| Debbie Peirce 2005-02-12, 1:36 pm |
| Our church is the South Meridian Church of God in Anderson, Indiana USA
I am motivated to send these messages because every day that I work on them
I am at ease and filled with energy and strength. The days that I think I am
out of my mind for interrupting the time of each church I feel weak and
sick.
I am e-mailing every church that I can in the hope that Jesus keeps me
alive. And, you realize that he is alive and among us now, sharing his love
and devotion for each and every one of us.
So you have my apologies and my utter belief that Jesus is behind this.
Here's why --
In 1956, I (Larry Peirce) was 10 years old and started getting daily
headaches that we now describe as migraines, which often made me too sick to
move. Fifteen years later, I was managing a car wash when one of my regular
customers (a doctor) could see I was in pain and wanted to call an
ambulance. I was having one of my worst headaches, but told him I was not
going to the hospital. He suggested I see the chiropractor across the
street; the doctor said he would come back in two hours and put me in the
hospital anyway if I didn't get any relief. So I went across the street, got
a full spinal and neck manipulation, and the pain disappeared.
After at least 20 chiropractic manipulations a year for 25 years, the
treatments stopped relieving the pain. At this point I was 50 years old and
had traveled the craft circuit in most of the states east of the
Mississippi, and now I was back home in the little town of Daleville,
Indiana. The headaches now made it impossible to do anything except sit in a
chair and hurt. We then went to Central Indiana Orthopedics in a plea for
pain relief. The doctor ordered a spinal MRI and neck x-rays. When the
doctor looked at the MRI, he said he couldn't read it, gave us a phone
number to call, and gave me a prescription for pain pills. The number was
for the neurological unit at Indiana university Hospital at Indianapolis.
When the doctor there saw the MRI and x-rays, he looked at them and said,
"wait just a minute, I want to show these to the chief of neurosurgery".
A few minutes later, the doctor came back with two other doctors, one of
which introduced himself as the chief of neurosurgery. He looked me square
in the eye and said, "Why are you alive"? He explained that I had three
broken neck vertebrae (C5, C6, C7) and each of these vertebrae was missing
half of the spinal fluid. He asked me if I had been in a car wreck, or if I
could remember anything happening to my neck. I remembered that when I was
10 years old, I was using a forbidden trampoline. I did a backflip and came
straight down on my head. He said that the accident should have severed my
spinal cord, and I should have been in extreme pain my whole life. He asked,
"How is it that you managed to survive?" I told him I was having routine
chiropractic back and neck manipulations. He turned white and said that each
one of those should have severed my spine. He also told me that both
collarbones had been broken and were pressing on nerves that affected the
lower back. He showed me a new way to sit and a new exercise for the lower
back. I asked him what they could do to get me out of the pain; he said
nothing could be done because of the location of the injury. However, he
asked me to consider moving within 30 minutes of the hospital so that when
my spine finally did sever they could have my body immediately for study.
We were numb with shock as we started on the hour and a half drive back
home. I was thinking how I could actually be alive. Not being a religious
person, this next idea really shot through me: there really is a Jesus
Christ, He is real, His power is real, and He had been using it on me for 50
years even though I never knew it. At that point I turned my head to the
right to look at what I thought was a deer, my neck gave a tremendous snap,
and the headaches and back pain disappeared. I told Jesus right then that I
would do whatever He wanted me to do.
Eight years later, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't catch
my breath, so I went to the local Emergency Room. They admitted me and I had
a heart catheterization, which earned me an ambulance ride to The Heart
Center of Indiana. They determined that I had three blockages and an
aneurism in my heart. I met with four doctors, one of which explained that
most blockages are like a kink in a garden hose; however, in my case the
three arteries that were clogged were like old pieces of rusted cast iron
pipe, with clogs all the way through the pipe. He explained that I had three
arteries that were clogged instead of four because the left ventricle of the
heart had blown out of shape with an aneurism and destroyed that artery. I'd
never had any heart pain, so I immediately remembered that I had given Jesus
my word but had not done anything about it. The doctor told me that due to
my weight, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, and not being certain where
they could reattach arteries and veins, I may or may not survive surgery. If
I did survive, he couldn't guarantee me even a day's worth of existence. So
I told him about my broken neck and assured him that whatever he did, Jesus
would handle the rest of it, since Jesus had already given me 48 extra years
of life. He got a very big smile and shook my hand.
In the recovery room with my heart rate at 160 beats per minute he came in
and told me that "Someone was watching out for you during surgery. The
surgical team all thought that you should have died". Of course I didn't
pass into the heavens, however I saw Jesus with His hands out toward me 4 or
5 times during the next three days.
One week later I was back in the hospital again after another heart attack.
No pain on my part though. At about 4 AM one morning the nurses were
drawing blood when I had one of my regular hot/cold flashes that had been
awakening me in the night for the last 5 years. I thought it was male
menopause. The next day, the doctor informed me that it was endocarditis
(infection in the heart valves and lining) and was luckily caught, because
it would not show up unless the blood was being drawn while I was having the
fever. He also told me that this infection normally kills people within a
year. How, possibly, could I be alive? Jesus, Jesus, Jesus! I've been
taking antibiotics directly into my heart through an IV for the last 4 weeks
and will have to keep taking it for another 2 to 4 weeks.
Jesus is great! Jesus is alive! The one and only! My Master, my Savior,
my Lord.
PS -- After another two weeks of antibiotics, the infectious disease
specialist is convinced the infection has been overcome and I am cured. My
general condition (according to the heart surgeon, our general physician and
the infectious disease specialist) is healing at twice the speed of a normal
heart patient. As I said before -- and will say again -- Thank You, Lord!
Why did He pick me? When I found out about the broken neck, I promised to
tell the world about His power then, but did not. So after this "little
reminder", you bet I'm telling everybody I can get ahold of about His power
and His love!! Romans 10:8-13 says, "The word is near you; it is in your
mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith we are proclaiming; That
if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart
that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your
heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you
confess and are saved. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be
saved."
Larry and Debbie Peirce
14315 W Heather Lane
Daleville, IN 47334
email: dpeirce@iquest.net
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