♪Early morning yesterday, I was up before the dawn...♪

"And I will go on shining shining like brand new, I'll never look behind me my  troubles will be few.."
Brand new, yes. Troubles few, not a chance. But it's worth the risk of changing simply for that hope...


January 1994.


Halfway through my third pregnancy, two monumental events took place. On MLK Monday, after the boys' dad had left for work at o'dark-thirty, The Northridge quake shook our little house on the riverbed, 60+ miles away. I snatched my kindergartner Randall and my toddler Craig out of their bunkbeds by their pajamas and wrapped my arms around them while simultaneously covering my second-trimester tummy and bracing us all in the doorway of my bedroom. We were lucky that we didn't live in Northridge, CA, because as soon as I tucked them next to me on the couch to wait for the Big One, I saw on the news that a CHP motorcycle cop had driven off the freeway during the quake, and that many of my friends living in L.A. had probably lost everything they had in that shaker.


Chemo brain and old age blur the dates, but not long before or just after the Northridge quake, another early morning jolt woke me out of a deep sleep. The phone rang shrilly through the house, and I stumbled to the living room so my pre-dawn conversation with Whomever IT WAS wouldn't wake the boys.


I'd been to choir the night previous, and joined hands in a circle to pray for the peaceful passing of my friend and co-worker, Julie, whose heart had begun to fail and organs shut down during the week. We prayed for Tom and baby Catie, two weeks younger than my little Craigie. Julie and I had cleaned out the Sizzler salad bar at regular intervals during our pregnancies, some of many wonderful times together as young brides. Tom had said good-bye to his sweetheart and taken the little two-and-a-half year-old princess home to start a life without Mommy, after her ten-year battle with heart disease and the one successful pregnancy out of nearly a dozen. As we spoke their names in the circle the little one within me fluttered, and I could barely keep from crying out. What if my boys were to have to go on without me? As the words went around the circle a strange calm settled in. The group broke up and went home with heavy hearts oddly touched with a sense of peace. We knew she would be at peace soon...


I grabbed the brown Trimline receiver with its glowing digital buttons, clonked it to my face, and grumbled a greeting. It was the contact for Julie's Phone Chain.


My heart sank.


But not for long.


"They found a match. She's going in to surgery in ten minutes."


THEY FOUND A HEART. I still have goosebumps. even at this very moment 18 years later, when I recall those few words and the silent sobs of relief at their pronouncement.


They found a heart. Julie had a new heart.


In the weeks that followed her life seemd to be touch and go even with the new heart. I couldn't visit because she contracted a virus that would harm Little Fluttering One, so until later that summer, all I could do was pray and hope and call occasionally to check on Tom and little Catie.


In the years that have followed, Julie's life has been touch and go. So has Catie's. The new heart did not solve every single problem they would ever have.


Julie has stayed steadfast in her belief in a Creator God, who made her and would keep her here or take her Home whenever He was ready. So has Tom, and so has Catie.


Some folks say Christianity is just a myth based on old legends and archaic customs. Maybe. We won't ever know until the next life.


Those who choose to cling to the hope of life beyond death don't hold to the possibility of a myth, but to a Great Hope.We believe in an eternal life in the presence of God, the Father Almighty. So, in the meantime, if we choose to get "a new heart", a change in attitude, a change in what we believe to be Truth beyond what we know, revere, and hold worthy of our worship and our energy, our lives will still be touch and go, just like Julie's -- but they will be full of grace and gratitude on a much deeper level.


Just like Julie's.


Happy  Heart Anniversary, Miss Julie. We love you.