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by Rick Malwitz (Author)
The story is told in the New Testament book of Mark about a paralyzed man brought to Jesus, who was ministering in a crowded house in Capernaum. Unable to bring the man through a jammed doorway, four guys took him to the roof. I imagine they peeled away the tiles, created an opening, held the four corners of an old sail and lowered the man to Jesus, who healed the paralytic. After complaining that her back hurt, Leah's body shut down from the gradual effects of a spinal cord stroke. Within eighteen hours she was in the emergency room paralyzed and unable to breathe on her own. The story of Leah, as told by her grandfather, is another story of help from four corners: the family, the church, the local community, and the medical community. "Little Girl, Get Up" is also a story how faith in God can be affirmed through a crisis. Leah's mother Abby spent eighty-seven days and nights in her hospital rooms, knowing her three other children were cared for by their grandparents. During the month when Leah was a patient at the Morristown Medical Center her father Peter slept in the waiting room. When told by staff he could not sleep there, he slept in his car for as long he could bear the March chill. Leah's brother Timmy, then seven, spent those eighty-seven days with Abby's parents. The four-year-old twins, Serena and Joey, spent those days with Peter's parents. Liquid Church, where Abby and Peter met during its founding years, before it grew into one of largest congregations in the Northeast, offered extraordinary support. As did the community of Long Hill Township, New Jersey, and hospital staffs in Morristown and the Children's Specialized Hospital New Brunswick, where Leah and her mom spent two months. Abby called the New Brunswick hospital the "gymnastics hospital." It was where Leah learned to walk again.
