It was like a scene from Robert Duvall’s movie The Apostle. A white
pastor was preaching the Gospel to a southern audience that was
about three-quarters black and one-fourth white, all united in
faith, all getting along marvelously, all gathered in common
purpose. Supercilious liberal bi-coastal elites have no clue that
such comity exists, but it does, yes it does, oh Lord, yes it
does.
The
scene occurred this past Sunday evening, in a candlelight vigil
at Lyons Park in Mobile, Alabama. The occasion involved a poignant,
life-or-death struggle. And the subject of the event is a true
little heroine, as
much an inspiration as a victim.
The story of Starla Eve Chapman, now barely three years
old, gained national prominence when Alabama Crimson Tide
quarterback A.J. McCarron
wore her name on his wristband during the BCS Championship
game. Mobile native McCarron, who is white, had taken up the cause
of Starla, who is black, through volunteer visits to her hospital.
Starla suffers from
acute myeloid leukemia, an often fatal disease that strikes
only about 500 children per year in the United States.
With a simple sentence that now provides the watchwords
for Team Starla’s efforts to save the girl’s life, Starla captured
the essence of her situation on the day before her first treatments
began, when she looked at her parents and said, “Just trust.” As a
simple Google search will confirm, her plight and her courage have
inspired a large national following. Chemotherapy treatments seemed
to be working, but apparently one of the drugs damaged her heart,
and on Jan. 3 she suffered a seizure and cardiac arrest, and was
put on life support. As of Jan. 16, though, her heart functionality
had improved from 6 percent (below 10 percent is usually considered
irreversible) to 21 percent, and she had opened her eyes. McCarron
visited her again that day, by the way, and the word as of the
night of the vigil was that she continued to improve and to be
weaned off medication.
“God continues to heal and we continue to pray for Starla
Eve Chapman,” read the summary in the small mimeographed program
sheet handed out at the prayer vigil Sunday night. “A daughter, a
grand-daughter, a niece, a cousin, a fighter, a witness, an
inspiration, A Child of God!”
Here’s what the sneering elites don’t understand: Out here
in flyover land, people believe. We really believe. That’s
why several hundred people would gather on a dreary winter night,
trying to keep the breeze from extinguishing our candles, listening
to prayers, and to live singers with lovely voices lifting songs
written especially for Starla, and to a motivational lay speaker,
and to a pastor’s stem-winding call to faith, and to more songs,
and again to more prayers. Dozens of black pre-schoolers stood
there under the oaks, perfectly well behaved for nearly two full
hours. So did an octogenarian white factory owner, and so did
people of just about every imaginable time and culture and stratum
of life in between. College-age folks wore brightly colored
homemade t-shirts bearing Starla’s “Just Trust” message; a black
homeless guy walked up and said he usually sleeps in the park and
wondered what it was all about.
After taking in the prayers for a few minutes, he said,
“Today’s my 47th birthday. This is nice.” After a few
more, he added, “I can tell, that little girl is already healing.
She’s right over at that hospital [just down the street from Lyons
Park] and she can feel these prayers, and she’s already better than
she was before this started. I can tell it.”
Starla’s family — her uncle, Willie Harris Jr., is
himself a preacher — believes that Starla’s “Just Trust” saying
was an echo of Jeremiah 17:7: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the
Lord, whose confidence is in him.” Jeremiah continues in verse 8:
“He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its
roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves
are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never
fails to bear fruit.”
Surely some of the community’s response to the Chapman
family is partly the fruit of the work of Starla’s mother, DeAndra.
For more than a year before Starla took ill, with no idea that her
own family would ever be in need of their services, DeAndra had
done volunteer work for the American Cancer Society and for the
Ronald McDonald House. Her roots already were out, and she has been
nourished in return.
As of early afternoon on Wednesday, Starla’s heart
functionality had increased still further, to 25 percent, and
Starla’s mother DeAndra said they expected a new, even better
reading within hours. Starla is now breathing on her own, alert,
looking around, drinking on her own (through a straw) rather than
solely intravenously — and again is talking a little, although it
hurts to talk much because her throat is sore from all the tubes
that were in it.
Speaking of the vigil three nights before, DeAndra told me: “It
just really goes to show the outpouring of love and support we have
received. It was an awesome experience to be a part of a group of
people of different ages, races, sexes, all coming together,
touching, agreeing, believing — believing in a miracle.”
