The End of The Story

When we first got to Marion I prayed that I’d get a job with IWU as it would help with tuition. I’d put in my application but hadn’t heard anything, so after about a month I put in an application with Wal-Mart and got hired. Oh me of little faith! One week after I worked there I got a call from IWU for an interview and the job was mine.
God had not only provided the job but he had also provided a house at an un-heard of rental amount.

My Mom was in the nursing home 3 minutes from our house. She now needed 24/7 care which I was not able to provide on my own. Over the years there we watched her failing more and more all the time. This was a type of stress that I had no idea how to handle. I think only those who have lost a parent to Alzheimer’s may know the roller coaster of emotions that we go through; to include huge amounts of guilt at times. However; even in this God was revealing his amazing “otherness” to me. (By “otherness” I mean that though we try to put him into a human box that we can understand, he’s so much bigger than that!) One day when she was sitting in her wheel chair and staring into space with a vacant look, I reached over and gently rubbed the back of her hand. There was still nothing, and this had been her state for a long time. And then I spoke to her and said, “Mom, you’ve walked with Jesus for a whole lot of years, haven’t you?” I couldn’t believe my eyes when her face suddenly lit up in joyful radiance and she nodded her head in agreement. And I said, “You’re going to be seeing him one day soon!” Again the light came back into her eyes with the radiant smile and she nodded her head! From time to time I would talk to her about Jesus and about Heaven and I would always have the same response.
It reminded me of the verse that says, “Thou outwardly we are decaying, inwardly we are being renewed day by day”. God’s Holy Spirit still indwelt her and Alzheimer’s disease hadn’t changed that. It made me sad and sickened my heart to know firsthand of those who treated people with dementia as non-persons with nothing left to offer. She no longer knew who I was but I knew her and what an honor and a privilege to sit with her and know that Jesus was right there with her as he was with me, and he was still using her to teach me lessons of the “fruit of the Spirit” that I needed in my own life that I would never have learned any other way!

In Jan. 2005 we began to wonder what we’d do about her after Bill graduated that May. We received a phone call from the Director of Missions in the Pacific Rim asking Bill to come and teach in the Bible School in Bougainville. We both had a heart for missions and had led a mission’s team there from IWU and loved it, but we both clearly knew it was not where God wanted us to go.
Bill had started to send out resumes to various churches outside of Indiana and we’d risen to the top of potential candidates for one church and the next step was to travel to candidate on a Sunday morning. Someone decided that their Assistant Pastor would be a good candidate and that door was suddenly closed to us although they did call and ask Bill if he’d like to serve as a youth pastor.

On March 5th Mom went home to be with Jesus.

We received a call from our D.S. in Central NY asking us to consider a small church in the country. Prior to this I had made it very clear to Bill that I had no desire to serve in a small country church. My fear was that I’d be too lonely. As soon as we heard about this church we both knew immediately it was where God wanted us. We drove from Marion to candidate. The night we arrived I was standing in the beautiful home of the Vice Chairman of the board looking out over a gorgeous valley below us and thought, “God this is beautiful but there’s nothing here! I must have heard you wrong! There’s no way I will survive in this wilderness!” We were to meet the church people the next evening and I asked the Lord that if this was where he wanted us to serve to please let me know that very clearly when we met with them. The next evening we walked into the fellowship hall of the church, and as the people came forward to welcome us my heart totally melted and I instantly fell in love with them. I was home! This was where God wanted us to be.

We moved in to the parsonage in July and in the Fall I had been to a doctor who told me that she didn’t like what she’d felt in her examination and told me to go get a mammogram done. I forgot about it and besides, there was no way there could be anything there. A couple of months later she called and got on my case so I complied and had it done. The next thing I knew I got an official piece of paper in the mail stating that I had cancer. Bill and I were both stunned and experienced a whole new gamut of emotions. Once again we found ourselves asking God for His divine intervention, but at the same time willing to submit to his answer if it was no. I have no idea how long it had been there but it was a stage 2 and mostly encapsulated. I had surgery to remove the cyst but after much prayer I opted to not have any treatments as the sentinel lymph node was clear and the margins had all been clear. We realized then that if we had accepted the invitation to move to Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, that the cancer most likely would have progressed to a point that by the time it was discovered it would have been too late. Once again, the Lord had protected me.

The door opened for the perfect job for me at Catholic Charities in the town 10 min. from us. I work with hurting, desperate people every day. I feel one with them in their pain, as I’ve traveled so much of that same road. I know the answer for their desperation and I pray daily for them that they will come to know the One who has the answers for them and the one that can give them the peace they so desperately need. I listen a lot and cry with them.

This has been an amazing journey and one that I plan to stay on as long as I am on this earth!

Most days on my way to work I sing a song I first heard from the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, “I bless your name, I bless your name, I give you honor give you praise, you are the life, the truth the way, I bless your name, I bless your name” and I then thank the Lord for everything good that would happen in the day and for everything bad that would happen in the day! He is bigger than all of it. It has totally changed my whole perspective of life when I have felt like crawling in a hole or am looking at what seems like insurmountable problems.

I hope you have been able to catch a glimpse of our great and wonderful God through reading this account of His wondrous works! I hope that if you know Him personally that your faith has been increased and that you will want to get to know him even better! I pray that if you don’t know Him that your heart will cry out to Him and that you will find in Him all your heart is long ing for!