Me vs. the Courts in California? In Which I Almost Lose My Job…. Again

This story's pretty simple really. After student teaching, I was offered several jobs teaching in different school districts. I chose a fourth grade class of 35 amazing kids at Glazier Elementary School in the Norwalk-LaMirada Schools. Then I moved out on my own to a cute little one room bungalow with a white picket fence.

The 35 kids became my whole life. I loved the kids and I loved teaching. I spent hours before, during, and after school trying to make learning and reading fun and meaningful.

However, being naive about legalities, I started telling my students about Jesus. Three of them, DeLise, Susan and Jerry, decided they wanted to follow Jesus too. So I started holding Bible classes after school. I was soon to learn this was not allowed.

So here’s how I almost lost my job….again. One afternoon during Bible class, we were working our way through John, chapter 3. One of the children, Susan, asked if verse 16 meant her parents needed Jesus too, or they would perish and go to Hell. We re-read the verses and prayed for her parents. However, she went home and on her own told her parents they were going to hell and needed to ask Jesus to be their Savior.

I was called into the Principal's office first thing the next morning and told if I wanted to keep my job and not end up as a major court case in the State of California, I would stop talking to kids about Jesus and the Bible. The Principal told me about other teachers who had lost their jobs doing this. But he wanted to give me another chance. So our Bible classes after school stopped. Instead I met on Saturdays with whoever could come and meet off the school grounds. 

With great joy, I recently reconnected with DeLise on Facebook and heard her recounting of the same events. Mostly I heard how she still loves and follows Jesus and that warmed my heart for sure.

But all of this took its toll, and by the middle of the semester I ended up in the hospital exhausted and still in need of much healing….enter the boy, the kiss, yet another tree, and the proposal.

John 3:16:  For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.


Song: Your Grace Finds Me (Matt Redman), Your Grace Finds Me  

St. Augustine and Me: “I Badly Wanted to Love Something….to Love and Have My Love Returned”

It was my final semester of college courses for my teaching credential and my whole world seemed upside down. I thought I had become a "successful Christian" and all of life seemed on the right track. Everything fit in a box, even my conceptual understanding of God and His Son Jesus.

Then God let my box be shaken....and it fell apart. I became involved in self-righteous, self-justifying relationships that were not godly and gave me a false sense of identity and the human love I felt I wanted and needed. How could I now be dealing with sin, and why?? Wasn't I still a "good Christian who loved Jesus"?

I began to touch the selfishness still rampant in my own heart. I felt much as Augustine did during his schooling in Carthage. He later confessed, “I began to look around for some object for my love, since I badly wanted to love something….to love and have my love returned was my heart’s desire, and it would be all the sweeter if I could also enjoy the body of the one who loved me” (Confessions 3:1).

Here was God's solution for my dilemma. As with Augustine, God didn't stop my foolish choices. Just like the children of Israel in the wilderness, He let me prove to myself that being and doing things right in my own eyes didn't work. Pure and simple, I was a sinner and needed His love and forgiveness. And He didn't forsake me. Instead, once I acknowledged sin as sin and yielded to Him my hopes for love on my terms, He began to give me more than I could ever have imagined.

I learned that I'm not the first person to prove I was a sinner and needed God’s grace provided through Jesus. In fact, there is no other way to be cleansed from guilt or to become a follower of Jesus. Recently I was reading how easily Aaron, and even Moses, "became" sinners and how God did not reject them, only disciplined them with love and forgiveness. Then there's Peter who denied him three times. Denied he even knew Jesus! I think Jesus wept with Peter….and I know He wept with me.

So I joined the company of those who have proved that they are nothing without Jesus. He's the only One who can clean us up and draw us back into relationship with the living God. This is really the whole message of Christmas and why Jesus came. The reason for the season is that we are separated from God and Jesus came to reconcile us to the Father. This is the real reason for celebration!

Out of His grace during this time, He also gave me a family in which to heal, the family of Dr. Larry and Jackie Hale. In order to cut housing costs, I had moved in with this family to help care for their precious baby, Rebecca. But I was the one who received the most care. Larry, the father of this home, prayed for me and encouraged me to seek God's forgiveness and healing. He and Jackie loved me with compassion, even when they saw how broken I was. Often Larry, as a father, would sit and talk with me after dinner, giving counsel, advice, and ministering the love and acceptance of Jesus. How good of my Father to give me a father at this time to help walk me into wholeness.

Here’s what Augustine learned, the truth of the only true completeness (Confessions 10:6):

What do I love when I love my God?
Not physical beauty, or the splendor of time;
Not the radiance of earthly light, so pleasant to our eyes;
Not the sweet melodies of harmony and song;
Not the fragrant smell of flowers, perfumes and spices;
Not manna or honey;
Not limbs such as the flesh delights to embrace;
These are not the things I love when I love my God.

And yet, when I love Him, I do indeed love a certain kind of light, a voice, a fragrance, a food, an embrace.

But this love takes place in my inner person,
Where my soul is bathed in light whose brilliance is not bound by space;
When it listens to sounds that time never takes away;
When it breathes in a fragrance which no breeze can disperse;

When it taste food which by eating can’t diminish;
When it clings to an embrace which is not broken when it is fulfilled.

This is what I love when I love my God.

Song: Create in Me a Clean Heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFlgIk7CXbs

Jesus' Birthday Cake

There are so many special things that happen during this season. I want to share my favorite one in our home. In addition to pumpkin pie, at our house on Christmas Day we bake a birthday cake for Jesus.

Then we decorate it and each person gets to put a candle on the cake. Around the Christmas dinner table, we all sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blow out the candles together. That's what Jesus does with our sins. Completely gone.

Now this next part is my favorite: We each take a piece of cake, reserving one piece of cake for Jesus. Then we pass around Jesus' piece and each take a small piece. We wait until each person has a piece and then eat it together. It is a time of communion with our loving God and each other.

May your Christmas be blessed with peace, joy, forgiveness and communion in your home as you remember Jesus, the greatest nomad who ever left one place and came to another.

21 Cartons of Milk and the Boy Under the Tree: How I Met My Husband

As I studied God’s Word, I felt strongly that I was to serve overseas and share His Word with those who needed Him. But there were so many opportunities, which way should I go? As I listened to different speakers and heard about many great things going on, I was drawn to one mission organization. Wycliffe Bible Translators focuses on giving God’s Word to people who have never had His Word in their own language. Since it was through reading His Word that my heart got drawn in, I wanted to help others come to meet Jesus through His Word.

Being a member of Wycliffe meant you had to have a minimum of two full summers of intensive linguistic training at one of Wycliffe’s training schools held at different universities around the country. The closest university to me was Oklahoma University in Norman, Oklahoma. So in my junior year I applied to take the courses and was accepted for the first set summer courses. It would be a long drive from southern California to Oklahoma, but I found another applicant who needed a ride and so we drove together. Janet Barnes became my roommate and friend. Janet and I drove straight through, arriving at 3 a.m. when the temperature was 103. We took the last room available—a corner upstairs room in a hot brick building facing the setting sun.

Now Janet happened to be a teacher who taught high school Spanish. One day she called me to come out of our hot dorm room and meet one of her former students. I went out on the upstairs landing in my bathrobe and curlers (!) and saw this young kid sitting under a tree with a tray full of 21 milk cartons. He was an MK (missionary kid) and had been travelling with his parents for a week. When he returned, he picked up the 21 cartons of milk he was owed for his absent meals (children got 3 a day) and took them to drink under a tree.

 

I’m afraid I wasn't too impressed with this young boy who seemed kind of nerdy. Plus he was only 18 and I was two years older and much wiser. If you know me, you probably already have figured out that this young geek was my future husband Bill. While he seemed interested in me, I tried to discourage his interests and so we didn't date that first summer.

Janet writes: "I remember that often you and I would go to the dining hall together, get our trays of food, and then I would spot Bill and suggest that we sit with him. Later on you told me that you really didn't want to sit with him, but I guess you were too polite to tell me that, so we sat with him, which pleased me!" Janet even kept a letter we wrote her of our engagement ... well, kinda told her. I'll be happy to share it with you if you'd like; just ask.

So I focused on my studies of phonetics, phonology, and grammar. Besides having Kenneth Pike (Nobel Peace Prize nominee) for a grammar instructor, I also had a very good phonology teacher named Dow Robinson During this summer I completed the rigorous application to become a member of Wycliffe Bible Translators and was accepted. Oh, by the way, Bill's father, Otis, was the Candidate Secretary for Wycliffe and Bill's mom, Mary, helped with the process, so all memberships went through their office. So really they knew me well before Bill did.

I returned to Biola for my final year to get my BA and to graduate. Though I still had Student Teaching and another semester of course work for my teaching credential, the next summer I headed back to Norman, Oklahoma, for the second summer of linguistic training classes (grammar and phonology).

During this second summer I had a couple informal dates with the geek from the previous summer--cokes or ice cream at local shops--and found him fascinating. When we talked he seemed caring and kind  and less geeky. He knew so many things about everything and he loved the Lord too. He planned to attend Westmont College the next year while I would be student teaching. Then he would be going to UC Berkeley for his final year to complete his math degree. But as I still didn't want to move things forward, we decided we would just write letters ... until the time when I ended up in the hospital in the same city where he was going to school, halfway across the US. But that’s part of the next story.

Wycliffe’s unofficial theme Song: Faith Mighty Faith by Charles Wesley:

Faith mighty faith, the promises sees and looks to God alone
Laughs at impossibilities and shouts “It shall be done!”
And shouts, “It shall, it shall be done. It shall, it shall, it shall be done!”
Laughs at impossibilities and shouts “It shall be done!”

Matthew 28:18-20: Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Working My Way through College and the Time I Almost Lost My Job

It’s never been cheap to go to college, especially if you live on campus. My mom helped out as best she could, but I had to work hard, sometimes 30 hours a week in addition to carrying a very full course load, with wonderful courses by amazing teachers. My work jobs were varied and included being an RA for several years. Another job was being the elevator operator for our downtown dorm (12 stories high). Back in those days, all elevators were operated by an employed person.

Fortunately I had some pretty interesting jobs and wonderful bosses. My first year, I worked in the children’s department of the Los Angeles Public Library, which was right next door to our dorms. I fell in love with children’s books, and the two amazing librarians there who nurtured that love. Mrs. Margaret Riddell became a friend for life.

The next year I worked at an insurance agency as a secretarial assistant to Mr. John Motley. He was a great boss. But I think I’ll tell you the time I nearly lost me my job. Normally my job was to file computer cards. Pretty dull and boring. Then his secretary went on vacation for two weeks at Christmas and he asked me to fill in full time. I was a good typist and dutifully typed up all I was asked to do. I enjoyed playing the part of being the “real” secretary.

But one day I noticed that a bill had not been paid and was way overdue. So I thought it would be helpful if I sent a reminder note to the man who had not paid his bill. Soon after, Mr. Motley called me into his office and asked me to sit down. He asked me if I had written and sent out this note. I explained my actions—that I wanted to help him. He told me I should never write and send a letter to a customer without his permission. I apologized, quite contritely.

Then he looked at me and started laughing. I was puzzled, as you might imagine. Then he told me he had wanted to write such a letter himself but didn’t have the courage! I don’t remember the outcome of the letter’s warning and if the bill got paid, but I’ll never forget the kindness of this boss.

With several jobs at one time, my GPA wasn’t stellar, but I did complete 6 years of coursework in 4 ½ years (including the two semesters that I also took Koine Greek (not in my major program) to learn to study the New Testament in one of the original languages (not to be outdone or an underachiever!). 

During my first year at Biola, 1963-1964, I had the privilege of being a counselor for the Billy Graham Crusade in downtown Los Angeles. I remember being up front and Billy Graham passing in front of me one time. I was blown away by the Presence of God he carried then.


Song from Biola Days:
I am not skilled to understand: I Am Not Skilled to Understand - original
Here's an update rendition (with Chinese translation: I Am Not Skilled to Understand

My life verse I chose during this time was Psalm 27:4 (KJV):  One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.

God Speaks in A Dream About the Trinity

God began to speak to me in dreams during my college years. The first time I remember this was when, during a Bible Class, we were studying the Trinity and I was trying to understand how three could be One.

During this time I had a dream, I was out in the desert with bright blue sky and the sun shining unhindered. No clouds. I was with my sister at a picnic table. We were getting ready to sit down when I suddenly noticed something unusual happening in the sky. The full moon over to the side began to grow larger. Then a distant star on the other side began to grow larger too.

I was so shocked I remember telling my sister to go grab our camera so we could take pictures of this! The moon and star continued to grow until they were equally as large as the sun--all the exact same size!

Then, before we could get the camera, the sun, moon and star all began to merge together into one glorious light. We were awestruck and I awoke. Mystified.

I knew the dream was from God, but didn't know what it meant. I immediately told my roommate about the strange dream and she knew it must have come from God to help in my struggles to understand the reality of the Trinity. There was no way to humanly understand this mystery. God wanted to show me He was three in One in a very memorable way.  It all came clear and all I could do was worship this Three-in-One God: my Father, His Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit. I never doubted the reality of the Trinity again.

I told this story to the boys and asked them to draw a picture. They didn't exactly know how to get the motion of them all coming together, but made a some great pictures. I like Isaac's picture of Nancy with the red hair and me with my hands raised!

Trinity Verse for Christmas: The Spirit, the Most High and the Son of God all in one verse!

Luke:34:35

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God."

Song of the Trinity

Come Thou Almighty King by Charles Wesley. Each of the first three verses addresses a different member of the Trinity. The fourth addresses the Three-In-One.

(1) Come, thou almighty King,
help us thy name to sing;
help us to praise:
Father, all glorious,
o'er all victorious,
come, and reign over us,
Ancient of Days.

(2) Come, thou incarnate Word,
merciful, mighty Lord,
our prayer attend.
Come, and thy people bless,
and give thy word success;
Spirit of holiness,
on us descend.

(3) Come, holy Comforter,
thy sacred witness bear
in this glad hour.
Thou who almighty art,
now rule in every heart,
and ne'er from us depart,
Spirit of power.

(4) To thee, great One in Three,
eternal praises be,
hence evermore!
Thy sovereign majesty
may we in glory see,
and to eternity
love and adore.