A Miracle of MIRACLES, an enormous community of BOLD FAITH BELIEVERS witnessed the impossible. Gale & Michael will share this incredible story with us 6 years later. We spoke LIFE, not death over Michael’s less than 1% chance to live. #WinWinWomen
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Walking Miracles: A Story Of Bold Faith, No Fear With Gale & 'Miracle' Michael Parker
We are going to be meeting Miracle Michael and his beautiful wife, Gale, as we relive a most terrifying experience and the miracles and grace that followed. I’m honored to have you here with us. Thank you for joining us. We're going to talk about a day in March 2017 that I witnessed personally firsthand. I'm going to tell a little bit about who Michael was to me and to our little group of friends when I lived in Downtown Fort Worth. Mary Margaret was our best friend and a bunch of us would get together and her neighbor Michael was always part of it. All of us loved Michael. I'm talking about it this time. We knew him to be such a leader and a fun man. He was military and big job at Lockheed, all kinds of stuff.
He was a leader's leader and the most eligible bachelor in the world. We all loved him. One day, we noticed that someone had caught his attention and it was one of our friends, Gale. We love him much. One of my favorite things about him is he's strong and collects antique sewing machines. He has all the bases covered and still does. By the way, we love Michael and I wanted to bring them on to talk about the most miraculous healing that we've witnessed personally. Most of us would be able to say that. I'm going to say what His beautiful wife, Gale, in her own words, said about Michael at that time.
She says, “Michael chose me. I didn't steal him away from anyone. I was as surprised by his affection, as were all of our friends. He's the love of my life. We love and adore each other. We love our friends, and we are grateful for the love our friends have for us.” It’s beautiful. I'm going to introduce Gale, who's here with us, a realtor for years and she continues practicing real estate in Fort Worth and other counties in Texas. They love gardening and traveling. They are a fascinating couple. I'm grateful to introduce them to you. Michael and Gale, please introduce yourself.
I’m Michael.
I'm Gale.
Michael, tell us a little bit about who you are in this world and what brought you to that moment in time in March 2017 that was unexpected.
On March 5th, 2017 on a Sunday afternoon at about 4:15, I threw up about 8 to 10 times. I calmed down for the next 2 to 3 minutes. I threw up again 8 to 10 times and fell on the floor in my kitchen. Gale is away for real estate, but coming back.
Gale found you on the floor of the kitchen. What happened there?
I was confused. He said, “Help,” when I opened the door from the garage and I came to his side. I started trying to ask him questions. He didn't know the timeline of how long he'd been on the floor.
It is just a couple of minutes.
I didn't know. I'm walking into it so I had no idea. I started trying to take his vital signs. I couldn't get any pulse in his arm, but he was talking. I knew he was there with me. I tried to get a pulse everywhere. I couldn't get it in his neck. I put my Fitbit on him. I know this sounds like a silly thing to do, but I thought my Fitbit will take his pulse. It didn't take his pulse on either arm and I thought it was broken. I put it on my arm and it took my pulse. I thought, “That's confusing.”
I helped him change his shirt. I know this sounds terrible, but Michael is pristine everywhere he goes. I changed his shirt. We got him up and took him to the car. He walked to the car. On the way to the car, he seemed a little unstable. I got him in and I thought, “Everything's going to be fine.” We got him in the car. It only takes about five minutes to get downtown. I thought we could get him there pretty quickly. On our drive, he kept apologizing. He kept saying, “I'm sorry.”
I'm still sorry.
I couldn't imagine. Why are you apologizing? I realize now that he was not well. He was apologizing for not being well.
Up until then, I didn't have one doctor visit, no broken arm, no nothing at all.
In your whole life. That's amazing.
It was picture-perfect health.
What I know from this point is you got him to the hospital. You were mortified to find out that he had some split.
Part of the reason that they found an aorta and even questioned it other than thinking a heart attack or whatever was because I couldn't get his pulse with the Fitbit. As the nurses and the triage team were in there, I said, “I couldn't get my Fitbit to get his pulse.” She switched her discovery mode. When they took him to a CT scan and got him back, they said, “What did you say about his pulse? What did you say about the Fitbit?” That changed the trajectory of whatever they were looking for, which is odd. I had no idea. They don't take your pulse anymore at the hospital.
They put things all over you and they put a monitor on your finger, but they don't take your pulse anymore. It's a weird thing. The pulse was something that answered the question of what they were looking for. That was interesting. Everything was interesting. The nurse that came in was a Marine veteran.
He is wearing yellow and red. I immediately look, “That's a Marine.”
Michael is always in the mode to tell me things about historic military items. He was giving me the lowdown on what this gentleman did in his profession as a Marine. The nurse was taken with Michael and cared about him immediately. Michael is that way. He is wonderful in that respect. People love him.
I wanted to move this to where you started calling friends. You called Mary Margaret. Mary Margaret called me. You called friends that had set up a ham radio system in their home. Almost immediately, as soon as you were able to broadcast out, there were prayers around the world.
I did talk to the doctor and they said, “This is a devastating circumstance here. We're scrubbing. We called the team. They're coming in. They're going to do this aortic resection.” I was shocked and scared to death. I had no idea what to expect here, except I knew I needed support. I called Susan and she said, “You have God. We are going to start praying.” I was calling Susan because her son is a minister and he could marry us right there. We had our license. We were ready to get married. We had a couple of delays for reasons here and there, but we were ready. On the way to the hospital, I said, “We are getting married today.” He said, “Okay.”
“You have God, and we are going to start praying.” Click To Tweet
I walked in. Mary Margaret put the word out. She said, “Michael's in the hospital. It's not good.” I dropped everything and ran up there.
I asked her to pull over while I talked to her because she loves us. I didn't want her to be upset and driving. She pulled over and said, “I had bad news.” She must have done a U-turn and come to us. She said she was calling you, “I have Charla. How do you feel about Charla coming?” I said, “Yes. Come on. I knew she would be supportive and she loves us. I needed to rely on someone to help me. She loves us so that would be a good person. She has a clear thought process.” Her bringing you in was wonderful.
I walked in and we were still in the emergency room, you said, “Are you a minister?” I was like, “Kind of.” You said, “Are you ordained?” I was like, “No.” You said, “Do you know anybody who is?” Miracle of miracles because these were layers of miracles.” It started with her taking them to a different hospital. All these layers of miracles are incredible when you step back and look at the puzzle.
Intricately, every single step of the way was miraculous.
One thing is miraculous, but a series of miracles.
It’s a series of things that continued to present themselves. You have a left and a right. If you go left, this was all miraculous. Every little piece of this went forward and scared us too.
I called my minister, Pastor Reyes. It was a Sunday night. I was like, “This is a situation. I have a couple here. These very close friends of mine have their marriage license in hand and they're in a situation that it would be hard moving forward.” You don't have other family members. It was just Gale. They were getting married over Facebook Live. It was legal, all done, and pre-planned.
It was all pre-ordained as we now know. We got you married so that Gale could also be responsible for making decisions for you during this timeframe. After that, everybody was wringing their hands and devastated. I'll let you say the perspective of me, but right then in my remembrance, you said, “Michael,” and I was like, “No.” I feel like something came over me divinely.
I don't remember it being shocking to me that you yelled at me or anything, but I do remember what you said.
“Speak what you want, not what you don't want. You speak life, not death. You speak bold, fake, with no fear. You speak what God says.” You said, “The doctor and the science said.”
You said that was the doctor's truth.
“That's not God's truth. God created those doctors and science.” We can come back if there's more there. The next day or it might have been in the middle of the night, I was watching an ultrasound and I was the only one. I watched that heart beating on this ultrasound and I was like, “If God can create it, He can heal it.” I was very clear on, “He created you. He created us. Deuteronomy 7:15 and many other places say, ‘You shall be free of every disease.’ We often let the doubts flood our minds.” To me, much of the miracle is just speaking what you want. It was hard because this is a huge piece of it. You have to deal with what's going on.
You had to make decisions. You had to do what was going on. I said, “Do not speak anything negative in front of Michael at all.” Who am I to come in and do all that? At the time, I don't know. You said 2017. I was thinking it was 2018, but I remember. It is still in my little house. Those things I think are probably one of the most critical messages to get a point because we often negate our power. We claim things we don't want. We claim the disease, angst, and anxiety, instead of giving you think what God wants and who says.
We give it life through our voice.
Every word matters. In my last show, I talked about that extensively. Speak what you want. Speak life. Come back and fill in anything else. This is my remembrance.
Our friend that was in St. Joe had gotten her ham radio license. When she said, “You have God, and I'm going to pray,” she was the first person I reached out to. I do believe miracles happen right there. She made her ham radio. She has a prayer group. She went straight to them. This went up the East Coast. People were actively praying.
My girlfriend that is down in Mexico at the time went right to light a candle at the altar. It’s Lucy. She said a prayer. You and Mary Margaret were praying. Jackie Jo was telling us the same thing. She said to visualize the future where you're going to sit and what you're going to do for your anniversary. These things were helpful because I was listening to you. I was being very careful about what I said. I tried to be very careful and I tried not to give any life to any fear. I did seek fear. It wasn't like fear wasn't there. We were afraid. We were terrified.
You didn't speak it. We didn't claim the terror. We claimed bold faith and no fear because who I say I am and had said for many years who I am is bold faith, no fear. It came naturally, I suppose, to speak it like that. The biggest piece that I remember is on a Tuesday, we found out that the Marine nurse recused himself from that case because Miracle Michael had a less than 1% chance to survive until Monday morning. Every doctor and person that showed up on Monday was shocked.
The doctor says maybe Tuesday, I die. On Tuesday, “You’re still here? That’s good.”
We did leave out something major. They stopped completely scrubbing. They had to explain to me why they couldn't go forward, which was devastating.
My body was too weak to understand the stroke after my stroke.
After a brain event, you can't intubate. No one can go on life support after that. I had no idea. You think all the time that life support is for everyone. You can go to the life support if you need to, but you can't. Not with the heart and brain event at the same time. I asked. He said, “We can't do the surgery, because if we were to do the surgery, he would stroke out. If he goes into distress tonight, we would have to let him go.” I said, “No. You will not let him go.”
That was before I got there too.
He said that we wouldn't be able to save him. That part was devastating. I didn't know how to convey that to you without saying it. I'm glad you stopped me from saying it. I was very terrified.
That was a huge piece that we glossed over a few minutes ago because when I walked in, he had already had a stroke. They'd already decided he couldn't have surgery. He was sitting up and able to speak, but partially paralyzed on one side. They stopped the surgery because of that. He was stroking. That certainly exacerbated the whole thing. I believe that's probably more when the Marine refused himself.
I asked him, “Can you give him the stroke medication?” They said no. That's when he left because he realized that he was having a stroke and he might not make it. He was too upset to continue, but we sent him again and he was happy to see us. As a matter of fact, because they couldn't do the surgery, Michael had to go into a whole different situation. He had to go into the ICU unit. They kept saying that it was possible that he was a DNR, which was something I told him not to say again in that room, “Don't say this in this room.”
That means Do Not Resuscitate, for those that don't know that.
Someone came into palliative care and I asked him to leave because hospice did not want to talk about this.
You weren't claiming it in your own in all of the beginnings.
It took some propping up. Thank you very much. You were there when palliative care was there. That was the night before the echocardiogram started then they did the carotid arteries. I still ask his doctor how he is vibrant without his carotid arteries because one side was 100% occluded and one side was 65% occluded. This is a miracle right here. He is a miracle. His doctors have explained to me that he has two veins in the back of his spine that took over as his carotid artery. Why is that?
If God can create it, He can heal it.
He's a miracle.
He can find a way. This isn't about religion at all or bold faith. This is about hope and healing. Can I ask you, before that day, how strong was your faith?
We knew that we both believe and had faith, but we never prayed together. Since then, we do it all the time, every day.
Every single night.
It gives me chills. I know the truth of you guys as a measure.
For the most part, for the first 6 to 8 months, you led a prayer, but ever since then, we pray together mostly my prayer. Every night, “Thank God for one more day.”
I thought that was miraculous of him. What a brilliant thing to say, “Thank you, Lord, for one more day.” It's not for tomorrow. It's for today.
Maybe not tomorrow, but today is yes.
The brilliant part of it to me is that it might mean tomorrow, but it does mean today. It means thank you for today. You don't always have tomorrow and we knew that. We prayed together. We had another friend in the rural area, Susan. She sent Netta. Netta called Pastor Joseph. Pastor Joseph came in on day two and he said, “Brother, do you want to live or die?” Michael said, “I want to live.” He said, “Do you want to pray?” Michael said, “Yes, I want to pray.” We sit and started praying. That was our praying life. It began the day of his stroke because there we were all praying.
The recovery was three days of total unknown and all that, then we started feeling hope and miracle stories, realizing the miracles were manifesting and working in that whole situation. You have had years of healing, recovery, and creating your lives as they are now. One of the ways of dealing with each other, there's been a learning curve because after a stroke you had some residual issues. What's the hardest part?
I have aphasia. It means the intellect and intelligence are in my head, but now out of my mouth. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not so good.
It's harder to bring those words that you have in your head to fruition.
My college career was undergraduate in Speech Communication. I don't understand engineering, but I do apply English.
The words are the hardest part. You've got something you want to say and it's hard to come out. Can I call you out on something? You said, “I have it.” What if we claim it like we claim what we want and don’t want, “I speak perfectly and beautifully.”
I didn’t have a stroke.
It's not a life or death situation as we were in with you, but just a thought because sometimes we don't hear ourselves. We need accountability a little bit. Food for thought. Maybe I hadn't thought of it that way. Gale, we brushed through a lot of it. It is time for us to bring in the rest, to bring in Mary Margaret for sure in a moment. Tell me where you are now and if we missed anything you wanted to say.
I feel like I wanted to say that they sent you home after a long two weeks in the hospital. I had to keep him alive because he is a strong man who likes to pick things up that are 100 pounds. I knew any one of those mishaps could happen during that time. I had to keep him alive to have the surgery in 6 or 8 weeks. My challenge was turning from that sweet girlfriend who never bossed anybody around to bossing him around a little bit because I would turn around, and he would have 100 pounds of something picked up in mid-air. I would say, “Put it down.”
Aren’t you glad she did? She has your back. You all have evolved into the sweetest couple and you're fun. You always were. Our hearts are blessed and warm. We did have a pre-surgery party and you were there. We had friends, Mary Margaret. It was a round table. I can't recall what we had to eat, but a lot of our friends that we knew.
Usual Suspects was the name of the group.
A lot of the group was there for dinner. We're going to repeat that as many times as we can. We love everyone. That was a part of our healing. Thank you for being there together and holding my tongue and helping me stand still and pray because prayer is important. It's not that you're going to always expect God to answer the prayer, but because it is His will. Sometimes everybody does the prayer. Everybody prays, but their prayer is not always answered. It is God's will. We knew that Michael had more to do in his life, didn't we? We knew that God had favored him and that He had more plans for him.
I'm believing you have a bold faith and a bold faith prayer that Michael's speech will be completely, fully recovered. I'll interject something that I ran across in my mind. Thank you is the best prayer we can ever have. If we say thank you and we can see what we want, “Thank you that it's already done,” is one of the best prayers.
I have my incident on Sunday afternoon. I didn't remember Monday at all, but on Tuesday for the first 3 or 4 days, I can only say, “Thank you.” Anything else is no.
It’s a constant mantra and there's a quote somewhere that says, “If the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it's enough.” That's a cool ending to our time because if you said thank you and you were grateful to be alive and to be part of our family still, and I've never heard of anybody that didn't adore you and Gale, you are loved beyond measure. You're walking and talking miracle. It feels like many people need help, hope, and healing. I hope this story generates amazing hope for the people that read it and that they may be willing to share it because this is a big story to me and it's part of our lives. We've lived it.
If the only prayer you ever say is Thank you, it's enough. Click To Tweet
We are going to kind of close this part of it I'm going to open up to Mary Margaret to come on. I'm grateful to everyone who read it. If you have a miracle story that you want to tell, email Charla@CharlaAnderson.com. I feel like we need hope. I'm glaring for miracles. Someone gave that to me in 2007 and I said, “I received that.” You can take a deep breath. I believe it's a miracle. That is the end of this portion. Please stay as we get Ms. Mary Margaret on.
---
Mary Margaret, we are miracles from day one, our friendship. She's a real estate agent at MMDavis.com. It's a beautiful business. Who are you, Mary Margaret?
I'm ex next-door neighbor of Michael Parker. I'm the introducer matchmaker Gale Caveness Parker and Michael Parker. My husband Grant still pouts when he realizes that Michael no longer lives next door because they were such good friends. The evening of the event, Charla called me and said, “Are you sitting down?” I've heard that saying, but no one's ever said to me.
It wasn't late, but it was semi-bedtime in my world. I took off and came down to the hospital. I wasn't here on the whole call, but at least in my experience, my cousin Lisa came. We all supported Michael. He was on the cardiac floor at Harris downtown. Prior to that, I'll always remember in Gale's story that as she realized there was a problem and headed to Harris Southwest and Michael said, “I recognize that building.”
It was the Texas and Pacific Lofts train station building. She turned off on Henderson right then because he would know that building and every car that they passed or came by. He would have a story about it. He has such a steel-trap mind. By the time I got there, everything had already happened. We mostly were supporting him on the cardiac floor.
I remember the next morning early. He was shaving with his electric shaver. He still had all the automatic things. We were all sitting in his room visiting then I came out to the area in the circular hallway. I saw Nancy Mitchell who has a pet walking service. I had never seen her as her real job, the RN position. She was the release nurse for rehab or home on that cardiac ICU-type of floor. I came into her vision and said hello.
She realized who I was there for. Her eyes turned down at the corners and she said, “You won't be needing me,” to me. There was only one way to interpret that. When I came back to Michael's room, he didn't realize but he was standing up and they were changing his bed and his little gown was all open in the back, right to the door.
Gale and I had a point walked out to the nurse's stand to ask a question and the doctor, maybe the surgeon, was facing away from his computer. Gale had asked a question about his stroke or whatever, and that doctor not knowing we were standing there, said, “It's a big old stroke.” In a lot of ways, they didn't expect him to leave that room, but he didn't have any noticeable physical paralysis.
We were there during this time. Later when the surgery was occurring, after his scar tissue grew, for them to have something to suture the new part of his aorta too, the preacher was there waiting. We got to hear stories about his life and how he stood up to a tornado right in the middle of his street and told it to go away, standing there in his underwear.
There are powerful prayer people there. We got to watch the board and kept seeing that he was still in surgery and all of those things, but I was glad that I could be there and it worked out. You went to that beautiful historic rehab facility for a time off in Lancaster. They're no longer there anymore, but even the place where you were was such a prayerful feeling place to me.
Gale stole him from our next-door neighbor and we're still friends, but Grant still pouts. It’s like when your little sister has heart surgery when she's three. Every time we get around, anybody that doesn't know, we asked Martha to pull up her shirt to show her scar. She was 5 or 6 years old. That is like, “Why don't we tell Michael's story again for the umpteenth time?” He's been very patient about that because he's aware that this is a miracle.
This whole little group that we formed when I met you in 2009 was at the TMP Lofts. We became immediate best friends and have been that way ever since. It's one of those miraculous formations of friendships. You who knew and I lived in the building and you sold all the condos. Neither one of you lived in the building, but I lived there. It was amazing.
Both of you are amazing in your positions as realtors and what we knew Michael to be as a Navy, Marine, lackey, and all these high-level positions, but he was the life of the party. He was invited and included in everything. Because Mary Margaret was right next door to him, they were coming together. The miracles never cease.
In my estimation, Michael and Gale will be living infamy in this time because I guarantee you, those doctors, nurses, that Marine and all of those people will tell this story throughout time. Perhaps, there'll be a time that we'll get it into a book because miracles are everywhere. When we take a moment to feel, see, and live them, we help others. It lifts the rest of the world. I appreciate all of you and anybody who came on as our guest and who will read this in the future.
Miracles are everywhere. When we take a moment to feel them, to see them, and to live them, we help others. Click To Tweet
I want to acknowledge you for knowing how to boldly pray and how you taught us some things that we didn't know and continue to teach us about how to boldly go beyond what we can see or feel, how to leave and pass it up to the one that is the miracle maker. I appreciate and love you.
Do you remember when it wasn't me? I was there, but I was a vessel at the moment. When you open to receive, it's amazing what can show up. I've witnessed miracle after miracle. Mary Margaret's witnessed a whole lot of them with me about housing different things in our daily lives that are totally unexplainable. I'm in favor. We're in favor because we choose to stand on what God says, not what the world says.
We're just in favor because we choose to stand on what God says, not what the world says. Click To Tweet
He says, “You shall be free of every disease. You shall be abundant.” This isn't religion. There's not an ounce of religion in this conversation. This is a relationship. This is people loving people, serving people, and listening to their higher self, our God. Sometimes people think it's religion when you talk this way, but it's not. In my estimation anyway, it's unconditional and infinite love. It's the hope for the hopeless and speaking what you want, not what you don't want. I'll never stop saying that. It's such a running theme.
I was trying to figure out where this show is going and how it is the seventh show. I can't even believe that first guest. I'm grateful for Michael and Gale saying yes. When intriguing opportunities present themselves and you say yes, things show up. That's what we've done here. You've shown up beautifully. You've told your story Mary Margaret, who is such Miracle Mary Margaret too.
I love you. I love this story of hope and continue working with the divine light and sharing it always. Thank you. You're a light in yourself.
Thank you. Who knows where we're going with this? I love telling the stories and having guests is more fun than just me being a talking head.
You're going to have a hard time talking about this one.
That is for sure. I started with the big one. We live this miracle strongly and I appreciate that each of you that read this takes a moment to be centered, listen to your spirit, soul, and heart, get clear, and have gratitude. When Michael was saying that thank you was the only thing he could say, gratitude is the key to everything else in your life. I'm grateful again to each of you. Gale and Michael, I believe there's nothing but huge favor in your future and that the experience of telling the story again in a more public setting is going to exponentially increase your work, mission, and the reason you're here.
Thank you.
Always remember every word matters. Choose joy. Blessings.
--
I'm Charla Anderson, host of The Charla Anderson Show, Collector & Connector of Fascinating People (and EVERYONE is Fascinating!) on live TV, streaming and podcasts. As a Ziglar Legacy Certified Trainer, a retired award-winning flight attendant, Olympic Torch bearer, personal development junkie, Inspired Speaker, Published Author and Your Courageous Coach, I want to share my passion of living life full-out, saying YES to intriguing opportunities, and encouraging YOU to do the same. Let's jump on a discovery call and get to know each other. Find all things Charla at CharlaAnderson.com/links.
On The Charla Anderson Show, We discuss Mindset, How much Your WORDS matter, Princess to Queen energy, mantras, HOPE, Faith, Miracles, Overcoming, and much, much more, including learning from amazing guests.
Everything Charla: https://charlaanderson.com/links/
Live show every Wed at 1 pm CT.
https://winwinwomen.tv/show/the-charla-anderson-show The WATCH Button turns green at 12:58 to join the live show. Also streamed on Roku, Amazon Fire, and Apple TV.
All replays are on my website: https://charlaanderson.com/tv-shows/
Become YOUR OWN Show Host: https://winwinwomen.com/ref/Charla
Build your own website with amazing support: https://courseplatformacademy.com/cpacharla/
Nutrition, Energy, Health, Vitality, Focus, Collagen, Brain Health: https://www.zurvita.com/charla/en/us/
CBD: https://www.zblendshemp.com/charla/en/us/
NOTE: Some links may provide a small commission to Charla Anderson, if purchased.
