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