Divorce was still scandalous at that time and I was outraged when my parents’ divorce became final in the autumn of 1971. I was in the seventh grade and quickly became a confused and angry adolescent. When confronted by their divorce listing in the newspaper, I could no longer deny that my 1950s-esque image of an all-American family had been exploded. During that period, church attendance was one of the few stable aspects of my life.
My two older siblings were already in college and my brother and I continued to live with my mother in our childhood home. Each Sunday morning, my father would drive me to the local greasy spoon for breakfast, then to Church services. I was still embarrassed, and probably angry, about my parents’ divorce, so refused to attend the Presbyterian Church services with him. Instead, we went to the morning service at the local Episcopal Church. We would usually go for a walk after church then return to his apartment to finish the day with a dinner of baked chicken and green beans: the only dinner he ever knew how to make. While I recognized his limitations, I still clung to the fantasy of his returning to my home, and of our family returning to the ideal of my remembered childhood.
My mother was young, attractive, and interesting, so I should not have begrudged her the desire to date, but I did so anyway and tried to disrupt the process in any way possible. Mack was the first guy who was serious about my mom after Dad moved out. One evening when I returned home, I discovered that he managed to eat all of the cookies I had just baked (none of which had been intended for him) and I was furious. I made my opinion clear and I was delighted never to see him again.
George was the next man who successfully captured mom’s attention. He was the general manager of the country club where my brothers worked, and they had told him about our mother. After my brothers persistently nudged him to call, a beautiful courtship developed between George and my mother. Although my parent’s divorce had long been final, I still hated the concept of my mother having a “boyfriend.” To his credit, George was funny, kind, gentle, understanding, and extremely patient. He also gave the best and longest back-scratches known to mankind, which, I might add, was a very successful way to break through my hostility! He loved my mom and he loved her children, so when my mom held a family conference about a year after they started dating and asked for our permission to marry George, it was impossible to deny her that happiness. In my heart, I remained conflicted. George was a decent man, and I thought he would be a reasonable stepfather, but I continued to pray daily for the return of my father and for the return of the life I had known.
Until the very moment in 1973 when the preacher officially declared Mom and George “husband and wife,” I continued to pray that my father would arrive to interrupt the wedding ceremony and reclaim his family. When this didn’t happen, I concluded that God hadn’t listened to my most desperate of prayers and certainly hadn’t answered them.
In my disappointment, I discarded the very notion of praying. I was only one very small creature on a planet of more than four billion people; if there really was a God, why should He listen to me or answer my prayers? I decided that my thoughts about an omnipresent God who cares about individuals had likely been a childish and silly belief so I decided to “move on,” leaving my beliefs about God behind me.
I was a smart, accomplished, self-confident fifteen-year old young woman. I thought I knew what was best for me and believed that I was capable of creating my own future without divine input. What was unrecognizable to me at that time was how God not only had heard my most desperate plea, but answered it in a way that was greater and more fulfilling than I could ever have imagined. Through my mother’s marriage, God gave me a stepfather who was steadfast in his loving, gentle, and gracious manner. George was supportive and respectful. As a parent, he taught me about joy, friendship, and responsibility. He modeled what a loving, respectful marriage looks like, and he became one of the most important influences in my life. God promises that He has plans for us to give us hope and a future and He kept this promise. George coming into my life was definitely not the answer I had prayed for. It was better.
CHAPTER 2
SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL
“The future belongs to those who
Believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt
Despite George’s steadying presence, my life was still in a state of pain and turmoil as I entered high school. Most of my friends were involved with drugs and alcohol, and I was spinning out of control. On a chilly night in March, actually on my mom’s birthday, John, Linda, and another friend picked me up in the brand-new Chevy Impala belonging to John’s brother. The ink was still wet on John’s driver’s license, but we encouraged him to drive over some local “rollercoaster hills” on our way to a party in a neighboring town.
Rollercoaster hills are exactly what they sound like … they approximate an amusement park ride. If you drive fast enough, your stomach rises into your throat when the car crests the hill. The wintery March roads were icy, and the new vinyl seats in the car were smooth and slippery as we began to fly over the hills. Linda insisted that we use the seatbelts, and the audible click of the belt buckles was barely fading when John lost control of the car. We struck a tree as we began to spin and immediately heard the violent tearing sound of the rear compartment being ripped from the passenger compartment of the car.
The impact with the tree catapulted our car to the opposite side of the road, where the front engine compartment was sheared off by hitting a second tree. The passenger compartment, with the four of us still inside, then rolled several times down an embankment before coming to a rest upside down. Although we were left hanging inverted in the car, suspended by the seatbelts that we had so recently fastened, none of us were seriously injured.
During our rolling descent into the ravine, I clearly and loudly heard God tell me, “I am with you.” At that moment, my fear dissolved, and I was even able to marvel at the beauty of the revolving trees and shrubs I saw through the shattering glass window as we tumbled down the hill. This was my first recognizable experience of God’s presence in my life. I marveled at what I had heard and felt but, to be honest, I was quite startled by this experience. I began to consider that God might not be just a “childish and silly belief” after all. For me, God was real, present, and apparently had more of a plan for my life than I seemed to have.
After this event, my life as a teenager was still confusing although I began to view it as being more meaningful, and containing more of a future than I had previously considered. I began to examine the reality of my behavior, my friends, and my choices. I decided that it was time to take my life more seriously and make some changes. I no longer enjoyed “hanging out” with the crowd on Friday nights, and began to spend more time thinking about my future and what was important to me. I contemplated my goals and how I fit into the bigger picture of the world.
I continued to attend services at both the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, and also began to intermittently attend the Oakland Road Christian Church with my friend Merry Ann. Although I had been baptized as an infant and confirmed in the Presbyterian Church, I chose to undergo a full-immersion baptism during one of the alter calls at the Oakland Road Christian Church. It makes me chuckle to think about this, as I am pretty much of a social introvert. The very idea of my responding to a public altar call and being immersed in a Plexiglas tank set into the front wall of a full sanctuary is enough to make most of my friends laugh out loud. Regardless, I actually did this and the Holy Spirit must have descended upon me, for when I emerged, I felt light as a feather. I was energized, euphoric, and ecstatic. I felt cleansed and reborn; I became a new person. God’s promise that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17, NIV) was fulfilled.
CHAPTER 3
MEXICO
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways
acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths.”
—Proverbs 3:5–6 (NKJV)
Shortly after my baptismal spiritual transformation, I read a church bulletin in which was contained a fundraising notice from an American missionary couple living in the mountains of central Mexico. Although they were not formally trained to do so, this missionary couple was holding Bible camps and running a medical clinic that provided health care to the poverty-stricken people in the mountains surrounding the town of Matehuala, in the state of San Luis Potosi. They were asking for support, and I felt an immediate call to action.
I was fifteen years old, with no money to give the couple and little interest in their evangelical work, but I thought working in a remote medical clinic would be a grand adventure. I immediately contacted the couple, who warmly welcomed my offer of help. Their only questions were, “How quickly can you come?” and “How long can you stay?” I announced my travel plans to my mother and we were able to arrange for me to receive school credit for my service in Mexico.
Everything fell into place quickly, and I departed for Mexico shortly thereafter. It was a good example (retrospectively, of course) of how easily things come together when one is moving in the direction of God’s will. It has taken many years to truly learn that when everything seems difficult and feels as though you are swimming upstream, it is usually because you are not following the direction of God’s will. When you are doing God’s will, everything seems to happen without much effort or many obstacles.
The missionary couple maintained a home in the city of Matehuala, but spent most of their time in a rustic mountain village several long hours away. It was on our way home one day from this mountain village that our truck became stuck in the mud, as I described in my introduction to this book. While in the mountains, we lived in a small farmhouse and this was where we provided food, Bible classes, and medical care to people living in the surrounding region. We offered a range of medical care, from the treatment of head lice and spider or centipede bites, to the fixing of broken bones and the surgical treatment of common problems, such as appendicitis. As rudimentary as it was, these villagers viewed ours as the only medical care available to them. There actually was a regional hospital, but it was many hours away and the villagers said they travelled there only when their condition was so grim as to have no hope of returning alive.
This particular missionary couple was quite desperate for help and seemed to be in a situation that was way over their heads. Upon my arrival, they handed me an outdated medical book and told me that I would be responsible for all obstetrical care, including births—even the occasional cesarean section. I had been looking for adventure and had a lot of self-confidence, but I was definitely not prepared for this level of responsibility and wondered if they misunderstood my qualifications.
When I questioned them, they suggested I pray for guidance.
I suggested they were crazy.
I prayed feverishly during my time in the clinic. I supervised easy deliveries, performed difficult deliveries requiring interventions, and performed cesarean sections. Gratefully, we never lost a child or a mother, despite my limited knowledge, limited experience, and limited equipment.
In taking credit for these successes, I believed that I had been a quick learner, good reader, careful “surgeon,” and so on. Later in my life, once I completed medical school and began my professional training to become an accredited surgeon, it became painfully clear to me that my own efforts had little to do with my early successes. I had merely provided the hands through which God could work. The credit for success belonged squarely on God’s shoulders and I don’t believe all of our patients would have survived without His guidance and intervention.
When I first read the church bulletin that ultimately led me to the Mexican mountains, I had been interested in the medical clinic, but not at all interested in the missionary or evangelical work. I anticipated that the evangelism, the Sunday services, and the Bible camps would be boring and uncomfortable. I believed that spirituality was a private thing and I did not relish the idea of discussing it with others or encouraging their faith. Everyone in the mountain village, including adults and children, attended our Bible camps and I was surprised to discover that their spiritual enthusiasm was both moving and contagious. They had little in the way of material belongings and often had only enough food for one decent meal a day, but they were gracious and quick with their praise and thanksgiving to God for their daily blessings. God was not just a “Sunday thing” for them, and they sang their hymns with genuine joy in their hearts.
It was inspirational to me to see God working in the lives of these remote villagers, and to recognize that these rural people were just as visible and valuable to God as are the very busy and “important” people from big cities. Clearly, there was nothing about their situation that could separate them from God’s love. The evangelical aspect of this adventure may have pushed my “comfort zone,” but it proved to be anything but boring.
CHAPTER 4
SPIRITUAL REAWAKENING
“People only see what they
Are prepared to see.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
My experiences in the Mexican mountains gave me a clearer vision of the person I wanted to become and I continued to work toward that vision as I finished high school. The ritualized worship services of the Episcopal Church continued to sustain me and I found that their predictability gave a sense of stability to my swirling adolescence. The radiance of the sunlit stained glass windows energized my spirit and the melodic rhythm of the cantor’s voice allowed my soul to take wing.
When the opportunity arose, I also intermittently attended services at the Presbyterian Church, the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, and the non-denominational Christian churches in my family’s community. I have always appreciated the variety of religious denominations that are present in our world. Their different styles of worship and ways of communicating offer people in different stages of their life and spiritual journeys an opportunity to find the place where they feel most comfortable and a place where their faith can grow.
After high school graduation, I began studying at the University of Kentucky where, despite my deepening spirituality, I rarely attended religious services. It seems that God rarely has a seat at the table in our educational system. No one is ever asked to actively discount their faith or beliefs, but university life just doesn’t seem to make room for the spiritual aspects of life and most students just drift away from spirituality. Life for most college students is entirely about the individual; what we are doing, what we think, what we feel, what we want, and what we are planning for our future. Even if we do things during college that are “altruistic,” like volunteering, it is usually because it makes us feel good or looks good on our résumé, not really because we feel called to serve.
I intended to apply for medical school upon completing my undergraduate studies, so I mainly focused on my schoolwork, though I also competed as a member of the varsity swim team. Absent any encouragement to think about the spiritual aspect of my life, I gave little time or thought to God in those years. I was basically living in a spiritual desert until I discovered scuba diving.
As an undergraduate, I routinely donated my blood plasma for pocket money. Donating plasma was easy and lucrative, but the more often I donated, the more I began to wonder about the sterility of the donation center, located in a very dirty part of the city. I also thought about the statistically increasing odds that I might accidentally receive someone else’s returned red blood cells due to a mistake in the lab. I began to look for other employment options and found a weekend job in the local scuba diving shop. I have always loved everything about water and I spent hours marveling at the images in the underwater photography books sold in the shop. I was awestruck by the beauty and intricacy of God’s underwater creations, and quickly fell in love with the abundance and variety of animal life and the brilliance of the colors found
in these photos.
I completed my first scuba course and became passionate about the sport. I gave up my paychecks and began working in exchange for equipment. When the shop sponsored a trip to the Florida Springs, I couldn’t wait to go. The drive from Lexington to Florida was long and our group arrived long after dark, but the water was beautiful, calm, and inviting that evening. We novices were so eager to make our first open-water dive that we compelled our instructors to break the first rule of night diving: Never dive at night where you haven’t yet dived during the daytime.
We impatiently donned our equipment and enthusiastically jumped into the water. Once under the surface, I stuck to my instructor like glue. We cruised along the bottom and I was thrilled with the splendor of the fish, and the variety of the colors and shapes of the coral. My first open-water dive was living up to all of my expectations and, too soon for me, the air in our tanks neared empty and it was time to surface.
When we inflated our vests and kicked toward the surface, we did not pop through the water’s surface as expected, but solidly struck rock. We swam in another direction, and again struck rock. We had inadvertently entered a cave, to which the exit was not obvious.
My instructor and I searched for the opening, but the visibility had been diminished when, in my inexperience, I kicked the bottom of the lake with my fins and raised a cloud of silt. We were running out of air and the tank alarms were echoing. That’s when I remembered to pray. I called out to God and I was immediately filled with the feeling of God’s presence and the knowledge that He would show us the way out. He would see me through.
To Heaven and Back Page 2
