My Glimpse of Eternity (5 page)

Once again it had been the Word of God which spoke to me so clearly. This phrase leaped out:
He sent forth his word and healed them.
Was this His way of telling me I would get well? Faith that I would be healed began to turn and whirl like a small wheel within my innermost being.

5
Spirit to Spirit

S
oon after the second operation to repair the bowel situation, the infection inside me went wild. My temperature soared to 105 degrees again. When the nurses began having trouble irrigating the stomach pump inside me, the doctor discovered an abscess under the first incision. Back to surgery again for minor repair, with more blood transfusions and the continuous intravenous feedings.

One of the nurses who took care of me during that period was Mary Barton. In recent years I have been in touch with Mary, who now lives in Tucson, Arizona. She vividly recalls some of the desperate moments we shared. There was the growing problem of finding veins strong enough to take the blood transfusions and intravenous feeding. They used the wrists, the bends in both arms, the ankles, and once my big toe, a most painful solution.

During my first days in the hospital I was only aware of events going on about me at a subconscious level. Gradually I began to take a more active interest in the routines. I kept asking the nurses for pieces of ice to suck. When I once asked Mary Barton if I would ever enjoy food again, she replied, “Yes. And when you do, what would you most like to eat?”

I though a moment. “A chocolate ice cream soda.”

“When the time comes, I’ll see that you get it myself,” she replied.

She admitted to me later that she was sure this was one promise she would not have to keep.

Another problem the doctors had in battling my infection was in finding enough blood for transfusions. There was a scarcity of my type—B-negative. Radio announcements were repeatedly made for donors but the response was poor. After my second surgery there was a tense, desperate period when the hospital sought frantically for B-negative blood to give me a transfusion. When my father heard of this need, he stood at the foot of my bed to “pray in” the person with this blood type to serve as a donor for me.

The way the Lord answers prayer is fascinating. My uncle, Jesse Scott Mullins, was a brakeman for the Pennsylvania Railroad at the time, the vibrant jolly man who used to toss me about like a sack of potatoes at picnics when I was a girl. He traveled the freights on a run that went from Terre Haute to Peoria to St. Louis and back, riding the caboose, a job that made him the most glamorous man in my life. Once he took me for a short ride in the caboose, pure enchantment for this small girl. On other occasions he would bring us some fusees, the torches railroaders would light on the tracks to warn approaching trains of an obstruction or stalled train. We would light the fusees in our backyard and have picnics by this glamorous reddish-yellow glow.

At the time of my second operation, Uncle Jesse was on his way from Peoria to Terre Haute. Later he told me the full story of what happened:

As Jesse “dead-headed” into Terre Haute, he had a sudden inner feeling that he should stop at the hospital on his way home to give a pint of blood for me. My uncle was not aware of any crisis situation at Union Hospital for B-negative blood. He didn’t even know what type of blood he had. All he wanted to do was help John and me keep our hospital bills down.

It was late morning and Jesse was tired and grimy from long hours on the train. It made more sense, he told himself, to go home and shower and rest first, then go to the hospital at night during visiting hours. So he climbed into his car and headed for home. Uncle Jesse had always believed that the supernatural power of God can direct our everyday lives. Therefore, when for the second time he felt an inner nudge to head for Union Hospital, he didn’t just slough it off. The feeling would not go away, so despite all his logic and common-sense reasoning, he found himself going directly to the hospital from the roundhouse.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Jesse inquired about the blood donor program and asked if his gift of blood could be credited to a patient who needed transfusions. They said this could be worked out and then drew blood to get his type. Soon a nurse rushed back in a state of urgency and said that Jess had B-negative blood which at that moment was desperately needed for me. The timing was amazing. It was God alone who did it.

The infusion of Uncle Jesse’s blood helped me rally. Later he came by to tease me: “I was your uncle by marriage before. Now I’m your blood uncle.”

After surviving this crisis, I began straining to be a mother and wife again. “How is Brenda doing?” I asked my parents. The reassurances that my daughter was fine didn’t quite satisfy me. Mother then patiently described in detail the cookies she and Brenda had made, the four new puppies that Dusty, their family dog, had delivered and how Brenda was helping Dusty keep track of her new offspring.

Several times Brenda and Gary had been put on the phone to talk to me. I heard from Gary how Brenda had hogged the one fishing pole when they went to the lake and from Brenda how she had helped Daddy and Papaw teach Gary to water-ski.

Since hospital rules forbade children under fourteen from visiting patients, the next evening they took her to the hospital lawn. “You and Mamaw sit here on the grass by those petunias,” my father said, “and when I get to your Mommie’s room I’ll wave out the window to you. She’s on the third floor. Count over four windows from the end and watch for me.”

“Will Mama wave out the window, too?” Brenda wanted to know.

“Not today, but soon,” Dad replied.

When he announced that Brenda was outside, I could barely nod my head. “Will someone be sure that Brenda gets to see the fireworks on the Fourth of July?” I asked.

Gently my father told me that it was now the sixth of July and that Brenda had already gotten to see the fireworks. Somehow I had lost several days.

In some ways I was more troubled about John than Brenda. My husband followed a certain ritual when he visited me. He would come into my room, kiss me lightly on the forehead or cheek, pat my arm, and then restlessly walk about or assume his sitting position on the other side of the door.

One day when he came into the room I held on to his hand. “Please stay close to me, John,” I whispered. Then, summoning up all my strength, I reminded him of the miracle of Brenda.

John and I sat there reminiscing, our minds going back seven years. We had already been married four years without children. The doctor’s report had been discouraging. Because of the rheumatic fever John had suffered at age nine and a later hernia condition, John’s sperm count had reached an almost zero fertility rate.

We had not given in to this verdict. Once when the pastor in our church asked people to come forward for special prayer, John was the first in line. He had never told me until later that this was a request that he become a father.

While John was praying in church, I would talk to God about the situation every day in my bedroom. One morning I was reading the book of Isaiah. Suddenly these words sprang from the pages:

For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty,

and floods upon the dry ground:

I will pour my spirit upon thy seed,

and my blessing upon thine offspring.

(Isaiah 44:3, KJV)

What a blessed promise! To think that the Lord would pour His Spirit and blessing on John and me. It was an awesome moment. I knew then that He was beginning to prepare me for motherhood.

Six weeks later I broke the news to John that I was pregnant. He wept as he told me for the first time how hard he had prayed for this to happen.

Then came a crisis during the fourth month after a long automobile trip to spend Thanksgiving dinner with John’s grandparents. The next morning I began hemorrhaging and called the doctor who came and examined me. He put me to bed but warned that it was probably too late to save the baby. I did not give up. Before going to bed John and I prayed for the Lord to save our child. I rarely dream but that night I saw Jesus coming toward me, holding a tiny baby in His arms.

I started to cry, thinking that I had miscarried and that Jesus had taken the child with Him to heaven. But I was wrong: Jesus walked slowly toward me and laid the child in my arms. I awoke the next morning arms folded across my stomach, still holding the baby inside my body.

Six months later on Father’s Day, June 21, 1953, Brenda was born, a healthy and normal baby in every way.

Remembering how God had spared our unborn child strengthened John. From then on he stayed inside the room and was much more relaxed. One day he came in after spending the day with Brenda. I was asleep when he arrived, but soon awoke as John began relating his experiences to my Dad.

“Brenda and I really had fun today,” he said. “I took her home so she could play for a while with her old friends, with her toys and in her sand pile. Then I took her to the station. She wanted to wash some car windows, so I let her do it with customers I knew well. She had a ball.

“On the way home, I told her I would cook supper and asked her what she wanted. She told me ‘Sandburgers.’” (This was Brenda’s term for a hamburger sandwich.)

At this point I was so interested I opened my eyes and tried to focus on my husband. John had never fixed a meal even once in our marriage, and would have been horrified if asked to put on an apron. He would not know where to find the salt and pepper, much less how to put meat into a skillet and use the stove correctly.

But I could see that John was relaxed and enjoying his role as storyteller. “So, Brenda and I stopped at the store, grabbed a cart, and bought some groceries. When we got home, I spread out the hamburger, tomatoes, lettuce, onion, and mustard on the table. Then I got a frying pan, and opened the package of hamburger, formed a nice little ‘sandburger’ for Brenda and put it in the skillet.

“My first mistake. I had picked up ground pork sausage, instead of hamburger. Oh, well. Smothered with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and mustard, Brenda wouldn’t know the difference.

“My second mistake. When I opened the cellophane around the lettuce I saw it was cabbage. Oh, well. Lettuce and cabbage are almost the same thing. So I fried the patty, put the sausage on the cabbage, plus all the other stuff, and served it to Brenda.

“Poor kid. She took one bite, pushed it aside and said, ‘Daddy, I like gravy. Will you make me some gravy and put it on bread pieces for me? That’ll be okay, Daddy.’ I could see that this kid still had faith in me.

“I thought making gravy would be a breeze. . . . Just add some flour to that stuff in the skillet. Well, I must have put in too much flour. It was awful thick. Brenda took one bite and said, ‘Hey, Daddy, I got it. Let’s go to the Royal Chef.’

“That sounded like a great idea to me. But before we left, I didn’t want to throw away all that good gravy. So I dumped it out in the cat’s bowl. Pumpkin Face had been staring at us hungrily ever since we brought her over from the neighbors for the day. Well, Pumpkin Face took one lick, shivered, and walked away. The ingratitude of that cat!”

My father was laughing so hard he almost fell out of his chair. It didn’t seem quite that funny to me, but it was good to see that John was getting back his sense of humor. And I was reassured over how much my family needed me.

Later that night I found myself dreaming. John was in the kitchen frying “sandburgers” and there was this awful smoke coming from the stove. I was in bed and couldn’t move. . . . I tried desperately to get out of bed, but my legs seemed paralyzed. . . . I kept trying to call John to turn off the oven, but I could not open my mouth.

I woke up in a panic. My hospital room was dark; only a dim light filtered through the slightly ajar door. Desperately I reached out for the warm Presence that had comforted me during bad moments in recent days. “Lord, help me. Lord, will I ever get well? Please take away the pain.”

At once the throbbing in my head eased slightly. My panic subsided. I was not alone. The Comforter had returned. Then gently, but firmly, I felt Him probing into my life again. “What did you learn today from your husband?” The question was there in my mind and I’m sure I didn’t ask it of myself. My husband’s pathetic effort to cook a meal showed how much he needed me.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it, Betty? To have your family totally dependent on you?”

Again this thought had come from the outside. It was a bit disconcerting; but not nearly as disturbing as the next thought.

“When John and Brenda are so dependent on you, Betty, they do not need Me.”

By now I was wide awake. This thought deeply disturbed me. Was I blocking my husband and daughter from God?

I fought off a desire to turn away from these painful revelations about myself, but there was no condemnation in the Presence. Only loving concern. Then it seemed that the two of us were seated side by side in front of a screen on which a series of scenes from my life were flashed.

Scene: My parents, younger brothers and I are driving in our old Hudson car to church on a hot summer day. The car has no air conditioning, yet I angrily shout at my sweltering brothers that the windows must be kept shut or my hairdo will be ruined.

Scene: Our kitchen soon after my marriage to John. At 5:30 a.m. I am baking biscuits when John sleepily appears, asking why the early rising. “I want your mother to know that you have a wife who gets up early every morning to fix your breakfast.”