James 1:17 (New International Version)
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the
Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
Mary was not a leprosy patient. Rather, she worked as a
medical resident at Brand's leprosy hospital in India. One day she went on a
picnic outing in a station wagon driven by a young student out to demonstrate
his bravery. After following a poky school bus for several miles the driver,
thoroughly exasperated, jerked the car into the passing lane and floored the
accelerator. When he saw another car coming head-on, he instinctively stomped
on the brake pedal-but hit the gas instead. The station wagon veered over a
bridge and tumbled down a steep embankment.
Mary Verghese, promising young physician, lay motionless
at the bottom of the bank. Her face was slit in a deep gash from cheekbone to
chin. Her lower limbs dangled uselessly, like two sticks of wood. .
Mary's next few months were almost unbearable. As summer
temperatures reached 110 degrees outside, Mary lay in her sweltering hospital
room, in traction, wrapped in a perspex jacket and plastic brace. She faced
agonizing hours of therapy. Each week nurses would test her for sensation, and
each week she would fail, never feeling the pinpricks on her legs.
After observing her downward spiral of despair, Dr. Brand
stopped by her room for a visit. "Mary," he began, "I think it's
time to begin thinking of your professional future as a doctor." At first
she thought he was joking, but he went on to suggest that she might bring to
other patients unique qualities of sympathy and understanding. She pondered his
suggestion a *Mary's story is told in Take My Hands by Dorothy Clarke Wilson.
long time, doubting whether she would ever recover
sufficient use of her limbs to function as a doctor.
Gradually, Mary began to work with the leprosy patients.
The hospital staff noticed that patients' self-pity, hopelessness, and
sullenness seemed to fade when Mary Verghese was around.
Leprosy patients whispered among themselves about the
wheelchair doctor (the first in India) who was more disabled than they were,
whose face, like theirs, bore scars. Before long Mary Verghese began assisting
at surgery- tedious, exhausting work for her in a sitting position.
One day Dr. Brand met Mary rolling her wheelchair between
buildings of the hospital and asked how she was doing. "At first the
threads seemed so tangled and broken," she replied, "but I'm
beginning to think life may have a pattern after all." Mary's recovery was
to involve many excruciating hours of therapy, as well as major surgery on her
spine. She remained incontinent for life and fought constantly against pressure
sores. But she now had a glimmer of hope. She began to understand that the
disability was not a punishment sent by God to entrap her in a life of misery.
Rather, it could be transformed into her greatest asset as a doctor. In her
wheelchair, with her crooked smile, she had immediate rapport with disabled
patients.
Eventually Mary learned to walk with braces. She worked
under scholarship in New York's Institute of Physical Medicine and
Rehabilitation, and ultimately headed up a new department at the Physiotherapy
School in Vellore, India.
Mary stands as an outstanding example of a person who got
nowhere asking why a tragedy happened. But as she turned toward God and asked
to what end, she learned to trust him to weave a new design for her life. In
doing so, Mary Verghese has probably achieved far more than she would have had
the accident not occurred.
Mary Verghese offers a great contrast to people I know
who have turned away from God because of their suffering. They talk about their
illness, often hypochondriacally, as if it's the only part of their lives. They
give full vent to the self-pity that smolders beneath the surface in each of
us.
Dear Lord we pray that we would take the gifts that You
have given us and that we would use them to show Your love to all those in our life.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
