Relocating to a new area and a new culture typically brings feelings of loneliness and isolation, which I’ve experienced so many times. God created us for relationship and made provision for it through His body, the Church. In my long cultural and religious Mennonite Brethren heritage, the gathering of believers is central to life. Though religion itself never saved anyone, it set for me a foundational precedent.

• My roots go back to German-Dutch Anabaptists who left Holland because of religious persecution. They settled in West Prussia for about 250 years until the Prussian government eliminated exemption from military service on religious grounds.
  When Catherine the Great of Russia issued a Manifesto in 1763 to invite Europeans to settle in Russia and granted Mennonites exemption from military service for twenty years, they accepted the invitation and established colonies that produced 6% of all Russian wheat.
  Some who strongly believed in repentance and acceptance of Christ as a personal Savior, as well as discipline, prayer, and Bible study, formally broke with the main church in 1860 to become the Mennonite Brethren.
  In 1870 a Russification plan ended all special privileges. The Mennonites had ten years to conform or leave Russia. The loss of exemption from military service and their right to use the German language in their schools, started a migration to the Americas. My grandmother Quiring came from Alexanderthal, South Russia at nineteen years old. Though there is no Russian in them, all my great grandparents were born in Russia and migrated to Minnesota or Saskatchewan.

With that kind of heritage, we never even considered not attending church. Someone told us of a Mennonite church south of town, so we went. When we walked in, no one said anything to us until one man told Daddy, “In this church, men and women do not sit together.” Then he asked, “Kounst du auch Deutch?” Daddy told him, yes, he knew German. Mommy and I sat on the ladies’ side. Mommy felt very lonely since our move. She tried to make friends with a lady with little children, but the lady wasn’t interested. I recognized a girl from school but even she didn’t talk to me. We sat through Sunday School and the church service, then walked out very slowly, hoping somebody would talk to us, but nobody did. Outside the church, we found Daddy with Dicky. Mommy asked, “Doesn’t anyone want to talk with you either?”

He said, “No.” When we got into the car he added, “Well, we have been here twice. The first time and the last time.”

We noticed a building on Main Street in Carrot River called The Gospel Mission. The shabby white Mission with storefront windows was tightly sandwiched between two other old buildings. A sign in the window gave the service times. The next Sunday we arrived on time but nobody else came. Someone later told the preacher we moved there so he came to visit us. Daddy told him we had been to the church but the door was locked. He said that was a sign from last year, but they never bothered taking it out when they changed the time because new people didn’t come anyway. He said he would invite us to church but because of some trouble, they were closing the church down. We decided to visit anyway.

Just a few people came, very few—maybe fifteen. An elderly man from the Salvation Army whom everyone called “Dad Little” played an old pump organ, was happy, and sang heartily. We joined in with gusto! Perhaps the addition of a new family was the encouragement they needed. It didn’t take long and more people began to come. Pretty soon we had thirty and forty people coming and it continued to grow. We enjoyed the people, were friendly, and they came to know us. When we sang, I remember feeling a bit embarrassed because my Mother sang louder than anyone else. She was used to good, strong Mennonite music. She took the junior high and high school girls under her wing and held a Bible class for them on Wednesday nights. As the body of believers continued to grow, they hired a preacher and purchased an existing building from the country, which they moved onto a lot in town.

Many Mennonites hold strongly to their religious and cultural roots. Attending the Gospel Mission with people without Mennonite roots, I learned early that roots in a religious system mean nothing compared to a relationship with Jesus Christ and with His people. What matters is that God gave His only begotten Son to die in my place to pay for my sins, that He physically rose again to intercede for me at the Father’s right hand, that He sent His Holy Spirit to indwell all who receive that free gift of salvation, and to strengthen them to live by God’s grace and power to love each other.

His body—The Church—serves to fill that inherent longing for love, acceptance, and oneness. Of course, Satan hates the Church, but Jesus said He would build His church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it (Matt. 16:18). Through my years, I’ve seen church battles, splits, and hurt, but also victories, grace, and love. God knows the hearts of those who belong to Him and He loves His Bride! I deeply value my roots of theological and biblical conviction, of ancestors who sacrificially forged their way to religious freedom and grandparents and parents who prayed for me. Yet religious roots or pedigree without relationship is dead. It cannot compare with a personal relationship with Jesus Himself. Peter tells us, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy (1Peter 1:8).

We snuggled with Daddy on the couch and after our Bible story he began to talk about living on a farm—about chickens and ducks and geese and gathering eggs, about playing in the barn and buying a cow and calves and pigs. It all sounded absolutely delightful! Actually, he had already traded the store for a farm up north—sight-unseen. His doctor had told him he needed to get out of the stress of business and try farming to ease the long-term effects of polio on his nervous system.

So we loaded a truck with all our possessions, including my budgie bird, a pregnant cat, and a stupid, lovable Irish Setter that rode in a wooden crate tied to the roof of the cab. Off we drove for 200 miles on gravel roads to a remote place up north called Carrot River. Within a half mile of our farm, the road suddenly ended. A heavy spring run-off had washed out the bridge.

However, the neighboring farmers alerted one another, met us there, unloaded our truck, hauled all our stuff over the swollen stream on planks, drove it half a mile, then carried it over another bridge-washout at our driveway. Without telephones, electricity, or affluence, these neighbors had learned to care for one another. These were tough men and women with large families—survivors, who had carved out their homesteads by hand and made a hard living by farming the rich northern soil.

Inside our farmhouse kitchen stood a woodstove, a few cupboards and a sink without faucets. Under the sink sat a five-gallon slop pail to catch the dishwater and food scraps. On the counter we put a pail of water with a dipper for drinking. Every gallon we pumped from the well had to be carried in and out. Mommy heated water for our baths on the woodstove in a large kettle to add to a three-foot-square, galvanized tub set in the middle of the kitchen floor. We bathed in turn from youngest to oldest. We used the outhouse in the daytime and a chamber pot at night.

In the middle of the old linoleum kitchen floor, a trap door opened into a hole in the ground called a root cellar. A small living room extended to the right of the kitchen followed by my parent’s small bedroom. To the left, an oversized hallway led to stairs ascending to the unfinished attic. Dickie and I slept in the hallway. When evening came, we often sat outside but had to light smudge pots of peat moss and dry leaves to smoke away the mosquitoes. In the house at night, we used coal oil lanterns for light.

That spring Dicky and I eagerly explored every nook and cranny of the farm. I can still remember the pungency of oil in the old sheds, smells of rich black earth, wet peat moss emerging from the snow, pussy willows bursting, and green things growing. We rode our bikes all over the muddy farmyard, that is until my bike tipped and I fell into a patch of hive-raising nettles—my first clue that farm life had it’s dark side.

A few yards from our house stood the pump shack and a storage shed. We always primed the pump by pouring water into it and then pumped like crazy. Without a refrigerator, Mother hung food in a pail down in the well to keep it cold. Daddy bought her a wringer washer and put up a clothesline. They put in a huge garden beside the barn where the soil was most fertile. The vegetables grew quickly during the long days of sunlight this far north. We had to help Mommy keep the garden weeded, which I don’t remember as fun at all.

In summer, lots of company came from Saskatoon and Dalmeny—so much company! When they came, they always filled the car with as many people as they could get in it and stayed for days. Some even stayed a couple weeks with their whole family for their vacation. Mommy baked and cooked for the whole gang on her woodstove and bought flour by the 100-lb. bags.

I can’t even imagine how my mother could work so hard with no modern conveniences. She was young, strong, resourceful, independent and a graduate of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, where she and two of her sisters sang on the BIOLA Hour radio program as the Schultz Trio. After graduation she made plans to go to Africa as a missionary and packed her trunk to go. When God closed that door, He opened another one in Dalmeny for her to teach Bible school and lead their choir. That’s where and when she met my dad. They married in Dallas, Oregon but returned to Saskatchewan.

Proverbs 16:1 says, “To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the reply of the tongue.” God did not call my mother to Africa, but to primitive living in northern Saskatchewan. Though her sisters lived in beautiful, modern homes with all the advantages of affluent American living, God gave Mom a calling with the strength and grace to live with so much less. I saw her live among these farm folk, become one of them, and minister the practical love of Jesus to them.

As I grew, my growing independence clashed with Mom’s management skills many times, yet I look upon her now as my hero, my mentor, my role model for strength and faithfulness. She carried 1Cor. 15:58 as her life verse, Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. Mother paved a road for me that I can walk because I know He leadeth me, He leadeth me; by His own hand He leadeth me. His faithful follower I would be, for by His hand He leadeth me.

Yes, I grew up on a different planet. A planet on which the early foundations of my life continued to form. We began each morning at Dalmeny Elementary by singing Oh Canada. Then the teacher read a story from the Bible. At the end of each day we sang God Save the Queen. The first two grades were combined in one classroom with one teacher.

My mother worked long hours in our store with my dad, so in first grade she hired an older girl to help me learn to read. I learned quickly with her help. I knew Mommy was not happy with my first grade teacher because she did not teach me to read. One day I figured out that I could think bad things about her and she would never know. Suddenly to my surprise and shame, she looked straight at me and asked, “MarJean, are you mad at me?” I learned that my face could betray my ugly thoughts!

A girl seated at the back of the second grade side of the room was a really good artist. One day I walked behind her desk to look at her picture and I told her how beautiful it was. Then, pointing to my own picture, I told her mine was not very good, hoping she would return my compliment. Instead, she agreed with me. Psychology lesson 101— When you fish for a compliment by saying something negative about yourself, that “fish” can slap you in the face!

A beautiful blue budgie bird came to live with us on my sixth birthday. We trimmed her wings and I made little houses from shoe boxes and cut windows and doors for her to go in and out. However, her wings grew back and one day she flew up and disappeared completely. I looked everywhere but couldn’t find her. So I knelt down by my bed, folded my hands, closed my eyes, and prayed earnestly to Jesus to help me find my bird. When I opened my eyes, there, right in front of me on my bed, stood my bird! I knew beyond doubt that God heard and answered my prayer!

Christmas Day after my seventh birthday, most of our relatives gathered at my grandparent’s home in Dalmeny. Being the second youngest boy of twelve siblings, my Dad’s relatives filled the house. At some point, I heard a conversation about becoming a Christian. That Christmas Night, God’s Spirit drew me to Himself, so I asked one of my cousins to come with me into Gramma’s bedroom. We knelt by Gramma’s bed and I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and come into my heart—and He did!

As if I had not spent enough time in hospitals, my tonsils and adenoids became inflamed that winter so out they came. I remember the doctor telling me to blow away the bad ether smell. So I took a big breath to blow it way and immediately the room spun into a tunnel. I awoke very sick and nauseous. Once home I needed to lay still, so I got to watch Disney’s Dumbo on our small black and white television, but felt too sick to keep watching. A few days later company came over and I felt better so I ran and played with the children. However, my nose began to bleed until it came out of my mouth. I still remember the fast ride back to the hospital that night. The hemorrhage finally stopped and we came home and life went on.

One spring day my teacher asked us to pass our papers to the person behind us for grading. I understood her to say, “Draw a lion beside every right answer.” I already loved to draw so I quickly drew a lion’s mane and face beside the first right answer. The teacher read the next answer and the next and I could not possibly draw lions that fast! I panicked and raised my hand. The child in front of me turned around and exclaimed, “She’s drawing on my paper!” The children immediately gathered around me with the teacher who said, “No, MarJean! I said a line, not a lion.” Snickers even from second graders can leave a lasting impression of feeling really, really stupid!

Second grade also brought success. All the district schools came together for an oratory competition for grades one through eight. My mother had taught public speaking and English in Dalmeny Bible School when she met my Dad, so she taught me a poem called, The Little Elf. I barely remember reciting it before the large crowd, but I clearly remember walking home hand in hand with my mother, knowing that she was very proud of me. The small silver trophy I received for first place gets polished maybe once every five to ten years, but still serves to remind me that I was capable of doing something valuable.

I may have grown up on a different planet, but the lessons are the same: Our faces reveal what is in our hearts; Putting ourselves down to be affirmed can backfire; God hears and answers our prayers at just the right time; We all need Jesus to come into our hearts and forgive our sins; Life is fragile; Feeling stupid hurts; Feeling valued heals.

“. . . being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6

IN AND OUT OF EVERY STORY,  GOD weaves His love and grace. His nail-pierced hands hold the threads of our lives as He intertwines them into His plan and eternal purpose. He wrote each of our days in His book before one of them came to be (Psa.139:16). So I continue to tell my story and pray God will reveal more of Himself to me as I write and through me to encourage you. I choose to trust Him for that sweet grace.

SO Daddy bought the Variety Store on Main Street and we moved back to Dalmeny while I was still five years old. Its wall-sized front window faced the street, which my little brother broke one day by throwing rocks at it. Upstairs was a big room with a lot of dusty old shelves. My parents cleaned it up, built rooms, and made it our home.

On one side of the store I could help myself to bins of fruit. Candy lined the shelves by the counter in the center of the store, but I preferred the fruit. On the other side of the store were shelves of tools, to which my little brother helped himself and ended up leaving at various places in town. Just one man returned the ones he found. Both Daddy and Mommy worked in the store while Dicky and I were free to come and go. Every night Daddy poured dark green pebbly stuff all over the wooden floors downstairs and then swept it up again, which didn’t make any sense to me. Some nights my brother and I fell asleep upstairs in the living room before they came to put us to bed.

One day as Dicky and I watched people come into the store through the floor register between our bedroom and the front counter downstairs, we decided to see how many people we could hit with our spit. We hit some people and missed others. All was funny until a bald man stood below us. Sure enough! We made a direct hit, but had not anticipated the not-so-funny response when he looked up and saw us. Bad, bad idea!

The building to our right was called Central. They managed the telephone service. A telephone was a big wooden box on the wall of each home with a handle on the right to crank the ringing sound and a bell shaped handle on the left attached by a cord to put to your ear to listen. The box also had a long metal piece that came out of the front to talk into. Every phone in town rang whenever anyone got a call so everyone could listen to anyone’s conversations if they wanted to, which they did. Each person on that “party line” had their own code of short or long rings so you knew if the ring was for you.

Every day at noon, an older boy from Central walked across the small empty lot to the side of our store and pushed a button up high on the outside wall. When he did so, a siren sounded. One day I looked up at that button and decided to push it myself. I could not reach it, but with a little ingenuity, I found my little bother and a long stick. I lifted him up and told him to push the button with the stick, which he did. Of course the siren sounded long and loud. Immediately people ran from every side of town until I could hardly make my way through the crowd. Suddenly Daddy appeared in front of me and asked if I rang the siren. I had to tell him, yes. The only other time besides noon that the siren rang was for a fire so everyone came to see the fire, but of course no fire existed. I still don’t know why my Daddy thought to ask me if I did it.

To our left was a small grocery store and on the other side of that was a dark and very dirty automotive garage. One Sunday afternoon my friend and I saw a ladder going up to the roof of the garage and decided to climb it, even in my pretty white and yellow church dress. It felt wonderful and daring on top of that roof! Then I noticed a shiny place that looked slippery so I scooted my bottom down onto it for a little slide. Suddenly, the “slide” broke beneath me! I scrambled off, but before I could get down the ladder, Mr. dirty garage man raced around the corner to find out who was on his roof! He told my Dad he heard the window break and looked up to see a patch of white and yellow coming through the sky light. Of course I was in big trouble!

Our playmates, Murray and Juliene, lived at the back of the post office across the street. Murray and Dicky played barber one day with an electric shaver. Soon Murray’s thick black hair sported lots of white scalp spots before his Dad found them and just said, “Well son, did you pay your barber?”

Further up Main Street was the school I would soon attend, and down Main Street were the train tracks where kids put nails and other metal things for the train wheels to flatten. Mommy said not to put stuff on the tracks or the train could derail. That was a scary thought!

Because of the effects of polio, I still needed naps until I started school. One day Mommy put me in her bed for a nap. I hated naps and lay there thinking bad thoughts. Suddenly I became aware that those bad thoughts were from the devil. So… I raised my foot and kicked him off the bed! When Mommy came to see why I was giggling, I told her what I did. He did not return to tempt me again that hour.

I got to thinking one night about how lost the devil was, so as I lay in my bed I told him all about Jesus and how he needed to ask Jesus to forgive his sins. When I excitedly told my mother what I had done, she very seriously told me never ever to talk to the devil like that again because he could never be saved.

I do remember he told me in my thoughts that I could sin if I wanted to because all I had to do afterward was ask Jesus to forgive me. Yet, I knew in my heart that was not a good idea. Our enemy respects not age nor innocence and tempts little children as he does adults. Yet, even then the Almighty kept His hand of protection over me and was deeply involved in my life. Even then He was drawing me to Himself and growing in me a spiritual awareness of good and evil, right and wrong.

“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” Philippians 2:12-13.

A cheerful heart is good medicine. Proverbs 17:22

WELCOME to some comic relief after the seriousness of past blogs. Inspired by All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum, I’ll share a bit of “wisdom” from the perspective of a five-year-old. As we learn to navigate through life, experience becomes our best teacher and humor can redeem that experience. What seemed so end-of-the-world traumatic to a five-year-old, ends up bringing a smile or even laughter given time and distance. Too many stories dot my fifth year of life to share at length, therefore, enjoy a few snippets from that year to remind you to smile at your own childhood experiences.

• When you swing on the lawn swing with a cute little neighbor boy across from you, do not let him lean over and kiss you, especially not if your parents are watching from the kitchen window. You just might burst into tears with embarrassment, Georgie will run away, and you may never see him again!
• When you get an idea to go home with a friend after kindergarten without permission, it is not a good idea because your parents will go to the police station to find you. Plus you have to be able to tell your friend’s dad how to drive you back to your house, and if you already have directional dyslexia, well, it takes some time to find it.
• Cutting off your ringlet, even if it keeps getting in your face while trying to cut out a jack-o-lantern in kindergarten, is not a good idea. Also, do not cut off another one when you get home.
• It is never a good idea to draw on walls no matter how great an artist your parents said you were. It can break your heart to actually be spanked for making something beautiful and for them not to understand that.
• Do not go for a walk in the garden in the spring, even with your mud boots on, because they get stuck and your sock foot will come right out and you’ll have to step into the mud so you won’t fall over. Then you’ll have to cry very loudly ‘cause Mommy does not like dirt, especially not mud, and she’s the only one around who can rescue you.
• It is a bad idea to make dots on your drawing paper with a sharp pencil when it is on a vinyl kitchen chair just because it sounds cool. And when your Daddy sees holes in the chair, don’t tell him you didn’t know you were making holes. If he believes you, he won’t spank you, but you’ll feel very guilty for lying.
• Never tip a full bottle of orange soda pop toward you from a high counter to reach the straw.
• Don’t eat too much watermelon before bedtime. A bad idea.
• It can be a good idea to stick your hand or foot over the edge of your bed at night to prove nothing will grab it even if you’re scared something will.
• It is a bad idea to play that you are blind anywhere near a long open staircase. It can scare the living daylights out of you when suddenly the floor is gone and you sort of bounce and fly all the way down the stairs, even if your Mommy catches you at the bottom.
• If your Daddy has an idea to bring home a brand new tiny puppy that doesn’t know where to go potty, don’t expect your Mommy to let you keep it for very long. And when you grow up, you’ll always kind of wonder what ever happened to that little puppy.
• Don’t chew on soft tar from the street even if it is someone else’s idea of chewing gum and don’t try to feed the gullible little neighbor boy dirt by the curb even if you have a spoon to do it.
• It is a cool idea to put dry dirt on top of a wet mud-pie because it feels soft and you can push on it without getting mud on your hand.
• It’s a bad idea to tell your little brother to do stuff you are scared to do, like jump off a dry docked diving board onto the sand. He will learn not trust you.
• When you are busy playing or drawing or making something, it is not a good idea to try to wait too long to use the bathroom!
• When your grampa lets you comb his hair, it is not a good idea to turn the comb around and around in his front wave. Even if he is a very kind and patient man, it still is a bad idea.

. . . if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding—indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2:1-5

In a few days I’ll post, “Store Adventures and the Devil.” You may not want to miss it!

Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. Psa. 62:8

Spring came, but I was not getting better. Then one morning my parents read from John 9 about Jesus putting clay on a blind man’s eyes to heal him. Daddy knew of a basement dig nearby so went there and brought home some clay, which they packed onto my knee with fervent prayer. God heard their prayer of faith and used the clay to draw out the infection. The swelling went down and the ache stopped. No coincidence. No doubt!

Yet, nightmares plagued me and I woke up screaming several times a night, night after night. My parents asked the doctor what they could do for me. He told them to give me a little beer before bed. I still remember crying and pleading not to have to drink it. Mommy held my nose so I wouldn’t have to smell it as they forced me to drink it down. Not only did it taste terrible to me but wasn’t it also somewhere on someone’s sin list? However, the “sinful” stuff worked and the nightmares immediately decreased, then stopped. . . except for nights throughout my life when my polio-compromised nervous system became too overstimulated.

Mother was such a nurse! A doctor told her I should never get a bad chest cold because the encapsulated T.B. spot on my lung could break free and fatally enter a bone. So when I caught a cold, she made musteroll from mustard powder paste, rolled it inside a tea towel, and laid it on my chest. It heated until I could not stand it any longer, then she would take it off.

She also gave me vitamin and penicillin shots. She loved to help people with her nursing skills and gave other people shots too. I remember the little jar of alcohol in which she kept her needles. The vitamin shots were especially painful, especially with an old and dull needle! The penicillin shots left blue bruises on my bottom, but no doubt the shots rebuilt my strength.

That spring I spent many hours at my little desk where I drew princesses with long beautiful dresses and rooms with windows. Outside the windows I drew trees and clouds and flying birds. A teacher told my parents I was doing perspective drawing. I remember the praise and encouragement. However, when my drawing talents extended to decorate the staircase walls, spanks replaced praise in no uncertain terms.

I remember Daddy saying he loved me after one of such spankings down in the coal room, but I also remember I could not believe he could spank me if he loved me. I realize now that I was a strong willed child, so it was a good thing I got disciplined instead of coddled. However, God designed me with a strong will to survive illness, months of hospitalization, and probably a lot of other things too. Our God is good and wise. He equips us with what we will need even before we realize our neediness. I’ve also grown to realize that God disciplines those He deeply loves.

When summer came, I longed to roller skate with the other kids. Even though I had to wear my brace, I tried to skate. I remember the day I unlocked the little metal clasps at my knee so I could skate better. By the end of summer I was skating. . . at the tail end of all the other kids, but still skating. I remember the day Mommy threw the ugly brown shoes that connected to my brace in the garbage because I had outgrown them. They had become familiar, ugly as they were. Why do I remember an unexplained wistfulness to see them go? Perhaps so I could better share God’s faithfulness with you today. This chapter in my life had forever changed me.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. Isaiah 43:2-3

I thought about the former days, the years of long ago; I remembered my songs in the night. Psalm 77:6

IT IS NIGHT TIME. The room is dark and quiet. A car rumbles up the street while dancing flickers of light and strange dark shadows dart across the walls. A clock ticks softly in another room I can see the outline of the archway between the dining room and living room and the blackness of Mommy’s big dining table under a ghostly lace tablecloth. In the corner of the dining room on the right are the forms of my rocking chair and little red table with all my crayons and papers with my princess drawings on them. Across from me in the living room are tall windows with lacy white curtains. The lights from the street peek through the lace making soft spots of light on the walls, the ceiling, and on Daddy’s big dark chair in the far corner.

I press my head against the arm of the couch and pull the warm quilt up around my neck. I turn my head back and forth. Again tonight my knee is hurting so much. I close my eyes and try to sleep. My heart throbs in my knee. Thin and pale I hear my voice calling through the darkness.

“Mommy! Mommy! My knee hurts!”

A tall shadow moves out of the darkness toward me. Mommy sits down at my feet on the couch, where I sleep in our big house in Saskatoon. She gently pulls aside the covers. Her hands feel cool on my hot leg. Slowly she moves her strong hands up and down, gently rubbing my swollen knee. I smell lineament. I hear the lineament bottle go “blupah” as Mommy pours a little in her hand and then rubs it onto my knee. Somehow it begins to feel better. Then, beautifully and softly, she begins to sing. I close my eyes.

I am glad to be home from the hospital in Chicago, glad to be out of the narrow iron bed with iron bars over it that held my leg straight up in the air. I can still hear the hollow clanging sound of the iron weights hanging down from the bars when I would swing under the bars like a monkey. I told Mommy how lucky I was to only have one leg in traction. If it were both legs, I couldn’t swing on the bars at all. I would have to lie flat like I was dead. I remember seeing tears in Mommy’s blue eyes when I said that.

I love my Mommy. I love her hands and her voice and her eyes and her dark curly hair. She is tall and strong. I think of when she carried me in the train from Saskatoon to the Chicago hospital. We missed Daddy so much but he had to stay home for a while to work and take care of baby Dicky.
I am so tired. I hear Mommy singing softly into the night. The smell of lineament floats through the darkness. My tears dry and I fall asleep.

Still His song is with me—and forms a prayer to my God who has been with me all my years like a loving mother caring tenderly for her child, “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.” Psalm 42:7-8.

Who could have known that a bone infection could wreak so much havoc? Sometimes both our physical and emotional childhood wounds heal. . . on the outside, but inside they can continue to fester and wreak havoc, spreading infection throughout our entire body and no one can seem to figure it out.

Nearly a month after my fifth birthday, I came home from St. Paul’s hospital, but my health did not improve. My mother’s sister Rita, a nurse in Chicago, told my parents to bring me to Chicago Kenner Hospital where they had a blood radiation machine. Chicago was far away. I remember riding on the train with my mother, who carried me because I could no longer walk. Daddy had to stay in Dalmeny to work and Aunt Mary took care of baby Dicky. Once we got to Chicago, I remember my hospital room, seeing black people for the first time in my life, the strict nurse I grew to dislike, and the little boy who drank from his bed pan. I don’t even remember all the medical tests but  T.B. of the bone was suspected. One night Mommy and Alice, a black Christian cleaning lady, prayed over me. Mommy put her hand on my knee and asked God to “kill that germ.” More tests. Yet, each test for T.B. came back negative.

A month passed and Daddy joined us in Chicago with Dicky. The doctors performed surgery on my knee to scrape out the infection, and then put my leg in traction. I had to lie flat on my back with my right leg held up in the air with weights and pulleys. I remember the embarrassment of having my Mommy help me change underwear and get them over and around the bars since there was no way to get my leg loose from the bars.

Another month passed and Christmas arrived with lights and a large plastic, lit-up Santa. The doctor fit me with a long brace that went all the way up my leg and locked at the knee so it could not bend. Finally at the end of January, I could go home because the doctor said there was nothing more they could do for me. His last words were, “I still say she has T.B. of the bone.” As far as they were concerned, they sent me home to die. We traveled back to Canada and Daddy bought a two-story, white house in Saskatoon. I had to wear ugly brown shoes that were attached to the brace but. . . at least I could walk. The swelling and pain continued and they prayed for a miracle.

King David said God desires truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part He will make me to know wisdom (Psalm 51:6). GOD knows where we hurt and why. He is the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles (2 Cor. 1:3-4). Sometimes all we can do is pray and wait for God to do what we cannot do—to heal us from the inside out, and sometimes that can take a very long time.

Have you noticed how certain insecurities from childhood seem to stick to us like peanut butter and jelly? No matter how many times we wipe our faces and fingers, it just spreads sticky stuff into adulthood and we feel and react to things without even knowing why. I struggle with unexplainable apprehensions to be alone in unfamiliar places and with strangers. I wondered if it might not be a good idea to trace these feelings back to their origin and ask the LORD to shed His light on them and redeem them by revealing more of Himself to me through them.

I loved to visit my cousins, Irvin, Shirley, and Joycie. We played house mostly, or Shirley read stories to us. A year after I survived polio, Irvin and Shirley took us to the school playground nearby and pushed Joycie and me on the swings. Suddenly I lost my grip and a strong push flew me through the air and I landed on my knees in the gravel. I remember bleeding and being inconsolable with pain as they held me up on each side and half carried me back to their house.

Some weeks went by and my knee healed on the outside, but inside something was wrong. It ached, was fevered, and stiffened at a forty-five degree angle. On my fourth birthday, September 27, 1952, I entered St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon. To avoid “unnecessary drama,” parents were not allowed to visit their children at that hospital. Every day they came to see me but could only stand outside and look up at my second story window.

Imagine leaving your desperately sick four-year-old in a medical institution and not see them for three weeks while doctors experiment to diagnose the illness. Who will ever know what they did and with what drugs!? I remember lying in a large crib with iron bars, watching people—nurses, doctors, and sick children in beds that rolled by. I don’t remember much else, except a few months later I do remember a nightmare, one of many, of a witch standing over me as I lay on a table while Mommy sat on a bench at the back of the room weeping.

Finally, the doctors diagnosed me with a rare blood disease and sent me home. When my parents came to pick me up after those three weeks, they hardly recognized me! Cortisone shots had puffed up my whole body. One of the nurses told my Mommy that when she first saw my knee, she said, “Holy cow!” But she said I told her that cows were not holy. Only God was holy. She also told Mommy that it was important to me to pray every night.

In spite of all the insecurities that stuck to me from those weeks of illness, I’m amazed that God drew me to talk to Him every night. I had never stopped to imagine God being so intimately involved with my life at that time until now. As I grew older, I always figured that was my parent’s trial, not mine, since I hardly remembered it.  Yet, He must have comforted me through my fears, loneliness, pain, and illness with His own very Presence as He continues to do today. That trauma as well as God’s care became embedded into my subconscious memory banks. It’s all still there somehow affecting my emotions and choices to this day.

Psalm 27:10 says, “When my father and my mother forsake me, Then the LORD will take care of me.” I fully believe He remained at my side the whole time, every day, every night—watching, loving, tenderly speaking His peace into my mind and heart because He promised, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” Hebrews 13:5.

These events could very well be the source of insecurities that stuck to me through my life. Yet to realize today how intimately God was with me, watching over me, caring for me, and intending to use it all for good, leaves me in awe of His faithfulness. Though He does not shield us from all harm, He does promise to use it for our good and His glory.

More traumatic events were yet to come. As I bring these memories before God’s light, I pray He will encourage both you and me with a deeper understanding to live fully in the security of His love and care.