In the two years FulfilledProphecy.Com has been on the Web, there have been a few who have continually support and encouraged me. Woody Livingston is one of these special people. This morning I found the following posted on our discussion board -- it's about our Woody. And, I wanted to share it with all the FulfilledProphecy community.
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Our eight-month-old son, Zacharia, was deaf. For a year he used different hearing aids and other treatments with little success. Finally my husband and I decided to try a relatively new procedure, a cochlear implant. He had the surgery, began language therapy and made steady progress. 

Still, I wondered if surgery had been right for our son. Sometimes my doubts got me down, like this past May. Looking for something to lift my spirits, I picked up that month's GUIDEPOSTS. I was stunned to see Woody Livingston's story about his cochlear implant. Reading about his experience reassured me. We had made the right choice for Zacharia. Kristie Chipps Denton, North Carolina 

For the first time in 25 years he was able to hear, and the roar of his new world threatened to overwhelm him

I was born with a hearing impairment and started wearing a hearing aid when I was still a child. But I didn't let that stop me from keeping up with the Boston Red Sox or the latest from Steely Dan; I just held my transistor radio right up against my ear. If I couldn't hear a teacher’s question in class, I could usually figure out what she was saying by concentrating on reading her lips. 

Sometimes kids would tease me if I misunderstood, but I never felt at much of a disadvantage in the hearing world. I made the most of what I had and prayed I wouldn't lose all of my hearing. 

One June day when I was 15, I was playing street hockey with some of the guys from school. Everything seemed normal until I went inside my friend’s house to call my mom to come pick me up. I was standing in the kitchen, holding the phone next to my ear. Mom would be expecting my call. "I'm ready to go," I said when I thought she’d picked up. "I’ll meet you outside."

There was no response.

"Mom? Are you there?" I asked, switching the phone to my other ear. "I can’t hear you." My friend took the phone from me and I could tell he heard my mom. 

Running outside, I threw down my hockey stick and slumped on the curb, crying. My hearing had never been so blocked. When Mom arrived I could only read her lips: "Maybe your hearing aid needs a new battery, or maybe you’ve got some wax in your ear." I didn’t think so, and a trip to the doctor’s confirmed that my hearing aid was fine. There was no wax in my ears. I’d gone completely deaf. 

I didn’t want to change schools. Through lip reading and help from friends I finished high school and took some classes at a community college. Finally, though, I had to concede that it was too hard to communicate in a hearing world. I enrolled at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., which is geared to the hearing impaired. I conquered sign language and earned a degree in computer science. I went on to get a bachelor’s in industrial design at Rochester Institute of Technology. But there were so many things I found frustrating. And I couldn’t get a job in my field. 

I was in my thirties and working at the photo lab at Wal-Mart when I met a petite blond-haired woman with a manner that could make the most impatient customer calm down. Jennifer was a cashier, and during my breaks I’d hang out by her register. I could tell she liked me. "Why don’t we go out on a date?" I asked. 

She made excuses. "I don’t know sign language," she said. 

"I’ll teach you," I said. "Here are a couple of letters." She resisted. "At least I can give you two letters: O and K. Okay?" I demonstrated them. She told me she had to get back to work. 

I wrote her notes and dropped them off at her register. Finally it was Jennifer who suggested we go on a picnic together. That was our first date. 

Four months later we got married. In the church as I saw the minister mouth, "Jennifer, do you take . . . " and turned to her, I read my wife’s lips. I wished I could actually hear her say those words, "I do." 

Jennifer got me going to a Bible study with a wonderful teacher. I came to appreciate how much God had helped me deal with my hearing loss. I’d gotten the education I wanted, I was still determined to find a good job in my field, and best of all God had brought me Jennifer. I felt myself drawn to the miracles in the New Testament. One in particular haunted me: Jesus healing the deaf man. Why couldn’t the same thing happen to me? 

Instead I had to depend on Jennifer to be my ears. Our children were born and she was the only one who woke up to their cries in the middle of the night. She heard their first words and practiced their ABC’s with them. I worked hard at being a father. I taught our daughter, Kassy, at three years old the signs for Daddy, Grandma, Mommy, but it wasn’t the same as having a conversation with her. And our toddler, Andrew, became bewildered if I didn’t respond to his calls. 

One night I sat up in bed, awakened by a vivid dream. I had heard music. Trumpets blasting a fanfare that rumbled through my body. A whole brass section standing up and playing. In the silence of the night, I still heard them in my head, reverberating as if in a symphony. Does this mean I’m going to be healed, Lord? 

About that time I was recruited for a job as a senior designer at Newport News Shipbuilding and we moved to Virginia. When I had my physical, one of the doctors suggested a cochlear implant. Unlike a hearing aid that simply magnifies the sounds of the outside world, a cochlear implant is a tiny computer installed in the inner ear to stimulate hearing. The procedure is more often done on younger people who can better adjust to the ensuing barrage of unfamiliar sounds. "But you had hearing as a child," the doctor said. "That makes you a good candidate." 

"I’m forty years old now," I told the doctors. "But I’m willing to give it a try. It’s been twenty-five years since I last heard anything." The doctors warned me that after the operation it would take time for me to learn to process all the sounds. But I believed in my dream, and this felt like one of Christ’s miracles. I just wanted to be able to hear my children call for me! 

A month later Jennifer waited with me at Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital while the nurses prepped me for surgery. The sedative slowly took effect. The last thing I saw was Jennifer signing—two fingers to her lips—the word "kiss." 

Three hours later I opened my eyes. There was a terrible ringing in my ears and a terrific roar in my head, as though a jet plane was taking off. I couldn’t distinguish individual sounds. All I could hear was noise. According to the doctors it would take six weeks for the swelling in my inner ear to go down. Then I would return to have speech processors installed, a tiny unit to wear behind my ear and one to clip onto my shirt. I survived on prayers until the crucial appointment with my audiologist, Debra Williams. 

She explained that the speech processors would be programmed like a computer so I could start making sense of the sounds coming at me. First she tested high and low pitches. 
"If you think you hear something, raise your hand," she said. 

"I think I hear your voice." Or was my mind playing tricks on me? I had waited so long for this day. I wanted the kids to come to me instead of saying, "Mommy, tell Daddy." I wanted to listen to music again. The last song I remember hearing was "Diamond Girl" by Seals and Crofts. 

"It’ll take a while for your brain to sort out different sounds. That’s why you should come back every week so I can keep adjusting the processor." 

Should. I thought I could recognize the shhh sound. I hadn’t been able to hear that even when I was a kid. On the car radio I picked up the drumbeat in Sting’s song "Brand New Day." 

Jennifer’s voice was much higher than I expected. At home Kassy and Andrew hugged me and their laughter almost knocked me over. I flipped on the TV. "There’s background music with that weather report!" I exclaimed. Then a loud chime. "What’s that?" I asked. 
"The clock," Jennifer said. "It’s just struck five o’clock." 

I opened up a packet of information about the implant. The crackling plastic wrap was like thunder. "Boy, I’m going to need some Tylenol tonight," I told Jennifer. 

Over the next few days I continued to pick up and identify sounds: the clicking of my computer mouse at work, my spoon hitting the side of the mug as I stirred my coffee. Some of it was wonderful, like the kids playing outside. Some of it was a shock. I couldn’t believe how noisy it was to eat. Chewing was like a whole army marching in my head. 

Catching up on the lost years, I spent hours playing CDs: old tunes from the Beatles and new ones from something called ’N Sync. Even though I couldn’t get the lyrics, I loved the music. 
Still, it was hard to make out what people were saying. I could recognize Jennifer’s voice, and Kassy’s and Andrew’s, but their words were muddled. I called Mom and heard her voice. I simply didn’t understand what she said. 

One night I was reading my Bible. Lord, why am I having so much trouble? I asked. Why do I only hear a babble? I turned to the passage about the man who was healed of blindness when Jesus put spit on his eyes. The man’s first response was bewilderment: "I see men, but they look like trees, walking" (Mark 8:24). That’s just what the world is like for me now. 

I thought back on all I had learned to function in a hearing world. The lipreading, the signing, studying people’s expressions to understand them. Hadn’t God guided me through that? When I met Jennifer and fell in love with her, hadn’t he helped me win her love? Wasn’t it God working through the doctors and my audiologist? 

The next day I bought some CDs of the Bible. That evening I listened to them, following along in the text. Night after night at my computer, I listened. Only a few words here and there came to me clearly at first. Slowly I began to make out sentences, then whole passages. Hearing the Scriptures confirmed what I’d known when I read them. God was leading me. 

A big breakthrough came when I phoned home. "Mom, it’s me," I said. "And you just said hello. I heard you!" 

Now I’ve gotten used to the sirens on fire trucks, the roar of the crowd at a baseball game, the crickets in our backyard. Some noises are still such novelties they make me laugh. The other evening I was watching a football game and I heard the whistle of the referee. "I never knew you could hear them whistle," I said to Jennifer. The sweetest thing is to hear my children call me Daddy. As I rush to Kassy’s bedroom in the dark I can hear her say, "I’m scared." And I let her know that God is looking out for her, as he has always looked out for me. 

"It is a miracle," I remind Jennifer, one that involved medical science and God’s healing touch. It continues to unfold day by day, word by word, sweet sound by sweet sound. 
Music to Our Ears

In a healthy ear, sound waves strike the eardrum, setting in motion three tiny bones in the middle ear—and causing fluid inside the inner ear to tremble. Within that inner ear is the cochlea, lined with microscopic hair cells that transform vibrations into electrical impulses. 

These impulses rush along the auditory nerve to the brain, which interprets them as the song of a bird, the greeting of a friend. 

For a profoundly deaf person, a cochlear implant replaces the inner ear’s damaged hair cells and provides the electrical stimulation to transmit sounds to the brain. 

Through a small incision behind the ear, doctors slip electrodes into the cochlea and attach them to a small implant just under the skin. Six weeks later the patient is fitted with a microphone behind the ear and a small speech processor that’s worn on the body, minicomputers that pick up sound waves and set the inner implant into action. Patients like Woody Livingston need audiological therapy to sort out the resulting sounds—but eventually it’s music to their ears. For more information, visit www.cochlear.com or call (303) 790-9010.

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In his job as a senior designer at Newport News Ship Building, Woody works on large vessels like aircraft carriers, but personally he prefers building smaller things. He has his own carpentry workshop where he likes to make hope chests and toy boxes. In the year that he's had his hearing back he has still been adjusting to new sounds. "I'm just so happy all the time, 

I'm always laughing. Every new sound makes me giggle." In particular, Woody couldn't wait to hear the sounds of thunder, rain and the wind. "The most amazing thing was hearing the crickets outside. They were so loud, I felt like they were ready to jump on my head. It really is such a wonderful world!" he says. 

This article originally appeared in the May 2001 issue of Guideposts magazine.
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Woody was among the first to sign up at our discussion board.

He goes by Woodhenot.