All posts by Luella Campbell

GOD STILL SPEAKS…BUSINESS WOMAN – 6

Christian Life, ,

God was good to me, a faithful Father…counsellor…and protector. Three years before I left my home, I returned to work at the hospital where I had worked at the end of my training. I had not practised as a trained nurse for 21 years. Everything had changed. The  drugs I had learned as a rookie staff nurse were mostly obsolete. I was in charge of a ward with a little experience and a whole lot of insecurity. 

Before I put on my uniform on my first day of work, God gave me a promise…

“Do not be afraid; you will not be put to shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated…”

‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭54‬:‭4‬a NIV‬‬

…a random Scripture out of context but, oh how He kept His promise. I remember on one occasion, early in my new position, when I was about to make a serious mistake with a patient’s medication, I felt a caution inside…a voice that said, ”Look what you are doing!” I looked again and quickly corrected my mistake. How grateful I am for a Father who was so intimately involved in my life!

For seven-and-a-half years, I worked, learned, and grew in confidence and experience as a trained nurse. Through great responsibility, God did much to heal me. I returned to work feeling like a “non-person”. Then, I slowly gained a new perspective of myself, my capacity to carry out my duties faithfully, with skill and integrity, as a child of God with God grace and help.  As I was given more responsibility, finally being in charge of the maternity department until I resigned, I became more of a whole person than I was during the toxic years of my marriage. 

In 1994, South Africa transitioned to  democracy and, with the change came a subtle change in the attitude in many of the hospital staff, an arrogance that defied authority. Nurses were often non-compliant, resisting instructions, acting as though they were in charge. 

As a white sister in charge of a department, I found difficulty in running my ward efficiently. Nurses would disappear, attending union meetings without asking permission, leaving me alone on the whole floor to handle everything including patients in labour…

but…I had a dream…a desire to run my own Bed-and-Breakfast. The situation in the hospital spurred me on to pray my dream into reality. I wrote, on a card I placed in my Bible, all the details of what I wanted and what I prayed for.  Ten months later, every detail of my dream was fulfilled. 

So, in 1996, I resigned from the hospital and launched into my great adventure…I, who had absolutely no experience of running a business, was solely in charge of a brand new enterprise…I, with no knowledge and no back-up…ran my B&B for eight years!  

One situation stands out clearly during that time. My finances were in deep trouble. I began my business with a bank overdraft. My B&B, in a relatively small town,  was at the mercy of much stronger players, influential men who had more clout than I had in the town. I, and other small players, lived on the dregs of the customers they left for us. 

The result was that my overdraft was eventually in overdraft! I was desperate. I wept my mattress wet day after day but nothing changed. I was even too afraid to buy a load of bread! 

One morning, as I sat in my car outside my church, waiting for the opening of the church for our weekly early morning prayer meeting, I cried out to God…” Why do I feel so rebellious?” God spoke, in my heart…as clearly as I am communicating with you.  “Because you think I have failed you!” 

Wow! Did that shake me! It was true. In the deepest part of my heart, that I was not even aware of, I was charging God for failing me! Think of that! I!!! Holding God guilty for not doing what I wanted! How arrogant of me! 

Like Paul said…

“But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭9‬:‭20‬ ‭NIV‬‬

I was mortified, melted…once again. God never rebukes to destroy. He rebukes to correct…and He needed to correct me because my attitude…my unbelief…was blocking something that was on the way…and I needed an open heart to receive it. 

Two years after I sold my business, I received a communication from the South African Revenue Service (SARS) that I needed to pay capital gains tax on the sale of my business. I was devastated. I needed every cent of my investment to live on. I visited the legal adviser at SARS to find out the details, and then awaited with trepidation for the assessment on my capital gain. 

A “window” envelope from SARS eventually arrived in the post…I trembled to open  it. Finally, I plucked up the courage to read it. At the bottom of the page, in the line marked “due by you” were four round zeros…00.00. 

The overdraft that had caused me so much grief was my salvation. No profit…no tax paid.  No tax paid, no capital gain.  My overdraft had saved me. God was vindicated. He was working in my darkest moments. Thank you, Father God! 

What a lesson…painful but effective. 

To be continued

GOOD STILL SPEAKS…MARRIAGE – 5

Christian Life, ,

My stormy marriage of 26 years yielded many lessons and many opportunities for God to speak…and He did…sometimes in clear words and sometimes in the things that happened…things that He allowed and things that He orchestrated…all for my good and His glory. 

The rift between my husband and me began to widen. His anger…for him a protective shield against the pain of his own suffering as a rejected son, which I did not understand…and my stubborn independence and reactions to his rages dug a chasm that only became deeper as the years went by. 

Oh, how I wrestled with my own bitter resentment towards him, conveniently forgetting that there are always two in the equation. 

Our caravan became my refuge. 

Wherever we were, first in the city, then in the town where my husband ministered in a small church, and then in my own home town…where we relocated to be with my eldest son whom we had placed in a boarding school, close to my parents…the conflict continued and the chasm widened. I spent agonising times in the caravan, locked away in secret, to weep and cry to God for deliverance from this prison of anger and fear. 

I was terribly afraid of the rages that exploded with volcanic violence at the slightest provocation. Even worse was the fact that one of my sons who clearly had his father’s  genes, angered him so much that one night, after a trivial incident, he threatened to kill him. 

I clearly remember, on another occasion, as I sat in the bath bewailing my ever-recurring resentment towards my husband and the depth of my own sinful heart,  “How can you put up with me?” I cried out to God. 

The words of the Lord came to me, clearly in my heart…”I can handle your blunders but I cannot handle your pride!” What a rule to live by! God’s words hit me between the eyes. 

I must confess that, though the message was clear, I have not anyways remembered it to my detriment. Isn’t pride the most lethal of our attributes as descendants of Adam? 

Our marriage finally ended in divorce in 1991. I had promised the Lord that I would never take  the initiative in a divorce. I would wait for him to deliver me…and He did. After a particularly explosive situation, my husband ordered me to get out of the house and never come back…and I fled! 

By this time, three sons had left home to make their own way. My youngest son was sixteen…and I had to leave him to the mercy of his father…so much damage occurred during that time that I only became aware of much later in our lives. 

In those thirteen months before the divorce was legalised, God spoke to me in clear directives on more than one occasion. Let me enlarge on one of them…

I left my home that night with a suitcase of clothing, my sewing machine, and a motor scooter for transport. My youngest son was left with his father because I was homeless. I spent the first few months of my exile in the Nurses’ Home of the hospital where I worked…in a small room which was the sum total of my space at that time. 

After weeks of frustration with only a small table to do my sewing, and much prayer,  one Sunday morning I fell on my knees beside my bed and cried out to God, “What are we waiting for?”  God’s response shook me. He said “You are not waiting for me. I am waiting for you!”

In a flash, everything became clear! That’s how it is when God speaks. It was about my attitude. I was impatient, angry with God, frustrated because He was not doing anything to help me…so I thought…but He was! He was waiting for my surrender, my trust, my willingness to submit to His leading, His timing, His will. 

What he said to me next was the directive that changed everything. He said to me, clearly, unmistakably, “Pay off your car,” and, “You will not go into debt.” 

My father had lent me the money to buy my friend’s small car. Living in the Nurses’ Home was cheap which meant that I could repay the balance of my loan in five months instead of two years. 

On that same Sunday morning, after God’s word had come to me so clearly, a friend’s husband who lived on a small holding on the outskirts of town, met me in town and told me of his intention to convert a disused double garage into a cottage for me! 

God’s love and mercy had been at work all the time…and so, a few weeks later, I moved into a two- bedroomed cottage on the farm where I lived happily for four years. 

As I reflect on those turbulent years…tossed out…homeless, and yet…I had a Father who was lovingly caring and providing for me, day by day nurturing my faith in Him and preparing me for my greatest adventure. 

To be continued

GOOD STILL SPEAKS…CHILDREN- 4

Christian Life, ,

Marriage, for me meant children. I wanted babies…but my first baby to a while to come. Finally, he made his appearance in 1967. I had named him long before his birth and…on the day he arrived, after a very short labour for a first-time mum…nothing could have been greater than the joy I felt when I held my Andrew in my arms. 

Another three sons arrived in quick succession, four boys in four years and nine months. From a woman with empty arms, longing for a family, I morphed into a frantically busy mother of four sons under the age of five. Those years slipped by in a flurry of cooking, cleaning, and caring for my husband and lively family. 

I think that my husband took to doing his “ministry” away from home as much as possible during those years, to escape his fathering role. He opted out, first because he had no idea how to be a father…his own father had finally rejected him years before when he was in Bible College…and second, because raising his sons scared him and he distanced himself from them as much as he could. They were there, but he left them to me to handle. 

The outcome was that I was building up a head of steam inside…a volcano of anger and frustration that threatened to blow from sheer overload! 

One day, the volcano erupted! I was 35 weeks pregnant with my desperately-longed-for daughter. One of my sons defied me at the breakfast table. My pent-up anger exploded. I grabbed him by the hair and pulled him from the table. 

I have no recollection of what I did next. I only remember falling in my knees at my bedside after the family had left and sobbing out my irrational rage to God. 

Later that morning, I drove to an appointment with my gynae for my regular pre natal check up. She expressed concern that the foetal heart sounded distant and faint. I thought nothing of it but…on my drive home, I was aware of an unusual feeling, as though the baby had slumped down in my womb. As a midwife, I was acutely aware of and followed the progress of my baby by the movement inside. 

There was no feeling of life that day…not the usual thump or flutter that I so enjoyed…those tiny interactions between my baby and me. Nothing! Just an eerie stillness and the alarm that grew as the hours passed. 

Finally, when I could handle the apprehension no longer, I made a hurried visit to my local GP to check the foetal heart. Nothing! No a sound! No familiar beat of a healthy little heart! Only the rhythmic woosh-woosh of blood rushing through my uterine  vessels. 

My GP immediately called my gymae and sent me off to the maternity hospital. After a few hours of induced labour, my daughter was born…beautiful, perfect, but wearing the mottled purple colour of death. I lifted my drugged head to take a quick glimpse of her before she was whipped away to be prepared for the mortuary. 

My baby was born in the era when it was thought wise to protect mothers from the sight and experience of bearing a dead baby. No closure! No “goodbye”! No final feel of her tiny body close to mine! Only empty arms and a shattered heart!

After the birth, I was wheeled into a private ward close to the general ward where mothers had their babies in cribs alongside their beds…to bond and care for until their discharge. This practice changed the practice, during my training year, of keeping the babies in the nursery, only to be taken to mothers at feeding time. 

My room was close enough to hear the babies crying…adding to the pain of my own loss…like digging a knife into an already deep, bleeding wound but…greater than the pain of loss was the agonising awareness of guilt. I had inadvertently killed my own baby by my angry outburst. I could not escape the truth. It overwhelmed me like a dark, threatening storm cloud. 

As I lay there listening to baby wails, I felt the weight of my guilt. I offered no rational reasons…no excuses. Then, in the midst of my deep despair, I began to feel, creeping over my whole being a warmth, as if I were being wrapped in a soft, protective blanket…a Presence…forgiveness flooding my heart…peace driving out the guilt…quietness in my spirit that completely replaced the agony of my sin. I felt God’s love so real, so overwhelming, so liberating, that I was free, free inside from the crushing weight of what I had done. The memory still remained…but not the pain. 

God had spoken…not in judgement…not even in words. He  was there. He had been there all the time but now…He had made Himself real, His own presence the greatest word of all…wordless but speaking of His deep love and forgiveness, of His unfailing mercy and grace. 

I was discharged from the hospital that morning…carrying with me the memory, but not the pain, of my loss. So transformed was my experience…from deep grief to deep gratitude…that I was free to reassure, first my doctor and then my friends and family, that I was not suffering from delayed hysteria.

There is a past script, a closure to this story. A few weeks later, in the early spring, I was preparing for a move to another town. I took boxes of unwanted clutter to the dump which happened to be close to the cemetery. On an impulse, I walked through the area where babies and children were buried, hoping to find the spot where my little angel lay. My husband and I had been debating whether to put a memorial stone over her grave or not. 

For some reason, despite my searching, I could not identify her resting place.  As I walked up the path, through the trees in fresh spring growth, I felt a whisper in my spirit. “She is not here!” Of course, her tiny body lay in the ground, a seed sown in death but she was with the Lord, waiting in hope for the moment of glorious resurrection. 

I left that city and the child I had so deeply desired, in peace. I carried with me the assurance of a love so deep and so real that nothing in the future…and there were many deep and stormy waters to navigate on my way to the Father…that I forever treasure what I learned from the loss and the love that sustained and still sustains me every moment of every day. 

To be continued

GOD STILL SPEAKS…NEW LIFE – 3

Christian Life, ,

After my new birth, my life took a dramatic turn…not outwardly because I was still pressing on towards the end of my school days and the beginning of my life’s adventure…but inwardly because my emptiness and  despair had given way to meaning and purpose. 

I was new inside. I found real friends…those who had been transformed at the same camp by the same grace that had changed my life. We found each other, at school and outside school. We stuck together to pray, encourage, and even play music together. We formed a group that played piano accordion and loved to play the gospel ditties we learned on a Friday night at our youth group meetings. 

Those were halcyon days. We were learning the basics of our new life and laying a solid foundation for the time when we would  move on, separated from the security of a close-knit group, to face the big, dangerous world alone… away from home and friends. 

My future loomed ahead. What next? I was learning to look to the Lord for guidance and direction. One door closed, another opened. At the tender age of seventeen, I left home to begin a career in nursing at the Carinus Nursing College in Cape Town. Alone, a vulnerable young teenager in a vast, unknown city, I clung to the Lord and the faith that was still forming inside me. 

I look back on those days and marvel that the Lord kept me and connected me to friends who helped to steady me until I found my feet in a hostile world. 

I became part of a small church in the suburb where I worked, which I attended faithfully during the years of my training. Although there were no dramatic moments, no specific times when God spoke clearly in my heart, I was deeply conscious of His guiding hand, keeping my resolve to follow Jesus and stay faithful to Him alive and intact despite many tests and temptations. 

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them away from me, for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else. No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand.”

‭‭John‬ ‭10‬:‭27‬-‭29‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The highlight of my three and a half years in Cape Town was the way the Lord honoured me. I had resolved, especially during the months of formal theory training at the college, never to study on a Sunday. When I reflect now, I realise how legalistic I was about observing Sunday…but my heart was sincere. I was determined to honour the Lord…and He, in turn, honoured me…

“But I will honor those who honor me, and I will despise those who think lightly of me.”

‭‭1 Samuel‬ ‭2‬:‭30‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I became the darling of the college and my training hospital in my final year, after I wrote my final examinations…winning the Kenneth B Gloag gold medal for the highest marks in the three groups of finalists in the country for that year, 1961…as well as the gold medal for my achievement in my own training college in Cape Town…

…but the glory was soon forgotten as the days passed. I left Cape Town behind, and returned home to complete the two months before I could be registered as a trained nurse when I turned 21. I worked under supervision as an unregistered staff nurse for three months in my small hometown hospital before I began the next phase of my journey into the unknown. 

My heart was set on God. I wanted to do His will. Two doors were open to me…Bible College or training as a midwife…the logical completion of my nursing career. Did I hear the Lord speak? No, not in clear words. 

I applied to both institutions and was accepted by both! What now? I decided on Bible College and, at the beginning of 1962, I entered the protected world of Christian fellowship and instruction. I was there for three-and-a-half-years where I completed two diplomas, one from the Bible Institute of South Africa (affectionately known as BI), and the London Bible College (known as LBC). 

In the course of this season, my life took another dramatic turn…i was engaged and finally married a fellow student in 1965. Let me say, with a measure of shame, that I followed my heart and my emotions rather than a clear directive from the Lord…and lived to face the consequences for years to come. 

I had only known my husband-to-be in the protected environment of a Christian college but not in the rough-and-tumble of the real world. 

I was learning, not from the mouth of the Father, but from the school of hard knocks, that choices and decisions have long-term consequences from which there is no escape. My passion for the Lord and His will began to be diluted in the struggle to survive in a relationship which became a power struggle rather than a union. 

Neither of us in this partnership understood what marriage was meant to be. We came together both carrying baggage and unfinished business, which was a recipe for disaster. We neither recognised nor understood that our issues would become a chasm that would eventually become uncrossable. My husband’s unresolved anger and my debilitating insecurity clashed incessantly until I, thankfully, moved out when I was driven out. 

Suffer as I did, my four precious sons, so young and damaged by the conflicts, bore the brunt of this collapse. They left home after school days, one by one, with their own baggage and unfinished business in their hearts, tarnishing their young lives and perpetuating the brokenness of their parents. 

Let me say, at this point, that however chaotic the early life of my sons had been…the crux of the matter was that they, like their own father before them, had never been truly fathered by a loving human father. Fatherless children, their father present in body but absent in real fathering, created insecure and angry sons. 

God had warned His own people centuries before, that the sins of the fathers would continue down generations, eventually producing a society of people riddled with sin. 

“I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected— even children in the third and fourth generations.”

‭‭Exodus‬ ‭34‬:‭7‬ ‭NLT‬‬

From one foolish error…not listening for the voice of God when I made a life-changing choice…out of a false and romantic notion about marriage rather than the careful choice of a truly godly partner, I brought upon the next generation years of painful “unlearning” about what real life in Christ is about. 

How I praise the Lord for grace…for His loving intervention that turned failure and pain into mercy and new life. Every difficult day, every moment of emotional suffering has become for me and for my sons, a doorway into God’s grace that we would not have missed for anything.

We are still learning.  The lessons never end. We still bump into old issues…we still uncover old wounds but…God’s supply of grace never ends. The more grace we enjoy, the more we are able to comfort others by pointing them to the grace that has comforted us. 

I am grateful to testify that three of my four sons have also become a part of God’s forever family. One has lost his way but…I have God’s promise…a clear word that He spoke into my heart…that He has my son on a long leash. 

In episodes to come, God has spoken, time and again, through pictures and words…keeping His wandering and wavering daughter moving…albeit hesitant, uncertain, often unbelieving and confused…in the right direction…towards and not away from Him. 

To be continued

GOD STILL SPEAKS…TRANSFORMED -2

Christian life, ,

Sunday, 1st 1956…the day God spoke…the day that changed me forever…but let me go back a few weeks. 

My dad has decided to sell our home but this entailed my family living in a hotel for three months while our new house was being built. 

My room in the hotel was at the back of the building, a small room with a window facing north. 

I was fifteen years old, a lonely teenager with few friends but… I had a deep emptiness inside that not even a friend could fill. 

One morning before school, in my desperation, I knelt at my bedside, with the warmth of the sun on my back, and I prayed. I had no idea how to pray so I prayed the only words I knew…the Lord’s Prayer. 

God was listening. He heard my heart, not my words. 

A few months later, the answer came…not in neon lights or a booming voice. It came at an Easter camp, organised for the young people in our area by the leaders of my church denomination…at a seaside resort, under canvas…rough and rustic. 

Our meeting place was a marquee tent…the floor, the field grass…our seating, rows of hard, uncomfortable chairs. Our preacher was a short man of Scandinavian origin, his subject taken from Isaiah 53. The title of his message was,”I wore my oldest shirt”!

It was Sunday, April 1…April Fools’ Day on the secular calendar but…not for me. I have no recollection of his sermon…not the words…not the content… not the point of what he said but… the Holy Spirit was drawing me. After the message, at the preacher’s invitation, I knelt on the rough field grass at my chair and allowed the Spirit to finish what He started. 

I don’t know what the Holy Spirit said. I don’t know what He did but…I stood up in that marquee tent a changed person. The deep inner loneliness was gone. In its place was a peace, a certainty that I was new inside, a joy that made no sense except that I knew I was a different person. 

The Bible tells me what had happened in those moments on my knees. 

“This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭5‬:‭17‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I was “in Christ”.  I belonged to Jesus. I was a new person. My old life had gone. 

“Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” …Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit.”

‭‭John‬ ‭3‬:‭3‬, ‭5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I was born again…of the Holy Spirit. I was born into God’s kingdom. 

“Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.”

‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭2‬:‭1‬, ‭4‬-‭6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

I was alive. God raised me to new life from sin and death because of His mercy. He didn’t snuff me out because of my sin. Instead, He answered my prayer and made me His own beloved daughter. He gave me His love, His joy, and His peace…a lasting legacy that has never left me…not even in the darkest moments of my life…

Wow! Did I know it! I was so filled with joy that I could not stop talking about what God had done. 

Seventy years have come and gone since that day…seventy years of learning to follow Jesus…of failing, falling, and getting up again, wiping the dust off my knees, the guilt of my soul, and going on. 

In those seventy years, my story has many episodes, many times that God has spoken…in clear words…in my spirit, words that rebuked…explained…redirected…even forgave, comforted and reassured me after I  had fallen…hard…!

There are two promises I hold dear, promises that have steadied me in dark times…times of failure, loss, rejection, betrayal, deep hurt, and despair. 

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭28‬-‭29‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Nothing happens without God’s purpose…

“And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.”

‭‭Philippians‬ ‭1‬:‭6‬ ‭NLT‬‬

God always finishes what He started. 

And so, the journey into my new life began. Was I an “April Fool” on that day? A thousand times “No!”

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

“This famous quote comes from the American missionary Jim Elliot. He penned it in his journal in October 1949, years before he was martyred while attempting to share the gospel in Ecuador.” (Source: Google AI)

To be continued