the divine Hand of God!)

About a year later, after going through months of therapy treatments to try to get me back the full use of my arm (it had frozen at a 90 degree angle due to the ligaments and tendines shrinking over the time in I was in a body cast) I was standing in church singing a song, with my good arm and hand raised up in the air in praise to God....when a ‘voice’ said very clearly to me, “Why don’t you raise the left arm and hand.?” I don’t remember even questioning the fact that I could not do such a thing. But I simply put down my right arm and hand and, not only lifted my left arm and hand, but stretched it completely out! I have had full use of this arm since that day - it has been 45 years! I definitely have a miracle arm, thanks to the almighty, divine, presence and intervention of a living God!

I Am Blessed!
Dorothy