MIRACLE WORKER

It has been said: God works his wonders to perform. The miracle is perhaps the most profound of all mysteries, and I have been a worker-of-miracles throughout my entire life. When I was a child I once watched a great horned owl fly into the hollow of an old dead tree. I pulled that owl out by its talons and it sat on my shoulder to let me pet it. A mountain lion once came up to me in a forest and allowed me to roll and play with him. I have chewed on twigs of poison ivy, have sat wearing sun shorts - in patches of the same, and suffered no ill effects. I once rode my bicycle through the rain - through a 12-inch deep river of water rushing down a street - and a bolt of lightning struck the handlebars of my bike, almost instantly melting the rubber handgrips and tires. But I was not electrocuted. The only ill effect I suffered was that all my hair was turned snow white. A great horned owl was struck by a car the day I rush out into the street and pick the owl up in my arms and carry it home with me. The owl had only been knocked unconscious. It allowed me to stretch out its wings to check for injuries. It allowed me to pet it and hand-feed it. I have been visited by ghosts and angels. I have handled live black widow spiders with my bare hands. In the year 1967, I was living on First Street in Long Beach, California. I have intestinal cancer for which a doctor had just recently prescribed 5-grain phenobarbital for pain. That same doctor told me that I had only 6 months (at most) to live. That evening I decided that I didn't want to wait around no 6 months to die. I swallowed 58 give-grain phenobarbital; that comes to 18,792 milligrams of the strongest barbiturate known to man: a deadly poison... enough to kill 19 people. Immediately after ingesting all that poison, I walk two blocks down to the beach; walk into the ocean; fall face-down into the water... and drown. Two days later I ("awaken"??) in St. Mary's hospital, my head covered with a sheet. There's a baggage tag tied to my big toe. I sit up in bed and a nurse screams out in shock, calls for a doctor, and orders another nurse to cancel the morgue call. An entire team of nurses and doctors rush to my room. My vitals were NORMAL (no small miracle in itself.) I felt light-headed and a bit weak, but that was all. I felt no pain whatsoever. Hospital staff could not believe my vitals were normal, so they took them three times. A doctor showed me, not just one, but TWO death certificates twice, he'd filled out on me... while a nurse removed the toe tag from my big toe. The doctor tells me they'd pumped my stomach to flush out the barbiturate... but that I still had enough phenobarbital in my bloodstream to kill 10 people. He said I still had enough water in my lungs to drown four people and I shouldn't even be able to breathe much less talk. The doctor told me that he is a man of science and does not believe in God, but can't figure out what's keeping me alive. With tears rolling down my face I tell him: "God is what's keeping me alive." I smile and tell him: "Now I know what Christ and his apostles meant they all preached; "Ye must be born again. I am a new person, Doctor. God has raised me up from the dead." The doctor says to me: "I might be a man of science, but I now know that there MUST be a god, because, you, young man, ARE a living miracle."