I am going to tell you about a miracle; but first I need to tell you about Naaman: not the biblical character but my grandfather. Poppa wasn’t a general in the army like the biblical figure, but he had the biblical Naaman’s irascible personality. He was a pretty successful tobacco farmer in the North Carolina hill country, and he was about as stoney as the ground out of which he tried to eek a living. He wan’t a leper like the biblical character, but he was an occasional drunk.

Poppa came from a hard scrabble stock. His grandpa was “Pleasant,” I mean, that was his name, not his personality. One winter’s night Pleasant got into an altercation with his brother-in-law, hit him over the head with a wagon standard, and left him out in the cold. When his brother-in-law died a few days later, Pleasant “lit out” for safer territory and was never heard from again. He had nine children and his brother-in-law had nine, so 18 kids were left without fathers. One of them was Mr. Frank, my grandpa’s father.

Mr. Frank was not like Pleasant, he was pleasant. He was an entrepreneur of sorts, and he was also a wise man. When prohibition hit, he applied and obtained a permit to make brandy for medicinal purposes. That augmented his tobacco income, which helped a lot when his wife, Emma, died giving birth to their seventh child. Naaman was two when his mom died, and six months later, her mother, who had stepped in to help raise her grandchildren, died as well.

Mr Frank was also wise enough to keep his savings in a small town local bank rather than move it to a big bank. He did so because the local bank treated him with respect. As a result, when the depression hit, his money was safe.

Mr. Frank was a hard worker with a dry sense of humor. He was a man of faith and helped build the local Methodist church. I’m told he was very physically fit, until he died felling trees when he was in his 70’s. My grandmother was very fond of him. She said I reminded her of him, which I took as high praise because of the way she looked when she said it. She really loved her father in law.

In many ways Poppa was a combination of his father and grandfather. He had a great sense of humor, and he had an entrepreneur’s spirit. He was a wheeler dealer: a real horse trader. He was dedicated to farming and always insisted on doing things right.

However, when he drank he was mean. He was not physically violent and I never saw him hit anybody; but he was verbally abusive and no one was safe from his tirades. One of my earliest memories was of my grandpa lying on the kitchen floor in a drunken swoon. I might have been only 5 years old, but I knew he was drunk. My grandmother stood over him in tears.

Poppa didn’t drink all the time and only occasionally got drunk. But he was a moody man, sometimes bitter and frustrated. He was often verbally abusive to my grandma: Momma, as we called her. But she took every bit of it and worked alongside him raising tobacco, cattle, and garden vegetables in that red clay year after year.

Poppa was worldly wise and could do basic math but he couldn’t read. I was a teenager before I found this out. We had just gotten up the hay and loaded it in the barn. We were headed to the store for “pop and nabs.” He told me “I went through school, I went in the front door and straight out the back.” We suspect he had a combination of really poor eyesight and mild dyslexia. I found out that day that Momma did all the paperwork in the household.

When Poppa got older his heart began to fail. He had a few heart attacks and then the big one came in 1986. He was plowing not too far from the road when it came, and we thought he was a goner. My grandmother found him, but he had been unconscious for awhile before the local paramedics got to the scene. They worked on him for 15 minutes before getting him breathing again. He was driven to the local hospital and put on a respirator. The prognosis was not good.

I can’t remember who told me about it, but I took time off and drove the hour from where I lived up to the hospital. I went into his room and saw him hooked up. My grandmother was there and she was crying. She told me that the doctors were saying that if he survived he would most likely be brain damaged and would have to have constant care. She said she just didn’t see how she could do it.

I was a new Christian. I didn’t know much about faith. The only faith I had was in knowing that Jesus was who He said He was. I had heard the voice of the Holy Spirit a couple of times in the two years before this, but now I experienced something entirely different as I responded to my grandma. I felt myself compelled to say, “Momma, you’re not going to have to take care of him like that, he is going to be healed and in his right mind; and when it happens, you’ll know that Jesus Christ is the one that did it.”

Even though the words came out of my mouth, I didn’t believe I had said them. However, in retrospect — as I have told this story over and over — I realize that in that moment I had believed those words more than I believed in anything else in my life.

Poppa spent 6 weeks in the hospital; it was not looking good. My sister was there often and she had nothing good to report. Then one day as I was driving down the road, I heard the Lord say to me “Praise Me.” I said, “Lord, praise you? Why?” He said,” I just healed your Grandfather.”

I went home and called my sister. She told me that Poppa had made a miraculous recovery, was in his right mind, and was being discharged the next day. I had the strangest feeling: I had just witnessed a modern day miracle.

Poppa lived 6 more years and always acknowledged the miracle he had experienced. He made a profession of faith and was baptized in his home by a pastor friend of mine.

When Marilyn met him he had changed a lot, and was old and not as irascible as he had been. On a visit before we were married we gathered together in his living room with my parents, my sister, my uncle and my grandma. We had had a good visit and were about to leave.

Marilyn went over and knelt beside him to say goodbye; the whole family held its breath collectively. What would the grumpy old bear do to this little whelp? It turns out that he reminded her of her dad and she was not put off by his bluster. She felt a deep tenderness for him, and as she touched his arm she looked into his eyes and said, “I love you.” He broke out into a huge grin and said, ” I love you too and everybody that looks like you!” You could have heard a pin drop. I doubt if anyone in that room had ever heard him say “I love you” to anybody. I know his son hadn’t. I hadn’t ever heard it from him.

Poppa had only a couple of years left to live at that point, but a second miracle had happened that day. From that point on, whenever this Poppa and his son talked together on the phone, Poppa signed off with “I love you.”