St. Martin's Cloak
The Cloak is a collection of audio vignettes—stories that reveal parishioners’ faith journeys. Share your thoughts by sending us an e-mail.
I was just thunderstruck. It was if I remembered how God had saved me through cancer.
Melissa Buckingham
Melissa Buckingham remembers receiving a special gift – the gift of healing – from a child who sang in St. Martin’s choir. Listen as she tells the story.
Nineteen years ago in 1991 I had ovarian cancer and it was bad. And the chemotherapy was pretty bad and made be pretty sick so sometimes I felt sick in the middle of the night. And one night I was pacing up and down my hall and I remembered a story I heard at St. Martin’s about a little boy who had been injured in baseball or soccer or something and had to have an x-ray and maybe even had to have surgery and he was being rolled up the hall in the hospital and his father leaned down cause he could see the boy’s, he saw his lips moving and he thought he was asking a question so he leaned over and it turned out that the little boy was singing something he learned in choir.
He was singing:
Surely it is God who saves me;
I will trust in him and not be afraid
For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense,
And he will be my Savior.
So I thought about that in the middle of the night and it really got me through a lot of nights. I would think of that little boy. I’m not even sure which brother he was of a set of brothers in the parish but it really got me through the really worst times.
Then the chemotherapy was over and I had another surgery and I finally went back to work full time and I was feeling sort of kind of dragged down about the whole thing. But spring was coming. Lent came and it was kind of sad, and then it was time for the Easter Vigil and the choir sang: “Surely it is God who saves me.” I was just thunderstruck. It was if I remembered how God had saved me through cancer. It was really important, really important to my healing.