God
Always Answers Little Girls’ Prayers
(A Skeptic is Healed) by Fred Burdick Fred Burdick is a building contractor in Foster City, California. He and his wife, Fran, live in one of the nation’s first model cities, just south of San Francisco. He was twenty-three years of age and the father of two small girls when he had a disabling accident. “Mama, haw many more sleeps before Daddy is healed?” Every night for a week, Maria, age six, and Lisa, age five, would ask their mother the same question. They were so sure that God was going to heal their daddy; and that daddy tells exactly what happened. It was a gray, chilly afternoon. We had almost completed the four-story building and were ready to put the roof into place. I was standing on a small ledge four floors above the street directing my construction crew in placing a pre-fab roof. The huge crane was swinging one of the two hundred pound sections into place so my men could juggle it into final position. Moving along the high ledge above the street, I bent over to nail a truss in place. Suddenly and without warning, the heavy roof section slipped from the high crane and smashed across the small of my back. I teetered on the ledge and then fell forward through a ceiling joist onto the concrete floor of the unfinished fourth story. The roof section glanced off the ledge and crashed to the ground almost forty feet below. I knew I was seriously injured. The construction foreman was close by, but I was in a state of shock and he had to wait for others to arrive before they could get me to my feet. Waves of dizziness and nausea swept over me as the “men lowered me down an inside ladder to the ground. I was rushed to a doctor, but his examination did not determine the extent of my injury. I was only twenty-three years old, and I felt I ought to be able to return to work. But I was wrong. The pain increased and five days later I was back at the doctor’s office for X-rays and tests. He immediately admitted me to Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City for a thorough examination. There, the doctors tried to explain what had happened. “Mr. Burdick, many of the muscles and tendons have been ripped loose in your spinal column. This is causing extreme pressure on some of the nerves. Our tests show paralysis in your legs which will grow worse unless we begin treatment.” The pain was agonizing and I readily agreed to the treatment. The next three weeks I lay in traction with heavy weights attached to my legs. The only time the weights were removed was when I was taken to therapy where they treated me with massage, heat, and hot water baths. I showed improvement and the doctors released me to return to work on a limited basis. “No lifting or prolonged bending,” they warned. They didn’t have to worry. The ever-present pain was reminder enough. But in only a matter of days the pain became so acute I had to return to the hospital. This time, they were giving me shots of codeine every four hours to ease the pain. And they resumed the traction and therapy. The days grew longer as my body was spread out with heavy weights attached to my legs, stretching the muscles in my spine to relieve the pressure on the nerves. When I was released, the doctor gave my wife Fran instructions to continue the treatment at home with massage, heat packs, and the constant use of drugs. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was slowly becoming dependent on the codeine that was a part of my everyday routine. The insurance adjustor suggested that I should collect damages from the company for time lost from work and medical payments. He talked with my doctors and they declared me sixty-three percent permanently disabled. This shocked me, for up until this time I had felt that I was going to get well. The horrible realization that at such an early age I was doomed to be a semi-invalid was more than my emotional system could stand. I began to crack. But there was nothing that could be done. “We could operate,” the doctors said, “but our tests show there is an eighty percent chance you will be permanently paralyzed if we do.” “Anything is better than this,” I told them, “the pain is unbearable and I cannot function anyway. Please, please do something.” But “wait” was all they said. My lawyer filed suit. The Industrial Accident Commission granted a temporary settlement for the loss of my legs and the prospect of a life of acute pain. By this time I could only walk with a cane. The days stretched into months and the months into years. The pain got steadily worse until I felt I could take no more. The hospitalizations became more frequent and I grew more and more dependent on the increasing dosage of drugs. Our home life was a shambles. Poor Fran; she tried so hard to be patient with me. But after a long hospitalization I would return to the house and expect her to maintain the same routine I had in the hospital—not taking into account that she had two little girls and a house to take care of ... plus a crabby, demanding, pain-ridden husband. On the long days when all I could do was stagger from the bed to the sofa and shout for my drugs, she sometimes gave up. I would hear her back in the bathroom, with the door closed, crying in frustration and despair. We had a beautiful home, one I had built myself. But it became a prison to me. I cursed the sunken living room that meant I had to climb two steps to get to the kitchen or the bathroom. My little girls, Maria and Lisa, would plead with me to play with them, but I couldn’t even hold them on my knee, much less pick them up. Time and time again I would fall and be unable to get up. My neighbor said that every time he saw little Maria running across the street, he knew he would have to come help me up off the floor. I was growing desperate and discouraged. We went from one doctor to another, but all told us the same thing. The muscles and ligaments had been ripped loose and when they grew back, they had pinched the nerves. Any muscle pressure or exercise caused extreme pain and sometimes instant paralysis. The nights were worse than the days. When I slept, Fran said I would groan from the pain all night. Many nights I stayed awake, shuffling through the dark house on my cane, trying to find relief. The drugs were helping less and less and on at least one occasion, I got drunk trying to kill the pain. I didn’t know (and at that point didn’t care anyway) that the mixture of alcohol and drugs could have killed me. Only a heavy meal earlier in the evening, which absorbed the pill, saved my life. I guess most people would have turned to God as a last resort. But I was a religious rebel. I had been forced against my will earlier in life and was now rebelling against anything spiritual. I scoffed, even in my pain, at those who said they were going to pray for me. I was a rough, tough construction boss and had no use for the panty-waists and sissies who believed in God. That was for weaklings. I could stand alone. But I wasn’t standing alone. I was leaning on the drugs. “We’ve got to pull you off the codeine, Fred,” my doctor said. “The last blood tests showed you are at the addiction point.” I pleaded with him to let me have the pills. “I don’t care if I am an addict,” I argued. “What’s the difference? I’m hopeless anyway.” He agreed to let me continue—out of sheer pity, I think. Only God and Fran knew how much I suffered, but Fran was the only one I ever complained to. Then, in December 1966, Fran had an operation. By the time she got home from the hospital, I was a physical and emotional wreck. That first evening, still weak from her surgery, she fixed supper and began to clean up the kitchen. I never tried to walk from the kitchen into the living room alone because of those two steps, but that evening I staggered out of the kitchen to watch TV. I never made it. As I started down the step, my leg collapsed. It just gave way without warning and I pitched forward on the living room floor where I twisted in horrible pain. Maria screamed for her mother. Fran stood on the top step with her hand to her mouth trying to stifle a scream. She ran to me but was unable to get me on my feet. I’d never experienced such intense pain. I heard her fumbling with the phone trying to call our neighbor, but her mind had gone blank in hysteria and she couldn’t remember the number. The door slammed shut behind her as she stumbled across the street in the dark screaming for help. Our neighbor and his three boys rushed over and got me on the sofa. I was in a cold sweat, shaking and screaming in pain every time I was moved. Fran called the doctor and he recognized her voice from the many, many calls before. “Get him to the hospital as soon as you can,” he said. This time, I was to remain there seven weeks. Christmas Eve came and the doctor gave me a twenty-four hour pass. “Walk slowly and climb no steps,” he cautioned, “or they may be the last steps you will ever climb.” We celebrated Christmas Eve at my mother’s house — in the garage, so I would not have to climb the steps to get into the house. The next day, Christmas, Fran had to call off her big dinner to take me back to the hospital early. I had fallen on my way to the table and couldn’t get back to my feet The children cried the rest of the day, Fran later told me. When I was finally released from the hospital the last of February, the doctor fitted me with an awkward brace that hung across my shoulders and laced tight around my waist and hips. But I was developing huge calcium deposits on my spine and they made the brace almost impossible to wear. The doctor said surgery was the only way they could be removed. While in the hospital I had received a shot of Demerol every four hours. But now that I was home, I turned to the pills for relief. I couldn’t seem to get enough. I was hooked. I was a drug addict. But the pain was so constant and so intense, I just didn’t care. It looked like the end of the world. While I was in the hospital, something different had been happening at home. My wife and our neighbor’s wife had been listening to Kathryn Kuhlman’s radio broadcast over KFAX in San Francisco. The neighbor then gave Fran a copy of I Believe in Miracles and asked their minister to visit me in the hospital. Fran’s life was changing. She had been reared a Roman Catholic, but never had worked at it very hard. Now her faith in God was coming to life like a sprig of grass that suddenly finds a crack in the bottom side of a rock and inches upward toward the sunlight. When I got home, Fran felt we should return the minister’s kindness and attend one of his church services. We were both deeply impressed with the friendliness and hospitality of the people. Several weeks later we joined the church. Things were beginning to happen. Fran, who was getting more and more excited over Kathryn Kuhlman, learned that Miss Kuhlman was going to be speaking at a luncheon in downtown San Francisco. All the tickets had been sold, but on the day before the luncheon our neighbor, who had a ticket, got sick, and gave the ticket to Fran. She came back home the next afternoon bubbling with enthusiasm. “People were healed! I saw it!” she exclaimed. “I talked with a woman who was healed of a back injury. Fred, I just know it can happen to you. Miss Kuhlman’s going to be back in San Francisco in six weeks at Memorial Temple on Nob Hill. You’re going to be healed in that meeting.” “Either you have lost your mind or got drunk at that luncheon,” I snorted. She was drunk all right, but I knew nothing about the “new wine” at the time. I began to be bombarded with prayer. People from the church visited and said they were praying for me. I was polite, but inwardly I sneered at their ignorance. I later learned that some of them were fasting and staying up all night praying for me. Fran chided me. “You ought to be ashamed. These people have sore knees from praying, and all you do is scoff and sneer.” She was right, but I was resigned to a life of pain. My lawyer said we ought to continue the lawsuit against the company since I had grown so much worse. “We’ve got a good case, Fred,” he assured me. “I think we can sue for a substantial amount and collect it.” I agreed. Fran had other plans. She was determined that I was going to be healed in the Kathryn Kuhlman service. “You’re wasting your time,” I told her. But she kept right on. She would try to read to me from Miss Kuhlman’s book. “Listen to this,” she’d say as she began to read aloud. “Isn’t it wonderful!” she’d remark, with tears running down her face as she read of one miracle after another. “I’m more dumbfounded by your crying than I am by those silly fairy stories,” I said. “Go ahead and be a skeptic. God’s going to heal you anyway.” She had also told Maria and Lisa that God was going to heal me and they began to pray for me in their nightly prayers. One afternoon, Fran was reading the book when the girls frolicked through the room and pulled it out of her hands. “Now I’ve lost my place,” Fran scolded them. As she opened the book to try to find her place again, her eyes fell on a single sentence: “God always hears the prayers of little girls.” That did it! From then on, nothing could sway her from the conviction that I was going to be healed. “It’s all a bunch of baloney,” I said. “No intelligent man will buy that stuff about healings.” But Fran kept right on believing. She even made a reservation on the bus to take us from our area to the meeting. “I made an appointment with a new neurosurgeon to enter the hospital for a new series of tests on the same weekend Fran had resolved I was to attend the services. By this time, I was pleading with them to operate, even if it meant I would be paralyzed. I would do anything to stop the pain. “Fred, please put it off for a week,” Fran pleaded. “You’ve just got to attend the Kathryn Kuhlman service. Can’t you get the doctor to wait for a week? You can go in Monday after the service if you want. Please put it off.” “The doctor will think I am crazy,” I said. “You cannot arrange these things at your own convenience. He has to do it.” She pleaded further. She threatened. She cried. She screamed. She used every tactic known to woman to get me to change my mind and attend the service. “Fran, you don’t understand. The insurance company has already spent $28,000 in medical bills. Now they have agreed to this. I can’t call if off.” “But I did. There was no other way to keep my sanity in the face of her determination. It is a decision I will thank God for the rest of my life. The following Sunday, we boarded the oldest, most dilapidated piece of junk I’d ever seen. “This is a bus?” I asked sarcastically as we sat down on the torn cushions. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “But it will be worth it. You will see.” As we bounced down the rough roads, I had the distinct impression that all the springs and shock absorbers had been removed. The seats seemed to be fastened to the axle and every jar sent waves of pain up and down my spine. I glared at Fran. “That driver’s hitting every hole on purpose!” “Fred,” she said as a tear ran down her cheek, “if I didn’t know for a fact that you were going to be healed this afternoon, I’d ask him to let us off right now. But I know ... I just know you are going to be healed.” “How do you know?” I snarled between gasps of pain. “What makes you so sure?” “I don’t know. I just trust in God and feel that He wants you healed. I’ve been praying for this so long and so have the children. And, you know, Miss Kuhlman says God always answers the prayers of little girls. I have even prayed you would be healed early in the service so I could enjoy the rest of it.” I sat silently, stewing in my own anger and pain, as the old bus jarred along. Fran spoke again, choosing her words slowly. “Fred, I am so confident that you are going to be healed that I asked your mother to keep the girls tonight so we can go out and celebrate.” “You what?” I exploded. Her nagging had been bad enough, but this was more than I could take. She just hung her head and I could see her lips moving in silent prayer. “What’s the use?” I thought. “I’m trapped. I might as well make the best of it. But I’ll never get caught in a mess like this again.” If only I could have seen an hour into the future. If only I could have known what God had in store for me. But I was bound by little knowledge and less faith and therefore trapped in my self-made prison of pride and self-pity. The bus arrived just as the doors of the auditorium swung open. By the time I got off, every seat in the lower section was filled. A friend of Fran’s helped her get me up the long flight of stairs to the top balcony. Another friend, a member of our church, saw us coming and gave up his seat. I gingerly lowered myself down, wincing from the pain. Fran stood, leaning against the wall in the aisle beside me. The choir had just finished singing when Miss Kuhlman appeared on stage. She was dressed in a brilliant pink dress and waved at the audience as they applauded. Then she broke into song, motioning the congregation to join in. Everyone around me was singing—everyone but me, that is. “Who does she think she is?” I muttered to myself. “A woman preacher! Boy, I must be the biggest nut in the world to get caught up in something like this.” As the service progressed, people began going up to the stage saying they had been healed. What kind of magic was this? Surely all of these people couldn’t be fakes? Just then Miss Kuhlman stopped and pointed toward the balcony. “There’s a young man in the balcony who has just been healed of a serious spine injury. He is some place in the top balcony. I do not know who he is or what his problem is, but he’s just been healed of a spinal injury. Stand up. Stand up and accept your healing.” Fran started poking me. “Fred! Fred! That’s it. She’s talking about you. Stand up. Stand up!” I looked around. Some of the people were looking at me. I was embarrassed and refused to budge. “Fred, God is healing you. Stand up and accept it.” I shook my head and tried to slip down as far as I could in the seat. But one of Miss Kuhlman’s workers came up the aisle and leaned down over me. “I think Miss Kuhlman is talking about you. Don’t you have a spinal injury?” I just gave her a blank look. “Why don’t you trust Jesus and stand to your feet?” she asked. I wanted to shake my head, but some strange, mysterious power was forcing me to my feet. I reached for the sides of the chair to pull myself up, but realized I didn’t need the support of my arms any more. I could stand alone. And the pain — the pain was gone. I stretched forward and slowly began to twist back and forth. The worker asked me to step into the aisle and to stretch in different directions. I could hardly believe it. The pain was gone. My back was limber and pliable. I turned to say something to Fran, but she was crying. “Oh, Fred, praise God. Praise God! Praise God!” That was all she could say. It was unbelievable! I hadn’t prayed. I hadn’t had an ounce of faith. I had scoffed and scorned what was taking place. And yet, suddenly and without reason, I had been miraculously healed. “Walk back and forth up the aisle,” the worker suggested. I did more than that. I began to run. Down the aisle and then back up. The people in the balcony were looking at me. Some of them had their hands up praising God. I didn’t care. I was healed. The worker said, “Would you like to go to the platform with me?” I didn’t wait for her, but started down the steps. I was running. When I got to the bottom, I turned and ran back up, three at a time. It was real! Even the jar and shock of my feet hitting the floor in a dead run caused no pain. I ran back down, bouncing and jogging to test my back. It was as though I had never been hurt; no pain, no soreness, not even any stiffness. We approached the platform and Miss Kuhlman saw me coming and reached out her hand. “What is your name, young man? Have you been healed?” I had never been able to speak in public, but that afternoon I stood before those thousands of people and told them what had happened to me. They broke into spontaneous applause. All over the auditorium, I could hear people praising God. I found myself saying it, “Praise God! Thank You, Jesus! Thank You!” And before I knew it, I was under the power of God, stretched out full length on the floor. Me — the skeptic — healed! Fran and I did celebrate that night. And what a celebration. There had never been two happier people in all the world. Afterwards, we went back to my mother’s to pick up the girls. For the first time in three years I was able to pick them up. “Fred, your back!” my mother screamed. I just laughed. I felt stronger than I had in all my life. About a year before, while I was still working part time, I had caught my right thumb between a truck and a heavy plank. The thumb had been crushed from the knuckle down and all the flesh and tissue had been stripped, leaving only the exposed bone tip. The doctors had fashioned a thumb tip out of liquid silicone and attached it to the stub. They then grafted skin around it from my forearm. “It’s just an ornament,” they said. “Of course it will never be movable or have feeling because it’s not alive.” That night, Maria and Lisa asked me, “Daddy, did God heal your thumb, too?” I grinned and said, “No, angels, God was too busy healing my back.” “But we prayed for your thumb, too,” they said with obvious disappointment. “We believed God would answer that prayer, too.” I tousled their heads with my hand. “Well, I think one healing is enough, don’t you? Besides, this thumb is only artificial. You don’t think God could bring it to life, do you?” But I had a strong feeling that they believed just that. We decided to ride with some friends to the church to testify about my healing. The Sunday night services would still be in process. On the way across town I suddenly noticed a strange tingling in my right hand. I look down. My thumb was twitching and I could move it. There was feeling in it—there was life in it. “Oh, Daddy,” the girls sang out. “God did answer our prayer, didn’t He?” He did indeed! Two days later, all the calcium deposits had disappeared from my backbone. The swelling and knots were completely gone. I was ready for any thing by then. The next day I called my lawyer. “You can call off the lawsuit,” I told him. “I’ve been healed.” “What?” he shouted into the phone. “Is this some kind of a joke or something?” “No,” I assured him. “I’ve been healed. My back is well.” “Wait! Don’t say another word. Come to my office immediately and we’ll talk in private. But don’t tell a single person about this.” I agreed, but I did not have the heart to tell him that I had already told several thousand people about it the day before. He tried to convince me that it was a psychosomatic remission. “Take a couple of weeks and get away,” he urged. “When things get back to normal, the pain will return and we can continue on with the case.” “It’s no use. My back is healed.” “It can’t be,” he cried. “Backs just don’t get well overnight.” I left him in a state of shock. He kept saying over and over, “Take things easy for a few weeks and you will be back to normal.” But I had been in pain for three years and did not want that kind of normalcy. I was healed and that is something that money cannot buy. The next week Fran and I took our first outdoor excursion in three years. We drove up to Lake Tahoe for a skiing retreat. I had always loved to ski, but we had resigned ourselves to the belief that we would never be able to go again. Fran and some friends (the ones who had been praying so hard for me) stayed on top of a hill while I sat in an inner tube and scooted down the incline on the seat of my pants. I was going at a terrific rate of speed when I hit a bump, catapulted into the air and came down head first against a tree. As I clambered to my feet and shook the snow out of my ears, I heard Fran shout from the top of the hill, “Praise the Lord!” I chuckled and said to myself, as I gasped for breath, “Amen!” Three weeks later, when I next put on my suit coat to go to church, I felt something in the pocket. I had forgotten about the pills, the narcotics. They had never crossed my mind all this time. I had carried them to the meeting on Nob Hill, certain I would need them before the afternoon was over. But the healing was total and complete. I knew I would never need them again. I went back to work in June. Since then, I have fallen off ladders and jarred my back in ways that would cripple the normal man. But it seems that my back is made of iron. I am stronger than I have ever been in all my life. Some of my friends were a little surprised that I went back to my old job as a construction man. They thought I would automatically become a preacher or a missionary. But I am still the same Fred Burdick. Oh, I love God with all my heart and I never pass up an opportunity to tell the men on my crew or my customers what God has done for me. No one is more grateful to God than I am. I am still just a hard-working construction contractor. I spend most of my hours working around rough, tough men—brick layers, roofers, carpenters and plumbers. I am not a preacher and I don’t try to act religious or pious. All I know is that once I was a hopeless cripple and now I am whole. And it was God who did it! It used to bother me a little that folks thought I should have gone into the ministry or something. That is, it did until I ran across the story in the Bible of the man Jesus healed in the country of the Gadarenes. The man wanted to follow Jesus as an apostle, but Jesus said, “Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee” (Mark 5:19). And that is what I have done. At night, after a hard day’s work, no one will ever know what it means when I sit down at a table and hear little Lisa as she bows her head and says, “Thank You, Lord, for healing our Daddy.” She will never forget. Neither will I. Ours Not to Reason Why: Chapter 3 |