Editors Note:
One year ago today I was totally out of it. In surgery and then in ICU. The following e-mail was posted, and I think it appropriate to republish it on its one year anniversary. “Enough said, it speaks for itself.”
The Call.
by guest writer, Caroline Hubbell Yingling, Webb’s daughter.
My Dad got “the call” today. The call from his transplant team that an organ had become available. A parent or a child or a friend also got a “call” today… a call to say that their loved one had died. A miracle and a tragedy, all in one day.
A surgeon too got a call today. A team of them actually. To be on the ready, to facilitate this tragedy becoming a miracle.
I can’t help but reflect on the distinctions among the calls exchanged today. One, a call to hope and saving and one, a call of sadness and loss. And yet another, a call to act, to serve and to excel.
All of these calls are calls from God. A call to return to God. Return to him in heaven. Or return to the work he meant for you to do. Or to the life he meant for you to live. Answering God’s calls requires the fortitude to pick up the phone, the faith to trust that it is God himself on the line, and the wisdom to know when it isn’t.
I received many calls today. As you might imagine. Lying in the hospital room, awaiting his new liver, my Dad called on me to please log on to his blog and write. “People are counting on reading it,” he said. He is right – we are counting on being able to hear his words again. HIS, not mine.
But when your father calls on you to do something, especially in such circumstances, you ought to do it. The parallel for me today is inescapable. What does the Almighty Father call on us to do and are we doing it? My Dad feels called by God to share his faith with others and even in the middle of his most frightening of times, he sought to fulfill the promises he made to him. Let my Dad’s example in this respect be, as it often is, a guidepost for our own lives and how we respond to God’s calling to us.
(I know he will be back on this blog soon. I know it. And I am so grateful to God, the doctors, and the donor and his family for this day.)
This is as moving today as it was a year ago… I don’t recall responding then, Caroline, but thank you!
tom