Mother Faithful

The story goes that years ago, a man named Danny Thomas was struggling to support his young family because his entertainment career was in rough shape. He finally decided that it was time to give up his dream and find a stable job with a steady paycheck.

On the night before what was to be his last audition, he went to a church and prayed to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Thomas promised in prayer that if he somehow got the job from the next day’s audition, he would be so grateful that he’d open a hospital for children with cancer.

Thomas got the job and went on to have a successful career as an entertainer for many years. And he held true to the quiet vow he made that evening in the church. He opened a children’s cancer hospital and named it St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. It is a wonderful place. Children with cancer receive top-notch treatment by top doctors, expense-free. Today, St. Jude’s is one of the top children’s hospitals in the country.

My mother recently visited St. Jude’s hospital located in Nashville, Tennessee. She didn’t know anyone being treated there; she was familiar with Thomas’s story and wanted to check out this special place. While there, she purchased a few St. Jude medallions, which are supposed to bring hope to those facing “lost causes.”

Shortly after my mother returned home, she learned that a friend of a friend’s teenage boy had been in car accident that left him in a coma. My mother was moved by the story and the plight of the young man who’d been in the coma for a month. She gave one of the St. Jude medals to her friend and asked her to visit the boy and set the medal on his bed. The woman did as my mom asked, and the next day, the boy awoke from his coma. True story.

Now, I’m not writing this story to get you to believe in the power of St. Jude medals. I think your beliefs will dictate whether you feel my mother’s and her friend’s actions were answered by some higher being or whether they were coincidental to the recovery. I don’t know who is right. To the family, the cause of the recovery is of little consequence. Their son is awake and alive. They thanked God, they thanked my mom’s friend, and they thanked my mom. Maybe they just have plain old fate to thank.