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This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Lou Martinez is a 22 year veteran of the naval service and a former power plant engineer. He has served as a volunteer prison chaplain and is currently a hospice volunteer. His experiences in the prison and with dying patients have provided much of the rich material from which this excellent novel is fabricated. Lou's poems and essays are regularly used by the Can-Survive cancer support group and by other local spiritually oriented groups. Along with rewriting a previous book, he is presently working on an anthology of poems and essays for use in bereavement classes.
Photo of the author, his wife, Nancy and their dog, Sparky.
He has put his name and reputation on the line by allowing variances that deviate from standard procedure. There is much to be gained, and he is certain nothing can go wrong - until his friend and protege sabotages the job. A severe accident results and Tom falls into disfavor and the beginning of a tail spin. Through more conniving his friend causes him to be sent to prison.
In prison he is branded a trouble maker. Later, he is sexually attacked and left for dead. While unconscious, he has a spiritual experience (commonly called a Near Death Experience) in which he finds himself in the presence of Christ. He is told he must return, for he has a very important task to accomplish (the task is not revealed to the reader, yet). Tom dispels the experience as a dream. Several more years pass and Tom is released from prison. He is rejected by his two young sons. He has no money or career, and is badly disfigured from the attack. With no means of support, he finds himself a street person. His only friend, Tony, is another street person, a black man who teaches him the ropes. With his friend he enjoys a brief and humorous respite from his problems, until Tony is killed as they are robbed. With the loss of his friend, Tom sinks to great depths of despair and poverty.
While staying at a local Mission, he finds that the manager is Joe Bishop, the volunteer chaplain he had met in prison. He is helped back on his feet by Joe Bishop and his wife, Karen. With their help he works on ridding himself of hate and forgiving his best friend and his ex-wife. With Karen's help, he works as a hospice volunteer during this time, and he makes progress, but the wounds are deep, and he has to fight to keep from being swallowed up by his own hate. While reviewing Tom's application for a nurse training program, the hospice director discovers that Tom is HIV positive. Tom was not aware until then that he was infected during the attack. The director accuses him of lying and asks him to leave.
With this final rejection, Tom experiences his bleakest moment, as he goes off on his own. With nothing to live for, he hits bottom as a drunk and a street person. But the Chaplain and his wife do not give up, and they search for months until they find him. Once again they take him into their home, and Tom starts over.
With the help of a well disguised angel, who is posing as a hospice patient, he overcomes his hate and is able to forgive. When he learns total forgiveness, he is given the gift of healing through the laying of hands. With his gift, he heals thousands and brings them closer to God.
His final test comes when Ns ex-wife brings her husband (Tom's former best friend) to a healing service to be healed of advanced cancer. When Tom recognizes who it is, and he sees his sons with him his mind is filled with revolt. He has the power of life and death over the man, and as he walks toward him, he thinks about destroying him, but then he thinks about all the good he has done with the gift.
In a final bout with evil, Tom achieves total forgiveness and reaches out for the man. As he reaches out, his hands glow with a shimmering light, and his whole being shines, and then in a final instant of glory, he is taken. His body slumps to the floor and shimmering lights appear to everyone in the service, and they are instantly healed in body, mind and spirit.
After Tom's death, Joe and Karen return home. They are depressed by their loss and are unable to move forward. They pray daily and ask for guidance and help, but it is not forthcoming Then one day, as they kneel in prayer, Karen, smells a familiar stench that is so strong she has to stop and call out Tom's name. In moments the odor is replaced by the smell of a thousand roses, and a detailed vision is revealed to Joe and Karen. A new world of love and caring is coming into being. It is a vision of paradise on earth. The vision continues until nearly every aspect of life is covered, then it stops at the scene where it began.
After the vision, Karen and Joe are rejuvenated, and go back to their former life of service, but there is little change. Then the letters begin to arrive. First a few, and then as many as a hundred a day.
As part of the healing Tom performed, he asked those who were healed to sign a pledge of one year of volunteer service to humanity. The letters are from those who were heated, and they are informing them of all the good that is coming of their service.
But it is not just what the volunteers are doing. For, as others see their zeal, they too are drawn to it, and there is a multiplying effect as more and more people get caught up in the gifts of the spirit that come from serving one's fellow man. The book ends with Karen clutching the letters to her breast and declaring that it was not just a vision, but that, truly, God is giving them a new beginning.
"The Healing" is a dynamic, emotionally wrenching story of forgiveness, healing, and the wonderful gifts of the Spirit that come from them. Touching scenes reveal some of the little known work of dedicated volunteers who bring God's love behind the walls to prisoners and to the dying in hospices. Other scenes dramatize the pain and anguish any of us could fall into, but by the grace of God, escape. But the principal message is that which is conveyed through the interplay of God's grace and the struggles and eventual triumph of the hero, Tom Phillips. The story ends with an uplifting message of what life could be.
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