foreboding

September 7, 2023

Assertive Action

“I am sorry, but your son will not walk again.”

My mom, seated in the Tulsa hospital’s polio ward, listened as the doctor offered his prognosis. Her heart sank.

It might be argued the physician’s assessment in the moment was made prematurely. Regardless, news like this coming to the parent of a paralyzed nine-year-old lying in a Hillcrest bed down the hall could not be received without emotion.

Our family was blessed to have friends. Common, blue-collar-status households marked, for the most part, the culture of our modest faith community. Upon receiving the latest troubling news of my ongoing decline, the little band of churchgoers rallied their hearts. They reset their resolve. As an earlier body of believers of ancient times had been challenged to do, they continued in prayer.*

Having been carried by Dad into the hospital weeks earlier – my legs and feet unresponsive to my very best efforts at even wiggling a toe – I was often reminded I was never forgotten by our faithful praying family.

My condition worsened still. Discussions were convened of bringing in a piece of equipment bearing a foreboding kind of name – the Iron Lung. A backup measure for my increasingly compromised respiratory system.

The actions of the small prayer band seemed a little counterintuitive. They simply kept on with their appeals. Kind people paid a visit resting kind hands* on my frail form.

It remains for me a big mystery as to why I got counted among some of the fortunate ones over time to encounter the miraculous firsthand. Looking back I recall with some wonder the astonishing shift in my condition. My terribly weakened body responding to the Lord’s gracious, powerful hand. The little company of his blue-collar intercessors had kept their petitions going. If biblical praying is anything it is love acted upon audaciously.

Some four weeks after the iron lung deliberation the hospital’s exit doors opened. I was standing upright, walking with only the support of a couple crutches which would soon get discarded. Both my body and spirit responded happily to the crisp air outside.

A doubtful questioner once offered, “I believe that, instead of God answering prayer, the matter is merely coincidental. You pray. A coincidence occurs and you claim that some prayer was answered.”

The prayer practitioner offered a kind response, “Maybe you are right. Yet, what I have found is this. The more we pray – the more the coincidences happen”.

This is the way of apprentices to Jesus. They engage. Routinely – in humble trusting faith – they converse with him.

August 17, 2017August 28, 2017

The further up-river we had driven the more we had felt the VW straining against a different-textured sand, more refined. The VW bogged down. Again and again. My friend’s idea made sense,

“Whichever of us is driving the Bug while the other pushes it, the driver must not slow the vehicle, no matter what.”

Simple enough. . . The guy behind the car, the one pushing, will likely hoof his way out, reuniting with car and driver out on the bank. We could then happily leave our water-less tributary behind us. We simply had to get the VW out of here and back to the dusty road. All this, of course, in the dead of night.

My turn to push.

“Come on, little bug”, I coaxed, my energy seeming to drain out my boot soles. John’s foot to the accelerator, the vehicle picked up speed.

“Good”, I panted, “keep going, keep going.” Traction picked up and my Kiwi partner shifted to second gear. The car was on its way. My reserves now spent, I couldn’t marshal strength needed to leap aboard the rear bumper as I had wanted. Unreasonable thought.

Shoulders adroop, I waved John on. The car gained more speed and as the distance between us grew I remembered our pledge. . . Keep the car in motion. The bug mustn’t slow and risk her tires spinning again into “stuck” mode. And I remembered another thing. This is Africa’s Wild, I’m in. Where the term “ferocious” links itself to many names in the animal kingdom.

My panting slowed and I squinted, surveying what landscape I could yet make out. Sketchy outlines of treetops marked what I knew to be distant river banks at either side. Apart from this, everything between the forests and myself was entirely dark. A cry of some undefined animal sounded from a distant place.

Turning to the direction of the vehicle, I watched the car grow smaller – the space between it and me widening. Nothing captures the isolation I felt when that car passed out of view, its dwarfed taillights vanishing around a bend far up-river. The motor sound faded. Softened further, then went silent. The dark about me seemed tangible, so much I knew I could feel it. My body tightened.

I was afraid. I had never been more afraid.

July 11, 2018

Foreboding

Considering the severe hardships missionaries have encountered through the centuries, our valley of 1984 could seem trite by comparison. For us it was raw pain.

What just happened?

The question had us reeling as my wife and I made our way back from Dallas to our temporary residence in East Texas – Carthage, where our family was part way through our stateside furlough.

Ann and I had served in East Africa 12 years up to this point. We had just been broadsided by news that we may be ‘disinvited’ to return to our post. The past six years had been among the richest of our lives to date. Amy, our cheery third-born, had been added to our family a year ago. Her siblings, Julie and Scott, were content as ever – growing friendships, learning, thriving. The Extension Training I had brought to the region and was overseeing had expanded and, by every account, was cherished by those it served.

“You need to fly to Nairobi, Jerry. I think it’s necessary for you to clear the air with what’s going on with you and the Kenyan leadership.”

The senior-most American leader in the Africa work, sitting opposite us now, offered his opinion in a near mater-of-fact voice. Yet, his manner conveyed an ominous urgency. “You need to meet with the Council face-to-face to get this resolved.”

We left the Dallas restaurant having barely touched our salads, both of us bewildered. After a few silent miles, Ann spoke. “What was that about. . . Get what resolved, Jerry?” Ann’s words echoed my own upside-down ponderings. What is happening. . . what?

As the Dallas bombshell news began seeping its way into our souls, Ann and I were reminded of a hint of something just a few days earlier. A co-worker and friend had phoned us from Kenya, feeling compelled to connect. He shared of some fuzzy word going around that Missionary Lout was possibly in trouble. But no details accompanied the reports. All he’d heard were guesses, conjectures. No one was defining what seemed to be afoot.

St. John of the Cross – a Christian mystic of long ago – spoke once of ‘the dark night of the soul’. The dark had started descending. Soon I would board a plane to cross the world, not knowing why.