This morning, Thursday February 5, 2004, while our 3 ladies sat in her living room for our weekly prayer gathering, the 89 year old hostess, founder of our group and owner of the home where we were meeting told us of an experience she had about 52 years ago and she has given me permission to share it with you. I believe it will evoke mixed feelings, thoughts and theologies but I am just going to relate it as she told it. I had heard her tell part of it before and I thought of writing it up then but I’m glad that I waited as she added more details this time.

Her mother, a Godly widow, was taken to the hospital with pneumonia fever and was unconscious for 2 weeks while the fever raged on. Her condition was deteriorating and the physician told her daughter Wyone, who had stayed with her a full 9 days and nights plus parts of the other days – that her mother would surely die that night and not to bother phoning him to come in as there just wasn’t anything more he could do for her.

At around midnight the fever broke and there was an hour’s lapse of time where the nurse and the daughter had to hold the mother down as it happened regularly and it was well-known in those days that a fever breaking caused a lot of hysterical unconscious behavior and the patient would even get out of bed. The nurse said the individual either wakes up feeling better or dies. In this case after about an hour the mother breathed her last. But the daughter, Wyone, didn’t want to accept the death and started praying. After some minutes the nurse wanted the family to be called but Wyone wouldn’t agree. As time passed she kept praying and went in and out of the room. Eventually a physician came to attend to the birth of a baby to a patient in a nearby bed and the nurse asked him to declare the death of this patient. After examining her he did. The nurse wanted Wyone to accept it but still she wouldn’t and she kept praying. More time elapsed and she could feel that her mother was as cold as marble but she kept praying intensely. It was a length of time of an hour or two after her mother died that she kept praying. After awhile her mother yawned, stretched and said she had the most wonderful rest. When the nurse found out about it she almost fainted. Everyone was amazed. When asked if she were hungry the mother asked for cornbread and buttermilk. And this was procured and she ate it. She soon was able to go home and lived 5 more years.

But today was when Wyone shared the rest of that story. She said this experience taught her to always pray for God’s will and not her own will. She said her mother eventually lost the circulation in her legs, and gangrene set in up to her knees. The doctor refused to operate and amputate the legs because her heart was so bad that she wouldn’t survive the operation. And so Wyone concluded with the statement that her mother died a horrible death. She regretted asking God for her own will to be done. And since then Wyone has lost her husband and 2 sons to death and she never again prayed for them to return to life. She only prayed for God’s will to be done.

So I welcome any comments on the above story and anything you might want to share with this saint of God who has read her Bible through 66 times over the years. She was a school teacher and also shared her faith and God’s Word with her students over the years. And she still teaches the Bible regularly. She says no one has believed her when she has told this over the years. But I certainly do.

Written out as told to Harrietta Turner

Harrietta Turner flyinhi@wnclink.com