ARCHIE : Saved by a Miracle AGAIN!

My office in Fullmeasure was upstairs at the front of the house, with a dormer window looking out over the front lawn so I could admire Archie's handiwork when he mowed the lawn, or see when he was coming home from town. It was also directly above the rooms we had modified for a bed-sitting room with ensuite for his mother or mine, whichever of the two was staying with us at the time. If any need arose downstairs, I was just a call away; but my tiny cluttered room was my private space where I could write and concentrate undistracted - usually with two or three dogs sprawled at my feet, and often with a cat on my lap.

Write to my heart's content ... or play computer games instead of doing housework. I was good at that. Solitaire was my favourite. Anything but housework. Yecch!

Often the Lord would waken me in the middle of the night to write at His dictation devotionals which I'd read in the morning and admire as the handiwork of Another. They had to have been of Him. They sure weren't my creations; I just typed what the Holy Spirit dictated. I still do, even with e-mails. Company's Coming, Get a Life!!, Not Guilty! are a few. One was published in four countries that I know of, and possibly others. I was even paid for a couple of them! LOL - the ones I sent to the United States for publication. Fifty dollars U.S., and the cheque would make my day. Archie's, too. Money was tight at Fullmeasure.

Some days the only time the Lord could get a Word in edgewise was those brief midnight hours when I was only half awake.




It was 3 a.m. on one such early morning that Archie came from our bedroom to pause by my office door.

"Is my speech funny?" he asked. "I don't feel right."

"It does sound strange," I told him. "Want to go to the hospital?"

"If it's no better in the morning, yes." Even in the space of minutes, his voice was thicker, slurred. "But I'm not getting dressed at this hour, and I don't want to disturb you when you're writing."

"We're going to the hospital. NOW! You go and get dressed, and I'll phone Emergency and tell them we're on our way. It'll only take me a minute to throw on a pair of jeans." I was adamant. Poor Archie knew better than to argue. This was lonnnnnggg before the Lord smoothed out my nature somewhat and the fruit of the Spirit started to show.




Archie got dressed while I phoned and threw on a pair of jeans over my nightgown. Minutes later we were in the car speeding along the gravel roads. My first husband had been a rally driver, and my skidding corners that night would have done him proud. A team of medics was waiting for us at the Emergency entrance and rushed Archie into an examination room. I filled them in on the events of the previous evening as they examined my guy, who by now was having difficulty speaking at all:
Archie and I had been out together, had come home around 10:30, shared a pear from a basket Mennonite friends had left on our doorstep, and gone to bed. In my infinite wisdom I figured Archie was suffering from a reaction to some spray or something on the pear. That was what the doctor should check for first, okay? Reaction to the pear. It had to be a reaction to the....

That was as far as I got. The doctor glanced significantly at a nurse, and a minute later I was sitting out in the waiting room, fidgeting and praying while the doctor examined Archie in peace. Sigh.




A while later the doctor came out to tell me I might as well go home. They had given Archie a needle to counteract an allergic reaction he was having to his blood pressure medications, and were going to keep him in for observation until they were sure the medication was going to have the desired effect. They would call me in the morning to tell me when I could come in to take him home.

Away I went, never dreaming how close my handsome hubby was to death. He had had an anaphylactic reaction so severe that his tongue had been swollen and his throat was closing by the time we reached the hospital. If not for my bad temper and Archie's reluctance to become its target, he would've been dead by morning. And if the doctor hadn't been wise enough to ignore my blather about that shared pear and look farther for the real cause of the reaction... well, I praise God that he wasn't taken in by my bluster. :( I didn't know that then. Nor did I know when I left the hospital that they weren't sure whether they'd been in time to save his life or not.

Prayer time once again. Time to enlist the aid of my internet prayer warriors, the friends in Christ the Lord had given us over the couple of years that I'd been on-line back then.




ANSWERED prayer time once again, praise the Lord. Archie was fine. I called the hospital at 8 the next morning and was told I could bring him home. He wasn't to take his blood pressure medication that day, and was to make an appointment to see our family doctor the next day for a change in his prescription. He was allergic to all ACE inhibitors, the most common treatment for high blood pressure. Reactions to that particular set of drugs was very rare, but our God had provided a doctor who could discern the nature of Archie's sickness and treat it quickly, and once again my man's life was spared. HALLELUJAH!

Faith doesn't grow in fertile soil; it springs up through rocks in the hard places of life, and it sends down strong, wiry roots deep, deep into clefts in the Rock that is Jesus. And it is watered by copious tears.

Don't knock the hard places in your life, dear reader. Those are the days that nourish and strengthen your faith, and teach you the nature of the wonderful One on whom you're to lean. And after more than a decade of leaning, I'm here to tell you He is the Rock, the King, our unchanging and unfailing and all-powerful Saviour.

Praise the Lord, people; Christ is KING!!!!!




{\0/} {\0/} {\0/} Hallelujah! {\0/}{\0/}{\0/}





Doris E. Howie
Founder, webmaster, and servant of the living God
OHzone.net