Rocky
Stories
Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit
Series V, Cycle C
Know that the Lord is God. It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. (vv. 3-4)
Harlene Taylor Gumm was a high school home economics teacher in Calera, Oklahoma. She and her husband had been married for three years and had been diligently trying to start a family. For years, doctors told her that she could not bear children. Despite every test and procedure known to medical science, Gumm was given the same prognosis: "You cannot have children." She and her husband could do nothing but pray for a miracle.
However, they seemed anything but blessed. In early 1963, she started feeling ill. Countless trips to doctors followed, and several series of tests were inflicted upon her. Medical science was not as advanced as it is today and specialists in both Dallas and Oklahoma City were stumped.
She was thrilled with one possibility. Some of the specialists thought she might be expecting, but every test available at the time came back "negative." Running out of ideas, the specialists placed Gumm on a strict diet. She began losing weight, but there was no change in her mysterious illness.
Gumm was as tough as they come so it didn't matter how bad she felt; she continued to teach. Doctors still had no prognosis. Her pain kept increasing, but she kept working even into the fall semester.
After Thanksgiving Day dinner in 1963, her unexplained illness heightened. She toughed it out overnight, but the next morning, she checked into the hospital in Durant, Oklahoma.
To the nurses and doctors, she was obviously in serious distress; some feared she might be dying. Her own doctor thought she might be trying to pass a kidney stone and ordered an x-ray of her abdomen.
The x-ray revealed the source of Gumm's malady. She wasn't about to pass a kidney stone. Instead she was about to give birth. Gumm's prayers to be a mother had been answered! The x-ray was the first picture ever taken of future Oklahoma Senator Jay Paul Gumm, who the doctor later referred to as "Rocky" after the misdiagnosis of a kidney stone.
Senator Gumm commented, "No one, except the Lord above, had any idea I was coming. When I was old enough to understand the story, it made me think of this: We all have much to be thankful for, and there may be even more right around the corner."
Jay Paul Gumm realized what the psalmist understood: God made us. We belong to our Creator, and therefore we have reason to be thankful. Life is precious and a gift of God not to be taken for granted. Let us praise and bless our God.
(details taken from the Jay Paul Gumm's Senate Minute article "Thanksgiving, a Time to Count Blessings in Life" in the Durant Daily Democrat, November 21, 2004)
Harlene Taylor Gumm was a high school home economics teacher in Calera, Oklahoma. She and her husband had been married for three years and had been diligently trying to start a family. For years, doctors told her that she could not bear children. Despite every test and procedure known to medical science, Gumm was given the same prognosis: "You cannot have children." She and her husband could do nothing but pray for a miracle.
However, they seemed anything but blessed. In early 1963, she started feeling ill. Countless trips to doctors followed, and several series of tests were inflicted upon her. Medical science was not as advanced as it is today and specialists in both Dallas and Oklahoma City were stumped.
She was thrilled with one possibility. Some of the specialists thought she might be expecting, but every test available at the time came back "negative." Running out of ideas, the specialists placed Gumm on a strict diet. She began losing weight, but there was no change in her mysterious illness.
Gumm was as tough as they come so it didn't matter how bad she felt; she continued to teach. Doctors still had no prognosis. Her pain kept increasing, but she kept working even into the fall semester.
After Thanksgiving Day dinner in 1963, her unexplained illness heightened. She toughed it out overnight, but the next morning, she checked into the hospital in Durant, Oklahoma.
To the nurses and doctors, she was obviously in serious distress; some feared she might be dying. Her own doctor thought she might be trying to pass a kidney stone and ordered an x-ray of her abdomen.
The x-ray revealed the source of Gumm's malady. She wasn't about to pass a kidney stone. Instead she was about to give birth. Gumm's prayers to be a mother had been answered! The x-ray was the first picture ever taken of future Oklahoma Senator Jay Paul Gumm, who the doctor later referred to as "Rocky" after the misdiagnosis of a kidney stone.
Senator Gumm commented, "No one, except the Lord above, had any idea I was coming. When I was old enough to understand the story, it made me think of this: We all have much to be thankful for, and there may be even more right around the corner."
Jay Paul Gumm realized what the psalmist understood: God made us. We belong to our Creator, and therefore we have reason to be thankful. Life is precious and a gift of God not to be taken for granted. Let us praise and bless our God.
(details taken from the Jay Paul Gumm's Senate Minute article "Thanksgiving, a Time to Count Blessings in Life" in the Durant Daily Democrat, November 21, 2004)
