6 Factors Leading to a Miraculous Recovery from Herpes Encephalitis

6 Factors Leading to a Miraculous Recovery from Herpes Encephalitis
"Three men have died from herpes encephalitis," my
physician husband told me. "We're having a little epidemic
here."

A request had just come through our church's prayer chain:
"Pray that God will heal a 12-year old boy who is in a coma
from herpes encephalitis."

There was something about the severity of this situation
that called for more than a glib compliance with the prayer
request. Besides, I have a "truth and justice" voice inside
me that does not allow me to comply with something I do not
believe is possible. Knowing the low survival rate for
herpes encephalitis, I did not believe at that time
recovery could be possible.

I could not pray as I was told. However, I did pray, "God,
show me how to pray for this child." Next, I held my
closed Bible between the palms of both hands, suspended all
thinking and allowed my thumbs to open the book
intuitively. I know. I know. People say you are not
supposed to do that. They argue, "What if you are told to
do something totally out of context?" Well, I was asking
God how I should pray for this boy and at that time in my
life, the only way I could be certain the answer was coming
from God, was to look in the Bible.

"Show me how to pray," I whispered as I opened the book.
As I glanced over the two pages of Psalm 27, verse 13
seemed to stand out to me:

"I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would
see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the
living."(NASB)

What could this mean? Was this a promise from God that the
boy would live? I spoke a soft prayer, "God, if this is
really you speaking through this verse, then I believe he
will be healed." I decided to keep this to myself since it
seemed to fly in the face of rational facts, and it felt
safer to keep it inside my heart.

A few days later I was at the hospital with one of my kids,
when I saw the boy's mother. We went for coffee and I asked
her, "So how is he?" Sadly, she shook her head and
replied, "The doctors say there is little hope. He is
brain-dead or will be soon."

At that moment I remembered the Bible verse, so I asked the
mother, "What does God say?" Her eyes lit up and a smile
stretched across her face. In a hushed tone, she
whispered, "Now that's another matter! God tells me that
all is well. But I'm his mother. Maybe that is just
wishful thinking."

"Maybe not," I pulled a small Bible from my purse. "Listen
to this verse I was drawn to while praying for your son."
I read it slowly and carefully, so she could receive the
full meaning behind it. "I would have despaired unless I
had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in
the land of the living." When I was done, our eyes met; we
both stood up and embraced each other!

"Let's keep this as our secret," the mother suggested.

"I agree. It is our secret." I promised.

Her son did not die. Gradually he came back to life. It
was a long journey, but today he is alive and well. I
remember seeing him when he was about 19 years old —
he had such a sweet expression on his face that I wondered
if he had been with angels. I also found out that he could
drive a car and had his driver's license. I was told he
went downhill skiing with his friends on weekends. He
missed about a year of school and had to learn how to read
all over again, but in the grand scheme of things, that is
very little.

As I look back upon this miracle — one of the first
miracles in which I participated -- I see a number of key
factors were at work:

1. Acceptance of the diagnosis was a big step. Often
people simply do not want to accept what is presenting in
the moment. Denial and suppression are never constructive.

2. Integrity was vital. My desire for truth led me to seek
a higher level of information. Sometimes it seems easier
to go along with the crowd, but this experience taught me
to pay attention to the resistance I feel when confronted
with someone's "wishful thinking."

3. I trusted my intuition. Intuition is our built-in
guidance system. Some people get a "gut feeling"; others
get "goose bumps"; while some folks seem to have a
"knowing." In this case, my intuition drew my attention to
that specific Bible verse.

4. I carefully guarded this precious spiritual insight. If
I had tried to tell the doctors, "God told me the boy will
live," and they reacted negatively to this message, they
could have created doubt in my heart and it's possible the
boy might have died instead. 5. Power was multiplied
exponentially when two of us agreed. "If two of you on
earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for
you by my Father in heaven." (Matthew 18:19) David R.
Hawkins in Truth vs. Falsehood, page 38, states that one
person vibrating in unconditional love counterbalances the
negativity of 750,000 people in a negative state, how much
more powerful are two people? 6. We celebrated the signs
along the way toward the completion of this miracle!
Sometimes a miracle occurs in a moment. Other times, it
takes months or years to fully unfold. I remember
celebrating with gratitude each milestone this young man
reached during his lengthy recovery. His mother and I kept
our secret with each other...until now.

Looking back on this miraculous event, I can clearly see
how the affirmation we are using during "A Year of
Miracles" is precise and true:

Even though this situation looks bad (or hopeless or
endless) I am opening a Window of Possibility to an
unexpected outcome.

When two people hold open a Window of Possibility, even the
impossible becomes possible and miracles happen.

----------------------------------------------------
Rebecca Hanson is the Founder of the Law of Attraction
Training Center. She is a natural teacher and mentor to
students from around the world. Learn how you can apply the
Law of Attraction to have a fuller more enriching life,
through the Certified Law of Attraction Practitioners'
Program, a 65-hour audio course at:
http://www.lawofattractiontrainingcenter.com/programs.html .

Don't call me a racist! (thoughts on Obama's speech)

Don't call me a racist! (thoughts on Obama's speech)
As a freelance missionary, a social critic, and (I should
add) a self-professed moral failure; I watched Obama's
speech this morning with great interest. I couldn't help
but thinking to myself that I was witnessing a profound
moment in history, something that would have been
unthinkable 40, 30, or even 20 years ago. I've never
publicly endorsed a political candidate and I don't plan on
doing so here (to be quite frank, I have some serious
disagreements with the Senator on a variety of issues), but
what I heard in the Senator's speech this morning was a man
who is both Caucasian and African-American (howbeit
African-American in a non-traditional sense) pleading with
members of both races to look past their prejudices,
abandon the politics of discontentment, and unite under a
common vision for the good of all.

As a white American evangelical, I've clearly grown up on
one side of the discontentment divide. My politically
conservative Christian background has taught met to
emphasize personal responsibility in the political sphere,
but eschew racism in the private sphere. The way this
usually translates on the white side of the discontentment
divide goes something like this: "I'm sick and tired of
black people (and other minorities) getting special
treatment just because of what my ancestors did. If there
are racial inequalities in our country between black people
and white people, then it's their own damn fault and-for
the love of God-I'm sick and tired of being called a
racist!"

Given my racial and socio-economic status, I can understand
this sentiment very well and, ironically, Obama seems to
understand it too, which is why he didn't condemn this type
of thinking outright in his speech. Rather than pointing
his finger at white discontentment as an example of
systemic racism, Obama put the blame on special interest
groups and corporate greed. While one can easily disagree
with this analysis, depending on whatever side of the
political divide you find yourself on, it's not so easy to
dismiss the fact that, for the first time that I can think
of, a formidable black candidate for the President of the
United States has officially given voice to white
discontentment-without using the wrath provoking word
"racist."

To further drive home the point, Obama spoke of his white
grandmother who loved him, cared for him, played a
significant role in raising him, and occasionally gave
voice to racially insensitive stereotypes. Obama's point,
which was in no uncertain terms relevant to the current
Jeremiah Wright debacle, is simply this: people are more
complex than than the sum of their racial discontentment.

The hallmark of the speech for me was when Obama addressed
the history behind the current economic and achievement
divide between black people and white people in the U.S.A.
I've known for a while that the violence in the ghettos,
the breakdown of the black family, and whatever other
deficiencies currently present in black culture aren't
simply a matter of black inferiority verses white
superiority, but there are historical factors that have
produced the situation today. The problem has been that
I've never been able to explain these historical factors to
the average discontented white male (including myself).
This is where the speech struck the deepest note in me:

"Understanding this reality requires a reminder of how we
arrived at this point. As William Faulkner once wrote, 'the
past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past.'
We do not need to recite here the history of racial
injustices in this country, but we do need to remind
ourelves that so many of the disparities that exist between
the African American community and the larger American
community today can be traced directly to inequalities
passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under
the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Segregated schools were and are inferior schools. We still
haven't fixed them 50 years after Brown Vs Board of
Education and the inferior education they provided, then
and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap
between today's black and white students. Legalized
discrimination, where blacks were prevented often through
violence from owning property, where loans were not granted
to African American business owners, where black home
owners could not access FHA mortgages, where blacks were
excluded from unions, or the police force, or the fire
department, meant that black families could not amass any
meaningful wealth to bequeath to future generations. That
history helps to explain the wealth and income gap between
blacks and whites and the concentrated pockets of poverty
that persists in so many of today's urban and rural
communities.

A lack of economic opportunity among black men and the
shame and frustration that came from not being able to
provide for one's family contributed to the erosion of
black families, a problem that welfare policies for many
years may have worsened. And the lack of basic service in
so many urban black neighborhoods, parks for kids to play
in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick up,
building code enforcement, all helped create a cycle of
violence, blight, and neglect that continues to haunt us."

In sum, I didn't agree with everything that Obama had to
say in his speech (especially when it came to his one-
sided statement putting the blame solely on radical Islam
and none on Israel for the current problems in the Middle
East), but, on the whole, I think it was an important
speech that everyone in our nation needs to hear. Rather
than just playing to one side of the racial divide, Obama
challenged white people to understand the roots of black
anger and black people to get past their anger and take
personal responsibility for their lives. Perhaps there
really is something to this "removing the plank from your
own eye" business a humble carpenter from Nazareth stated
so beautifully 2,000 years ago.

----------------------------------------------------
Aaron Taylor is the founder of Great Commission Society, a
missionary organization dedicated to serving indigenous
ministries working in the least evangelized areas of the
world.
http://www.greatcommissionsociety.com-Website
http://www.aarondtaylor.blogspot.com-Blog