Day 33

 

The Source of Beauty

 

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

 

1 Peter 3:3-4

 

I first met Cathy while I was on a date with another girl. I can't say it was love at first sight because I was, after all, on a date with someone else and not paying much attention to her. Our meeting was not a big occasion for either of us.

 

I had met a girl at a Christian book store and had asked her out on a date. We had a hard time with our schedules finding a time that we were both free. We had finally decided to  meet at the church where I was a youth minister. I was preaching the evening service that night and my date was to meet me there and after church we would go on our date. She told me she had a friend that lived in that area that was looking for a church home and asked if it was okay to invite her to the service.

The friend was Cathy and she came to the service. She sat in the back and made fun of me to my date. I was introduced to her and barely noticed her and after the service was over I went on my date with the other girl. We had a pleasant enough time together but there was nothing there.

 

The next Sunday morning Cathy was in church and filled out a visitor's card. I don't recall talking to her at the service but I called all the visitors that came to the morning service in the afternoon and I had a nice talk with her on the phone. The next Sunday morning I was looking for her. We talked at the end of the service and I asked her out to lunch (not all the visitors got that treatment) and during lunch we set a date for the next weekend.

 

She stood me up on our first date. She called late in the week and said she had to go home to Missouri for some family deal. Usually if a girl canceled a date on me I understood it to mean don't bother to call again. When she got back I thought it was worth the risk to call her again and it was.

 

Three months later I accidentally proposed to her. I had thought about it but I intended to wait a while longer to see if things

continued to go well. We were having this conversation about some distant future plans when I jokingly said, "Oh, that will

happen after we get married and have our 2.3 kids."

 

She looked at me serious and asked, "When will that be?"

 

And suddenly I was engaged. I was 33 years old. I had always been adept at getting girlfriends and even more adept at losing them. Now, I was getting married.

 

 

         Cathy had come to Houston, Texas from Missouri when she was 19. It wasn't a move of choice; she came to go to the hospital. She had cancer. She had come to M. D. Anderson hospital for chemo therapy and surgery. The kind of cancer she had most people did not survive. She had chemo therapy, limb salvage surgery where the tumor was removed along with her knee joint and an artificial knee put in its place. Then she had more chemo. During that time she enrolled in nursing school and eventually got her nursing degree. The surgery and chemo saved her life but left her with a inability to retain electrolytes and with a damaged heart.                 

 

She was a beautiful girl with blond hair and blue eyes. That was not what made her special though. She had an inner strength and determination to make the most of life. She was the most courageous person I had ever met, facing death on numerous occasions. It was that inner strength that made her so beautiful.

 

We got married about a year after we met. Her strength and mine would be tested in ways I could never have imagined.

The Photos: Cathy May Sumrall 1986 and Cathy (with the scarf on due to loss of hair during treatment) with John Denver.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read 1 Peter 3:1-7

• Does Peter say that there is anything wrong with outward beauty?
• Where is the most important source of beauty to come from?
• If someone is physically weaker does that make them less valuable?



 



Day 32

 

An Unoccupied House

 

Then it says, "I will return to the house I left." When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order.

 

Matthew 12:44

 

 

One day a young lady came into my office whose mind was stuck on "free parking," in the monopoly game of life. I don't know what was wrong with her except she was crazy. She had been by before and I had talked to her mom on the phone. Tragically this young lady that had gone scooters had a 3 year old daughter that was most often the adult in this 2 person family.

 

The grandmother had rescued the 3 year old for the day and the lady was sitting in my office talking to me. It was hard to focus on what she was saying because as we were talking her head would slowly tilt upwards until she was looking at the ceiling. Then she would grab her hands in both hands and pull it down so that she was once again looking at me.

 

This went on for a while so I asked her why it was going on. She told me an unseen force was pulling her head up. So I decided to have a roll call. I called out her name and asked if she was there and she said, "Yes." I called out my own name and answered, "Present." Then I called out, "Unseen Force? Anyone here named Unseen Force?"

 

No one answered.

 

So I said, "Well it seems to be just the 2 of us here now. Unseen Force appears to have left, so could you please stop the thing with your head?"

 

The day was just beginning though. After some more conversation with her and calling a doctor on the phone it was somehow decided that I should take her to the county hospital for a psych evaluation. So,  off we went to the hospital where it turns out they had treated her before. They let her into the lockdown psych ward and I sat out in the hallway. After a while a guy came out and asked if I would come in and sit with her because she was nervous and pestering them and they were very busy and hadn't been able to see her yet.

 

Once I was in the lockdown unit it was clear why they were so busy. There was a guy who was mightily struggling to escape as they were transferring him from one gurney to another. He was incredibly strong and I was really hoping he would not get lose. He was also saying some remarkably rude things about the astronaut Sally Ride.

 

The lady and I sat at a table watching this when she made the brilliant observation, "Everybody in here is crazy! Let's leave."

 

I was not about to leave until she had seen someone. There was another lady sitting across the table from us calmly talking on a pay phone so I said, "Look not everyone in here is so bad. That lady on the phone seems nice."

 

My timing was perfect. The lady on the phone began to cuss out what was apparently her mother on the phone, telling her it was all her fault. She slammed down the phone in anger, hanging it up. She immediately picked up a quarter, dialed her mom back up and started the cussing again. She slammed it down again, grabbed still another quarter dialing up dear old mom again.

 

This caught the attention of one of the staff who told her to stop. She did. She hung up the phone, climbed up on the table, stood up and shouted, "I am going to kill everybody in here!"

 

To which I replied, "That's just great."

 

The staff chased her around the unit as she leaped from bed to bed with psychotic agility, all the while promising to kill us all. Eventually they captured her and eventually they got around to seeing the lady I had brought. They gave her some medication and told me to take her home. I don't know if the medication helped or if she was just scared straight by the lockdown unit but on the way home she seemed much better.

 

The question comes to my mind how do you know when a person is just crazy or if they are demon possessed? Yes, I do believe that people can be demon possessed. It happened in Jesus' day; I see no reason why it shouldn't happen today. I've heard missionaries that work in places where there are animistic religions, who believe they have seen demon possessed people. So, I think it can happen though I don't believe it does happen all that often. For one thing, in our society imagine the bad press Satan would get it there were loads of demon possessed people running around. Satan can keep plenty busy and keep a low profile and lull people into thinking that he or any other spiritual reality does not exist.

My first thought when I see someone acting crazy is that they are just that, crazy. Perhaps they can be medically helped or they may need to institutionalized.

 

Jesus talks about a person who was demon possessed and then the evil spirit leaves. Later the evil spirit returns to that same person who has cleaned their life up because their "house is unoccupied."

 

That is the danger of an unoccupied house. You can live a good moral life (at least by human standards) and be unoccupied. There is a void where God should be and somebody or some thing that is not worthy of the God spot in your life moves in. The good news for Christians is if a demon should try to occupy you, he will find the Holy Spirit is already there and saying, "Sorry, no room in the inn."

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read Matthew 12:22-29, 43-45

 

• How could the crowd tell Jesus had healed the demon possessed man?
• What did the Pharisees accuse Jesus of?
• What is the danger of an "unoccupied" house?     

 

Day 31

 

A Friendship Bracelet

 

"A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity."

 

Proverbs 17:17

 

 

Eleanor was going to have a hard time after she graduated high school. I could see it coming. Because of her family situation she was going to be pretty much on her own. As long as she  was in high school, being involved in the youth group was enough to keep her out of harm's way but years of youth ministry told me she was not grounded enough in faith and had too much emotional baggage to stand on her own.

Experience had taught me that the usual causes for celebration for teenagers were also the opportunities  for disastrous defeats. When a kid gets their driver's license it is a cause to celebrate and a time to watch out for reckless behavior. A teenager getting their first job, starting dating, graduating high school or going off to college are all special occasions but they are accompanied by enormous pits they can fall into.  It's a question of maturity. Are they mature enough to handle their new freedom and do they realize that with freedom comes responsibility?

We live in a society that gives teenagers too much information, too much freedom and responsibility without guidance. Kids in elementary school know more about sex than I did when I graduated high school. That doesn't mean they are mature. There is a difference between social maturity and emotional maturity.

You can be socially mature and not treat the people you date with respect. That takes emotional maturity. You can be socially mature and be a menace to society when you drive. You can be socially mature and be a worthless employee. If you lack real maturity you use people, you put people at risk, you expect too much for so little and think life is a party.

Eleanor was socially mature. On the surface she appeared to be all grown up. The truth was she was not ready for the freedom of being on her own. She got a job and fell into a lifestyle in which there were fleeting moments of joy in a sea of crushing guilt and emotional despair.

I had moved and was serving at another church and lost track of her. A couple of years went by and one day she called me. I encouraged her to get back in church and to get right with God.

She told me, "I've been kind of disappointed with God lately."

I told her, "I think God has been kind of disappointed in you too."

I haven't heard much from her as the years have gone by. I still think about her sometimes because kids in my youth groups will always be my kids even though I may not know where they are. Years ago Eleanor made me one of those friendship bracelets made out of embroidery thread. From time to time I wear it to remind me to pray for her.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read 1 Samuel 20:1-42

• What did David ask Jonathon to do?
• What did Jonathon ask David to promise to do?
• When would David and Jonathon's friendship come to an end?