If Father Will Hold Me

A Typhus epidemic afflicted children in the Smith household. Each child recovered without complications, except young Joseph. He wrote, ®…the disease removed and ascended into my left leg and ankle and terminated in a fever sore of the worst kind.®

The doctors recommended amputation, but Mother Smith refused. Joseph consented to trying an experiment by removing a large portion of bone, but instead of being bound during the operation, Joseph said, ®I will have my father sit on the bed and hold me in his arms.®

The surgeons operated ®by boring into the bone of his leg, first on one side of the bone where it was affected, then on the other side, after which the broke it off with a pair of forceps or pincers.®

I cannot imagine the courage of Joseph or his father. What a special relationship that he need only for his father to hold him and he would endure.

I want to be the kind of a parent that my children will hold to during hardship, and the kind of daughter that will hold to my Father when times are tough.

Liz Lemon Swindle began her painting career in first grade. Her first exhibitions were on the refrigerator, encouraged by her father. In the early 1980s she tutored under renowned wildlife artist, Nancy Glazier. In 1992, Liz began painting a subject matter she had long desired to approach: her faith. Her paintings are now held in corporate and private collections around the world and have been published in countless magazines and books. Liz and her husband Jon have five children and thirteen grandchildren.

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