She said that my angel was very special because I was born with a hole in my heart. The doctors had told my Mama and my Pop that there wasn't much of a chance for me to have a normal life and if I lived it would be a miracle. My mother had to give me oxygen and prop me up with pillows and I couldn't walk because of my weak heart.

I didn't know I was missing playing and running around. I had my wonderful dogs and I learned to read because Mama taught me. I went everywhere and did everything when I read a story in a book. Sometimes I was really sick. I had pneumonia sometimes and had to stay at the hospital.

When I was five-and-a-half, my Mama heard of a new surgery that repaired the hearts of little children even when it seemed unlikely and risky. She was brave and believed that God had sent her a message. She wrote to the doctor and he wrote back. She told me that she prayed that the operation would make me healthy and help me to live a long life. The doctors who first performed the surgery all were back East but I lived in rural California. My Pop wanted me to have the surgery but we were very poor. We couldn't travel back east, live in a hotel and wait for my turn with the new surgery. I still played with my dogs and little plastic horses with cowboys and I still read Little House on the Prairie Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, but I was getting weaker. Some days I couldn't even sit up. My fingers got blue from lack of oxygen and so did my face.

One day the doctor from back east wrote to my mother to tell her a doctor at a hospital in San Francisco was learning to do the surgery and he had asked that my name be put on the list. We were excited but worried. Mama said she would pray and God would have it all come out right.

We took the Greyhound bus to San Francisco. One of my cousins drove us in his car to my Auntie Edna's house.

The next day in the morning we went to the hospital. Mama carried me and Auntie Edna carried my oxygen tank. I don't remember much except I had to have a crib, not a cot like at home. I also had to have lots of tests that I don't remember now.

That night when I laid in the hospital crib Mama and I prayed that God would help the doctor help me get well.

Mama then told me, "Baby, I have to go back to Auntie Edna's but I'll come back first thing in the morning and see you before your surgery. I'll be here when you wake up. You'll be all well, pink and healthy. You'll be able to run and play like the other little kids."

Then she gave me a stuffed cat that looked like my barn cat at home. His name was Tom. She also gave me the calendar picture that my grandma had given me so long ago. I sat looking and crying at the picture of the beautiful angel leading the children over the bridge. I could hear my mother's heels clicking away down the hospital hall.

I cried and cried. Finally, I looked at the picture of that angel and could feel her put her wings around me and help me to pray. She led me in my prayers and showed me the way to God's love that night when I was so small. I fell asleep.

When I woke up from the surgery, the doctor said my mother was waiting to come into see me.

She came to me and I saw her smiling with tears on her cheeks. "Baby, you're fixed now. No more hole in your little heart."

"Now I can run and play like other kids," I whispered to her.

"Yes, Baby, and live a long life, too." Mama kissed my forehead.

That was more than 50 years ago and when I see that same picture of the angel and the children crossing the bridge, I still feel that magnificent love I felt for her and for God the night before my heart surgery.