Looking for Healing
by Pamela J. Tinnin

The summer I was seven years old, 1953 it was, I come down with polio. Mama 
tells it that I was feelin’ fine when she called me in for the noon meal, but 
by supper I was fussin’ about how I hurt all over. When she put her hand on 
my forehead, she said I was hot as a stove lid, so she put me to sleep in her 
and Daddy’s big bed under the quilt Granny Holcum had made for their 
weddin’. 
    
When mornin’ come, she saw I couldn’t get outta bed; couldn’t move my legs 
and was talkin’ outta my head. My daddy was off fishin’ with his brother, so 
Mama sent my brother John down to the Taylor’s place. Vi Taylor had an old 
pick-up truck and he came right away with his wife Sudie. When Miz Taylor saw 
how bad it was, she helped my mama bundle me up in the quilt. Vi carried me 
out to the truck and put me in mama’s arms for the long drive to the hospital 
in Lexington. Right off, the doctors told ‘er it was fifty-fifty. Mama stayed 
all night, and Daddy got there in the mornin’. It was near a week til the 
doctors said I was outta danger.
    
I grew up crooked, my back twisted funny and I dragged my left foot. I gotta 
confess, for the longest time, I was real mad about it; Mama said I should be 
grateful to be alive, but then she wasn’t the one who could never run fast, 
the last one picked for the softball team, the one who wasn’t never gonna go 
to a homecoming dance. 
    
The older I got, the meaner I got, mean as a snake; rather spit at you as look 
at you. Maybe I figured if I kept everybody away, I wouldn't get hurt so 
much. It was an awful lonely way to live, but after a while I guess you get 
to used to anything. 
    
Then my mama got religion. It was the summer before my sophomore year, July 
and so hot the corn withered on the stalks. Sudie Taylor talked Mama into 
going to see the new preacher at the Freewill Baptist Church. At first, I 
thought it was like all the rest of the times she’d answered an altar call. 
She’d go around for a few weeks talkin’ sweet and readin’ her Bible, 
prayin’ ever night; then she’d lose her temper,  start cussin’ at daddy or 
one of the boys, and things’d get back to normal; not that she was bad or 
anything, her folks had just never been church folks.
    
But that wasn’t the way of it, not that time. Her baptizin’ musta took, 
cause she joined the Freewill Baptists, went ever Sunday, and pretty soon had 
my daddy goin’; and that was a miracle right there.
    
But then they started draggin’ me to ever healin’ service there was. I hated 
it; people starin’ at me when I step-dragged, step-dragged up the aisle, 
pointin’ and whisperin’. They’d all crowd round til I could hardly breath, 
lay hands on my back and legs, and they’d pray and pray. The preacher would 
quote scripture, how Jesus had healed the demon possessed man, had spit and 
touched the blind man’s eyes and the man could see, how he’d lifted up 
Simon’s mother-in-law right outta her sick bed, her fever  gone. 
    
But when it was all over, and they’d finally stand back, I’d get up and limp 
back to my seat, ashamed that nothin’ had happened, ashamed that they all 
went home disappointed. Mama never said much, except one night when she came 
into my room near bedtime. She leaned over me, brushed the hair off my face 
and whispered, “You got to have faith, honey,” and turned off the light. 
Right then, I knew that me bein’ so mean all those years had condemned 
me; that I was too bad to be healed. 
    
Finally one night, when Pastor Jimmy called for people to come forward, 
people who wanted to be healed, the first one up the aisle was Miz Ellie 
Crawford. She musta been way in the back, cause I was in one of the last pews 
and I never saw her. People said she was crazy, and there she was in one of 
her raggedy old dresses, her long grey hair all twisted and tangled, her 
stockings showin’ where she had rolled ‘em up above her knees but in no time 
they’d slid down around her ankles. 
    
First, we thought she was carryin’ a baby, this little bundle wrapped in a 
towel. Then I saw the nose of her weiner dog, Little Ike, named after General 
Dwight David Eisenhower. That dog musta been 15 or 16 years old, his nose 
frosted with white—she’d had him since her husband Alfred died, just after 
the war. 
    
Miz Ellie walked up that aisle all the way to Pastor Jimmy. The congregation 
was so quiet we could hear ever word. “Pastor, my Little Ike is dyin’. I 
know you could lay hands on him and heal him.|I just know you could. 
Please?|He’s all I got.”
    
Pastor Jimmy was young and just outta seminary and didn’t know what to say. 
He put his hand on Miz Ellie’s shoulder and told her they couldn’t have no 
dogs in church. “You go on and take him home now; the Lord knows what’s best.”
    
I couldn’t hardly watch her walk down that aisle. Miz Ellie kept her head up, 
held Little Ike to her just as tight as could be, and took one shaky step 
after another. Without even knowin’ I was gonna do it, I stood up and walked 
out and caught up with her. She was near slow as me, and I walked her all the 
way home.
    
We didn’t say a thing until we got to her house and she asked if I’d come in 
for a cup of tea. Her place wasn't scary at all, but real cozy with dried 
bean pods strung from the rafters and shelves of canned garden truck; jars of 
beets and apricots, blackberry jam and apple butter. Miz Ellie stoked up the 
fire and we sat there a while and sipped tea that smelled like lemon and 
cloves. 
    
When I got up to go, she said, “Katie, could you lay hands on Ike and pray 
for him?” I tried to tell her I wasn’t the one to be doin’ that, that the 
Lord and I wasn’t on real good terms. But when I saw she was gonna cry, I had 
to do somethin’. 
    
I didn’t even know what words to use, but I put my hand on that old dog’s 
head and mumbled, “Lord, I’m tryin’ my best to believe, so I hope you’re 
listenin’. Little Ike here is the only family Miz Ellie’s got left; if you 
could see fit to give him a few more years, she’d sure appreciate it.”
    
Ike just kept wheezin’ like he had been, and I went on home. The next day I 
went back to Miz Ellie’s, just wonderin’ if there was anythin’ that might 
need doin’. I helped her wash clothes and then we snapped some beans for 
supper. Before I left, she asked me to pray for Ike again, and I did; figured 
it couldn’t hurt. He kept wheezin’ but opened one eye and looked at me.
    
After that, I came every day or so. We’d do chores and visit and I’d pray 
for the dog. One day I asked real gentle if Miz Ellie would like for me to 
wash her hair. “That would be real nice,” she said. After it was clean, I 
brushed and brushed it, then braided it on top of her head. The next week Miz 
Elli showed me how to quilt with the tiniest stitches.  She had a voice like 
an angel and while we sewed, she taught me to sing harmony on some of the old 
mountain tunes my grampa always loved. By then Little Ike was up and walkin’, 
not real good, but he’d make it out to the yard and back, with this little 
hop, what my husband Clarence calls “a hitch in your gitalong”. 
    
Then school started. It didn’t seem so bad that year. A couple of girls asked 
me to sit at their table in the lunchroom and Mr. Chalmers heard me singin’ 
in the hall and asked me to be first alto in the school chorus.  I spent 
nearly every Saturday afternoon at Miz Ellie’s. Hard to believe that Ike had 
been so sick; he was back to chasin’ his ball and he’d even do this funny 
trick he had where he’d sit up and twirl around.
    
That next spring Miz Ellie caught a cold that got worse by the day. I tried 
to talk her into goin’ to the doctor, but she said her remedies would do her. 
Then one Saturday I found her face down on the porch. Little Ike was right 
there by her, yippin’ and yappin’. She died up in Lexington a few days 
later. We had a real nice funeral for her down to the Freewill Baptist 
Church. I sang my first solo, Amazing Grace.
    
Little Ike come home with me, even though Mama said he had the worst case of 
halitosis. About a year later, the gate got left open and he walked right out 
in front of coal truck comin’ down the grade; he was deaf as a post. I buried 
him up here on Miz Ellie’s home place, just out back there in the yard. 
    
I've thought a lot about everything that happened back then. Some might say 
God had healed that old dog, but left me crippled as ever. But you know, it 
wasn’t long before I come to see it different. Maybe I’m the one that’s 
crazy, but me bein’ there the only time Miz Ellie ever stepped foot in that 
church was no accident. God give Miz Ellie and me exactly what we 
needed; somebody to love and to love us back, somebody to care about and be 
responsible for. Bit by bit, God healed my heart, healed my spirit, and ain’t 
that the biggest miracle of all? I finally come to see that bein’ cripped 
wasn’t who I was; it was just one thing in my life.
    
And if there’s one person here this mornin’ who wants to find healin’, 
don’t you go tellin’ yourself you’re not good enough, that you’ve done 
something so bad that you’re lost forever. The Scripture tells it: “God’s 
grace is sufficient for all”. All you gotta do is take that first little step, 
even if all you can bring yourself to say is “Lord, I’m tryin’ to believe”.
    
And one last thing: all of us can get the power of miracles: athletes or 
bodies crooked as can be,  sick or well, old or just a child; all of us got 
miracles in us because God’s the one that makes ‘em happen. If we give our 
hearts and lives over to the Lord, why, you wouldn’t believe what a body can 
do.  

(Comments to Pam at pamelatinnin@EARTHLINK.NET )