When Jonathan, Hannah, and I started home early Monday morning from Missouri in our trembling "new" old truck, we had no idea we'd have a little detour to the Omaha hospital. But for a moment I digress.
After a couple years of cancer fight and not knowing if I'd ever see my mom again, I was blessed to not only be able to go down in October, but during this quick and unexpected trip to Florida to drive the truck home for Jonathan to replace the one he had to discard, we were able to spend Sunday with my mom and family again.
Sam and Caitlyn happened to also be there for the weekend, and since Ezra was wanting some photos of family with Grandma Morley, we obliged.
Our family is so blessed to have Christian grandparents and upbringing. Over and over, we realize this is such a unique thing--even just to have an intact family. So many people's holiday seasons are not happy with so much loneliness and bitterness and pain and lack of purpose.
On our way toward South Dakota Monday, Jonathan listened to a tearful voice message from a business relation in South Dakota. His mom had suffered a stroke Sunday and had been flown to the hospital in Omaha--a city we were traveling by in a matter of hours.
"Shall we go visit her?" we pondered, and decided that yes, we would.
What a beautiful visit! It was a Lakota lady who is a believer. For her privacy, I will call her by a different name, Tabitha. When the stroke hit her the day before, she was in church, and the church people gathered around her to pray for her.
"I know God touched me when they prayed for me," she said. You would not know anything was wrong with her now. When I asked her to tell us her testimony, she told us how she used to be one of the typical natives on drugs and drink. That's how she coped with life until she landed in jail, surrounded by concrete. Everything crashed in around her head, and for the first time in her life, she turned to God.
What's to worry about anyone hearing when concrete walls surround you? Inside those walls, she screamed to God. "I screamed and yelled to God!" Tabitha told us. "And God heard! It took a while for me to realize it, but when I did, I was scared."
All her life Tabitha had not been afraid even though she had lived a rough life. "I was stabbed ten times," she told us, "but I was never afraid until I screamed to God and He heard! I knew He was real, and that scared me!"
This real God had heard her! Her life was transformed and she started to read the Bible. She was quoting scripture to us as if she was a preacher, recalling the verse in Hebrews that talks about how God's Word cuts between soul and spirit and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of our hearts. She said one day as she had been quietly reading her Bible, never saying anything about it to anyone, she knew in her spirit that God was telling her she was going to be in jail ministry. At first she didn't think that could be. But while she was in jail she led some jail ministry.
Upon her release, she was not allowed to go back even as a chaplain or minister for 10 years but she said it has been over 10 years. I told her I would be interested in going with her to a women's prison. She was excited about that and I hope we can get in the process of applying.
We just never know what God has in mind when we go through an open door! While we were traveling we three had practiced "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," "Away in a Manger," and "A Shelter in the Time of Storm" to sing to her. We tried to sing in parts. Hannah is not used to it but she did well. The lady and her daughter were touched with the songs.
"Your singing was different," they said, then tried to explain themselves. "It had God in it--it was anointed. It seemed louder because of God."
Yes, this real God that Tabitha had encountered some years ago was still real in that hospital room. He was real in the simple songs a family of three tried to sing.
It was such a different atmosphere from the stunning beauty of five days earlier in Pierre, but this real and amazing God, whether in Florida, South Dakota, or Omaha, still amazes us!
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