A MIRACLE MORNING IN MAY!

I love the sound of the spring morning with bird singing and a train rolling down the tracks in the background. There's something about a late May morning for me that fires the blood on the one hand and brings deep memories on the other. I want to talk to you about that. This is Dick Foss, one more time with stories from the road. The thing about this particular morning, May 24th, that so special and spectacular to me is that we had a moment, 12 years ago, a pedestist part Colorado. When we were with some friends in the cabin, we friends with whom we had met annually for a few days, every year for about 20 years, maybe. And in the middle of our time together, Ruth collapsed. Let me just give you the short version. Those of you who know us have heard this story probably more times than you wish, but I'm not going to stop telling the story because it was a great moment. It's about 10-15 in the morning on the 24th of May, 2013, 12 years ago. We were sitting in the group together and one of our friends had been going through a difficult time and Ruth had said, you know, I have a poem that I love. It's called for those who are tired and she started to quote this poem. She said, I don't know if I can do it fully because my heart is pounding so hard. She finished it, sat back next to me on the love seat and instantly slumped to her left. And I looked at her and her eyes were open and she wasn't breathing. And I just grabbed her and shouted, Ruthie, don't leave me. I don't know what the instinct was. But I found out later that she had suffered an episode of ventricular tachycardia that your heart has kind of its own electrical system if I can put it that way. And when it gets overloaded, it shorts out and just stops. That's a layman's way of saying it. That's not medical terminology. When your heart stops, the place that ceases to catch blood, first would be the cortex of the brain. All of your memory, your motor controls, all of those kind of things come from that. An older person when those cells start dying for lack of oxygen, i.e. in the blood, it's two to three minutes for older people, maybe four to five minutes for younger. And we were making two calls at that time. We were calling on God and we were calling 911. When we called 911, they said to layer on the floor, which we did. And they said, start giving her CPR, what we know is CPR today. And about that time, a young rookie cop ran into the room, knelt down beside her and started doing chest compressions. I'll cut to the chase within moments. We were only two minutes from a hospital there, which in and of itself was a miracle. Within moments, there were maybe half a dozen, seven people including an emergency room doctor in the room. They cut her clothes off. All I could see were her bare feet. She was surrounded by these people. And I could hear this metronome, if you will, of the chest compressions, you know, a hundred beats a minute, whatever they do. And it's one, two, three, four, five, like that. And they put the paddles on her and shocked her. Feet came off the floor, nothing. Shocked her again, nothing. And that metronome was still going. One, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, like that. And they shocked her a third time. And I tell people that I heard, apart from the sentence, Jesus loves you, that probably the greatest sentence I've heard in my life is, we have a pulse. Long story shorter, they put her in what is called the Haka Protocol, where you take the body temperature down to 92 degrees for 24 hours. And then you warm the person back up at half a degree in hour for 12 hours. And the purpose for that is that when the blood is cooled, your brain doesn't need as much oxygen. That's the thesis and the, and the practice behind it. So they did that. They put her into a coma and helicopter gear from Estus Park down to Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, Colorado. 13 minutes by plane hour and 15 minutes by car. And when we got there, the cardiologist said, this is what happens, this is what we've done. And we don't know how much damage there's been. We don't know when she will wake up. It could be days, it could be weeks months, or the odds are pretty good that she might never wake up. We don't know. We had friends on the mountain. They came down the mountain with us. Other friends from here came and gathered around and spent the next time with us. And our daughter, Erica, in Oregon on her Facebook site back in the day, put a candle there as a symbol of prayer and God's light and faithfulness and situations and around the world, other friends picked it up and put candles on their websites. We had one young friend out in a friend of our daughters, out in Virginia Beach who had lost her mother when she was a teenager and she was affected deeply by this moment and really for us and it, as you might appreciate, and she had candles all over her house. And then the second night she said, fully on this and went out and build a bonfire on the beach. Let's get after this thing. On the second night, we were there. And of course, you have no responsiveness. She has all of these things in cardiac ICU, all of these leads coming off of her head and all of that. She's intubated and a doctor walks in whom we didn't know. And I'd met him just in passing, but he wasn't a hard doctor. He was a cardiac surgeon doing rounds. He stepped into the room, looked around and said, Dick, I think this is going to be okay. I don't know. There was any empirical data for that looking at the things, but then I wouldn't know. And then he said something that up to that point, I had not heard in a hospital. And that was the doctor said to me, may I pray for Ruth? He said absolutely. He put his hand on her and began to pray, not in a shouting voice, but in a strong voice. Lord God Almighty, I pray that you will raise your growth up, heal her from the top of her head to the toes of her feet. Just pray like that for a minute or two and left. And nurses are coming and going and texts and all of that. I think it's about four hours later, I was trying to sleep by the head of her bed. And at 2-10 in the morning, a friend who had been sitting with her, wrote me up and said, Ruth's waking up. And this is 10 hours into the warming up protocol of 12 hours. And I stood by the bed and they have a protocol that you go through. And the the the male nurse who was standing there, he to sit with, open your eyes and chill with your eyes. Said, look at me, she tried to focus. Of course, heavily sedated. Said, I want you to, I want you to squeeze my hand. He did that. She did that. Said, wiggle your toes. Wiggle both sets the toes. He said, wiggle the toes on your right foot. She did that. Then he said, shrug your shoulders. He did that. And he said, give me a smile and she give me a little smile around the tube that was down and then he said, give me two thumbs up. And she gave him two thumbs up. And when that happened, I lost it. I started to weep and thanking the Lord and all of that. Ruth survived that in a spectacular way, the survival rate, resuscitation in the field that year, 2013, across the nation, was 19% or less. And of the people that got taken to the hall of those, of those people taken to the hospital, only one in 20 walked out. And of those an infinitesimal number, walked out without any significant brain damage. And Ruth was one of those. We don't know the answers to that. We have friends for whom it did not happen that way. But the fact is, it did happen that way for Ruth. And when we look back on that moment, there's something so profound about the grace of God. Ruth at that time was 70 years old. We now have had 12 years together that we might otherwise have had. But when we walked away from that, we are so grateful to the medical community to the first responders. And Ruth's fund is saying, I love those first responders, those who pray and those who come with uniforms on. A year later, on this date, Ruth is an apple pie maker. Not as much now as it used to be, but she baked eight apple pies. And we took two to the cardiac ICU unit here in in Loveland, Colorado. And then we drove up to Estes Park. And we took two to the emergency room people up there with the doctor. And then we went to the fire station. And when we walked in, they knew we were coming, but they had it's volunteer, except for maybe one person. And they were out on a call. The young woman who was there when we walked in, she said, your Ruth, aren't you? And she said, yes. And you know that she, and the young woman said, I was the second person in the room that morning when you went down. She said, I need to tell you this. And that is that a few months before, I think it was in February, we went on a call for someone who had suffered what doctors called sudden cardiac death with the hard stops like that. And he was a friend of ours. He was in his mid-20s and we couldn't save him. And I said, I'm not doing this anymore. This is the young woman speaking. She said, but I was the second person in the room that morning and when I heard when Dick called the emergency room a couple days later and said, you were awake. I said, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life. And after we left that wonderful moment at the fire station, we went to the police station because we had fire people, we had police officers, EMTs from the emergency room, all of that, there in that cabin. Went to the police station and they gathered the chief of police, the captain. They were all there in the wardrobe with some detectives and others at Estes Park. And the young rookie cop who came in and first started chest compressions on Ruth, he got his own pie and he had his wife and a little child there. And at the end of our time, the captain said, I was in the room that morning and he said, I know that you and Ruth are praying people and he said, Dick, would you pray for our team here in the police department at Estes Park. And so what a wonderful opportunity it was to bring glory to the name of the Lord and to be thankful together for the skills and all of the capacities of the people in that room and just the grace of God. I don't know how to put into words the feelings that we have 12 years after the fact. I thought the best way to do it would be to ask Ruth to join me. And I'm still out here on the porch. It is mid-morning, the sky is blue, we got a robiner too on the lawn. Now and again, we just saw Hummingbird the wind is blowing through the columnar aspsons that are in our neighbor's yard. We've got sound of airplanes and trucks and machinery and in the middle of that. I get to get to have my wife Ruth sit next to me for just a few moments. Hi Ruth. Hi. I just explained to our listeners the trauma and the power and glory if I can use that of those 11 days of which you remember virtually nothing. But you have had some thoughts when I ask you about this time and this event and just a couple of them. I'm so grateful for the 12 years that I've been given since then especially because I wouldn't have gotten to meet a granddaughter. Our beautiful Miss Lilly who joined our family and also five great grandchildren. I have great. Which I never dreamed I would have great grandchildren. So what a blessing. And then just friends and people that I wasn't aware of but who gathered, who prayed, who let candles and just were serious about their intent to intercede for me when I was unconscious. From the moment I collapsed I had good friends around me who were praying and I had a friend. We're sitting on this porch. One of the reasons I wanted to do this here is that for three Monday nights after you woke up a friend of mine, Gary Brogam, friend of decades, who's the counselor came and sat on this porch with me on most of my day afternoons and sort of talked me through my response. My response to everything that was going on. Friends come in different places at different levels don't they? They do and we're grateful for all of them over a lifetime. All of them that God has given us for sure. I was telling just mentioning to Dick this morning that a song that has been so much on my mind was written by Andre Crouch and entitled My Tribute. As I often do said at the piano and playing some hymns and choruses and this came to my mind and the words are so appropriate. He wrote that song and I believe 1972 and I think he wrote it for me. He didn't know it but the chorus goes with his blood he has saved me with his power. He has raised me to God be the glory for the things he has done and that's just a huge part of my story for sure. And I don't know why but I'm so grateful that I'm still here and enjoying life and the family and friends and especially Dick he's just been a tremendous help to me. I'm the best. You're the best. And on that note I don't want to sign off on that. Can I just read the first words of that? Verse of that? How can I say thanks for the things you've done for me? Things so undeserved yet you gave to prove your love for me. The voices of a million angels could not express my gratitude all that I am and ever hope to be. I owe it all to thee. I think we're all over that aren't we? We are. Well thanks for sticking around Kit and stick around a while longer. I want to. We keep debating on who's going first but well oh my God knows that. That's true. Thanks for doing this. Love you.