Bits & Pieces

This photo recently popped up on my facebook page.  It was taken just a year ago at Thanksgiving time.  I’ve also reread some of the notes posted on Art’s Caring Bridge pages.  These have made me aware of how many answers to prayer I’ve had both during and following Art’s cancer journey.  Because you prayed with us, here are just a few of the many answers we received:

• A doctor to follow Art as a primary care physician in Marion, IN where we were staying with our daughter, Sharie. God sent us Dr. Sedaghat who helped us through a critical time.
• Safe travel to and from Cancer Treatment Center in Zion, IL.  God even provided a way to bring Art home for a week-end while he was undergoing radiation treatments for pain.
• Art would have no falls or broken bones!  Although he had a couple of falls, he had no broken bones.
• I would have the ability to care for him until God called him home.
• I’d dreaded our being alone when hospice made the first visit; God sent dear friends who drove in from southern Michigan just ahead of the intake nurse.
• Art would be able to sit at the table for Thanksgiving dinner with the family, and he was!
• Relief from pain many times!
• On March 8^th I prayed Art would glimpse heaven again and it would draw him.  On March 13^th, two days before he passed away, he was pointing toward heaven and mumbling something.  Sharie asked him what he saw and he began to sing, “I see the lights of glory…” from the song, Because He Lives.

One of the hardest things for Art was to trust that I would be ok once he was gone.  I remember the day that he said the Lord had assured him that I was going to be alright.  And though I miss him, I am doing well.  Several have told me that they pray for me daily.  Others have sent a card, email or text to encourage me and keep me with a joyful spirit.  And some have even come to spend a day or two with me, assuring me of their continued friendship despite the fact that Art is no longer here.  I am truly blessed!

And this Thanksgiving, though there will be an empty place at the table and in the hearts of the family as we gather for dinner, my heart will continue to overflow with gratitude for the blessings God continues to send my way. 

It was late Sunday evening in Haiti.  We had finished devotions.  Our team leader had shared from Max Lucado’s book, “Safe in the Shepherd’s Arms,” a commentary on Psalm 23. Now our team of teachers was doing last-minute preparations for our sessions with Haitian teachers scheduled to begin in the morning. I glanced at the clock. Almost 11:00 p.m.

Thony, our Haitian country director, stepped outside the only entrance to the guesthouse to check on the vehicle we were using. Suddenly three men with handguns surrounded him. They threatened him, one holding a pistol to his forehead and another thrusting a pistol into his side. They claimed to know him and to know that the team had brought $50,000 into Haiti. They demanded this money.

Thony had no choice but to bring them into the guesthouse.  I looked up from the materials we were working on as three scraggly looking characters entered the room with Thony.  I immediately thought that these were sure skuzzy looking characters for guards at the seminary where we were staying and holding the seminars. Then I heard one of them say, “Stay cool!  Stay cool!”  At the same time I noted that he was waving a pistol at us and I instantly knew these men were not connected to the seminary!

From the look on Thony’s face and his words, “Just do what they say,” I immediately knew that we were in trouble.  Thony approached the table and sank to his knees at the corner across from me and to my right.  Although his body language betrayed his concern for the situation we were in, he remained composed and translated what two of the men were saying to us, or at least what he knew we needed to hear.

The apparent leader of the threesome, dressed in a green striped shirt, in his late 20s or early 30s, approximately 5’10” or 6’ tall, thin with a long narrow face and black bushy curly hair, pointed the gun toward me and said something in Creole. The only word I caught was “Madam” and I knew he was singling me out. Thony translated, “He says that he knows you. He has seen you at the airport. He says that he knows me too.” This was possible since I had been in and out of Haiti several times. I noted the tension in Thony’s voice and knew he was terribly frightened too, although he was staying outwardly calm.

“And He will give his angels charge over you to keep you in all your way…”  I silently prayed, “Show me, Father, what to do!”  This was an oft-repeated prayer during the ordeal.

The second man, bald-headed, with a heart-shaped face, very sour expression, and a wart on his bald head demanded that we take off our rings, watches, and even our glasses and put our heads down.  I tried to pull my wedding ring off, but there was no way to get it over my arthritic knuckle.  He nodded at me and demanded, “That ring too.”  I shook my head.  “I can’t get it off.  My joint is too large to let it come off my finger.”  He looked disgusted, but his attention was diverted to something else momentarily.

Then Thony spoke up.  “They say that they know that we have $50,000.  They saw it in a black case at the airport.”

“We don’t have $50,000 and would never carry that into any country,” I exclaimed. 

Thony translated again, “They want money.”

“We’ll give them what we have, but it isn’t nearly $50,000,” I said.

“They say that they have to report back to the airport what they get,” Thony said.

At some point, Ben* came to the table and sat down on the opposite side from me and to my left.  The second man suddenly whopped him on the side of his head, making such a loud cracking sound that I feared my team member might really be hurt.  He demanded Ben get his head down.  At that moment I realized these men were not beyond using violence to get what they wanted.

With the demand for money, Ben took out his wallet and laid some bills on the table.  “If we find you are holding out on us, you will be in trouble,” the gunman warned him menacingly.  It may have been at that point that he hit Ben a second time.  Ben suddenly remembered that he might have more in a hidden compartment in his wallet.  He told the gunman this through Thony, took out his wallet once again, and found some more bills that were hidden in it.  None of the rest of us had any money on our persons.

The third man stayed in the shadows.  I never did get a good look at him.  “Is this everyone?” they demanded. 

“No,” Thony told them.  “There’s another couple who have already gone to bed.” By this time the third man was opening the door to the bedroom next to the entrance of the guesthouse.  The couple had only been married a few weeks, and so we had given them the privacy of their own room.

When the thug entered their room, he demanded that they come out with the rest of the team.  The Haitian husband’s fear was that his wife would be a target for rape.  He knew of a recent incident when a man broke into a Haitian pastor’s home and raped the wife.  He kept his arms wrapped protectively around his wife as they came to the table and sat across from me. Then he pulled her onto his lap.

Sue* feared that as they riffled through our things in the dorm rooms and found more money, they would come back to torment or harm us. She begged to be allowed to go get money that she knew was in her suitcase. I didn’t want her to go alone into the bedroom with the leader of the gang, fearing for her safety. Finally they gave in to her insistence. Things were already strewn about, but she managed to find the money and bring it back to the table.

Then a couple of the men spoke up. They each had more money in their room. They too were allowed to leave the table and go to their dorm room.  Things were tossed about, but they managed to find their funds and bring them back to the table. Again the gunman demanded my wedding ring and again I told him I couldn’t remove it. Before the event was over, they demanded it a third time. I thought that maybe they would grab a knife from a set that was in plain sight and chop off my finger.  But again the Lord protected each of us from physical harm.

While the second man stood guard, his gun pointed at us, the other two continued searching through our things and tossing them into a duffle bag, a backpack, and a computer case.  They picked up cameras, cell phones, a CD player and CDs, two laptop computers and five wedding bands among miscellaneous other items. The wedding rings were the most distressing loss to the group.

Finally, the trio seemed to be in a hurry to move on. They demanded that Thony come with them. My heart sank as they took him to the door at gunpoint. They turned back and warned us to keep our heads down and not to talk. I knew throughout the time that I needed to keep alert to what was going on, so instead of burying my head in my folded arms, I put my chin down but kept an eye on things. I was at a good vantage point, sitting directly in line with the door plus able to see either side of me and observe the rest of the team and the gunmen.

My mind raced to ascertain what the gunmen were up to. Were they going to take Thony outside and beat him? Were they still determined that we had $50,000 and they were going to hold him for ransom? Since he could identify them, would they simply take him outside and kill him? Later we learned that when they got to the door, two of them began to argue. One said he had to go with them. The other said they needed to tie him up and leave him behind. Finally the latter won out and they escorted him back to the table. They had tied his hands behind his back.

“Stand up!” they demanded the Haitian husband.  As he moved to meet their demands, his wife began clinging to him and crying out, “No! No!”  I realized the situation was quickly escalating again.  I knew something must be done to calm her and get her away from him.

“Let her come over here to me!” I said firmly.  Thony, although bound by the strap, still had to serve as the translator. The leader looked at me and nodded. As soon as she was beside me, I held her hands tightly as we watched anxiously to see what was next.

One of the men took the end of the strap and tied the husband’s hands behind his back. Now he and Thony were linked together. “Get face down on the floor,” they demanded. It was another tense moment as both men fell face down on the floor.  Were they going to shoot the men in the back of the head? But the gunmen quickly gathered the bags they had loaded and left with another warning to the team to keep our heads down and not say a word.

I later wrote down fifteen tense moments when the situation started to escalate, but “the angel of the Lord was encamping around us and delivered us each time.”  My paraphrase of Psalm 34.

We waited several more minutes, heads down, everyone silent. Again I prayed, “Lord, show me what to do and when.” Finally, I felt that I needed to go as quietly as possible to the door and get it locked. On my way, I looked at the clock that had been behind me. Midnight. They had been here an hour!

Quickly I made my way back and knelt by Thony and began untying him.  As I worked to get the knots out, I heard the other man quietly start to sing, “You are Awesome Mighty God in this place, You are Awesome Mighty God, Abba Father…”  Slowly, quietly one by one the rest of the team joined him.  Ben came to my side and took over untying the men.

Once we knew we were safe, we began discussing what had happened. “You all did exactly what you needed to do,” I commended the team.  “If any one of you had reacted differently, the outcome could have been so different.  Preparation for this kind of thing doesn’t happen in orientation or even prior to coming on the trip. God has been preparing us for some time to go through this.”

Later during Critical Stress Debriefing, I was asked what God was saying to me through this experience. I thought hard and long about that, but I felt it was more what I was saying to Him:
              You are faithful to Your promises!
              You are my Rock. My life is built on a Solid Foundation that is not shaken by circumstances that come into my life.
              You truly are my Shepherd, and I know Your voice!

Probably more so than that any other point in my life, I “knew” what to do and say moment by moment. 

This is what the Lord says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go. Isaiah 48:17 NIV

* Some Names have been changed to protect privacy.

My nephew recently posted on Facebook a picture and note about his biracial son, Cruz. The children in Cruz’s classroom represented different ethnicities.  Yet this preschooler came home and said to his mother, “I wish I was white.”

When I read the post, my mind flew back to an incident that happened in the 1980s.  My husband and I had a team of young adults on a mission trip in Jamaica.  We were having dinner at the home of one of the members of the church where we were ministering.  Our host was a banker and the family would have been considered an upper middle class family.  Their two children spoke English very well, so it was fun to talk with them.  Their little boy who was 4 or 5 sat on Art’s lap playing with his hands.  I watched as he examined first Art’s hands and then his own.  Finally he looked up and said, “I wish I was white!”  My heart wrenched at how ingrained the concept that “white is superior” was in this child’s mind.  Yet this was not the only time I encountered such prejudice.

Two African-American sisters worked at the facility where I was an administrator in the 1990s.  The younger of the two was light skinned, the other was very dark skinned.  More than once I heard the younger woman belittling her sister or making unkind remarks about her color.  This was always troubling to me.  Why should the color of one’s skin determine how one was treated?

Moving on into the years around the turn of the century, I was working with people from many different countries and ethnicities.  As I prepared things to take along on a trip to an Asian country, my hostess asked if I could please bring something “to lighten my skin.”  I didn’t even know such a thing existed.  To me, there were a lot of people who went to tanning salons so their skin would have the rich tan that I knew she possessed naturally.

I also quickly learned while traveling in different areas of the world that lighter-skinned children had a better chance of getting an education than a darker-skinned child in the same family.  Boys were also given preference over girls.  So this concept that “white is better” is not indigenous to the US but can be found in many areas of the world.

I used to think that if children weren’t taught to regard the color of one’s skin as important, they would not make this distinction.  My father who grew up in the 1920s often told of visiting a butcher shop with his mother in Detroit.  A black mother came in with her son who was about the same age as my dad who was a preschooler.  My dad had never seen a black child before and the two boys began chasing each other around the butcher block.  Suddenly they turned and laughing hugged each other.  It made no difference to either one at that moment what color skin each wore. They were far more interested in having fun.  And that is the way it should be!

I certainly don’t have any answers, but meanwhile my heart bleeds for each child who feels inferior because of the color of his/her skin. Bill and Gloria Gaither wrote a song that says, “I’m a great big bundle of potentiality.”  And I believe that.  But until children are comfortable in their own skin, they will have difficulty developing their God given potential. I may not have any answers to the issues faced by a child like Cruz, but this I know—each child is precious in the sight of God and deserves to be treated as such.

I don’t like facing life without my soul mate.  I hate the word, “widow.”  But looking back, I realize God began preparing me for this phase of my life a long time ago!

When we were first married, I was only 19 and Art was not quite 21.  I had never lived independent from my parents although the previous year I had gone to college 450 miles from home.  I knew that if I got in a jam, I could always call my parents and they would do what they could to help me.  In the first few years of marriage, I transferred my sense of security from my parents to my husband.  Art always seemed to know what to do in any given situation.  He was naturally a problem solver. 

We joined a prayer fellowship in another state.  But Art needed to return to Michigan to finish turning his construction business over to his brother.  He left our young son and me with people I barely knew in a strange community, and with limited resources.  This was before the days of cell phones and we had no landline in the house we were temporarily renting.  I had no way of contacting him or anyone else back in Michigan.  The days went by and I didn’t hear from him.  I was lonely and afraid.  And that gave fertile soil for Satan to bombard my mind with “what if’s.” 

During our time there, the Lord was teaching me many lessons about my relationship with him and the truths of his Word and how they applied to my walk with him.  It seemed that as I was learning these lessons, the Lord would give me the melody and words for a song that expressed what I was learning.  One day when I was having a difficult time and feeling so fearful, it seemed the Lord impressed me with the thought that my security wasn’t in Art.  Nor was my security in my parents or any other persons.  My security was in him alone.  He allowed me to sense the reality of his presence in a way I never had before.  Then the words to a song came to me:

I love Thy presence, Oh my God,
Thou art my Friend divine.
In Thee art all I need or want, security is mine.
As long as to Thy hand I cling
I need not have a fear.
I love Thy presence oh my God; I love to feel Thee near.

I love Thy presence, oh my God,
Thou are my strength each day.
As we go hand in hand along life’s weary, lonesome way
Thy love upholds, defeats the foe,
and puts his powers at bay.
I love Thy presence oh my God, be near me now I pray.

That was my first lesson in learning that my security wasn’t in Art, but was in trusting God whatever the circumstances might be.  Little did I realize at the time how important this was if God was going to open doors to ministry that would demand my trust in him alone.  But it was learning this that gave me the confidence to take many steps of faith through the years.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

I don’t know what lies ahead, but I am confident that as I take the first step, God will be there to keep me safe.  I am secure in his hands!

Art wrote me a love letter for our 56^th anniversary last summer. In the letter he said, “Through the years we’ve had a few bumps in the road, but nothing that our love could not overcome. …It is very likely that our greatest trial together has just begun. But as in everything else through life we will be there for each other. God has given us just enough trials, just enough heartaches and just enough difficulty to make us strong for the trial that is ahead. …and we will weather this one triumphantly.”

Just a few days before, Art was told he had cancer. We did not yet know all that would mean, but we did know that his condition was serious and at the very least would necessitate surgery. Two things stood out to Art as we were in the early days of our journey: we needed to be submitted to whatever God’s will was for us; and he wanted to keep the joy! And keep the joy, he did! 

How does one submit a situation like cancer to the sovereignty of God? And how does one finish the course with joy? As people came to visit Art, we were often asked that. I soon realized that it went back to something Art said in that love letter. God had allowed us through the years to experience just enough heartache and trials to strengthen our faith and prepare us for this final journey together.

One such incident happened years ago. The staff at the church where Art was senior pastor gathered at our home following one of the special Christmas services. Our minister of music and youth and his wife had a baby less than 3 months old. Little Matthew was sleeping so his mother asked if she could lay him down on one of our beds. Our bed was piled with the coats of our guests, so I had her lay Matthew on our son Stephen’s bed.

No one was in a hurry to leave that evening. It had been a full day with morning services and the special program that evening and everyone seemed to enjoy time to relax and fellowship. Stephen was tired though and was ready to head for bed. When he went to his room, he discovered Matthew there so he came and got me. I reluctantly went to move the baby fearing he would wake up. The moment I touched him, I knew something was terribly wrong. His body was stiff and cold.  My mind raced. What should I do? How could I let Beth know her baby was gone? “Go get your Dad!” I commanded Stephen. He went to the stairs and called to him. But Art wanted to know what the matter was before he came. Finally in desperation I called to him. By that time everyone in the room was alerted to a problem and both he and Scott came rushing up the stairs.

911 was called and the EMTs arrived, picked up Matthew and rushed him off in the ambulance. We quickly followed in our car. At the hospital we were ushered into a small room with Beth and Scott, the baby’s parents. After what seemed an eternity, the doctor came in. They had done what they could, but Matthew was gone. At that moment we were confronted with what we already knew to be. I remember Scott crying out. Then he said in essence the words of Job, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.” No anger.  No railing at God asking why.  Just submission to what God had chosen for their precious baby.

I remember Art was so impressed that in that moment of loss Scott was able to simply submit to what God had allowed. In the face of this tragedy, Scott and Beth had not turned away from God but leaned hard on Him. And I learned that even when our world falls apart, God is there.

And so as we began our journey, we knew the power of submission. And God brought to mind the words of an old song by that title:

Not what I wish to be,
or where I wish to go,
for who am I that I should choose my way?
The Lord will choose for me,
Tis’ better far I know,
So let Him bid me go or stay.*

*Submission byC. Austin Miles/Mrs. R.R. Forman

Rain pelted the windshield as my father pulled into the gravel parking lot of the local grocery store. He quickly dashed into the store for something my mother had asked him to pick up. I waited in the car. We were on our way home from school for lunch. I stared out the window on my side of the car. Something was lying on the ground a few yards away. Suddenly I caught my breath. It was a person lying there in the mud! I watched as a truck pulled into the lot and skirted the fallen figure. Then Daddy was back with a sack of groceries.

“Look, Daddy, who is that over there?” I asked hesitantly, wondering what my father would do if it really was a person lying there.

My father glanced over to where I was pointing. “Why that looks like Indian Dan!” he exclaimed.

“But, Daddy, why would he just lie there in the mud and rain?” I questioned anxiously.

“He’s probably drunk and just happened to fall there,” came his soft reply. Dad started the car. My heart sank. We couldn’t just leave the old man there in all this rain. What if he was sick and not just drunk as my father supposed? Without a word, Daddy pulled the car up beside the crumpled figure. Then he got out of the car.

Could it be that my father in his clean, well-pressed business suit and topcoat was really going to help that sodden, muddy figure to his shaky feet? As Daddy got the old Indian sitting upright in the puddle of water, the mud and gravel oozed from his matted hair and streamed down his face. They struggled together until finally old Dan was safely seated in the front seat of our immaculate care. Though my father took great pains to see that our care was always clean and polished, he didn’t seem at all disturbed about the muddy water that now was soaking the front seat off old Dan’s clothing, or aware of the nauseating odor that nearly gagged me.

I crouched in a corner of the backseat and watched wide-eyed as my dad got in and began to drive. Where was he going? What was he going to do with the old man? Questions stormed through my mind, but I was too scared to breathe a word. I’d never seen anyone drunk before, and now here I was in the same car with a drunk!

Indian Dan was a foreboding figure with his ruddy complexion and squinting, bloodshot eyes. We children had heard such wild tales about him that though our parents assured us that he was perfectly harmless, we were fearful of the very sight of him. In fact, we would go around the block rather than walk past him.

As we rode through the rain, I remember old Dan making some unintelligible noises and my father speaking gently to him. On out into the country we rode. We turned down a back road and suddenly I realized we were nearing the Indian reservation by the river. We pulled up in front of a small, tar-papered shack. My father got out and dashed through the rain to the door. A heavy set, worn, middle-aged woman answered his knock. They talked for a moment with gestures toward the car, but I couldn’t hear anything they said. Then Daddy came back to the car and helped old Dan out and to the door of the shack. The woman reached out to steady him and quickly helped him inside. The door closed. They were gone.

Dad quickly returned to the car and we headed home for our lunch. I don’t recall much else that happened. But recalling that incident as a young adult, I suddenly understood the meaning of the word compassion. It meant caring enough about someone to help them, even if it cost you something like a late lunch, a dirty car, or a dry-cleaning bill for a muddy coat or suit.

Years later in a tribute to my dad I wrote, “I am sure when you picked up old Indian Dan from the mud puddle, put him into our car and drove him out to the reservation  you had no idea that you were teaching me a life lesson on compassion…a lesson that would follow me into adulthood and even be preparation for ministry I would later have with people at Oakton Manor and then around the world!”