Holy Smoke!

Did you know that in the Bible, there are 139 references to the healing power of
God’s love?  Indeed, when Jesus walked on earth, He brought a two-pronged message of good news.  First, He preached the message of forgiveness, offering imperfect people reconciliation to God and the promise of eternal life.  Secondly, He healed people.  Physically, emotionally, relationally and spiritually, Jesus healed people.  On two occasions, He even raised people from the dead! 

Forgiveness and healing: two sides of the same coin that, according to the Bible, pretty much sum up what God is all about. Why? Perhaps it is because once we experience God’s forgiveness and healing, He can use us to reach out to help others.

I was 24 years old, three years out of college and living and working in Orlando, Florida, when I first experienced God’s healing touch…  

Driving north on Orlando’s South Orange Blossom Trail, I gripped the steering wheel of my lime green Mustang with my left hand. With my free right hand I raised the car’s cigarette lighter, glowing ruby-red, to the Winston clenched between my lips. 

Okay, God, I inhaled the delicious nicotine-laced smoke. This is my last cigarette.  I promise. 

But before I could exhale, I knew it was a promise I would not keep. 

I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for me to quit smoking.  I mean, I really wanted to stop.  I’d seen the photographs that compared a healthy pink non-smoker’s lungs to the blackened lungs of a smoker.  I agreed that it was a dirty habit.  I worried about my persistent cough and ticklish throat. But no matter how hard I tried to quit, I just wasn’t able to do it. 

On the car radio, Gordon Lightfoot was crooning on about the The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. In the rear view mirror I watched as Tupperware Home Parties World Headquarters – a massive two-story complex with Babylonian-like hanging gardens and an outdoor fountain that looked like a giant dandelion puff – grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared altogether in a rushing flat landscape of towering Florida pines.

Turning right into my apartment complex, I passed the swimming pool and clubhouse, and pulled into my parking spot.  As Todd Rundgren warbled Hello It’s Me, I took one last drag on my cigarette and extinguished the butt in the car ashtray.  I turned off the radio, grabbed my purse, and bounded up the front steps. 

“Hey, hoo-ney!” I did my best Ricky Ricardo impression.  “I’m hoo-me!” 

My roommate Sandy and I both worked in the Advertising and Public Relations department at Tupperware, where we traveled around the country interviewing successful women in the business, and then wrote up their stories for the company’s national magazine, which was read by America’s then 250,000 Tupperware ladies. 

Prior to joining Tupperware, Sandy had majored in Journalism at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and worked as a writer for the Florida Catholic Reporter. When she came to work at Tupperware, we hit it off immediately.  Both of us loved the Beatles, had big feet (size 10), and – most importantly – we discovered that we shared a simple faith in a loving God.  Before we knew it, we became the best of friends. We were so close, in fact, that even though we looked nothing alike (Sandy was brunette and I was blond) people often asked if we were sisters. 

There was only one major difference between us. Sandy did not smoke.  And she did not approve of my smoking.

“It’s disgusting,” she said.  “Plus, it’ll kill you.”

Since becoming a Christian in college, I had flitted from church to church, never staying anywhere long enough to call any one congregation “home.”  I enjoyed visiting churches – not only in and around Orlando, but also when traveling on business trips.  I liked the way each church had something unique and colorful to offer, like various members in a great big extended family. 

At some point during the service of every church I visited, I closed my eyes and silently begged:  Please God, help me quit smoking.  

I was a protestant.  Sandy was Roman Catholic, a regular churchgoer who frequently invited me to join her for Sunday mass.  On a chilly February morning in 1977, I finally agreed.

Orlando’s St. John Vianney Catholic Church was a modest, cement block structure, just off the South Orange Blossom Trail.  I’d never been inside a Catholic church before. I don’t know why, but I had expected something fancier, grand and gothic – like Chartres, or Notre Dame, or Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.  The service, too, was simple and plain.  No Latin. No incense. The sermon, which the priest called a “homily,” was about Saint Blaise, a physician who lived in Armenia in the fourth century when Christians were being persecuted by the Romans. Saint Blaise loved Jesus and was martyred for his faith.  Because he once saved the life of a young boy who was choking on a fish bone, he became known in the early church as the patron saint for curing sicknesses of the throat. 

“Today is February third,” said the priest, “the Feast Day for Saint Blaise.  As many of you know, a special blessing of the throat is offered on this day.  If any one of you would like to have your throat blessed, please come forward and I will pray for you.”

I glanced at Sandy.

She raised her eyebrows as if to ask, Well?

I took a deep breath and stepped forward. 

What if the priest asks if I’m an official member of his church? I worried.  What if he only blesses Catholics?

The priest looked at me with compassionate brown eyes.  He asked no questions. 

“In the name of Jesus,” he said, “on this Feast Day of Saint Blaise, I pray that you no longer suffer from any illness of the throat and that you be healed by God.”  With his right thumb, he gently marked my forehead with the sign of the cross. “I bless you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

That was it.  I didn’t feel much of anything.  No heat.  No electricity.  No spiritual ecstacy.  No swooning and falling to the floor.  But I was touched by the priest’s tenderness and generosity – especially to a visitor. 

When I returned to the apartment, I reached into the bottom of my purse and pulled out a half-full pack of cigarettes. 

Okay, God.  I crumpled up the pack and tossed it into a white wicker wastebasket.

I never smoked again.

Now this is, admittedly, a rather dramatic example of a faith-based healing in the way it was so instantaneous and absolute.  Very often healing takes time – especially the healing of broken relationships.  As with any prayer, sometimes God’s answer to a prayer for healing is “Yes.”  But sometimes His answer is “Wait.”  And still other times, “Not now.”  But no matter what God’s answer may be, the first step toward healing is to step out in faith, and with the unwavering trust of a child, ask. 

Is there an area in your life – physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual – that cries out for healing?  Talk to God, our great and loving physician, whose nature it is to heal and for Whom, the Bible says, nothing is impossible. 

Remember, when it comes to healing, you don’t need any special kind or amount of faith:  To believe in God is to believe in healing.

It’s that simple.

Kathryn “Kitty” Slattery is a longtime contributing editor for Guideposts magazine and the author of several books for children and adults.  This story is adapted for The New Canaan Patch from her new book, Heart Songs: A Family Treasury of True Stories of Hope and Inspiration (Guideposts Inspiring Voices, 2012).