by Malz, Betty
On they went, chatting about family news as though I were wide awake and alert. How I loved it! When they got up to leave and stood by my bed, I tried to open my eyes. All they did was flutter. But the two women noticed and got excited.
“I believe Betty does know we’re here,” Mother said. Each kissed me tenderly. My spirit was so refreshed by their visit.
Aunt Gertrude was another who knew exactly how to handle herself when she visited me. She would stride into the room, pick up my hand and hold it gently but firmly. “Keep your chin up, Bets. You’ll be home with your family soon. And just remember this, too—we need you back playing the organ at our church.”
Each time the words were different, but there was always a life line thrown to me with a ringing affirmation that I would soon get back into the action. And I began to believe I would.
One day I heard the footsteps of a man entering my room and at first assumed they belonged to either my husband or my father. The steps stopped at the foot of my bed. I heard the pages of a book being turned. When he started to read, I recognized the voice of Art Lindsey—the man who had annoyed me so much with his radio program of sermonettes and country music:
Oh give thanks to the Lord,
for he is good;
for his steadfast love endures
forever!
At first I was so conscious of the man I didn’t hear the words. “Why is he here?” I asked myself. “Doesn’t he know how sick I am? Only close relatives should come in here.”
Some wandered in desert wastes,
Finding no way to a city to
dwell in;
hungry and thirsty,
their soul fainteth within them.
Then they cried to the Lord in
their trouble,
and he delivered them from
their distress. . . .
As Art read on I calmed down and listened to the words:
Some were sick through their
sinful ways,
And because of their iniquities
suffered affliction;
They loathed any kind of food,
and they drew near to the gates
of death.
Then they cried to the Lord in
their trouble,
And he delivered them from
their distress;
He sent forth his word, and
healed them,
And delivered them from destruction.
Let them thank the Lord for his
steadfast love,
For his wonderful works to the
sons of men!
And let them offer sacrifices of
thanksgiving,
And tell of his deeds in songs
of joy!
(Psalm 107:1, 4–6, 17–22)
The words ended like a benediction, filling my soul with hope. How gentle and loving and dedicated was this man! As he walked from the room, I knew that Art Lindsey was indeed God’s messenger of good news. I knew too that God had used Art to continue His work inside me, teaching me, healing me, changing me. For in a period of minutes I found myself filled with love for a man I had disliked heartily before.
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
Soon 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.
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 li
fe 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.”
Scene: In a local department store I spend hours trying to find matching mother-daughter outfits for Brenda and me. I explain the intensity of my search to the clerk: “It gives my daughter a sense of security to dress like her mommy.”
Scene: Late at night in our bedroom. I give the room a romantic aura by lighting some candles. Next comes a spray of perfume. John watches me from the bed with mixed emotions. “Just one time I’d like you to forget the trappings, come into my arms and say that all you really want is me,” he says.
Scene: John and I are talking one evening in our home. He has met a young husband and wife who have had such marital troubles that their infidelities are well known about town. “They’re looking for help,” says John, “and I’d like to have them for dinner and then take them to our church afterwards.” I tell John that the neighbors might think it strange if we identify with people of low reputation, that it would be best for them to go to church directly and have my father minister to their needs.
All of these scenes on the surface might seem fairly typical of family life. Yet as each one flashed before me I was gently made aware of a truth about myself.
My determination to protect my hairdo in the car, at the expense of others, was not only self-centeredness, it was the beginning of a pattern to get my own way.
My early arising to bake biscuits was not to show John how much I loved him, but to impress others with what a good wife I was.
My great search to find matching mother-daughter outfits was not for Brenda’s security as much as an effort to tie my daughter closer to me.