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(The photo is of Wanda and her two grandsons making Footprints through The Valley of Fire, Las Vegas, NV)

Today, I am excited to bring you a post by Wanda Winters-Gutierrez. I know you will enjoy it. You can visit Wanda at her site The Journey.

A Grandmother Leaves Footprints on Souls

I am on a year long journey, before I turn 65, to discover who I really am. In my first blog covering this adventure, I wrote, “During this year, I want to connect more to the solitude deep in my spirit where God lives. I want to find my lost childhood and see God, and the world, through unwounded eyes. I want to have fun. Actually, I want to find out what fun is! Not just what others think fun is but what is fun to me? I want to be Wanda, who ever she might be.”

One incredible fun thing I am discovering is the power of a grandmother to impact the lives of future generations. I am grandmother to fourteen beautiful children between the ages of seventeen and two. Lately, I have awakened to the fact that although our family members, including me, have done some pretty stupid things in the past, there is still a heritage of faith that runs deep and strong through all of us. There are footprints laid out in time that they can follow.

Ten year old Matthew spent a few days with me last month. We had a wonderful time doing things he wanted do and in between times Grandma told him family stories. Stories about the times God had performed miracles for us. The first story was about his great grandfather Sampson Eli Church.

Grandpa Church was a coal miner during the early part of the 1900s when his sister, Aunt May, developed cancer. When the doctors operated, they found that the cancer had totally destroyed all her female organs and stomach. Her abdomen was an empty cavity, so they stuffed her with cotton, sewed her up, and sent her home to die.

They called Grandpa out of the mines to say goodbye to his sister. But Grandpa was a great believer in prayer and instead of saying goodbye, he laid his coal blacken hand on her head and asked God to completely heal her. And He did. Instantly, she was made totally whole. Her insides were replaced by the power of God to the degree that, later on in life, she conceived and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.

Right now, your eyes may be as big as Matthew’s was when I told him this story. All I can say is it is 100% truth and I will tell you what I told Matthew...never limit God...He can do anything.

I told Matthew the story about the time his Uncle Chris, my son, fell two stories through the open frame of a house he was building, onto concrete head first. He was 18 and working in Texas. I lived in Kentucky and got the call from his brother, “Chris fell...it looks really bad...he is bleeding from his nose and mouth....he’s hurt bad.” When something traumatic happens, I get really quiet inside and try to hear what God has to say about it. So, after a moment of listening I KNEW my son would be fine. I was to speak healing...I was to believe God.

I said, “Take him to the hospital and do whatever they say BUT KNOW this...God is about to do a miracle and Chris will walk out of that emergency room TODAY fully and completely healed. Do you understand me?” My son took a deep breath and said, “Okay.”

Every fiber of my being was vibrating with the certainty that God would do whatever it took to heal my baby. There was not a doubt in me anywhere. An hour later, I called the emergency room in Texas and asked to speak with anyone with Chris. When his brother got on the phone, I asked, “Okay, how is he?”

“Well...” he said, “ask him yourself.”

When I heard Chris’ unmistakable Texas drawl saying, “Hi, Mommy,” I started laughing and asked, “Chrisie…what happened?”

"Well, I reckon, I just fell on the hardest part of me.”

That day my son walked out of the emergency room healed.

When I finished that story, I looked into the wide brown eyes of my little grandson and saw a footprint on his soul. Forever he will have a touchstone of faith to stand on when life’s impossibilities hit him. That footprint proclaims, “God is big...and He loves us...and He hears our prayers....and miracles happen.”

I also told Matthew about another kind of miracle. When his daddy was about two years old, he fell on a glass bottle and laid open his little face clear through the cheek to the inside of his mouth. We rushed him to the emergency room where the ER doctor shook his head and said, “I can’t fix this. If the nerves and muscles are not connected right, he will be paralyzed on that side of his face.”

At that very moment, another doctor walked in and said, “Let me see. Oh, no problem...this is what I will need...”

The new doctor just happened to be THE BEST plastic surgeon in the state and he just happened to stop off at this hospital on his way home and just happened to walk into the ER at that moment when one of God’s Little Ones needed his specialized skills. Michael’s cheek healed perfectly.

Charles Spurgeon said, “A Christian is a perpetual miracle.” I believe it.

FOOTPRINTS NOW

Ever since the Haiti disaster, our family has done whatever we could to help. We prayed, gave, and reminded our friends to give. My son Michael organized a band concert in Las Vegas that raised thousands of dollars to feed children there. Last week, my 17 year old granddaughter Donna went with a missions team to minister in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Her Uncle Michael said, “Well Mom...the family now has a footprint in Haiti.” Indeed we do...

A friend, Jax Shows, sent this definition for FOOTPRINTS, “The action of one step that sets the world toward a better place...by one or many.” That works.