A True Miracle Story!

By Cindy Griffith

Our Christmas Miracle Christmas 2000

            Let me tell you about the snowy Christmas Day when we were blessed by a healing visit from a true Christmas Angel and the Christmas miracle she blessed us with. We now know that miracles do happen and that if you are open to receiving, they can come at any time! I give you a little background, so you can understand the blessing we received that day! Dave was recently diagnosed with Stage 4 lung and bone cancer. Radiation 5 days a week and once a week Chemotherapy treatments had been leaving him quite drained.

            The Doctors have not been able to tell Dave how much time he had left, so we are looking at an optimistic ten-year plan, yet at the same time taking care of his affairs. Many people have been offering us their healing advice. We have gotten suggestions ranging from jumping up and down on a trampoline to this very healing Essiac Tea! Because cancer in the spinal column has deteriorated Dave’s top three discs, we have decided not to go the trampoline route! Due to a near-death experience a number of years ago, Dave has a good connection to Spirit and has been able to sift through all the well-meaning suggestions and take what works best for his healing.

Christmas Day

            Now back to the story. Because both radiation and chemotherapy treatments deplete the white blood cells that help fight infection, if Dave gets sick, he wouldn’t have the ability to fight off the infection. It would be silly to die of pneumonia while healing his cancer! We all know that not only is Christmas a time of sharing love, it is also known as a time of sharing germs (especially from the wonderfully loving children in the family). Now don’t get me wrong, I love the little ones, yet we decided that Christmas with the family was not in our best interest this year. I knew that I probably could have gone myself, but I really didn’t want to leave Dave alone for Christmas Day. As the 6-hour round trip and few-hour visit would take most of the day, I made plans to go down the day after Christmas. Most of the family would still be there, but all the extra visitors would not. This was the first Christmas in my 39 years that I had missed!

            Now family guilt, self-inflicted or not, is one of the worst types. I called a number of times through the day and with all the “We miss you!” and “We are running behind schedule, you always keep us on track!”, the guilt kept piling on! At about 5 pm, Christmas night, the phone rang. Now, I get a lot of clients calling for appointments, so on days I am not working, I usually screen my calls. For some unknown reason, this time I just automatically picked up the phone.

The Christmas Miracle Phone Call

            “Hi Cindy,” said the unidentified voice. As she kept talking I recognized the English accent as this very sweet massage therapist that specializes in Tai Massage. “Have you ever heard of Padre Pio?” I told her that I had visited Padre Pio’s when I made a trip to Italy. I knew that Padre Pio was born in the late 1800s and was the only 20th-century person that had received the stigmata, the wounds that Christ had experienced on the cross. He lived until the 1960s. Padre Pio was known for his compassion and healing works. He also was known to bi-locate (be in two places at once). It is documented that during the Second World War, the air force was going to accidentally bomb an area that was occupied by allies. The fighter pilots reported a monk appearing in the air, in front of the plane, motioning for them to go back. They were so scared that they did go back and the disaster was averted! She then asked me if I had heard about the healing miracles that happened around the glove of Padre Pios. This I was unaware of. She offered to put another woman on the phone to tell me about it.

            The woman had a very sweet and calming voice. It turns out that she is a local television personality, known for her beauty inside and out. She started to tell me about Padre Pio’s glove. It seems when the priest that used to be a custodian of Padre Pio in Italy returned to his parish in Brooklyn, New York, he was given two of the gloves that Padre Pio had worn to keep the blood from the Stigmata wounds from dripping on the floor.

Padre Pio’s Glove

The Parking Lot Attendant

She figured that the parking lot attendant knew everyone from the parish, so he would be the best guardian for the glove. The glove shares a box with a sheet that came from Padre Pio’s bed, a book that people write to Padre Pio in, and one of those famous double-image pictures of Padre Pio that changes as you tilt the picture from side to side! The Parking attendant’s little booth used to be a shrine to Frank Sinatra, but now Frank shares his glory with Padre Pio! The Attendant gives the Box full of healing goodies to whoever needs it. There is a waiting list which the woman on the other end of the phone had somehow gotten on and so now, on Christmas Eve, she had received the glove for two whole days! Our English friend had told her about Dave’s cancer and she had called to see if Dave would like to touch the miraculous glove.

            Well, Dave was tired from a visit earlier in the day and when I mentioned that, the woman kindly offered to come to us. Now, for those of you that don’t know where we live, it is known as Windy Hill! Our place used to be a cross-country ski resort on top of a high hill that is often buffeted with lake-effect snow. We were currently getting hit with a snowstorm. The landlord was out of town so the drive hadn’t been plowed. She still was willing to make the trip! We gave her directions and, an hour and a half later, via cell phone, we guided her into our hard-to-find driveway!

            The stranger arrived, covered with snow and bearing a canvas tote. We sat in our living room and she pulled out a wooden box with a little picture of Padre Pio on the top. She gently opened it and took out the picture, and a little book and then gently brought out the glove. At first, I was surprised. It was a little tiny brown glove with no fingers in it. It looked like a glove you would see on a homeless person. The funny thing to me was that it was so simple. You would think it would be ornate or at least a little bigger! Padre Pio was a large man. I remembered seeing his slippers when saw I his monk cell in Italy. They were so big!

A Little Glove with Big Energy

            The little brown glove had a simple metal cross gently sown onto the top side. Later, when I turned it over, I saw that someone had sown a tiny piece of cloth with a little” x” in the place that must have been where the hand wound from the stigmata was. The amazing thing to us was the aroma that came from it. Anyone that smelled this rose scent could tell you that it was like no other rose smell you had ever smelled. You couldn’t recreate it even with the best oils or perfume. The sheet from his bed also had that scent. The sheet was in a little plastic bag, but the glove was naked except for the cross sown to it.

            Dave put the glove in his hand and you could just feel the calm that came over him. This is how he explained it to me. “At first, I just sensed a type of love similar to what I feel when I touch my near death. When I touched the glove I was feeling with my heart and not my mind. I could feel my heart opening up and feeling that light and love. I could feel both Spirit and human emotion because it was vast amounts of unconditional love. It is like going back into the light a little bit, not all the way. In order to experience the near-death you have to accept that light back. And I have been having trouble keeping my heart open and working with my light and love because of the physical fatigue and drug-induced emotions. But as I stroked the glove it felt like some of the barriers were just melting away and the light in my heart was just able to open and shine as bright as ever. Well, I could just say that my spirit was singing. Spirit gets in this joyous frame of (not mind but) Spirit. When Spirit is joyous, it feels like a song in your heart, and it interacts with your human emotions. It just brings tears to the corners of the eyes. It gets you a little choked up. You can feel it emanate throughout your whole body. It isn’t just your heart that expands, it expands throughout your entire body physically.”

            As our new friend told Dave the glove’s story and how she ended up with it, he sat and stroked the sacred glove as it lay in his right hand. Later he told me he could actually feel the glove, which is its own little miracle as he has permanent nerve damage in that hand and hasn’t felt any sensation with it for over six months! She had told of how Padre Pio was able to bring his compassion and insight into the confessional and would help people to know what it is that they really want to release. Later Dave told me, “A funny thing was that it was almost like I was giving a little confession, when I was talking to her, about my near death, cancer, and what it all was like. She had told us about when he would give confessionals from his heart. I felt compelled to talk about the near death, to give a confession of it. I didn’t realize it till later.”

            He handed me the glove and I could immediately feel the energy coming from the center of it. I felt calm and at peace. I knew this was real. I handed it back to Dave and then took the piece of sheet in the little bag. Again, I was taken aback by the undescribably intense rose scent growing in the room as she and Dave talked about everything from how his near-death experience is helping him deal with a terminal disease to the wonderful experiences she has had while the glove has been with her. She said she felt like a Christmas Angel. We told her that she is definitely our Christmas Angel! The rose scent kept growing stronger and stronger and was starting to fill the room. It was accompanied by a pervading sense of peace and love.

The Rose Scent

At one point our Christmas Angel stopped the conversation and said, “I have had this glove for two days and the rose scent has grown stronger and weaker depending on who was holding it, but I have never smelled it this strong!” She was amazed. The smell had filled the whole room by now and so had the sense of peace and love!

            Together we shared stories, feelings, hot tea, and gingerbread cookies as if we were old friends. An hour and a half later, our Christmas Angel was calling the next person she was going to share the glove with to let them know she was on her way! We wondered if she had been able to spend any holiday time with her family, and with the number of people she had visited, we doubted she had.

The Christmas Miracle Continues

            The miracle continues. After she was well on her way to share the healing glove with the next blessed person, we could still smell the rose and feel the peace and love

Dave told me that when we went to bed that he could still smell the roses. I told him that I couldn’t smell them, yet when I reached over to touch his hand, the minute I made contact, I could smell the roses too! I slept through the rest of the miracle; here is how Dave explained it to me the next day. “I could smell the roses as we went to bed. It just made me go into a really nice calm peaceful sleep. It helped my body to relax and drift off to sleep, which is a lot closer to normal than in a long time. I don’t just drop off to sleep that easily lately. I used to be able to just go to sleep right away, but now I have to sit. That night I went right to sleep and it reminded me of when we used to do a nice pipe ceremony. (A Native American tradition of giving thanks and offering prayer) It was very comforting. The smell of the roses and the glove just comforted me. I was able to get a restful sleep.”

            He continued, “At two o’clock I awoke and the smell of roses was just like it was everywhere. I just started to cry. I could feel my heart fully open and I could feel my light and my spirit shining as bright as in my near death. So, I got up and meditated and just enjoyed taking that energy in. It has helped me since to keep my heart more open when I am feeling the physical and drug-related difficulties that are associated with the therapies that I am on. That is how it is helping me now.”

            As we talked about our Christmas miracle, we realized that part of the miracle was that I was even home to get the call! If I had followed my guilt (Dave was feeling a little guilty too) and gone to my family’s on Christmas Day after all, we would of missed the phone call and our Christmas miracle altogether! As it was, I went down the day after Christmas and had a wonderful visit with my family and two friends! The kids were downstairs for most of the visit (thank you Kay and Gigi) and Dave got to have some quiet time alone to take in all the love, peace and light offered from the previous day!

            We also talked about our Christmas miracle acting as a sign to let us know we are right where we need to be. We feel that Dave’s cancer has brought about a situation that is allowing us to come back to our spiritual center. We are allowing ourselves to enjoy every day, communicate our love more frequently and sincerely, and accept all the gifts from not only God but also all of our friends and family. We are adjusting our priorities and are hopeful that Dave will receive the gift of full remission. We recognize our Christmas miracle as a sign that miracles do happen and that people like our Christmas Angel are around to bring miracles to us and everyone else on a daily basis. We are reminded that Angels don’t always have wings; sometimes they appear in a snow-covered coat and scarf!

PLEASE NOTE: We have lost touch with the glove and do not know where to find it.