Christy Collins and Sandy Simon
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church has been my spiritual rock for as long as I can remember. It has always been a larger-than-life part of me.
My mother first brought me to Sunday School when I was two years old. My three brothers and cousins, aunts and uncles walked as a line of ducklings from our homes less than two blocks away.
By age nine I was a member of the Boys Choir, an acolyte, and a member of our Christmas and Easter pageants performed before the entire congregation every year.
When I left for college at seventeen, I attended All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta just a few blocks from my school, Georgia Tech.
Every time I returned to Delray, I returned to St. Paul’s. I looked to St. Paul’s for peace, quiet, love and God’s presence. Jesus was always a part of my life and He lived, as far as I could tell, at St. Paul’s.
Years later, after living in Georgia and attending graduate school at Wharton in Philadelphia, I returned in 1980 and resumed my weekly attendance at St. Paul’s.
I think I was so busy in my work and civic endeavors that I had a relationship about God, not a relationship with God. Like many, I had become more secular and less spiritual. I am convinced that I sought control over my life and my everyday existence.
In time, that mindset and over attendance to my business career left me alone, separated from God’s spiritual presence. Eventually, the stresses of that life culminated in a massive cerebral hemorrhage. But for the angels sent by God, I would have died, as the doctors said, if the bleeding didn’t stop within thirty minutes. My angels from God included my brothers Ernie, Charlie, and Roy, the first person I called when I found myself incapacitated, then on his advice dialed 911. And more angels came, the EMTS.
I became totally impaired, paralyzed on my entire left side. The doctors told my family that I would never walk again, talk again, use my left side again, or make a decision again. I was declared 100% disabled for life.
That was the vision of the doctors, a vision I could not accept. I never lost my faith in God that He would heal me. I prayed and prayed believing the doctors’ vision was not true.
Every Sunday after church, my three brothers visited me at Pinecrest Rehabilitation Hospital. They told me the St. Paul’s congregation prayed for my healing, my survival. My confidence and faith were strengthened by that message, that support and encouragement. I believed that I would walk again, talk again, use my left side again, and make decisions again.
I am convinced that the en masse prayers of St. Paul’s together with my therapists, my beautiful angels, calling on my Lord and Savior saved my life and gave me the opportunity to do more with my life before He would call me home.