My mother Ruth often told me of a healing when I was about two. More than forty years later, the marks on my body remind me of God's grace.
By Paul Zhang
"Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."
--- Psalm 103:2 (KJV)
Can a person really remember what happened when he was two years old?
Probably not.
At two or three years old, a child can barely speak in complete sentences. More than forty years later, the images, sounds, and sensations of those early years have long faded. I do not truly remember what happened to me when I was about two.
Yet there is one story from that time that I have heard all my life.
My mother told it to me again and again.
She told me, and she told many others as well. Whenever she spoke about it, she would remind me:
"Never forget the grace God has shown you. God saved your life."
So a story that was never really part of my own conscious memory became an unforgettable part of my life because my mother preserved it for me.
Even more remarkably, what happened more than forty years ago left two marks on my body that I can still see and feel today.
One is between my eyebrows.
The other is on the back of my head.
I was about two years old.
My mother said I had only begun to speak a few simple words. One day, a red swelling appeared directly between my eyebrows.
At first, she did not think much of it.
Then a Christian sister who was very close to my mother came to our home. When she saw the swelling, she became concerned.
She said, "Sister Ruth, this swelling is right in the center between your child's eyebrows. I don't think it looks good. You should take him to the hospital and have it checked as soon as possible."
After she left, my mother could not stop thinking about what she had said.
What if it was serious?
What if I really needed to go to the hospital?
Our family was extremely poor at that time. My mother later told me that we were so poor that sometimes even the matches used to light the cooking fire had to be borrowed from my grandfather.
If buying a box of matches was difficult, how could she afford a hospital visit?
But her little boy was lying there, with that red swelling directly between his eyebrows.
How could a mother not be afraid?
My mother had nowhere else to turn.
She laid me on the bed. There was a small platform beside it, and she knelt there.
She cried as she prayed.
"Lord, this child is the inheritance You have given me. Someone has told me that this swelling between his eyebrows may be serious and that I should take him to the hospital. But You know that we have no money. I cannot afford to take him."
"Lord, I have no other way. I place this child completely into Your hands. Whether he lives or dies, I entrust him to You. Please have mercy on my child."
A young mother knelt beside the bed.
Her two-year-old child lay before her.
She had no money. She had no solution. She did not know what would happen.
All she could do was cry.
Pray.
And entrust her child to God.
My mother later told me that during that prayer she faintly heard a voice.
It sounded familiar---almost like the voice of her own grandmother.
The voice told her about several herbs that could be used.
After all these years, I no longer remember the names of all of them. One that my mother repeatedly mentioned was elm root, together with several other herbs that were common in the countryside.
At first, she thought she must have imagined it.
She stood up, opened the back door, and looked outside.
No one was there.
Everything was quiet.
She knelt down again.
"Lord, was that Your voice?"
She continued praying.
She heard it again.
Still uncertain, she prayed again.
A third time, she received the same instruction.
Finally, she got up.
With no other solution available, she decided to follow what she believed she had received in prayer.
Remarkably, those herbs were not difficult to find.
They grew near the small creek behind our home.
My mother gathered them, washed them, crushed them, added a little salt, and applied the mixture to the swelling between my eyebrows.
That was sometime in the afternoon.
Later that evening, she picked me up and said, "Baby, lie on Mommy's arm and let me take a look at you."
As soon as the back of my head touched her arm, I screamed as though I had been pierced by a needle.
I began crying loudly.
My mother was frightened.
"What happened? What's wrong?"
My hair at that age was arranged in several little tufts. When she turned me over and moved the hair at the back of my head aside, she discovered something she had not seen before.
There was another red swelling on the back of my head.
It was even larger than the one in front.
One in front.
One in back.
Almost directly opposite each other.
By then, the herbal mixture had already been applied to the swelling on my forehead.
When my mother checked it again, it had opened and pus and blood began to drain.
As she carefully cleaned it, she noticed something white inside that looked like a piece of thread.
My mother was a seamstress, so thread was something she knew very well.
She took a pair of tweezers, carefully grasped the white thread-like object, and slowly pulled it out.
She said it was more than an inch long.
She treated the wound, reapplied the herbs, and then placed the same mixture on the larger swelling at the back of my head.
Later that night, the back of my head became very itchy, and I kept scratching it.
My mother said, "Baby, lie down and let Mommy look."
When she removed the herbal mixture, the swelling opened.
Pus and blood came out.
My mother cried, "Thank the Lord! Thank the Lord!"
As she carefully pressed and cleaned the area, she again saw something like a white thread.
She took her tweezers and slowly pulled it out.
This one was even longer than the first.
My mother often told me that my head was somewhat long in shape as a child, protruding slightly in front and in back, almost like an olive.
She would gesture with her hands and explain how long the two white thread-like pieces had been.
Later, she heard that local people called this kind of condition "对口疮" (duì kǒu chuāng). According to a frightening folk belief at the time, if the sores in front and back somehow "met," the condition could become fatal.
That was the understanding of ordinary people in the countryside at that time.
My mother was not a medical professional, and today I cannot determine from a description more than forty years old exactly what illness I had or what those white thread-like objects actually were.
But our family remembers what happened.
On an afternoon when my mother had no money for a hospital and no solution of her own, she knelt down and prayed. She then gathered the herbs she believed she had been directed to use and applied them to her two-year-old child.
Both swellings opened.
The material inside was removed.
After the herbs were applied another time or two, the wounds gradually dried.
They formed scabs.
They healed.
And I lived.
My mother did not tell this story only to me.
Over the years, she shared it with many people.
Later, an elderly church leader in Aojiang suffered from a serious sore on his leg. I was told that he had undergone surgery, but the wound had still not fully healed and continued to cause problems.
After hearing my mother's testimony, he asked about the herbs she had used.
As I remember it, the inquiry came through Pastor Chen Xiaolang (陈孝浪牧师).
My mother prepared the herbs as she remembered them and sent them to him.
We later heard that after applying them several times, his condition also healed.
For my mother, this only deepened her conviction that God had heard her prayer when she was at her most helpless.
Whenever she told the story, she never presented herself as someone skilled in herbal medicine.
Instead, she would say:
"God gave me that prescription."
More than forty years have now passed.
The two-year-old child my mother once held in her arms has traveled a long way through life.
I have forgotten many things from childhood, much less anything from when I was two.
Yet when I look in the mirror and slightly furrow my brow, I can still see a small indentation directly between my eyebrows.
It looks almost like a tiny dimple.
Sometimes I reach up and touch the back of my head.
I can still feel the scar there.
One in front.
One in back.
More than forty years later, they remain.
My mother once told me:
"These are the marks God left on you when He saved you."
When I was young, I simply listened.
As I grew older, I began to understand the weight of her words.
I do not remember my mother kneeling beside the bed in tears.
I do not remember her praying again and again.
I do not remember her going to the creek to gather herbs.
I do not remember the sound of my own crying.
Those are not my memories.
They are memories my mother preserved for me.
But the indentation on my forehead is real.
The scar on the back of my head is real.
Like two silent markers, they have accompanied me through the years.
Why did my mother tell me this story again and again?
I understand now.
She was not afraid that I would forget a story.
She was afraid that I would forget grace.
She wanted me to know that before I understood faith, before I knew how to pray, and before I even understood what was happening to my own life, someone was already kneeling beside a bed and praying for me.
In my mother's understanding, God was already there.
In the poverty.
In the tears.
In the helplessness of a young mother.
And in the only thing she could still do---pray.
Scripture says:
"Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."
--- Psalm 103:2 (KJV)
Do not forget.
Perhaps those two words summarize the lesson my mother spent her life teaching me.
We easily remember what we have lost and forget what we have received. We remember what we did not get and overlook the grace already given to us.
My body happens to carry two reminders.
Whenever I see the small indentation between my eyebrows, whenever my hand touches the scar on the back of my head, I remember my mother's words:
"Never forget the grace God has shown you."
I cannot use modern medical records to reconstruct exactly what happened that afternoon more than forty years ago.
Nor can I prove to someone else exactly what the voice my mother heard during prayer was.
But as her son, I know how she told this testimony throughout her life. And as the child in that story, I know that those two scars are still on my body today.
So, as someone who has now walked through much of life, this is my testimony:
Before I knew how to pray, my mother was already praying for me.
Before I understood what grace was, grace had already entered my life.
More than forty years have passed since my mother's prayer beside that bed.
But the scars remain.
Life remains.
And grace remains.
Some scars are left by suffering.
Others become lasting marks of grace.
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