Ten years ago, my sister got sick. She was just really weak and tired, short of breath. She would get tired just walking from the car to the house. Little things really wore her out. She thought maybe she had bronchitis or some sort of bug, so she went to her doctor. He gave her some medicine and sent her on her way.

A day or so later, she was at a luncheon with the people from her work, when she couldn't breathe. She just couldn't get enough air. The lady she works with put her in her car and rushed her to the emergency room of our local hospital. When she got there, she was told she was in congestive heart failure.

What?! Congestive heart failure? Isn't that something that happens to old people? She was only 33 years old! She had been pretty healthy her whole life. Where was this coming from anyway?

Our local hospital sent her to a more specialized one an hour down the road that deals with cardiac problems. I was there the morning they did a catheterization to see if she had blockages or something causing the problem. I remember the doctor coming in to talk to my parents, my brother-in-law, and myself after the procedure. He told us there were no blockages, but that her heart was functioning at less than 10%. It was enlarged to about twice its normal size, and just stretched out like a rubber band that won't bounce back. He said there was really nothing much they could do and she would need a heart transplant...

Words like that really send you reeling. Heart transplant? My dad, the one who always fixed things for me and my sister when they were broken growing up, asked the doctor if there was nothing that she could do to strenghten her heart..he was trying to get some glimmer of hope. The doctor basically wasn't giving us any. My dad looked at him and said, "You do all you can do. We'll pray." The doctor said they would pray too.

And pray we did. Churches joined us all over in praying for my sister. I poured my heart out to God, asking him to please give my sister a miracle. You see, she isn't just my sister. She's my best friend.

She came back to church for the first time on Easter sunday that year, so weak she was hunched over when she walked. She plays piano at church, and we bought her an office chair with arms on it to sit at because she was too weak to hold her arms up to play. In the following weeks, she got back to playing the piano. Then she stopped using the chair and went back to using a bench. Then she got back up there and started singing with me again...something I love to do and still cherish. For her to have enough breath to do that was a miracle already.

Last year, she went back for her yearly check up, and the technician doing her heart study told her she had such a beautiful heart, she could be a heart model! You see, God isn't a stranger to healing hearts. He takes hearts of stone and turns them into hearts of flesh, and he takes broken ones and mends them. He took hers that was enlarged and not functioning right, and made it go back to normal size and normal function. She travels, she shops (my how she shops!), she sings..she loves life!

I could never thank God enough for the miracle that he has given us. I am so thankful for my sister. We share so many things that no one else will ever share. We keep praying for her. Last year her function was a little bit less than normal, but we are hoping that was just a variant of the reading, because we know God hasn't brought her this far to drop her now. He has truly worked a miracle in her life, and I want the world to know that miracles aren't just in the Bible. They still happen today. What a mighty God we serve!

So Happy Anniversary, sissy! I love you!