I grew up in a world full of beliefs, my family believed in everything. They had no problem combining Catholic teachings with cults inherited from indigenous and African traditions, in which the most diverse spirits could be invoked for help. For them it was normal to light candles to the Virgin of Carmen or to Cacique Guaicaipuro, a legendary warrior who confronted the Spaniards when they arrived in our territory.
My mother was very devoted to Doctor José Gregorio Hernández, a great Venezuelan doctor who died tragically, run over by one of the few automobiles that circulated in the streets of Caracas at the beginning of the 20th century, and to whom was attributed the power to heal people.
Since I was very young my mother taught me to ask for the help of the spirit of José Gregorio, something I did very often because since I was two years old I began to have asthma attacks that made my life impossible. Every time I had asthma my mother lit a candle in my room and told me to ask him to heal me, and more than once in the midst of my delirium I felt that the miraculous hand of José Gregorio touched my body and relieved my discomfort.
I have kept this habit of asking José Gregorio for help when there are health problems through time. There are many times when in the midst of an illness I ask for his help and ask him to relieve me. This gives me a sense of companionship, helps me to relax and increases my faith that the medicines will have the desired effect and that things will be all right.
That possibility of believing that some mysterious force can empower our inner capabilities is one of life's great miracles.
I must say that I do not know first hand of any case in which there has been a miracle of the type of spontaneous healings, of those in which people who have had terminal illnesses have been healed without any explanation.
However, I can testify to the case of a younger brother who found the possibility of changing his life when he managed to incorporate spiritual beliefs into his way of thinking.
The last of my paternal siblings was born when my father was in his sixties. By that time I already had my children, who were older than their uncle. As children, my children found the matter confusing because they could not understand how it was that their uncle was younger than them.
That brother had a very troubled childhood, he was not disciplined enough to go to school, he hung out with strangers and got into mischief that went beyond the normal limits.
When he reached adolescence he had serious problems with alcohol and drugs and almost all his friends were young delinquents. Both my father and his mother felt powerless to control him, and could do nothing to get him off the path of perdition he was on.
Things came to a head one day when in a fight he was shot in one of his shoulders. Fortunately that incident did not leave any serious scars on his body, the bullet went clean through the muscle and he did not need much medical intervention to recover.
As a consequence of that experience my brother's mother decided to move with him to another city. There they came into contact with a group linked to Christian beliefs. Step by step my brother integrated with those people, became a believer and began to change his life. Something inside him clicked and he became a different person, he finished his studies, looked for a job, got married and has two children.
Nowadays he lives in the same city as me and we have very good relations, we see each other frequently and his two young children love me very much. In our family every time we talk about him we say that his change was a miracle, he managed to turn his life around when he was on the edge of the abyss.
As time has gone by it has become very easy for me to think about miracles, I see them every time I look around me, the wonder of nature speaks to me. So much perfection is undoubtedly a great miracle.
And our body is also a true miracle, it never ceases to impress me how many things have to synchronize perfectly for us to breathe. There are billions of cells that have to be in total harmony to keep us alive.
I think if we take some time to reflect on all the wonder of the world we would have no doubt that miracles are a reality.
I am publishing this post motivated by the initiative proposed by my friend @ericvancewalton, Memoir Monday, in its fifteenth week. For more information click on the link.
Thank you for your time.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
Logo creado por @themanualbot