My Life of Miracles - pt 5

I was married at 17. Now, that seems very early, but in 1975 in rural American it was quite common. I graduated from a class of 19 and by our graduation over half of our class was married. Unfortunately only a tiny portion of those remain married to this day.

Damaged Goods

To say I was damaged goods is not a comment to elicit a sympathetic word or for you to feel sorry for me. It was a fact. There were many factors that may or may not surface in the course of this blog about my life, but please just believe me when I say that there were issues the enemy had orchestrated to drive me to do things that were not in my best interest.

I made choices based on warped feelings and mental lies the enemy had placed in me and convinced me of. I was not where I could have been. I did not make choices that I could have made that would have been better in the long run.

No Regrets

But, I do not, and will not regret a single one because every wrong choice is an opportunity for God to miraculously shift our course. Please hear me when I say that I never encourage anyone to make a wrong choice because they know in the end God can perform a miracle. We should never be that flippant. It may be a long bumpy road to the good outcome.

Many people came to me and asked me if I was sure that was what I wanted to do. It was. I wanted out of my parents home. Yes, God had done a miracle and my father was not drinking. Yes, our home life was so much better. But my relationship with my mother was not better. In fact it felt like each year it just grew worse and worse. 

A Root Cause

As I grew older, I began to understand that there had to be a huge underlying story the was the root of my mother’s angst towards me, but I didn't know what it was. At age 17, I just wanted out.

To prepare for our marriage, we went and bought a single-wide trailer home and a week before our wedding, he got a job in the oil field so we would have money to live on. The job he had would barely have kept us in frozen pizza, must less anything else. And of course, I was still in high school.

Kicked Doors Open

To this day I am not sure if it was God sending angels to hinder us getting married, or if it was the enemy just making the whole thing horrifically hard. Knowing what I know today, I would stop and pause and at least ask. Back then I just kept going forward and never really thought of asking God what He wanted for me.

Being an expert seamstress, I was making my wedding dress. It was quite elaborate. Laidback and lackadaisical were very good words to describe how I was. Procrastination was my middle name. And the stress of me getting half way through sewing my dress then doing nothing on it for weeks, put my mother in the hospital from the stress of it all.

Couldn't Get a License

I did finish my dress, complete with seeded pearls on the lace overlay and all the teeny tiny satin buttons. But then, when we went to get our marriage license, it came to our attention that our blood tests had dried up in the mail system somewhere. So, the county would not issue us a marriage license.

We talked about doing a quickie marriage in Texas, then coming back for the wedding, the the pastor of our church would not ‘marry’ us in church if we did that. He required a bona fide marriage license from the state of Oklahoma. The wedding was planned in two days. There was no time to get new blood tests, not in 1975.

My Mother Was a Formidable Force

We went back to the county courthouse and I remember my mom walking back behind the counter where no one but employees were supposed to go. She took the woman by her upper arm and marched her to the back of that room and had a ‘discussion’. To this day I do not know what she said, but we walked out of there with a marriage license.

The evening before we got married, my mother got a new car. Her current car was paid for and so she gave it to me so I would have a car to get back and forth to school, and wherever else I needed. I was all set and ready for my new life.

Disappointment

But, it wasn’t what I had hoped for. It seemed to me that the moment we got married, my now husband immediately changed. He was no longer happy with the way we had lived. He began to demand that I be a certain way, do certain things, and so forth. I really felt caught off guard and as though someone had jerked a rug right out from under me.

Not to mention, his new oil field career took him several miles away from our home to work nights, seven days a week. Then between the two cars we had, one or the other kept breaking down and he would only fix the one he needed to get to work, so I never had a car to drive. I was always stranded.

Isolation

I was stuck in a small town where I didn’t know anyone, alone all evening. We didn’t even have a phone, because that town had a local phone company with a waiting list that was months long. I had never felt so isolated and alone.

Fortunately, a classmate lived in the same trailer park and she would let me ride with her to school, which was about 15 or more miles away. I went to Vo-Tech (that is what we called vocational-technical schools back then) in the afternoon. I would ride the bus back to the town where I lived, but had to walk several miles from the bus stop to get home each day.

Loneliness

Loneliness was all I felt. I was so very sad and incredibly alone. We did eventually move our trailer a few months later to the town where I grew up. I graduated high school, but things just kept happening. There was just so much drama and discord. To say I was miserable was an understatement.

In May of 1976 I graduated high school that year and not long after I got home from my senior trip, I realized that I was pregnant with our first child. I was thrilled! Finally someone I could love and who would love me back, because truly other than my dear sweet father, I didn’t feel loved at all.

Sick and Pregnant

That summer of being pregnant I had morning sickness so bad that I would throw up, then take one of those pills we now know were not good for us or the baby, then throw it up. Then wait a moment and try to take another one. We had a bookcase headboard and I would keep crackers in easy reach so that I could grab one before I even got out of bed. It didn't work, but I tried.

My mother and grandmother took several weeks and went to California without me which increased my loneliness. My mother-in-law thought I was a horrible wife to her son and so I didn’t feel welcomed there. High school friends had all scattered. Things were no better that they ever were.

Hot and Pregnant

Then our AC window unit went out. Here I was big, very big, and pregnant in a single-wide trailer house and no AC and nowhere to go. I would literally lay down in the middle of the living room floor on my back and spread out my legs and arms so they wouldn’t touch and just pass out from the heat. This was the only way I knew to survive. If I were to guess, I would say the temperature in that trailer was easily a hundred degrees or more.

As the time for my baby's arrival came, I was told that he was butt first with his legs up over his head and that with my short stature there was no way to deliver him safely through a normal birth. I was devastated. But just to show how young and immature I was, my first thought was that I wouldn’t be able to wear a bikini again, because back then, a C-section was to acquire that heavy up and down ugly scar.

Wracked With Pain

We set a date, I went into the hospital, and it was time. What no one knew what that my body had a high, very high tolerance to drugs. First, they gave me a spinal block for the surgery so I could be ‘awake’ for delivery. Then, they gave me whatever they give you to knock you completely out. I went out, but then I woke up and felt everything. The spinal was gone. The anesthesia was gone. The pain was horrific and they couldn't give me anything more until they finished.

My Baby Boy

I won’t describe further how horrible that whole ordeal was. You can imagine. But, I had my knew baby boy. I named him after my dear sweet father because what else could I name my precious new baby but after the man I loved the most.

We were in the hospital for one entire week. Major surgery, etc. kept me there, which was normal for that day and age.  When, I arrived home there was the cutest little red Mustang sitting there. My sweet daddy was tired of me not having a working car to drive and he had bought it for me. It was not brand new, but nearly, and I loved it! I felt life might be turning around after all.

Exhausted and Heartsick

However, it didn’t. I was breastfeeding because that was what you were supposed to do. And my baby cried all night long. I, for whatever reason, couldn’t sleep during the day, and as soon as I laid down at night, he began to cry. I was exhausted and nearly delirious.

My mom would come and help me try and rock him all night long she would rock and carry him and then I would. Bless her heart, because then she would go to work and teach school all the next day. She couldn’t come every night. So most nights, I would just sit and rock him while he cried endlessly and I did too. I would rock and we would cry.

The Point of the Story

Now to the point of this story. I remember this night profoundly. I was rocking, we were both crying, and my husband was yelling yet again for me to shut him up so he could go to sleep, because he had to go to work the next day. Mom’s took care of babies, dad’s went to work. That is just the way it was.

But, I couldn’t make my sweet baby happy. I had no idea what to do. So, that particular night as we were rocking and crying, I cried out to God. I began to beg God for help. I begged him to make things better. I had been through so much and I just didn’t know how much more I could take before I crumbled into a heap.

I remember saying, there has to be more to life than this. Please God, please God, please help me.

The Answer Came in an Unexpected Way

Now, I know this story has been a long one, but I feel very necessary. One Sunday morning while sitting in the church I was attending, in walked a new family. They had just moved to town and were standing looking for a place to sit. As soon as I saw the woman, I heard, “Now, that is a Christian.”

I was startled. I was sitting in a church full of about 200 Christians. I did not know anything at all about that woman. But, as I later discovered, her husband received his company transfer to our town almost at the exact same time as when I prayed to God for help.

God Will Move Chess Pieces For You

More life chess pieces were moved and I wound up working with that lady. The joy of the Lord was all over her. I loved her so much and was drawn to her. They had bought a house less than half a mile from where we lived.

It was not coincidence that God brought her into my life. One night our conversation drifted around to the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. All I had ever seen was strange and I didn’t know what to think about it.

I drug her testimony out of her. She did not relinquish it easily. But as I read it as she had written it down, my heart burned. I knew this was what I was missing. I knew my entire life would change if I just had that. I yearned for it with a hunger that was unlike anything I had ever known.

I Didn't Want to Wait

She taught me first, showing me scriptures to give me understanding. Before, when I had read the bible it was always as if I was reading Greek. I would read and read and have no understanding of what I had just read.

But, suddenly it was amazingly clear even in the King James Bible. Not only that, I was also receiving revelation knowledge. The words were being seared into my soul. I began devouring the bible all day long, seriously. I didn’t want to do anything else.

I Couldn't Wait

And still, she had not prayed with me. On Thanksgiving night 1977, I showed up at her house at about 10:30 or 11:00 that night. All the lights were off. I stood on her dark porch and rang the doorbell. What gumption I had, but I was desperate for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. 

She answered the door, and I said, “I need you to pray with me right now to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” She led me through her dark house to the room where she studied and we sat on the bed. She prayed with me, and my life was split wide open with life. I was never ever the same again.

That Was Just the Beginning

As I begin to give you in subsequent posts other miracles, you will see that all the pain, heartache, loneliness, and hardship that I had experienced most of my life, suddenly faded away. This miracle was the miracle that has made my life new each day, no matter the hardship that was to come, both from life and from my own poor decisions.

This miracle alone is the most profound miracle and one that every single person can and needs to have. I cannot stress this enough. If you want to live a miraculous and supernatural life, this is the way.

Read more about praying in the Holy Spirit. This is a document that I prepared with multiple scriptures.

I want to encourage you to leave me any comments below. They are so encouraging and motivating to me. 

Click to Read Part 6 Here

Nancy

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