SAVED FROM FIRE

During the Korean War in 1954, my brother, Lloyd, was serving with the Alaska Communications Service, a branch of the Army, and was in the same barracks as his highschool buddy, Ken. During that time, our father became critically ill with cancer and Lloyd was given Compassionate Leave to come home. While he was home, the barracks caught fire one night and every one sleeping there was killed.

While we grieved for Ken and the other boys who died, we were thankful to God for sparing Lloyd's life --- if was as if the illness and death of our father a few weeks later saved his life. And so when Billy Graham came to Seattle during this time, Lloyd rededicated his life to Jesus.

In 1998 my little brother went Home with Jesus, but I'll never forget that wonderful day when he went forward at the old football stadium, on the grounds of what is now the Seattle Center, to do Eternal Business with his Lord God!

SAVED BY GOD'S GRACE

For many years, I have struggled with the painful issue of abuse. I didn't think of it as abuse when as a child my mother would hurtfully and unfavorably compare me to my older sister and younger brother. To this day, I know that it wasn't intentional. She probably did the same thing that was done to her in her huge family of nine children.

She would say, "Oh, why can't you be more like Norma or Lloyd!" My grandma on my dad's side always acted like she liked them more than me, and early in life I came to believe my mother liked them better as well. This caused me to feel inferior to them, and brought on shyness and severe inferiority complex that has lingered to a degree with me for the rest of my life.

I graduated from Multnomah Bible College in 1951 and two years later attended Biola's School of Missionary Medicine with the intention of serving the Lord on the mission field or as a pastor's wife. While at Biola and just before graduating, I went home to nurse my father who had cancer.

Before Biola, while at MSB, I met and fell in love with Jack who was one class before me, and we planned to spend our lives together, but he passed away from bulbar polio the summer after he graduated in 1950. He was 21 and I was 20. I tell my story of losing the man I hoped to marry (click here) and I thought I'd never be able to love again.

But I did learn to love again. I met Lee in early 1955 in Seattle when he was pastoring a small church in Des Moines in the mornings, but always came to my church on Sunday evenings and to our Business and Professional Group on Thursday evenings.

I was working at the time in Seattle while waiting to hear from TEAM, the Mission Board to which I'd earlier sent my application. I had recently moved into an apartment there after nursing my father for two years before he went Home to be with Jesus in 1954.

My mother and family met Lee and loved him too. I felt sure that it was in God's plan for us to marry, which we did over a year later in 1956. Lee graduated from MSB ten years before I did, and we had that and our many friends in common. He had also just graduated from college with a degree in psychology, and had accepted the small pastorate in Des Moines (he had been a missionary for 7 years on a small island in Alaska before coming to Seattle Pacific College, now Seattle Pacific University).

I looked forward to serving the Lord with Lee, and believed that we would always serve God together with him whereever He called us. However, shortly before we were married, he was offered a job as Northwest Field Representative, covering several states and British Columia, with Moody Bible institute of Chicago. He was thrilled, and I was happy for him, with the offer and he served with Moody for 17 years, and then with World Vision for 3 years before our divorce.

To my gradual horror and sorrow after we were married, I learned that Lee was also an abuser. I simply didn't want to believe it, because with him it was intentional. And by then, while in college, I had done a thorough study of abuse and it's relation to inferiority complexes, and I couldn't believe that any Christian could allow themselves to be one. It was sin, plain and simple. Before we were married, I'd had no inkling of it, but I was naive and thought that Christian who married would live and raise children happily together with God's help and guidance.

Well, pastors and missionaries are people just like the rest of us. They face the same fears and temptations that you and I face, and I think Lee was only doing what probably happened to him by his own strict mennonite parents. But that was no excuse, we all must choose between right and wrong and good and evil. Most Christians do, but some don't. Lee's degree in psychology should have helped him to overcome this tendency to abuse, but it didn't. It was important to him to try to exercise his power over us. What he thought or wanted counted only.

No one believed he was abusive. He seemed to be two people. In the church, he was a sensitive, caring, and gentle man. In our home, it was up and down, sometimes happy but he was often angry, legalistic and severe. I lived in fear of his anger and condemnation. We had two wonderful sons which we both adored, but I had to be both mother and father to them one-half of each year while Lee traveled, and the stress was so great that I developed heart trouble.

Lee would always think I was doing a terrible job as a person and mother. When our oldest son was about 10, he asked him to remember "what mommy is doing when I'm away, so you can tell me all about it when I come home." I believe that this perhaps started a somewhat split personality and psychological problems that he has to this day, and perhaps the addiction to drugs that I talk about below. Grant has always been coddled by his dad, and when I have wanted him to get help, his dad always pooh-poohed it and of course Grant as well.

When MBI learned of Lee's and my marital problems, they offered to move us to Chicago to be home every night or so, and I hoped and prayed that he'd accept the offer so he could work out of our home, and the boys could become acquainted with other Moody kids and hopefully eventually go to MBI, and I could join the ladies groups, but it didn't happen. I knew that it was God's will for us to go, and that it was one of those fantastic offers that most people would not even think of being offered, much less refusing. They would pay for all our moving expenses, help us sell our Seattle home, and help us find a home in Chicago. But I couldn't convince Lee to accept this generous offer, to our eventual sorrow.

Finally, after years of emotional abuse, my doctor who delivered our boys told me that I had to make a choice to die or live, divorce or die, fight or flight, because nothing would change. By that time, after 20 years of marriage, I didn't think that God was going to help me cope with it all or that Lee would ever change.

So I decided to live. But I have wondered ever since if I made the right choice and should have just gone Home to be with the Lord instead, if that is what would have happened. God only knows. And God only knows if it would have been better for my boys if I'd stayed with Lee. Certainly to me, it was like death anyway, and anathema to my soul, to even consider divorce. It was not what Christians did, and were considered in the church as pariahs and sinners, if you were the one to get the divorce. I'm so glad churches are more thoughtful and loving today.

My sons and I were so traumatized and affected by the things that transpired in our home that we have never fully recovered, although we have all forgiven. I am not here to defame a man, but to proclaim victory. Lee is a wonderful man in so very many ways, and after our divorce he has always been invited and included at Christmases and birthdays and to every single family event at my house, in spite of everything. God only knows if he's always been totally blind to his anger with us. I just knew that I couldn't live well unless I forgave him. I have also always wondered if his blindness to his actions and unwillingness to repent caused his literal blindness that he has been suffering for over 15 years.

Max Lucado, in "Grace For The Moment" says, "Power can be painful and it can come in many forms, it can be the husband who refuses to be kind to his wife. P-O-W-E-R is the goal, "I will get what I want at your expense." And the end is futility. A thousand years from now, will it matter what title the world gave you? No, but it will make a literal hell of a difference whose child you are."

But I want to tell you about God's healing, not just about the pain. I desperately needed to heal. I needed to come to a place of forgiveness, but I was afraid to let go. I was so close to falling apart. I didn't know how to trust. I'd been hanging on for so long that I didn't know how to let go.

I wanted to help my children heal from their pain, but the truth is, I couldn't help myself. At first, I think I unconsciously transfered my pain to God and blamed Him, because He is sovereign and could have answered my prayers. For the past 7 years, I had sought Christian professional marital help. But at that time, they all said that I needed to accept the situation and be a good wife. Obviously, that wasn't the help I needed. For a long time, I found it so hard to trust God again.

However, my Bible training taught me that I could, although I couldn't understand why He had not answered my prayers and forsaken me like others had done. All of our friends from our church deserted me when Lee and I were divorced. They believed that since I got the divorce, then certainly I had to be blamed. One of the hardest things in life is to be rejected, to have the feelings of rejection are devastating.

But somehow, through it all, God taught me to trust Him again. All things are known to Him and we really can trust Him in all of those things, no matter what. I thought I was listening to God for the 7 years that I went from one to another pastor and Christian counselor before Lee and were divorced, to hear what He was telling me to do. I knew that when God speaks, it's important to listen, and I thought I was. He never wastes or minces words. He says what He means and He means what He says. But I didn't hear one word from Him. So I can only know now that I wish I'd heeded His Word to not "put one another away in divorce" but to stay with the stuff, no matter what.

I am not saying that He intends us to stay with a man or a woman who is physically hurting us or our children, or is unfaithful to us. But Lee was abusive to me and the boys emotionally, and to this day I'm not sure if I made the right choice to leave him. I'll never know if God would have changed us. I needed a thick skin and not take everything he said to heart which would have helped me and the children, but I was never able to do that. I kept praying that Lee would stop being hateful, and start manifesting the fruits of God's Spirit of Galatians 5.

God speaks to us through our circumstances. and it is up to us to listen for His still small voice. When we take the time and are quiet, we can hear Him. He will never speak contrary to His Word. Jesus says, "I was rejected too, so bring your heart to Me, I have never or will never reject you!"

"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering . . . he was despised and we esteemed him not." Isaiah 53:3. The nail scars in Jesus' hands are there because we need a Savior, a Friend, someone we can trust. He can heal all our heartaches. He came to "bind up those who are wounded and broken." He knows all about rejection and insecurity!

God has given each of us two hands and one heart. He gives us choices. We choose what we hold on to. Some things are held in our hands, some things in our heart. I held on to pain because I didn't know what to do with it. If God controlled our choices, He would violate the very laws He created, laws by which the universe runs. If He controls us, then we are not free to love Him and follow His Word or to reject it.

When someone does something cruel to another, God is grieved. He offers His grace and comfort to the wounded and broken; He offers to bring healing, and to help them find forgiveness, but He will not force it or control our choice to receive or reject it.

It sounds complicated, and I didn't understand it until I experienced it. Since God made me, He knows me, and how I function, so when He wanted to free me from my pain and heal me, He helped me with an exhaustive study of the German Mennonites, and that was what led me to total forgiveness.

It took longer for Paul, and I doubt that Grant even realizes yet that he needs to forgive but he has been running from reality and God for all these years, while at the same time he knows that God is keeping him, and answering constant prayers.

Thank God that when we lay our broken, bleeding hearts at His feet and take the gift of love and healing from His hands, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us (Philippians 4:13). It's true, we can, but only through Him.

Since I have let go, the Lord has become more precious to me than words can express. He has never failed me. He loved me then, and He loves me now. He has taught me to forgive, and the hardest person to forgive was myself. The choices I made perhaps caused my children more pain and suffering, but I chose what seemed like good reasons. Even so, thank God, nothing is wasted in God's economy---when we heal, He uses us to "comfort others with the comfort we have been comforted."

It broke my heart that when I sought help, no one really listened or helped. But there is help and hope in Jesus. He has done so much for me. The pain is still with me after more than 30 years, but very different from what it was. He fills the void in our lives to make us whole, and gives us hope.

Even today at my advanced age, I often have feelings of inferiority, that I am not wanted and am unimportant, that I have to yield to Jesus. We all face hard times, hard things, but God is always there if we love Him. He always cares, and nothing takes Him by surprise.

He promises to give us all the grace we need to get through today, and tomorrow is brand new. Praise God, "His mercies are new every morning" even during family and church problems. When Lee and I were divorced after 20 years of marriage, he kept going to the same church that we had all attended for many years. But when our friends there rejected me, because they thought I was all to blame for the divorce, I stayed at home or visited other churches, although irregularly. It was hard to go alone. Grant and Paul kept on going to church with Lee, but gradually less and less because they felt uncomfortable there.

All during this time, however, I earnestly prayed for them to meet wonderful Christian young people to be their friends, and go to church with them.

And in 1980, God wonderfully answered prayer for Paul, and he me some great Christian friends and was invited to their wonderful church. Eventually he began studying in their Bible College and graduated, and married Debbie, a beautiful girl he'd met in one of his classes. Grant also met and married Donna, who was born-again after attending the church with us.

God answered prayer for Paul in a literal way, when Christian friends from work asked him to their church. They invited him to come to their Saturday evening Song and Praise service. He misunderstood the address and went to their Bible College campus instead of the church, and when he didn't see any cars around was totally mystified, and ready to go back home. At that moment, a little old lady suddenly appeared at his car window and asked him if he needed help. He told her the story and she asked if he'd like her to show him the way over to the church, and he said yes. So she hopped in his car and when they got to the church's doors, he turned to thank her for helping him and she was no where to be seen, then or at any time thereafter. I believe she was an angel sent by God to make sure Paul got there in answer to many prayers. He and his bride were married in the church's chapel a few years later, and he loved studying God's Word in their Bible College. I will always thank God for helping him become the man that I'd always prayed he would become.

I have another story here as well in regard to this church. After Paul had been worshipping there for a while, and already attending Bible College, he asked me to start coming too, which I did. From almost the first Sunday the music, the ministry, the friendliness began to meet the need in my heart. It had been broken by the breakup of my marriage, and while I knew theologically that Jesus had not also deserted me, emotionally I felt like He had by not intervening in my marriage after many years of asking Him.

One night after the service, Paul and Debbie and I went up to the Upper Room to pray, and a young man came over and asked if he could pray for me. I didn't know him, but when he started to pray he said things that only Paul or God could have told him. Paul said later that he'd never talked with him at all about me. This young man laid his hand on my head and said, "God wants you to know that He has always been right there beside you, tenderly loving you, and knows the heartache and pain in your heart because of your husband, and He wants to heal that hurt and heartache tonight." And that very night, the Lord answered his prayer or word of knowledge, and the hurt and heartache totally disappeared. He put a new love in my heart for Lee which helped me to see his heart in a new way.

To our horror and sorrow several years later, the church crashed when the senior pastor got involved in sin and tried to lead the congregation down that path. The hurt and devastation that followed caused the breakup of both of my sons' marriages and caused such heartache that it has taken years to recover. This directly led to Grant's crack cocaine drug addiction which has plagued him for over 22 years and to this day, and for which I continue to pray for his complete and once-and-for-all deliverance. And I believe the answer is on the way for my wonderful son.

It was so hard to watch, and not be able to do anything about it, and stand by as this wonderful church became another statistic of churches that fall by the wayside. The pastor will one day answer to God for the utter devastation he caused in hundreds of lives. I don't know if he ever repented. But I've learned that no matter what comes into our lives, whatever the pain and heartaches, Jesus is always there to help. And the truth and joy of that night of prayer in the Upper Room has never left me, I still have that, and that's why my heart leaps for joy in praise to this Wonderful Lord of ours. I keep praying for a wonderful life.

Back then, while none of us three wanted a divorce, we weren't able to stop them. We were all seriously hurt by them, but Jesus intervened in all our lives and became real and personal to each of us. Probably not many of us can say we have always had perfectly wonderful lives throughout our years. It seems that sometimes we have to go through pain and devastation before we learn the deep, deep things of God.

Coming from a Christian family, and after going through Bible College and Biola's School of Missionary Medicine, and marrying a minister and serving the Lord together for many years, and then to be divorced about killed me. Thanks to God, with His help, I made it. And I'll always thank God for that church when it was still going strong for God, and that night of prayer in the Upper Room when Jesus came up closeand personal to me.

That's why I'm always singing praises to Jesus, and why I encourage others that He will do the same wonders for them too. We can say, "I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." Galatians 2:20

With B. J. Hoff, I say, "Lord, You have given me the music, a song of life that's new and unrehearsed. You have given me the joy that makes my heart sing, even though at times the tears come first. You have given me the theme of my existence, and I will sing Your Glory all my days; for now and forever be my music and make my life a symphony of praise."

Thank God that He loves us and can be real and upclose and personal to all of us through whatever life throws at us. Trials and sorrows come to everyone while we live on this planet. He is no respector of persons, and He didn't promise us a rose garden. But He did promise that He will be with us and help us through thick and thin if we are His child and trust and rely on Him. He promises that it will be worth it all when we see Him and join Him in Heaven.

SAVED BY AN ANGEL

During the gas and oil crunch in 1974, I had to drive my mother home one Sunday from Seattle to Salem, Oregon. Since all service stations were closed on Sundays then, the day before we had filled up my old car with gas and oil, air in the tires, etc.. But as we neared Chehalis, the car let out a horrible noise, like it was ready to fall apart. We pulled off I-5 into town to see if, by some miracle, we might find a station open, but of course none were. We sat in the car and prayed for help.

We then started driving slowly down the street until almost the end of it, still praying, when by a miracle we saw an old ramshackle station with one gas pump, with a man standing beside it watching us as we drove in. He could hear the racket the car was making, and I told him that I had no idea what was wrong. He said "maybe it just needs a little more oil," and proceeded to pour in a little although it was practically full. He closed the hood and came over saying "I think it will be okay now." I started the car and it hummed like a Mercedes. He smiled and said "there's no charge, it's on the House." He waved as we drove away. My mother and I looked at each other still in shock, and said simultaneously, "I think he's an Angel!"

Two or three months later, while again driving mom home, we decided to stop off in Chehalis and see our friend at the ramshackle service station, driving down the same street to where we'd gone that day. But there was only a field. We weren't surprised. We just thanked the Lord again for His miracle-working Power to help two of His Kids when they needed Him. We believed the oil that was poured into my car was the oil of the Holy Spirit, and the "House" was God's House where that Angel was from! My old car had no more problems from that time on until I sold it for $200 two years later.

SEEING GOD'S CARE

On a bleak and wintry morning only one day before my house buyer was to close the sale on January 10, 2004, he backed out because of unforseen problems in financing the loan, and leaving me desperate because I'd counted on the sale going through to pay my bills. It was an old house and needed a lot of work, although I had been renting the house to my oldest son for the last 4 years.

All morning and afternoon I felt so low while talking to God all about it, sometimes complaining but clinging like a drowning person to His Promises that He knows our needs and won't leave us stranded and alone.

About 4 o'clock that afternoon, I got a call from my son who was moving out the next two days. He said, "Guess what! Just as I was leaving a few minutes ago, someone knocked at the door, and I was tempted to just leave and not answer the door but then "something" stopped me to go see who it was.

"A man was standing there who said that he'd driven by the house all month and noticed the "For Sale" sign, and that he now noticed the "Sold" addition to the sign was gone. He said that he was a contractor and would like to buy the house to fix up and sell.

"I took him through the house and answered his questions, then he gave me his card saying that he would contact his realtor and ours in the morning and sign the papers."

And that is exactly what he did the next morning. A few hours later the realtor brought the papers for me to sign.

What a miracle, and what manuvering God had to do to arrange all this on the very day that the sale was to have closed!

Two hours before the realtor came by for me to sign the papers, I had gone to the office of the senior low-income apartment complex where I live to ask if there was a small studio apartment available because with the sale of my house and loss of rent income I couldn't afford to keep my larger apartment any longer. I had been stressing about what furniture and things I could keep in a studio apartment and what I couldn't keep, and it had taken me at least three years to adjust to living in the small apartment with two rooms after moving there from my large home, but I knew God would help me adjust again to one room if that was His will.

Then I heard some overwhelming and awesome news: I could stay where I was,and the monthly rent would now go from $825 to $230, and told I could get funding from HUD to help me stay where I am and with other low income help as well.

I am in total awe of the goodness of God, and it took me a while to stop feeling numb. It felt like I was standing on holy ground!

With joy, I fell on my knees with thanksgiving and praises to God for coming to my aid once again, and with such exact timing so that there could be no doubt that He was in control!

God wants people who don't know Him to see how He loves us when they hear true stories of His help like this, and that He gives answers to our prayers and sends miracles to graphically show that we can trust Him through thick and thin and whatever comes into our lives!