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The Story of Barb's Miracle
By David Staples [email protected]
Edmonton Journal Staff Writer

In this secular and rationalistic world, it seems old-fashioned to speak seriously about the possibility of a miracle -- a real, God-ordained miracle -- but that discussion is now underway in connection with Barb Tarbox.

Many people who watched Barb in her final months believe that God intervened through her, giving Barb the strength and inspiration to warn 50,000 Canadian school children and millions of other North Americans about the dangers of smoking.

Through her work, hundreds, if not thousands, were convinced to give up their lethal habit, and that is the crux of Barb’s miracle, says Father Mike Mireau of St. Theresa Roman Catholic Church in Edmonton.

"That’s the miraculous thing, that suffering can be turned into something that can help other people, that her suffering will now stop young people from smoking."

Several people who quit smoking after hearing Barb see God’s hand at work.

During the first few months of Barb’s crusade, Kelly Jones, 37, a retail supervisor from Leduc, made sure to flip the channel or turn the page every time she saw a story on Barb. A smoker for 22 years, Jones didn’t want to deal with Barb’s harsh message.

One day, however, as Jones channel surfed, one of Barb’s commercials for the Alberta Alcohol and Drug Abuse Commission (AADAC) came on. Again, Jones turned the channel. Just then, however, Jones says she heard a voice: "Kelly, how do you know that’s not going to be you?"

Jones believes it was God sending her a message.

She turned back and watched the ad. Afterwards, she went on the internet and read stories about Barb. Jones started to quote Barb to her friends, and convinced seven others to quit, including her husband Wayne and a woman at her church, who had been smoking for 50 years.

Jones was able to quit smoking herself without any difficulty.

"It was like Barb was my guardian angel," she says. "I felt such a connection to her. It was like God sent her here just for me. I’m sure there’s a lot that feel that way."

Miracle stories are as old as The Epic of Gilgamesh and the other early stories of humankind. They are part of every major human faith, writes Kenneth L. Woodward in The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam.

Moses divided the waters of the Red Sea to save his people. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. The Prophet Mohammed blinded an opposing army with a handful of dust. Krishna lifted a mountain to save a village. The Buddha dazzled his kinfolk by rising in the air, dividing his body into pieces, then rejoining them.

The major religions still accept the reality of miracles, but the modern world has tended to reject the notion. Some have argued this tendency to rule out even the possibility of miracle has gone too far, most notably the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis.

"Whatever experiences we may have, we shall not regard them as miraculous if we already hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural," Lewis wrote. "Any event which is claimed as a miracle is, in the last resort, an experience received from the senses; and the senses are not infallible. We can always say we have been the victims of an illusion. . . If we disbelieve in the supernatural that is what we always shall say."

For example, Lewis said, if the world ended in the Apocalypse described in the Bible, if heaven rolled up, the great white throne appeared, and a modern materialist found himself hurled into the Lake of Fire, he would tell himself it was all a hallucination, even as he burned forever more.

In the Christian faith, miracles are most associated with Jesus and his time, but they still occur in the modern world, Father Mike Mireau says. Miracles are unique events, but they aren’t uncommon and they’re not always dazzling. "Miracles aren’t usually as profound as this (Barb’s crusade). They don’t usually touch as many people as it did, but miracles do happen, for sure. They’re just not parting-the-Red-Sea kind of miracles."

Father Mike first presented the idea that Barb’s crusade was a miracle at her funeral on May 24, 3003, where he gave the homily. He recalled how he first met Barb in November, 2002. She told him that tumours in her brain and lungs were growing fast and she wasn’t expected to live past Christmas.

"Of course, Barb had something else in mind, and obviously God agreed," Father Mike said in his homily. "Now my job as a priest is to be able to recognize miracles. . . I am willing to stand here and stake my reputation as a priest on my conviction that what we have witnessed in Barb is a miracle. It’s God showing up in our lives, bringing triumph out of tragedy, bringing life out of death."

In the last months of her life, Barb became an image of Jesus, with her mission, her suffering and her love patterned on Jesus, Father Mike said. "Barb put her own suffering on display so that people, especially children, would see it, that they would be shocked and saddened and broken-hearted by it, and they would stop smoking. And so many have. They have because Barb had the courage to take her suffering and love people with it. And so God gave her months and months and months to reach thousands and thousands and thousands with that love."

In order to get her message out, Barb pushed herself and everyone else around her to the brink of exhaustion, bringing to mind something said by American writer Phyllis McGinley about miracle workers, that they differ from the rest of us in their exuberance: "Moderation is not their secret. It is in the wildness of their dreams, the desperate vitality of their ambitions, that they stand apart from ordinary people of good will."

Barb’s husband Pat was amazed by what she was able to accomplish in her dying months, as she was wracked with diarrhea, fatigue, seizures and pain that took daily hits of morphine to control.

"The strength was coming from somewhere and a lot of it had to do with her faith and belief," Pat says. "I tend to believe that there was some outside influence here that said, ‘Let’s take this to the max.’ "

Barb herself saw her crusade only as something she had to do in order to atone for the fact she had stupidly smoked for 30 years and was going to deprive Pat of his wife and their 10-year-old daughter Mackenzie of her mother.

Every day, Barb asked for God’s intercession in her prayers so she could have the strength to continue to speak out. "Every morning when I wake up, I’m grateful," she said in November 2002. "The first thing I say is, ‘Thank you,’ and the last thing I say at night is, ‘Please give me one more day. I don’t want to be greedy, but, please, give me one more month.’"

Over time, Barb came to believe that God had listened her. In mid-December 2002, speaking at a school in Calgary, she was asked by a student, "Are you scared?"

"Well, God is with you every day," Barb said. "Now He carries me."

She also believed that God had provided her with the friendship of Tracy Mueller, who organized all of Barb’s speaking events and drove her to them.

"Without Tracy, this path, I could not have walked it," Barb told one journalist. "God has chosen this path for you, but he also sends his strongest angels to walk right beside you, and that’s what He has done."

Many people saw God’s hand on Barb.

"Barb is one person who might be able to reach my kids," wrote Kathryn Speck, an Edmonton school teacher, in a letter to Tracy Mueller. "She seems to have a God-given power to strike a chord with young kids."

"I have been praying for you everyday, knowing God is with you and is guiding you," Earla Diletzoy of Edmonton e-mailed Barb in January, 2003. "He has given you a job and you are fulfilling it with grace."

After a talk at Ottawa’s Hillcrest high school in February 2003, student Jessica Frankland wrote to Barb: "I believe that God put us all on the Earth for a reason, to accomplish certain things, or for a sole purpose, and I know your purpose was to save lives. Today you have accomplished that."

In early March, one smoker, Rhonda Sargent of Red Deer, felt that God had touched her as she drove along the highway, listening to Barb speak on the radio. "Today I found myself in a gas station buying a pack of cigarettes and then lighting one up on the highway," Sargent wrote to Barb. "Once again, I was totally disappointed in myself. I was at the Ponoka area when I heard you come on the radio. THERE IS A GOD!!! I listened to you for about twenty minutes and threw them out the window. I will never smoke again. Thank you. You will always be in my heart."

In March 2003, during her final treatmentst at the Cross Cancer Institute, Barb received a visit from Roy Trosin, a 38-year-old truck driver and father of three, who had heard her speak on the radio and had experienced a similar revelation as Sargent.

"You hear people over the radio and it never, ever affects you, but this did," Trosin says. "There was a presence there, and I know who it was. God was using Barb’s words to say, ‘This is the reality of your sin, and this is where it will lead.’"

Over the 20 years of his smoking habit, Trosin had tried many times to quit, using the patch, Zyban, nicotine gum. Nothing had worked. As soon as he heard Barb on the radio, however, he threw his cigarettes out the truck window. This time, he was able to quit easily. "I go around people that smoke, it doesn’t bother me," he says. "No cravings, none, not even the slightest."

Trosin now speaks at smoking cessation about his experience. "I really do believe that it was a miracle and God used her to be that conduit to make the difference for me, because I wasn’t listening to anybody. I was so selfish. I just couldn’t quit. I honestly couldn’t. But God said, ‘I’ll be your patch. You don’t need cigarettes any more.’"

At his meeting with Barb at the Cross Cancer Institute, Trosin was able to thank her personally for helping him. He could see she was in a much pain. "I really believe God was carrying Barb through the last months of her life and that He used her mightily," he says.

In April 2003, as Barb struggled out in a wheelchair to make her final speaking appearance at an Edmonton school, an Edmonton woman, Lynne DeCoste, wrote her: "I can sit here and honestly say that there is no way that I could have had the fortitude to get out and speak to kids like you have. . . My mom always taught me growing up that the Lord never gives you more than He thinks you can handle, no matter how horrible it may be . . . You were selected for a reason, God’s messenger if you will."

Barb went into palliative care at the Grey Nuns a few weeks later, at the end of April. Father Mike Mireau often visited her there. She had dropped from 160 pounds to 75 pounds. Her speech was increasingly slurred and she constantly mixed up words. She could not get out of bed on her own.

"You've done good work," he told her one day. "We all make mistakes. But God can forgive us of our mistakes and make good things out of them. And He did that with you."

Barb nodded. "That was me," she said.

One year after Barb’s death, Father Mike remains convinced about the nature of what he saw with Barb.

"I think that God was working through her, and when I say it was a miracle, that is what I mean, that it’s God who is actually working here, sometimes with her knowledge, sometimes not so much. But God made use of her and made use of her suffering."

"The tree is known by its fruit, that’s something that Jesus said, and this is something that has abundant fruit, and those are the criteria by which we judge something to be a miracle."

Father Mike is also astonished by one final thing, the appropriateness of Barb's last name, Tarbox, for an anti-smoking crusader.

"That's an incredible coincidence, if you think about it."



(This article first appeared on May 16, 2004 in The Edmonton Journal and is reprinted with permission.).