A must read of the day...

Today is Andrew's 18 month b-day (I guess that is what you call it) and I was going to write about him. HOWEVER, something much more exciting and wonderful has taken precedence. (I don't have spell check and I don't know if I spelled that correctly.

Anyway, some of you don't know, but I am the youngest of 4 siblings. My sister is 10 years older, and then I have two brothers. One is 8 years older and one is 15 months older. My eldest brother, Ross, was born with a T&E fistula - a birth defect that caused his esophagus to attach to the side of one of his lungs (or something bad like that). He was also born deaf in his right ear. He underwent numerous surgeries as a child (all before he was five) and had a very rough start. He was one of the first babies to survive such a birth defect at that time. He is now 41.

So, for 41 years he has been deaf in his right ear. Most people would never know it - unless you try to whisper in his ear, etc. He has made the best of it - and has joked that when his kids were little, he always slept through the night by putting his "good" ear to the pillow and his deaf ear up. Our family naturally sits in correct positions when we go to a restaurant so that his good ear is pointing towards the conversation.

My brother is an amazing man. He is truly one of the nicest people I have ever known, and I am not making that up. He will come to your aid at the drop of a hat. He is compassionate and loving - and is a great dad. He taught a parenting class for years, and while we were wading through the first years of having our first child, he was a great resource for discipline tips. We talk on the phone at least once a week. He loves the Lord, is funny and is sensative. I'll see if I have a picture of him that I can post.

Ok, enough mushiness. He went to the doctor a few months back because he had ringing in his good ear. He was a little freaked wondering if he was going to lose the hearing in that ear. The doctor did some hearing tests, and told him that the nerves in his right ear (the deaf one) were in tact, and that his ear bones were not attached. The doctor believed that he could do surgery, re-attach the bones, and restore 80% of hearing to his right ear. So, last month, Rossi went and had the surgery. His ear was packed post-op, so he could not tell if the hearing had been restored. So, we waited, and waited. You feel bad calling someone and saying - so - can you hear yet? Well, the packing got removed, and still nothing. The doctor told him that his ear canal would fill with blood and it could take some time to dissolve.

Today, I talked to Rossi as he drove down to the ENT. His head was hurting, and he was afraid his ear canal was infected. The doc suctioned out his ear, and suctioned out some gel packs that were down deep (that would have eventually dissolved on their own). Well, as the packs came out, Ross started hearing the suctioning machine, and after 41 years of NOTHING, sound came flooding into his ear. Tears are streaming down my face as I write this, and we praise God for using this doctor to perform a miracle.

I asked Ross what he did when he started hearing, and he said he started crying, and the doctor couldn't stop smiling. He heard people talking behing him in the valet line, and he heard the air vents blowing in his car. His doctor goes to the same church as we do, and he told him where to sit so he could hear trumpets out of one ear and bass out of the other. Life in stereo for the first time. Amazing.

It is so a picture of what God does in our life. He restores life to where it once was not. He takes what is broken and fixes it. He takes a part, and He makes it whole. Praise the Lord today for what He has done for Ross. A miracle could not have happened to a better guy.