--by Timm Artus (artimus64@hotmail.com)
I was thirteen and a half exactly. I had just gotten
back from my first week of Christian camp at a place
called "The Wilds" somewhere in North Carolina. It was
just a week from starting eighth grade, my last year
at the only school I had ever attended, Covington
Elementary School, District 123, Oak Lawn, Illinois.
It was bright and warm and the kids of the
neighborhood were swarmed around the clubhouse.
We had to squeeze the last bits of summer 1977 before
another year of school started. I scampered up through
the trap door underneath the raised first floor of our
clubhouse. Below, the girl who was "It" in our game of
tag was racing around after one of the half dozen
other players. Safe on this level for only a few
seconds, I scaled to the roof, by-passing the porch by
popping through the "skylight" trap door. Now as high
as our garage roof, I had a great view of the game
playing out below. I sat down and waited. Then I heard
the "It" girl coming up through the first level!
Before I really thought about it, I lept off the roof
as she reached through the skylight.
My brothers and I had jumped off the clubhouse roof
for years. It was just a little too high to do it, so
it had a bit of danger associated with it. Of course
we played that up with multiple "death scenes" in the
grass. Academy Awards could have been handed out for
the stillness, breath-holding, and tickle-ignoring
techniques employed by the bunch of us preteens lying
on the lawn after a failed jump. This time however,
while sitting on the edge of the clubhouse roof, I had
hooked both feet into the window. When I jumped I
didn't pull my feet out and managed to land on my
head.
The impact twisted my whole body in a painful crumple.
I laid stunned for a second, to the yelling and jeers
of the gang "faker!" When I tried to get up, I
couldn't stand straight up. My stomach muscles felt
too tight, like a really bad cramping. I left the back
yard for help. My siblings and neighbors all thought I
was faking it. I stumbled through the house looking
for my Dad. The pain increased by the time I got all
the through the house to the front door. I called for
Dad, who was talking to a friend pulling out of the
driveway. I fell back and hit he couch. A few minutes
later Dad came in. He thought I had called him to the
phone. I explained the situation and told him I
couldn't stand up straight anymore.
He checked out the scrap on my forehead and tried to
uncurl me from what was now a fetal position. Finding
no bleeding he figured it was a pulled muscle.
He gave me some aspirin and put me in his bed. When
Mom got home from work she too could find nothing
wrong, externally. They decided I would go to the
doctor the next day if I wasn't better. I went to
sleep.
The next morning I was still stooped over, but the
pain wasn't as bad anymore. Our family doctor (a
miracle worker by the name of Dr. Green) was in
England on vacation, so we had to wait a long time to
get a visit with the doctor covering for him, Dr.
Graham. When I finally got into a tiny exam room, the
doctor asked a few questions and sat me on the side of
the exam table. "Lay back, and don't use your arms."
I got halfway into the reverse sit up when my insides
screamed. I burst into tears and the doctor caught me
and pulled me back up. "He has to go to the hospital
right now." That poor doctor just got even busier!
Mom and I sat in the waiting room for a few more hours
before I got to take some more tests. Dad was called,
"It's his spleen. He ruptured his spleen."
Dad left work thinking I had broken my "spine." Soon
everyone in my family was asking what in the world is
a spleen?
It's a small organ a few inches below your heart and
left of your lungs. It's the size and shape of a small
jelly doughnut. It's God's little emergency blood
pack--ready 24-7 to feed the body extra blood in a
crisis. It also manufactures antibodies and white
blood cells. In the fall off the clubhouse, I had
managed to squeeze all my internal organs around and
the poor little spleen burst. Later we would learn it
was nearly cut in half. The surgeon who removed my
spleen said he had never seen anything like it; that
close to the heart and opened as it was, the blood
pressure should have emptied me of my blood supply. I
was basically supposed to bleed to death without any
external signs at all.
The aspirin, a blood thinner, should have slowed the
platlettes down from clotting. I should have never
woken up from that night of "sleeping it off." Over
twenty years later, I found out one clue to the Lord's
miraculous planning.
While doing pheresis screening at the blood donation
center the technician exclaimed, "You're never leaving
here, boy!"
Pheresis is a way of donating the platlettes from the
blood. One needle "drains" for two hours while another
needle "feeds" your blood supply back in. Along the
way, a filter grabs those little cells for burn
patients, etc. The technician told me the average
person has a platlette count of "120-150. You have a
count of 320."
Somewhere along my ancestral genetic line, the Lord
set into motion a trait that causes my blood to clot
very quickly and very well. Knowing I would take that
tumble back in 1977, God pre-ordained that I would be
able to survive this accident. Talk about "fearfully
and wonderfully made!" It's good to know the Lord is
never surprised by any event in our lives, isn't it?
I had my spleen removed and a quick check of my other
internal organs revealed no other damage. I was out of
the children's ward on the top floor of Little Company
of Mary Hospital (the same place I was born) in a
week. I left with 12 stitches running down my stomach.
A forever scar and reminder of that day when one
miscalculation changed my whole life. The Lord brought
me through a deadly experience for which I am forever
grateful and in awe of. Yet, I get to keep that
"zipper" scar running down my trunk.
The lack of a spleen didn't keep me out of the
Marines, (but retraining those abs to do more than 120
crunches has been a battle!) The lack of that little
internal organ didn't keep me from numerous blood
donations, since I seem to have an overabundance of
the red stuff. I've even celebrated the "Spleen Day"
for decades as a way to laugh about it and thank God
for pulling me through.
But that scar. That icky little scar that runs down my
belly. My wife says it's hardly noticeable--but I
can't miss it! Sometimes life brings scars. Especially
when you do something stupid or sinful. Scar tissue is
the body's defense against trama. It tries to reseal
broken areas, but the memory of the wound is always
there. Maybe scars are a good thing. To remind us.
Maybe "spiritual" scars are even better reminders.
Good things to note to others who might be heading
down a stupid or sinful path, "Hey, bud! See this
scar? I got it doing what you are thinking about
doing."
Then there are scars that are loving reminders.
Remember Christ's scars? The nail prints in His hands?
The mark of the spear in His side? The apostle Thomas
wanted to see them as proof that the Lord had, indeed,
returned from the dead. Christ offered and Thomas fell
to his knees. Those scars were a memorial of the
sacrifice Jesus the Christ made to open Heaven for
every man and woman on earth. But how many refuse to
acknowledge Him? How many say, "well He might be a
'good teacher' or a 'fine man' but I can get to Heaven
by being good enough."
One bore the sin and carries the scars, yet others
want to say, "no, not good enough. Or "no, too easy."
A client of mine ministers to the residents of New
York City. He witnessed to a devout Muslim after
September 11 in NYC for an hour, and in the end the
man acknowledged that the truth of Christ's sacrifice
was incredible, but simply believing that Jesus was
the Son of God and asking Him for salvation was just
too easy for him. He believed he had to do something
to merit Heaven. He had to give to the poor, to pray
towards Mecca, to try to afford a pilgrimage, to be a
good person. Then God would find favor. Then God would
allow him salvation.
But Christ carries the scars of the final sacrifice.
Christ was the perfect Lamb offered "once for all."
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!" A free
gift! A present, a non-merited favor offered to all.
The receipts are those nail prints. Christ already
paid the way! Accept, believe, and Christ receive!
There is no other way, no "right" to refuse the King's
Son and still have an eternal audience before the
royal courts of Heaven.
A glorious gift made to us at such a high price. But
Jesus died willingly, out of a compassionate love that
is so hard to understand. But He did it so that we
might be able to live with Him forever!
I've been privileged to have been saved now for 30
years. The Lord has blessed me with twenty-five years
that, humanly speaking, I should never have had. I
should have passed into glory that night in my sleep.
Yet He saw fit to let me grow up, go to college, find
the love of my life, serve my country, and have four
children!
So Happy 25th Annual Spleen Day. Have a jelly doughnut
and consider how the Lord has our lives woven like a
tapestry! (Be sure to rip the doughnut in half before
eating it!!)