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My Mother's Promise
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TODAY’S MESSAGE of ENCOURAGEMENT
FROM
Discovering a BETTER LIFE MINISTRIES
(Stories of Real People, Real Events, Real Places)
Are dedicated to HELPING
PEOPLE FIND PEACE and HOPE
(John 10:10)
(MAY 10th, 2020)
Friend, today being Mother’s Day, I would like to share with you the amazing story of Dr. Ronan Tynan, who is a double amputee, a man who has set track and field records in the World Amputee Games, a world renowned Irish tenor, a motivational speaker, physician, author, Equestrian Champion, and Paralympic Gold Medalist.
However, there was a time when Irish tenor Ronan Tynan thought he'd never walk again, but his Mother proved him wrong!
Unashamedly, Ronan Tynan acknowledges that his courage and confidence to succeed in life, has been because of his Mother’s tenacity and determination that he would walk.
Today, I’d like to share, in Ronan’s own words, what he had to say about his Mother’s promise to him.
My Mother's Promise
The marquee was lit like a Roman candle, even in daylight!
Tonight: With The Irish Tenors, I stood outside New York's Madison Square Garden and just stared, almost dumbstruck.
I was one of the three. Me, a farm boy from County Kilkenny, a child who some thought would never walk, let alone go as far as I had in the world.
I managed to find the performers' entrance to the massive building and made my way to the dressing room area.
Some of the best musicians in the world had performed at Madison Square Garden. Some of the greatest athletes had competed. Good Lord, I thought, looking out at the empty stage, have I come through the wrong door?
I walked to the center of the stage. In a few hours I'd be singing to 15,000 people with my two singing partners, John McDermott and Anthony Kearns. I looked down at my trousers, which hid my two prosthetic legs. Forget the odds of me singing on this stage, I thought. The miracle is that I can walk out here at all.
From the day I was born, Mam always said, I've never been shy about expressing myself. She said I came out of the womb kicking and screaming. But there was a problem!
"It's his legs," said the midwife who helped deliver me.
The doctors at the Dublin hospital told my parents I had phocomelia, a deformity that affected both legs below the knee. Each shin splayed outward, was shorter than normal and each foot had just three toes.
My parents returned home to our farm in County Kilkenny. I was moved to Temple Street Children's Hospital in Dublin for more treatment, though there was little doctors could do. Eventually they sent me home, to our farm outside the village of Nass.
Life was tough. I couldn't stand, much less walk. I rarely left the farmhouse—and then only in someone's arms. Mam bundled me up whenever she took me to town, no matter the season.
No one outside the family was to see my legs. Not that my family was ashamed of me. No, I was as loved as loved could be. It was just that my mother had plans for me.
"I don't want him to see others giving him odd looks," she told Dad. "I want him to grow up believing he has the same chance as everyone else."
"You can't shut him off from the world," Dad told her.
"The world will see him when he can walk," she answered. "And he will walk!"
Mam dedicated herself to helping me. She tried everything to get me on my feet. She tried to tempt me with toys she'd put a little ways away from me. "Stand up and get it," she'd urge. But I couldn't. She could read the frustration in my face. And I could see it in hers.
Finally, when I had grown a bit, she and Dad took me to a prosthetics clinic in Dublin. "You're going to get new legs, today, Ronan," Dad said.
I was three. The clinicians looked me over. Prosthetics was rudimentary at best in the 1960s. They laid me down on a table, atop a large sheet of hard, white paper.
One drew an outline of my body. Another measured me hip to knee, knee to ankle. Next they cast my legs in plaster of Paris, to make molds for artificial lower limbs.
I felt like a lab rat. "Mam," I asked, "why do I need these?" Around the house I had become a champion crawler, with strong shoulders and arms.
"To help you walk like everyone else," she told me.
"Will I need them the rest of my life?"
"Yes," she answered. "Yes, you will!"
I wasn't sure I wanted to go through with the procedure. Change is scary, especially to a child. I didn't understand how these things would work. But Mam insisted. Dad backed her up. "It's for the best, Son," he said.
A few weeks later we returned to Dublin. My artificial limbs were ready. In the examining room, Mam closed her eyes. I knew she was praying.
She always closed her eyes when she prayed. And I knew she was praying for me to walk. She prayed that every day! I closed my eyes and prayed along with her.
The clinicians entered, carrying what looked to be a pair of knee-length, ladies' lace-up platform boots. "Put these on," one of the men said, handing me a pair of leather socks. "They'll keep your feet from cutting on the rivets in the boots."
Then, one at a time, he slipped my legs into the boots and laced them up. Attached to their sides were reinforced steel rods to hold the limbs in place. He lifted me off the table and placed my feet on the floor. In front of me was a pair of parallel bars.
"Grab on to the bars, little man, and place one foot in front of the other," he said.
I reached up, got a good grip and pulled myself to a standing position. "I'm standing!" I exclaimed to Mam and Dad. You have no idea what an incredible sensation that was.
To this day I can remember exactly how it felt to finally stand upright in the world, to not have to crawl or be carried.
"Now, walk," the clinician told me.
I took a deep breath and shifted my weight to my left foot. Then I lifted my right foot and swung it out. It felt heavier than lead in that boot. I set it down on the shiny floor beneath me. I then did the same with the left.
"I'm walking!" I cried.
I took four glorious steps. Dad's eyes were red. Mam gripped his hand tightly and beamed with pride.
Back home I practiced walking with my new limbs—at first while holding on to something. Then one day, just before my fourth birthday, all on my own. "There's nothing anyone can do that you can't," Mam said.
Then she turned to Dad. "It's time for Ronan to see the world—and for the world to see him.”
"You and I are going to walk through town," she said, turning to me.
The next day Mam dressed me in red dungarees and a tartan shirt. She donned a summer dress and fixed her hair and makeup. Dad drove us to the church at the edge of town.
We stepped out of the car. Mam took my hand. "Hold your head up high, now, Ronan," she said.
We walked 300 meters to our first stop, the post office. It was the farthest I'd walked, and I was sweating from the effort. Mam greeted the clerk. "I have Ronan here with me," she said.
The lady clerk came from behind the counter to have a look at me—the Tynan that townspeople had seldom seen. She handed me a yellow lollipop. "Is this the poor little dickens?" she asked.
We left the post office and continued down the street, Mam's eyes gleaming with a mother's pride. She walked me into the butcher shop, then the grocery store.
The heavy boots and my splayed feet gave me an unnatural gait. People stared. "I don't like this," I whispered to her.
"I know it's hard right now, Ronan," Mam said. "But after today these people won't focus on your legs. They'll only see your courage."
"Okay." We kept on even though I was in pain. At the edge of the village we ran into the parish priest. "Oh, is that the delicate little fellow?" he asked.
"None of my children are delicate, Father," Mam replied. "Especially not this one and he won't be little." With that, we resumed our walk.
That night, back on our farm, I lay exhausted and sore on my bed. I'd still be sore in the morning. It meant nothing, though, compared to what I'd done on my walk. A new chapter had begun in my life and I would never forget this day.
And it was true. But life was still tough. Eventually I had to have both legs amputated below the knee. I was fitted with new prostheses, but still I lived in pain.
Yet whenever that pain felt too great, I remembered that walk through Nass with Mam. Her lesson has stayed with me. Since then, I've set track and field records in the World Amputee Games.
I spent so much time in hospitals that I decided to become a doctor, and earned a medical degree.
Then I bypassed the security of a career to pursue my dream of singing. And at every step Mam's words came back to me---“Ronan, you can do anything anyone else can do”---and the faith she had in God, who would help me do it.
I've sung from the grandest stages in Europe, to music played by the world's finest musicians. But Madison Square Garden has always been the Everest of concert halls to me.
That night as I walked from the wings with the Irish Tenors, Mam's words chimed in my ears. Light bulbs flashed. The crowd rose to its feet.
Just before the orchestra began playing I took a deep breath. My parents weren't there—Dad has passed away and Mam was back in Ireland—but I imagined their faces beaming in the footlights.
The conductor waved his baton. The orchestra started playing one of my solos, --"The Town I Loved So Well."--
I began singing. I couldn't feel the pulse of the music in my feet, but I felt it deep in my heart, the same place where Mam's promise lived.
Friend, thank you for taking the time to read the inspirational story of Ronan Tynan’s Mother’s Promise, that he would walk and become a person the world would sit up and take notice of.
I feel very privileged to have shared Ronan’s story with you today and sincerely hope you have been encouraged as much as I have, in being reminded of,
The amazing power of a Godly Mother’s love!
“God Bless all Mum's”
Ron Bainbridge
Co-ordinator of:
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Ronan Tynan
The Glorious Irish Tenor known for his unique voice and irresistible appeal.
Ronan Tynan, introduced to international audiences as a member of the Irish Tenors, became known for his unique voice and irresistible appeal.
His album, Ronan, with the heartfelt song,
"Passing Through"
which Ronan sang in honour of his mother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, was the 8th best-selling classical album of 2005. He has appeared on Primetime Live, Good Morning America, Hour of Power, 700 Club, and 20/20.
Ronan is famous for his performances of "God Bless America" at Yankee Stadium during the seventh-inning stretch. In the wake of 9/11, he performed at benefits and memorial services for New York's Finest and Bravest.
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