One woman's faith
Judy and grand daughter Jaycee in a fairly recent photo.
"the daughter must go, the daughter must go"! These were the words God spoke to the new Christian not long after being saved and filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
There are thousands of stories of faith in God that He has written since He created the world, in truth far more than millions. This is just one of them and it happens to be about someone I know. My little sister Judy. No matter that she is my kin, what she has done, rather what God did through her, is noteworthy. Judy had to grow up very fast after our mother was beset with Lupus when only twenty six. As the oldest brother I have a picture fixed in my memory of my little sandy blonde haired sister standing at an ironing board pressing a shirt for me. She was only ten or so. A lot of her girlhood was robbed by our mother's sickness. I dislike seeing any child having to give up days of childhood because burdens of responsibility has come way too soon. When it's your own sister it seems worse. Only since I've grown older have I begun to recognize things I should have noticed far sooner.
I've thanked my dear sister for all the motherly deeds she was required to perform when only a child.
Sometimes in our childhood when mama was gone on an errand with dad, my younger brother and I would get busy and clean the house from top to bottom. All dishes would be washed, dried and put away. Floors swept and mopped, beds made, trash carried out. Everything was done. We couldn't wait for her to get home and see what we'd done without even being asked. When she came in and saw all of the things she wouldn't have to do, the expression on her face was worth a fortune. We knew nothing about it being better to give than to receive, but the feelings we had after doing for her were wonderful. The Lord reminded me of these things as an encouragement that my heart as a child wasn't as hard as our adversary would have me believe.
We lived in west Little Rock in those days of the 1950's and early 1960's, beyond the city limits that ended at Hayes street, now named University avenue. Dad had sold our place to the city during an "urban renewal" program. One of those imminent domain government programs that forces you to sell out your home or business whether you wanted to or not. We moved to a nice house about 1964 on hwy 167 between Protho Junction and Jacksonville and east of North Little Rock. It was on Ink Bayou, and I spent many happy hours exploring and hunting that darkly wooded and flooded swamp land where I rarely met another man.
The vile Lupus took its toll on mama and her entire family. A deadly disease afflicts every person in a family, not just the poor soul that is attacked. Lupus is Latin for wolf and the disease is so named because it ranges around in a body and attacks whichever organ it chooses, just like a hunting wolf. It is treated with, among other medicines, high doses of prednisone. Prednisone is an anti-inflammatory and is terrible stuff. One of the effects is that your skin becomes very easy to bruise, and thin like paper. It doesn't take much to cause a scratch or even a tear that quickly starts to bleed, and takes far longer to heal. Lupus and prednisone are both wolves. Puffiness and swelling of the face is also a side effect.
It is a Jeckyl to Hyde concoction that will scare you to death, at least that's what it did to my mother and later for awhile, to me. It helps but there is a laundry list of bad side effects. I had an inflamed optic nerve once and my eye turned blood red. I was very frightened of going blind in that eye that was sore and aching. My eye doctor put me on 150mg a day of the stuff which I took for months. I yelled at my family over the smallest thing and even as I heard my own voice it was like I was listening to someone else. Your temperament becomes a mystery to you and your own actions frighten you. Such is the nature of many drugs.The happiest day was when I was able to stop taking the stuff. By God's grace I kept my eyesight, though I lost 20% vision in that eye.
My mother was not herself after she began treatment for Lupus and my sister took much heart breaking verbal abuse. Thank God it was never ever physical. For a long time I blamed my mother and was bitter and unforgiving of her. Only Jesus washed all of that away but that came much later. My mother was the sweetest most gentle person imaginable, but the lupus, prednisone and a plague of hospital stays, surgeries, perpetual pain and misery had taken their toll. Judy was somehow made the recipient of much of mama's unintended and medically induced irrational anger. Judy was with mama more than us boys so she was the target of opportunity. Such is the by product of many drugs used to help us through sickness. The enemy of our souls and lives was there doing his evil. Extreme circumstances will stress an entire family sorely.
My father, having been saddled with years of medical bills and the dysfunction that severe sickness brings to victim families, was probably of little support to Judy. Seeing his wife devastated by this wicked disease must-have been terrible for him. When they were married mama was seventeen and he was nineteen. She was too young to marry in Texas where they lived, so they drove across the state line into Oklahoma where a preacher sat in the car with them on the roadside and performed the marriage ceremony.
Mama was not able to give Judy the support she desperately needed.
A support any vulnerable teenaged girl so much needs at the time when she is growing into a woman. A time with so many questions. Oh how we needed the Lord Jesus in our lives!
In high school by then, Judy formed a friendship with a young man there who was her age and also a neighbor, and before long, due to not having an understanding mother and other stresses, they decided to run away together. I weep when I consider how alone she must have felt for God was not in our family then. How many errors He keeps believers from committing only He knows.
Saved years before, my father's failures and sins condemned him to the point that I remember no mention at all of God or Jesus from him as I was growing up. Before her sickness I remember mama often mentioning the savior and taking us kids to church. But Lupus ended all that. A wolf indeed coming to kill, steal and maim. Can you guess who sent it? I'm amazed when religious people say God sent some horrible illness to "test your faith". No, the devil sent it to kill you. One woman with cancer told the preacher who was about to pray for her "I'm just suffering for the glory of God" to which the preacher replied, we'll I'm going to pray that you get another one so God will get twice the glory! No!, was her instant reply. If only we had known His love.
After Judy and her boyfriend ran away we didn't hear from her for over a year. It was a time of great sadness. My wise wife, who knew Jesus after a fashion, convinced my father to drop kidnapping charges against the boy and then helped find out where they were through the boy's cousin. They had been living and working in north Arkansas but after we contacted them they didn't come home right away. While they were gone the poor girl had suffered a miscarriage and had no one from her family or even a friend to offer a
comfort.
After they returned to Central Arkansas there was an uneasy reconciliation with our parents. Her husband never had a good word for my father and to a point I can understand that. He could be very hard. They had a simple wedding right after returning and just our two families attended. She finished school and then found a good job with a utility company.
About 1969 our father had a cerebral aneurysm that left him paralyzed, blind and deaf, all on one side of his body. My mother tried to care for him for awhile and it was just heartbreaking. One very sick wife trying to care for a very sick husband. Finally she contacted the V.A., and his WWII vet status allowed him entrance to the Fort Roots veteran's hospital. Being the oldest son I helped mama take him to Fort Roots. He was absolutely helpless to do anything for himself. On the day we took him he was clean and well dressed, which was a struggle because you had a wrestling match just to get his clothes on. During the drive he became sick and threw up all over himself. We stopped and cleaned him up the best we could. I remember there on the roadside feeling so low and wishing I could be anyone else and wondering why did we always have so much hardship. Christians certainly have hard times too, but they are so blessed to have God to help and heal them.
That hospital was the best possible thing for the both of them. Thank God we had the VA to turn to. Though I loved him it was very hard to visit that place. There is a spirit of sadness and melancholy that covers the place like a shroud. So much misery, pain and loneliness concentrated in one place. Lonely, wounded men, many of them totally forgotten by their families, living out their meager existence shut away from life and love. Every time I went I swore I wouldn't cry and every time I did.
Continues below.
Judy and grand daughter Jaycee in a fairly recent photo.
"the daughter must go, the daughter must go"! These were the words God spoke to the new Christian not long after being saved and filled with the power of the Holy Spirit.
There are thousands of stories of faith in God that He has written since He created the world, in truth far more than millions. This is just one of them and it happens to be about someone I know. My little sister Judy. No matter that she is my kin, what she has done, rather what God did through her, is noteworthy. Judy had to grow up very fast after our mother was beset with Lupus when only twenty six. As the oldest brother I have a picture fixed in my memory of my little sandy blonde haired sister standing at an ironing board pressing a shirt for me. She was only ten or so. A lot of her girlhood was robbed by our mother's sickness. I dislike seeing any child having to give up days of childhood because burdens of responsibility has come way too soon. When it's your own sister it seems worse. Only since I've grown older have I begun to recognize things I should have noticed far sooner.
I've thanked my dear sister for all the motherly deeds she was required to perform when only a child.
Sometimes in our childhood when mama was gone on an errand with dad, my younger brother and I would get busy and clean the house from top to bottom. All dishes would be washed, dried and put away. Floors swept and mopped, beds made, trash carried out. Everything was done. We couldn't wait for her to get home and see what we'd done without even being asked. When she came in and saw all of the things she wouldn't have to do, the expression on her face was worth a fortune. We knew nothing about it being better to give than to receive, but the feelings we had after doing for her were wonderful. The Lord reminded me of these things as an encouragement that my heart as a child wasn't as hard as our adversary would have me believe.
We lived in west Little Rock in those days of the 1950's and early 1960's, beyond the city limits that ended at Hayes street, now named University avenue. Dad had sold our place to the city during an "urban renewal" program. One of those imminent domain government programs that forces you to sell out your home or business whether you wanted to or not. We moved to a nice house about 1964 on hwy 167 between Protho Junction and Jacksonville and east of North Little Rock. It was on Ink Bayou, and I spent many happy hours exploring and hunting that darkly wooded and flooded swamp land where I rarely met another man.
The vile Lupus took its toll on mama and her entire family. A deadly disease afflicts every person in a family, not just the poor soul that is attacked. Lupus is Latin for wolf and the disease is so named because it ranges around in a body and attacks whichever organ it chooses, just like a hunting wolf. It is treated with, among other medicines, high doses of prednisone. Prednisone is an anti-inflammatory and is terrible stuff. One of the effects is that your skin becomes very easy to bruise, and thin like paper. It doesn't take much to cause a scratch or even a tear that quickly starts to bleed, and takes far longer to heal. Lupus and prednisone are both wolves. Puffiness and swelling of the face is also a side effect.
It is a Jeckyl to Hyde concoction that will scare you to death, at least that's what it did to my mother and later for awhile, to me. It helps but there is a laundry list of bad side effects. I had an inflamed optic nerve once and my eye turned blood red. I was very frightened of going blind in that eye that was sore and aching. My eye doctor put me on 150mg a day of the stuff which I took for months. I yelled at my family over the smallest thing and even as I heard my own voice it was like I was listening to someone else. Your temperament becomes a mystery to you and your own actions frighten you. Such is the nature of many drugs.The happiest day was when I was able to stop taking the stuff. By God's grace I kept my eyesight, though I lost 20% vision in that eye.
My mother was not herself after she began treatment for Lupus and my sister took much heart breaking verbal abuse. Thank God it was never ever physical. For a long time I blamed my mother and was bitter and unforgiving of her. Only Jesus washed all of that away but that came much later. My mother was the sweetest most gentle person imaginable, but the lupus, prednisone and a plague of hospital stays, surgeries, perpetual pain and misery had taken their toll. Judy was somehow made the recipient of much of mama's unintended and medically induced irrational anger. Judy was with mama more than us boys so she was the target of opportunity. Such is the by product of many drugs used to help us through sickness. The enemy of our souls and lives was there doing his evil. Extreme circumstances will stress an entire family sorely.
My father, having been saddled with years of medical bills and the dysfunction that severe sickness brings to victim families, was probably of little support to Judy. Seeing his wife devastated by this wicked disease must-have been terrible for him. When they were married mama was seventeen and he was nineteen. She was too young to marry in Texas where they lived, so they drove across the state line into Oklahoma where a preacher sat in the car with them on the roadside and performed the marriage ceremony.
Mama was not able to give Judy the support she desperately needed.
A support any vulnerable teenaged girl so much needs at the time when she is growing into a woman. A time with so many questions. Oh how we needed the Lord Jesus in our lives!
In high school by then, Judy formed a friendship with a young man there who was her age and also a neighbor, and before long, due to not having an understanding mother and other stresses, they decided to run away together. I weep when I consider how alone she must have felt for God was not in our family then. How many errors He keeps believers from committing only He knows.
Saved years before, my father's failures and sins condemned him to the point that I remember no mention at all of God or Jesus from him as I was growing up. Before her sickness I remember mama often mentioning the savior and taking us kids to church. But Lupus ended all that. A wolf indeed coming to kill, steal and maim. Can you guess who sent it? I'm amazed when religious people say God sent some horrible illness to "test your faith". No, the devil sent it to kill you. One woman with cancer told the preacher who was about to pray for her "I'm just suffering for the glory of God" to which the preacher replied, we'll I'm going to pray that you get another one so God will get twice the glory! No!, was her instant reply. If only we had known His love.
After Judy and her boyfriend ran away we didn't hear from her for over a year. It was a time of great sadness. My wise wife, who knew Jesus after a fashion, convinced my father to drop kidnapping charges against the boy and then helped find out where they were through the boy's cousin. They had been living and working in north Arkansas but after we contacted them they didn't come home right away. While they were gone the poor girl had suffered a miscarriage and had no one from her family or even a friend to offer a
comfort.
After they returned to Central Arkansas there was an uneasy reconciliation with our parents. Her husband never had a good word for my father and to a point I can understand that. He could be very hard. They had a simple wedding right after returning and just our two families attended. She finished school and then found a good job with a utility company.
About 1969 our father had a cerebral aneurysm that left him paralyzed, blind and deaf, all on one side of his body. My mother tried to care for him for awhile and it was just heartbreaking. One very sick wife trying to care for a very sick husband. Finally she contacted the V.A., and his WWII vet status allowed him entrance to the Fort Roots veteran's hospital. Being the oldest son I helped mama take him to Fort Roots. He was absolutely helpless to do anything for himself. On the day we took him he was clean and well dressed, which was a struggle because you had a wrestling match just to get his clothes on. During the drive he became sick and threw up all over himself. We stopped and cleaned him up the best we could. I remember there on the roadside feeling so low and wishing I could be anyone else and wondering why did we always have so much hardship. Christians certainly have hard times too, but they are so blessed to have God to help and heal them.
That hospital was the best possible thing for the both of them. Thank God we had the VA to turn to. Though I loved him it was very hard to visit that place. There is a spirit of sadness and melancholy that covers the place like a shroud. So much misery, pain and loneliness concentrated in one place. Lonely, wounded men, many of them totally forgotten by their families, living out their meager existence shut away from life and love. Every time I went I swore I wouldn't cry and every time I did.
Continues below.
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