Hey......this is Maw Maw Dee here to tell you the best story ever.
Got your cocoa and blanket? Are you near a warm fireplace? If not, then this story will kindle your heart and soul.
Maybe I should tell you first a little about myself. Do you know what a PK is? That is a preachers kid. Yes that's me. I have been a PK since the 1960's. My grandfather, father, husband, son, and a brother in-law and even some distant uncles were evangelical preachers. Now what does that say about me? Well for one--I have viewed the church from every angle there is. Good and bad.
I was taught from my very early youth to believe in the One, True God, Jesus Christ. He is Lord and Saviour of my life and He can be yours too if only you will let Him.
Now just because you are brought up in a pastor's home does not mean that you know all there is to know about God, church, people or anything else for that matter. But sometimes I guess you get to thinkin' "I got this all figured out. THEN comes a day you get married and you are on your own.
Life on your own is different. Not like being under mom and dad's roof. Now you make all the decisions with the help of your spouse, which we hope will be a Christian also. (that makes life a little easier). When you know your spouse and yourself are in this as a team to work for the Lord. It can be a wonderful life.
Children soon came into our life and what a life-changing experience. You love them to death as we say in the south. My boys would trust their daddy to throw them in the air and catch them from all angles. They would climb as high as they could on furniture, whether it be the bed, dressers, even appliances and say "catch me Daddy, I'm gonna jump." They knew Dad would catch them no problem.
Then all of a sudden came the questions! What? How come this, and that? Why momma? Where? And you tell the kids. "Enough with the questions. I've got this don't you trust me anymore? I think maybe God feels this way a lot of times when we ask the same questions over and over.
Life for us in our home was no different from any other except we had church responsibilities along with the parenting issues. Our boys had so many sports events in a weeks time that we were hardly ever home until late at night.
So we were constantly busy. Between the church, family and work we were totally spent. My prayer life had gone by the wayside with so much of life pulling and tugging at me. You would think that, that would be the first place I would go if so much was going on, but all I can say is that it wasn't until all of a sudden one evening, as I sat down to read the Bible and I fell asleep, that I realized that every time I started to read the Word, I would fall asleep. I told the Lord, "Please God if you have something you want to tell me wake me. Let me know. I do want to spend time with you Lord, but it seems I cannot stay awake long enough to even read a little scripture."
Be careful what you pray for, because within two weeks later, I was awakened at 3:00 am. I heard my name 3 times. I was reminded of the story of Samuel and said, " Yes Lord, I hear you."
I was also reminded for the next 3 hours that I was created to Praise the Lord and I had not been doing that. So those hours were spent praising, singing, quoting scripture reading the Word, and just listening to all the Lord had for me. Those were the greatest 3 hours I have ever spent with the Lord. All the details of this is a book for another time. But I felt I had to tell you this to let you know where I was with God at the time.
From this time on, I finally began to LISTEN to what God was trying to say to me. You have to learn His voice, so when He speaks you can listen and reply if need be.
The next year was a trying one financially. The economic fabric of our society was decaying. Jobs were going much further south. Many were losing their jobs. It was a hard time for everyone. One evening as I was driving home from work I felt God was trying to tell me something. I began to listen and His question to me was, "Do you trust me ?" I said " "Yes Lord I trust You, I have from my youth." He said "No, do you REALLY trust me?" Is there anything you trust more than me? Your job? People, money, what do you trust more than ME?"
I told the Lord, I trusted Him and in Him only do I trust. He said, "if you trust me then quit your job and move away from here, where I tell you to go." I think I know how Abraham felt when God told him to pack up and move to a place God would show him.
I know it sounds crazy to some people but saying you trust God and doing it are two very different things. At this point I had learned to listen and do as He said. None of this made much sense to any of my family. Even God fearing family had problems with it I think. The Lord let me know He was in control and He would take care of everything.
It is hard to do what God tells you when family members think you are wrong. Friends let me tell you...if your child comes to you and tells you I feel that God is telling them to do this , that or the other thing. Just pray for them and trust their feelings. They know what God is telling them if they are listening to Him. Just saying.......don't make it any harder on them than it is already.
My prayer for our family then became. "Open the doors we need and shut the doors we don't need." I'm not going to say that every path was easy but going through the doors God opened for us meant that we were on the right road to where God wanted us to be. Accepting the closed doors as well as the open doors was an adjustment to make. Many times you think this door is the right one and when it gets shut you think again, WHY Lord? Then you have to remember I prayed that God would shut the doors that are wrong for me to keep from getting on the wrong path. If you REALLY trust HIM then you say. "Thank You Lord Again". Needless to say, Thank you Lord, became one of my theme songs for the next several years.
My husbands business had us traveling for several years, but was able to close it in 2004 and come back home to be closer to our families.
My husband was a man that enjoyed playing sports of all kinds. He liked to play softball, basketall, work out in the gym, and most favorite was running. He sometimes ran 8-10 miles a day. I never really understood that. What can you say...to each his own?
In April of 2008 he had an event take place at a softball game that would change the rest of his life. Just the week before he had jumped so high, it had to be 5 ft off the ground beause the player ran under him. He was quite agile, the all-time athlete. This game was his last. Something happened to cause him to lose control of his neck and he could not hold it up. He could only look down. He had surgery to correct it, but it only lasted a few months.
We soon found out he had the worst kind of ALS. His Dr. said he had never seen anything like it before. He had the fast kind. Every day was exponentially worse that the day before. Needless to say it was a blow to him and me. He had never really been sick a day in his life. Hardly a sniffle in winter. This was so hard to understand. The Dr. told him he might have 5 years. I confronted the Dr. and the doctor told me privily he might have 6 months. I knew better God had already told me that he would have 3 or 4 months left.
My mind and my heart had to get prepared for this. All of this was such a shock to watch an athlete fall apart is one of the worst thing to witness. When you have ALS everything quits working except the brain.
Through it all I was still going to Trust God with this situation.
My husband passed away April 2009, Easter Sunday morning.
The day of his funeral there were double rainbows in the sky to double remind me that God had this covered. I was still going to trust God with my future whatever that was.
to be continued.............stay tuned for part 2.