As my parents and I left home, we were told the hole in my bone looked like cancer; my left arm would probably be amputated before we returned. MD Anderson in 1975 was gigantic even for Texas. One desk would take blood, X-rays across campus, questions in one room, more blood in another. We wondered how 3 days of disparate data could come together.

On D-day (diagnosis day) we toured the Johnson Space Center before our 3 pm appointment. We entered an auditorium of desks filled with 30 students in white coats. My X-rays lit a wall behind an examination table on a stage. Mom’s legs buckled and I helped her into a chair before she hit the floor.

I was invited onto the stage table. Each time I answered a question about a specific symptom, the doctor would nod at me, nod at the room, and 30 white coats would scribble. No severe pain during the day (notes); 2 am wake up with sore arm (notes); aspirin helped me sleep (notes); onset a month or more ago (notes). We 3 were asked to wait outside.

The brief silent wilderness of waiting, watching a hundred promenading strangers facing their own fears, seemed like hours. The auditorium we re-entered now contained only our two doctors. Finally we were told that it was a benign tumor called Osteoid Osteoma; they could cut it out next week. In the moment, the reality of bone surgery on me seemed more frightening than the unreality of cancer; that feeling was fleeting.

One of my parents’ friends told me it was a miracle. God had reached down from heaven and cured me of cancer by changing the tumor. At the time I didn’t say what I thought: “It was more of a mistake than a miracle — a premature diagnosis with insufficient experience.” Later I would wonder if God really reaches in to miraculously change reality for people. If God acts alone to rescue one person, then why does God withhold a miracle from another? Maybe we need better understandings of miracles and how God works with us in our lives.

How do you interpret the metaphor of miracle in the Bible and in your life? If God could, why wasn’t Jesus rescued from state sanctioned execution by the empire? When have you waited for God to change something in your life? Do you wonder if God is waiting for you? How have you been partners with God to bring healing and wholeness?