by Malz, Betty
We drove home from church that evening through northeast Terre Haute, not far from the Paul Cox airfield. From the window of the car I saw a light in the sky descending toward that small airport. Remembering my father’s sermon, I wondered, “Could that be Jesus coming back? Was I ready for Him?”
It was a plane coming in for a landing, but my mind remained stimulated. Later, lying in bed in the darkness of my room that night so many years ago, I found myself repeating the words of a prayer I had stopped saying years before:
Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
The third line then began to bother me: “If I should die before I wake. . . .” Could this happen? If so, would I miss out on all that the Bible promised? “I’m not ready to die,” I thought to myself.
I jumped out of bed and went to my parents’ bedroom door. Their light was out. I knocked anyway. “What is it?” my father asked sleepily.
I was embarrassed, then blurted out the first words that came to mind: “I’m not ready to die.”
Instantly both parents were wide awake. In his sensitive spirit, Dad knew exactly what to do. He took me by the hand and he and Mom led me down to the living room.
“Betty, are you ready to commit your life to the Lord Jesus?”
I nodded.
I knelt between my mother and father in front of our three-cushioned brown floral couch, one hand in Dad’s, the other in Mother’s. “Lord, I accept You as my personal Savior. I surrender my life to You for You to do with it what You will.”
Then Dad read me some passages in Scripture where Jesus is talking to Martha just before He raises Lazarus from the dead: “Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25, 26).
Thirteen years had passed since that night, during which I had gone to church faithfully and tried to live virtuously. But there in my hospital bed I felt His gentle correction: I had lived by rules, but I did not know Jesus. Therefore I had missed the most important part of the Christian life.
Despite the fever and pain, I was aware of the beginning of a teaching process in my spirit. Something in me had been activated by Dad’s prayers; my spirit and God’s Spirit were touching. Then a strange thing happened.
For years I had loved the recordings of Jack Holcomb, two in particular: “The Old Account Was Settled Long Ago” and “I Have Been Born Again.” While lying so helpless in my hospital bed, I heard the music of these great old hymns and the unforgettable words of the latter:
My heart glows with rapture,
My cup runneth o’er,
Such joy, so transporting,
I ne’er knew before;
It flows thro’ my soul from God’s heavenly store,
For I have been born again.
I’ll sing it, and tell it wherever I go,
I want all to hear it,
I want all to know,
The joy of salvation
That makes the heart glow,
For I have been born again.
During one period of consciousness, I thanked the nurse for giving me this wonderful background music. She looked at me suspiciously and said there was no music in hospital rooms. How then had I heard it so clearly?
Then two events took place which made me more aware than ever before that the Comforter was with me. The first involved the visit of my mother-in-law.
Mother Upchurch had driven from New Castle, Indiana, some 150 miles across the state. The first time she walked into the hospital room with John, negative vibrations began to flow between us. My eyes were closed, but I could almost see her dark snapping eyes studying me, the life support equipment, the vases of flowers. She clucked sympathetically over me for a few minutes, then seeing that I could not respond, turned her attention to John. The questions began.
Was Brenda receiving good care? Who was looking after the house? Were you eating properly? And getting enough sleep? As the interrogation between mother and son continued I learned that John had been living alone in the house (Brenda was at my parents’) and that the kitchen had been full of dirty dishes. John admitted ruefully that he had hired a young girl at a dollar an hour to wash the dishes. It had taken her six hours to do them.
I found myself getting upset at my mother-in-law’s concern for John. I was the one near death, not John. It was almost as if the whole situation were my fault and she, Dorothy Upchurch, had to get things back in proper order, which she obviously intended to do, beginning with my kitchen.
Yet as I felt my resentment rising the way it always had when I encountered John’s mother, a surprising thing happened. Something cool poured over my agitated spirit to quiet me. Like a refreshing ointment soothes bruised skin, this coolness extinguished the hot feelings within me. Then the words were implanted in my mind: She has reason to worry about John; but she also loves you and someday you will see her as I do and love her too.
Then it was as if a section of Scripture moved onto a screen in front of my eyes. The verses seemed to be a part of a long psalm:
The earth, O Lord, is full of thy steadfast love;
Teach me thy statutes!
Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O Lord,
According to thy word.
Teach me good judgment and knowledge,
For I believe in thy commandments.
Before I was afflicted I went astray. . . .
(Psalm 119:64–67)
The words of the last verse seemed to enlarge until it stood out from the others. I began to tremble. Before I was afflicted I went astray. The Holy Spirit was showing me something through God’s Word: that I had gone astray, that I had many things to make right and not just with my mother-in-law. Then I heard the gentle words: Those who suffer for Me can minister for Me.
My second experience of the Presence took place at the end of three tortuous days caused by a blockage in my bowel. Before taking me back to surgery, the doctors decided to relieve my distress with a manual procedure that is acutely uncomfortable and embarrassing. As two nurses with rubber gloves worked on me, I gritted my teeth and thought to myself, “This is the most humiliating experience of my life.” And as I reached out for the Comforter, a wonderful change took place inside me.
My pride began to slip away as if I were shedding a frayed old skirt. I forgot that I had a body of different parts, some to be seen, some to be concealed. I became one body, one person, one spirit. And as I reached out for Jesus, He laid His hand on my head with such tenderness that I knew He was seeing me as I really was in the world of Spirit. The pain and discomfort fused into a moment of pure ecstasy.
And then there was a quick vision of how God had originally meant us all to be at our creation. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden—happy, carefree, unaware of any knowledge of good and evil, unaware of the need for concealment of anything about their personhood, free and open to God and each other.
At the same time I felt a sudden infilling of my body with what I can only describe as a torrent of love. It was the love of Jesus for me, ministered through two compassionate women. In turn, I had the intense and overwhelming desire to love Christ with all my heart, as well as all of His ministering angels. This joy and love so flooded me that I thought I might burst.
There followed a period of sudden relief from pain as though Jesus were saying, “You see now—you can depend upon me to be with you in your moments of agony and despair.”
This was exactly the kind of reassurance I needed to face the days that lay ahead.
4
Captive Listener
Two days later I was wheeled back into the operating room for more surgery. X-rays now showed that the ruptured appendix had caused a telescoping of the bowel and thus a blockage. As during the first operation, doctors and nurses assumed that since I was under anesthesia
, I could hear nothing of what was said. And so they spoke quite negatively about my chances for recovery.
I have since learned that other patients have had this same experience. A friend of mine named Ida told me that she had been desperately sick in the hospital several years ago. Thinking her completely unconscious, her two children, a son and a daughter, began arguing over who would get certain items of her estate. It was such an ugly scene that Ida, who heard it all, was spurred on to recovery. “I fooled them two ways,” she laughingly told me. “I lived, and then changed my will, leaving everything to my niece.”
Even when under deep anesthesia, spoken words seem to be received by the patient’s unconscious mind, collected and transferred to the brain in a process little understood. There can be a time lapse of hours, even days, before this translation process occurs and the patient has an awareness of what was said. After both operations I knew by their comments that my doctors considered me a hopeless case. I even recall the jokes about my Florida tan.
The result was a struggle inside me between two forces—a feeling of defeat which said that I might as well give up, and a fighting determination not to quit but to battle back. I resisted defeat, but I can see how some people might not. And I wonder how many unexplainable sudden post-operative deaths have resulted from patients who heard their death warrants under anesthesia, and in a state of despair gave up and died.
The problem of negative influences continued in my room for days after the operation. Only family members were allowed to visit me, but I belong to a large family. I’ve since spent hours reflecting on conversations I heard while seemingly unconscious; I’ve made notes and pondered the whole subject of how the vibrations, attitudes and dialogue of visitors can poison the atmosphere in a hospital room—or bless it.
Three women dropped in for a visit several days or so after my first operation. I later put down on paper the type of things they said:
“Betty’s so young too. I believe twenty-seven.”
“That’s about the age of Susan. She left a four-year-old girl.”
“What happened?”
“Susan was riding the ferris wheel at the circus over in Marshall, Illinois. She fell out. Broke her neck.”
“How awful! Had she been drinking?”
“We think so. She and Sam were having problems. Sam’s remarried now.”
“It didn’t take him long.”
“Brenda will take Betty’s death so hard. She and her mother are very close.”
“I don’t think John will marry anyone who would mistreat Brenda.”
“The husband never knows. He’s gone too much. John is at his shop day and night.”
At this point I was relieved when the subject was changed to operations; but only for a while.
“I hear that it was a doctor in Florida who messed up Betty’s case. He diagnosed it as some kind of malformed pregnancy.”
“I would think there would be tests to tell the difference between a pregnancy and appendicitis.”
“You would certainly think so.”
“If, by some miracle, Betty recovers, she should sue.”
“It probably wouldn’t do any good.”
“I guess not. There was the woman in New Goshen who was sewed up after an operation with a sponge still inside her. She had to go back to the hospital for another operation to get it removed. Some tiny veins started to grow through the sponge.”
The women chatted on and on as though they were at a coffee klatsch in one of their homes. When they got up to leave, they stopped a minute by my bed. I’ll never forget the brief prayer one said: “Lord, give her a peaceful hour in which to pass.”
Another woman came to pray for me. Valerie was from our church and I had worked with her on special youth programs. She stood by my bed and began to weep.
“Lord, we want Your will for Betty,” she began. Then her voice took on a sepulchral tone. “We all have to die sometime, Lord, and we want to be prepared. We pray that You will spare Betty and let her remain with us. But our life here is so short and Your eternity is so long, so we know it is never right to ask for special favors. Instead, we want to be so totally in Your will that whether we live or die makes no difference . . .”
Valerie’s heart was loving and her intention utterly selfless. What she said may have been true enough, but the tone of her voice and her weeping mannerisms told me she believed I was going to die. This left me depressed.
Then there was the young couple who came to see me one evening when I was alone. They stood quietly by the bed for a few moments. I was aware of their presence but did not open my eyes. They sat down and began to talk to each other. The husband began:
“Marge, you’ve left the newspaper in the driveway for two days now. I’ve told you about this before. It gives the impression we are away and invites prowlers.”
“Well, let’s stop the delivery. You can pick up the paper on the way home from the office.”
“No. That won’t work. Some days I’m not near the newsstand.”
“Well, you’re as bad as I am. When I drove the kids to camp, I came back to find the mail left in the box for two days. One envelope had come open through the humidity and there was seven dollars in cash inside.”
“Marge, I had to be gone part of that time on a trip with George.”
“I hear he and his wife are getting a divorce.”
“It looks that way. Emily’s drinking is driving him up the wall.”
“I hear that George is chasing around.”
There was a short silence.
“I don’t think those rumors are fair to George. He has taken a lot in that marriage.” Then followed a quick change of subject. “Let’s not stay here long. We’ve got to stop for gas. I’m on empty now, and I want to work some on the lawn.”
“By the way,” said Marge, “there was a warning on television that we should not water the lawn. The drought seems to be worse. All of Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio are in trouble.”
“That’s all we need. No water.”
The couple got up to leave and I was anguished on the inside. With my high fever I had been craving a drink of water, but because of the stomach pump connected by tube through my nose, I was not allowed any liquids in my mouth. Instead, a nurse would rub ice on my lips. Thus the news of a water shortage suddenly depressed me. Though grateful that they had cared enough to stop by, once again my spirit was disturbed. I was left with the feeling that people had written me off as so hopelessly ill that what they said did not matter.
My father was my anchor during those critical first days of high temperature and unconsciousness. For one stretch of eight days he hardly took time to change clothes as he sat with me day and night. In addition to his prayers, there was one phrase he often used which held me fast to the mooring. He would stand by my bed, touch my hand or arm or place his hand on my forehead and say softly, “Bless the name of Jesus.”
The words drifted through my fog of pain and fever like soothing crystals of light, dissolving in my body with a deep healing effect. I had played hundreds of hymns on the organ extolling the name of Jesus, but I never knew the full power in His name until that moment. It was as though Jesus Himself was somehow spreading through my tissues, cleansing the poison, nourishing my blood, strengthening muscles and tendons and protecting the life system of veins and arteries. How I loved to hear my father repeat that phrase: “Bless the name of Jesus.”
John was in and out during those days and I could sense his worry and tension. His body could hardly remain still. He could not sit in a chair. My inert form and closed eyes unnerved him. I kept wanting to say, “John, I love you. Relax, just hold my hand and talk to me. I can hear you. I just don’t want to open my eyes. Don’t be fearful.”
When John did try to pray, his words were hesitant as though to ask God to heal me might bring him a disappointment. I caught the same cautious tone from preachers as well as lay people. They were praying, “We ask that Your will be done with this des
perately sick woman.” I understand the reluctance some people have to pray with all-out faith. From the viewpoint of having been a very sick woman, hedged prayers almost made me feel that God was a capricious Father who couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing by His children.
My mother had to care for our six-year-old during the first days after the operation. When she walked into my hospital room for the first time, she looked at my greenish face, gasped and slumped to the floor. A nurse was summoned while Daddy lifted her into a chair and began rubbing her wrists. She revived quickly but spent the rest of her visit talking in a whisper as though afraid to waken me. I wanted to comfort Mother somehow. “I know I must look awful, Mother, but I’m aware of what is going on. Please don’t whisper. I want to hear what you’re saying. And don’t be so melodramatic. Just tell me about Brenda and Gary.”
It was almost as if Mother heard me. The next time she visited my room accompanied by her older sister, my Aunt Lillian, she was much more positive. While making a tour of the flowers that had been sent by relatives and friends, she directed her conversation to me.
“Betty, you may not hear me,” Mother said, “but I think I’ll read you these get-well cards and describe the flower arrangements.” She did so with help from her sister.
Then Aunt Lillian, who was the principal of the Marion Heights Elementary School in northwest Terre Haute, spoke of a visit she had had with Brenda.
“Brenda can’t understand why she isn’t allowed to visit you, Bets. She says she doesn’t have any germs that would hurt you. Meanwhile, she’s been visiting her daddy at work and asked for the job of cleaning the windshield of every car that stops for gas. She says she wants to earn money to help pay your hospital bill.
“Gary wants you to know that he was out to the lake Saturday and has learned to float on his back. And he has taught Brenda to ride the two-wheeler bike. Your mother is so good with them, Bets.”