LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. — My column this week may be sort but, hopefully, it will be sweet.  My secretary (Loretta) has declared a strike so, stroke be hanged, I aim to see what I can turn out with one finger and thumb my nose at uppity women.  Actually, I’ve pretty much milked this stroke out, and I’m determined to do anything and everything I can without any assistance while hoping and praying I may eventually regain  use of my left arm and hand.  

It’s going to be slow going but I am convinced that the possibility is real.  For instance, I wonder how many of you readers have ever raised a sweat while tying your shoes?  I did just that this morning.  

It took me 30 minutes and I muttered a lot of language that can’t be quoted in a family newspaper but, by golly, I got ‘er done and I’m so proud of myself I may sleep with my shoes on tonight.       

Besides that, I’m still on a very high cloud as a result of a most wonderful experience with which Loretta and I were gifted last Sunday evening.  

I have a close friend, Sean Coleman, in Massachusetts with whom I swap email nearly every day.  Perhaps the most amazing thing about this friendship is that Sean and I have never laid eyes on each other.  We simply have a gaggle of mutual friends who do socialize with both of us.  It’s a much longer and more complicated story than I have space for here in my column, but I believe Sean and I are of the same mind in the notion that it’s impossible to have too many friends.  So, in the spirit of that attitude, it was only natural our relationship would evolve.

Beyond mutual friends what we have in common, more-so than anything else, is a profound love of music, be it Beethoven or Bill Monroe; The Beatles or Buck Owens; the low down blues or the church choir down the street.  Neither of us are all that picky.  Sean could be playing music professionally but that is yet another story.

He is also deeply religious and a devout believer in the power of prayer, especially when it comes to healing.  One day last week he emailed to ask if I’d like for his church choir to sing for me and offer up a prayer come Sunday evening.  Not only that, but Lo and I were invited to listen in and participate by telephone.  Sean asked me to rattle off a couple of my favorite hymns and I immediately requested “How Great Thou Art and “In The Garden,” also known as The Andy Song.  

(A little girl was once asked in church to name her favorite hymn and she promptly said, “The one about Andy.”  The youth minister was stumped and said he wasn’t sure which one that was. The little one told him we sang it all the time and commenced belting out, “Andy walks with me.  Andy talks with me. Andy tells me I am his own.”)

 So, just before 6 p.m. last Sunday, the phone rang and first Loretta and then I spent some time chatting with Sean and catching up.  (I’m at the point now when anyone calls to ask about my health, I put Lo on the phone.  It has gotten to the point even I ask, “How am I doing, Honey?”

Then we turned the volume up as loud as it would go on the speaker phones and listened while the Healing Choir of Bethel Church of the Nazarene in Quincy, Mass., sang to us.  I promise you faithfully there was not a dry eye in our house as we whispered along. And I can tell you for sure we experienced much healing in our spirits and in our souls.

I have seldom ever felt so richly blessed.    

 

ikeadams@aol.com