The 12th Person Healing Support Team

This is an excerpt from The Healing Tapestry: A Memoir of Divine Guidance by Unity minister David W. McClure, a book where he recounts how he used spiritual principles in his cancer journey and miraculous recovery.

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One Sunday, after delivering what I felt was a lackluster sermon pouring out of a dying man, [my wife] Donna and I didn’t wait for our usual handshaking at the end of a sermon—a sermon that, to this day, I can’t remember. We slipped out of the building and headed home for more of our favorite pastime at this point: moping and sulking and tribulating.

After a short period and quickly tiring of MS&T, I decided to distract myself and turn on the TV to watch some football. My favorite team is the Seattle Seahawks. On this day, they were playing the Tennessee Titans. If you think I was down and depressed before coming home, the way this game was going was sending me deeper into the doldrums.

The Titans stepped out to a commanding lead and halfway through the fourth quarter, I found myself about as far down in my La-Z-Boy as I could possibly get. I was about to turn the TV off, when a sound—clear, bold, and loud—began to roar out of my TV speakers. This was not an unfamiliar sound to me. I had heard it many times before. It was a sound that had always inspired and uplifted me. But this time it was different. This time I heard a gazillion more decibels than I had ever heard before. I thought my eardrums would shatter.

The sound was that of the collective body of Seahawk fans—better known as the “12s”—cheering, yelling, screaming, and lifting the roof off the stadium …

For those not familiar with football and the 12th man concept, it started with Texas A&M University. Each team is allowed only 11 players in the game at any one time. The Aggies of A&M believed they could create an extra player with the enthusiasm of their fans in the stands. They began to call the fans “the 12th man.”

In 2006, the Aggies and the Seahawks made a deal allowing the Seahawks to also use the 12th man idea …

The Power of Support

That afternoon, the Seattle 12s broke the decibel record for an NFL stadium. It was louder than any roar that had ever been heard at any football game, college or professional. As the roar of the 12s reached a crescendo, I watched the whole tempo of the game shift. In that moment, the Hawks found their second wind.

One good play led to another and soon they were marching down the field, moving the ball, running over and around the Titans, and most important, scoring points. Followed by more points.

Finally, in the last seconds of the fourth quarter, the Seahawks got the go-ahead touchdown and won the game, thanks to their earsplitting hooting and hollering 12s. Talk about a cheering section!

I found myself standing up and cheering like one of the 12s. Donna, who was in the kitchen at the time, came in to see what all the noise was about. I told her about the 12s, and we both broke into a cheer of our own. It was the first time in a long time that I had had anything to cheer about.

This marked a game-changing turning point in my attitude about life and my situation. Sitting down for a football game that afternoon and hearing one of the loudest affirmations of life I had ever heard … triggered what was to be the most important spirit-lifter I had ever experienced. Immediately, I sat up straight in my chair, followed by jumping to my feet and standing up straighter and taller than I had for weeks. I began to believe in myself again. I might have thought all was lost when it really wasn’t. There is something astounding, something certain, beyond where hope can take you.

I told Donna that if a football team could have a cheering section like that, then so could I. I would create my own 12th Man/Woman Healing Support Team!

What surprised me most was that, even with the dire diagnosis that was still staring me in the face, the majority of my newly formed 12s not only offered prayerful hope but also the certainty that the healing thread had my back and that healing was on its way!

A Personal Cheering Section

I immediately started a list of those I wanted in my healing cheering section. I began with all those on my medical team—my primary care team, my oncologist and his team, my radiologist and his team, and yes, even Mack the Knife [the surgeon].

To this list, I added my family, my prayer partners at church, my Master Mind Prayer Group, Silent Unity (the prayer ministry of the global Unity movement started by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore long ago), folks from ministries I had previously served, Donna’s chaplain coworkers at Sacred Heart Medical Center, even some folks whose stores I frequented, and last but certainly not least, approximately 5,000 Facebook friends and followers I had at the time.

In contacting them all, I confided in them about the death sentence I had initially been given by my medical staff. I told them about my Seahawk 12th Man experience. And then I asked them to join my 12th Person Healing Team and invited them to send me their prayerful and moral support if they felt so guided.

Within hours of sending out my SOS, I received dozens, then hundreds, of positive responses. What surprised me most was that, even with the dire diagnosis that was still staring me in the face, the majority of my newly formed 12s not only offered prayerful hope but also the certainty that the healing thread had my back and that healing was on its way!

Buoyed by this cheering section, I began to think of what my next moves would be on this astounding journey. What was before me on the road ahead? How different life can be for us when we have encouragement. What an uplifting experience it is when we know we are not alone in what we are confronting.

I think that was the main thing I got out of this experience. When you think you are all alone with your predicament, that’s when you hear the roar of the crowd. You find you have this huge, amazing cheering section. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, who can see beyond where you alone can see. They can believe beyond your unbelief. They can roar when you whimper. When you’re backed up on the one-yard line, they can open a path to run for a touchdown.