Primero Dios
Ingrid Hernández
Associate Chaplain Linda Bertram responded to a call one day to support a family in the emergency department at Central Texas Medical Center in San Marcos, Texas, a member hospital of the AdventHealth network. It didn’t look good, but the patient’s wife was not going to give up easily. “Watch and see,” she said.
When the doctor arrived, he confirmed the news about the gravity of the situation. The patient’s wife took a deep breath, continued to look the doctor in the eye and said, “But primero Dios (a Spanish saying for ‘if God wills it’). God answers my prayers. Watch.”
The patient’s daughter then told the doctor that her dad would not want to live like this and that since she was the one responsible for making the decisions, she wanted the tube removed. Her mother was not happy with the decision, but neither was she deterred. She said, “Ok, you will see,” steadfastly trusting God’s ability to keep her husband alive despite the odds.
When the tube was removed, the patient continued to breathe on his own. It was not a unique occurrence, as the doctor had warned the family that they wouldn’t know how many minutes or hours would pass before he stopped breathing on his own. The next day, Bertram stopped in to visit the patient and his family, expecting the worst. But to her surprise, the patient was still breathing on his own.
To everyone’s amazement, a few days later the attending doctor released the patient to return to the nursing home where he lived.
Bertram said. “I thought, ‘What unfailing faith! God answered this beautiful woman’s prayers in spite of the dire circumstances.”
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Ingrid Hernández is a senior communications specialist in corporate communications for AdventHealth.
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This first appeared in THE FLAME Special Miracles Issue 2019, a Texas Conference quarterly magazine. Find the entire issue at issuu.com/texasadventist.