livin the good life

(again I have done two posts today.......these are hard posts to write, and sometimes I need some motivation to write another, so I try to fit in as much as possible)

So, now I'm at college..........I didn't have much money so I got a job to pay for school. This left me working and at school most of the time. I usually stayed after work and did my studies there, instead of going home, because momma got irritated at the sound of my pencil scratching or an extra light bulb burning at night. It was easier to study at work, more peaceful, no mother yelling or kids in my lap. I went thru a little phase where I really didn't want much to do with my sbilings, after going to the Dr and finding out that the sexual abuse had left me so scarred inside that I would never have children. I was angry and hurt, but eventually learned to live with it.

I worked in a nursing home, on the "death hall". I know, it sounds morbid, but I grew to love my job, and stuck with it for 12 years or so, before I "retired". It was in the nursing home that I met the woman who changed my life forever............

Susan, a tiny scrap of a woman, dying a horrible death of cancer, in constant pain, unable to eat and so, she was to starve to death. The cancer she had caused her body to decay before she died, so on top of her pain, she lived with the smell of death seeping out of her body for over six weeks. She smiled every day.

I would go sit with her and hold her hand, sometimes she would have me read to her out of her Bible. She told me once that Christ had died to save me from my sins. I told her that I knew this, that my granny had told me the God was love and Christ died for me and blah blah blah. But what I REALLY needed was someone who could save me from other people's sins. She sighed and seemed to understand, and then prayed aloud for my salvation.

Several weeks, and prayers later, I sat with her as she died, in pain like you or I could never imagine, with blood leaking from her nose and mouth, as well as out of her rectum and at times her ears. She had gone from a healthy woman of 136 pounds to a shriveled 68 pounds of bone.
She no longer wet the bed as her bladder didn't have the strength to squeeze out the few drops of waste her body created, and everyone who visited her did so with Vicks rub smeared under their nose to cover the horrid smell of death still pouring out of her. And she smiled.

I sat with her that night, reading to her (I think I read out of Psalms but Im not sure). I do remember reading something about dancing and her eyes glittering with laughter because she knew how I loved to dance. I stumbled thru my first time praying aloud with her because it was so hard for her to talk. As time passed, she began to go in and out of sleep, and at one point, she looked at me with such tired and dull eyes , and closed her eyes, but her lips moved, so I knew she was praying. When she opened her eyes again, I watched at the dullness slowly crept out and a light began to shine. Her face relaxed and I saw how truly beautiful she was shortly before she drew in her last breath. And, even in death, Susan smiled.

It hit me hard, like a brick wall, what I had just seen. God had not sent someone to save her from her sins and just left her at the mercy of others......He had been right there inside of her the whole time! AND, it was so with me! He was right there with me, and had been there, holding my hand, loving me thru everything that had happened.

I welcomed God and was overjoyed, though I was secretive about my having been saved because momma was very adament about us kids not believing in God. But I had Him there, and even she didn't have the power to take Him from me. Little did I know that my life was about to change, dratically change, and God would bestow upon me blessings like I never imagined possible.