So why didn’t God answer my prayer?

 This coming Monday marks the 30th anniversary of my father’s death from ALS. 

Exactly four weeks later, I got married. 

In the years between my dad’s death and now, I’ve kicked myself for not getting married sooner so my father could see me get married and I’ve also been angry at God for allowing my father to die at the time he died. 

Daddy was diagnosed at the end of 1991. I learned of his diagnosis on February 29, 1992. (I even still remember the drive home; I’d had to work that Saturday and I remember taking State Road 826 north in Dade County, Florida; I drove by the Office Depot sign in Hialeah, took my exit, and arrived at my parking lot.) 

The answering machine was flashing when I got home on that February day. It was my mother; I called her back, Daddy answered, saying, I haven’t heard from you in a while; and after a short chat, he handed the phone to Mom . . . who said six words that ended my life as I knew it up to that point. 

“Your father has Lou Gehrig’s disease.”

My reaction: “Oh, my God!” 

We talked for a while, and then after I hung up, I was on the phone for the next hour with my now-husband and my two best friends. 

My husband and I had been dating since 1987. In fact, he proposed on Valentine’s Day 1990; and I was shocked. It was something I had not expected, and after a long conversation, we decided it wasn’t a good time right now. And I believe we made the right decision, because I started developing the disease I have now, interstitial cystitis, and trying to plan a wedding in the middle of navigating my own health struggle would have been difficult. 

When husband proposed again in May of 1993, I accepted. And one of the first things I thought of was, please let my father live long enough to see me get married. 

I prayed for God to heal my father. I prayed for him to live long enough to see me get married. 

Neither of those things happened.  

My sister called me on September 11th and told me that they didn’t think it would be much longer. 

I called my husband after that, in minor hysteria. I called a couple of friends, and friends called me. 

But in the middle of that hysteria, I suddenly had a moment of clarity and said, “But God, if you’re going to take him, take him quickly and please let it be as peaceful as possible.”

That night, I heard the phone ring but didn’t answer it.  I was in bed and didn’t feel like getting the phone. 

Mom called the next morning and told me, “Your Daddy’s gone.” 

I immediately called my husband, who came and said, I’ll either drive you or take you to the airport. You’re not driving alone. (He drove me.)

One of the more surreal experiences of my life was accepting congratulations on my engagement with my father’s coffin around ten feet away. I mean, how do you celebrate what should be a happy time in your life when you are in such close proximity to your father’s body? 

Not only that, I made a phone call from my parents’ house regarding my bridesmaids’ dresses.  I think I may given information over the phone; I know I told them we’d had an emergency in the family. 

The funeral was on September 15. My husband and I left the next day and I immediately plunged back into planning a wedding. That wedding happened on October 9th. On October 11th, a month to the day after my father died, I boarded a plane to Cancun, Mexico, for my honeymoon. 

Since then, like I’ve said above, I’ve wondered why God said “no” to my prayer for “let my dad live long enough to see me get married.” 

In my nastier moments, I wonder if God was just mad and he wanted to punish me for some reason. But when I think about God as being kind, compassionate, and loving, I just can’t see him doing something like this just because he was in a bad mood. 

But if God is kind, compassionate, and loving, why did he let my father die when he did and how he did?

Then I’ve also told myself, you should have gotten married earlier. You should have pushed your husband into having a wedding earlier. 

There were two reasons I didn’t do that: 1. I didn’t think that “letting my dad see me get married” was a good enough reason to push my husband into marriage, and 2. I knew someone who’d been in a similar position - in her case, her mother had cancer and the girl got engaged not too long afterwards - and right after the honeymoon, the girl I knew left her husband. (I’ve since learned that there were other circumstances involving the couple’s relationship that probably led to their divorce.) But at the time, I thought, “So and so got married when her mother was so sick, and look what happened. Do I want to do the same thing?” 

After 30 years, I have no solid answers to, why did God allow all of this to happen the way it did and how it did? The only solid answer I really have is: I don’t know. 

The longer I am a Christian, the more I believe that the most humble and honest answer I can give to the question, why did God let this happen? is, “I don’t know.” I can come up with the Christian cliches of, “God needed another angel in heaven,” or, “It must have been God’s will,” or, “At least he’s in a better place.” I can give the broad answer of, trials come to increase our faith, to prove that our faith is genuine, etc. But the specific answer of “why this trial, why now?” I don’t know. 

I can tell you that from the time my father was diagnosed until he died, I never heard him complain or feel sorry for himself. He never talked about being sick with me. He had to leave teaching, and when I asked if he regretted not teaching, he said, “No. It was getting pretty bad.” (I didn’t blame him for feeling that way.)

The last time I visited, in August of 1993, I had written down the directions from my parents’ home in St. Petersburg to the hotel I was having everyone stay in. I had asked my father’s younger brother, my Uncle Jerry, to give me away if Daddy couldn’t. His answer:  “I’d be honored.” Uncle Jerry would end up driving my mother and sister to Miami.

Getting them down to Miami would be the easy part. 

Getting them to the hotel would be the hard part. 

It took me one full paragraph to get them through a particular portion of Freeway Hell known as the Golden Glades Interchange, where the following highways merge:  Interstate 95, State Road 826, State Road 9, Florida’s Turnpike, and NW 167th Street. So I was writing, this is the sign you will see, this is the lane you need to get in, this is the turn you will have to make.

When I showed the directions to my dad - who, by this time, had lost all power of speech - his eyes widened and he pulled the paper away from his face.

I burst out laughing. Because even though my father couldn’t talk, the expression on his face said everything. “All that?” 

The very last time I saw him, he was taking a nap and I was debating, do I go wake him up and tell him that I’m leaving to go back to Miami, or do I not disturb him? I’ll feel bad if I wake him up . . . but if I don’t go in there and it turns out I should have . . .

So I went into the bedroom, told Daddy good-bye, he gave me a hug, and when I walked out of the room, I said, “That’s the last time I’ll see my father alive.”

He would die in that bedroom about two weeks later. 

I am fortunate to have one of my last memories of my dad be a happy one. 

I am also fortunate to have his example of not complaining, although I hope he was at least able to talk to Mom. 

So why did God let my dad die when he did and how he did? 

I don’t know. 

The one conclusion I have come to in 30 years is that God is God, I am not, and I will not know until I ask God directly why he allowed things to happen the way they did. I jokingly refer to this as my “beef with God”. 

But God is still God. Even when a prayer does not get answered in the way you wanted it to be. 

God is God, even when your dad dies before your wedding, even when you feel cheated by the fact he never gave you away at your wedding; even when you realize he did not see his other daughter’s remarriage, even when you know that he has two grandchildren that he will never know . . . God is God. 

Right now, my answer to “why didn’t God answer my prayer?” is, “God is God, he is in charge. I am not.”

And I pray that I will remember that.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation. 

Forged in cold water

The cold water lapped at Martha Elliot’s chest as she held her three-year-old daughter on her shoulder.

Martha, her daughter, and two other relatives were trapped in a truck, victims of a May, 1979 Texas flash flood.

 

The flood had already claimed the lives of Martha’s husband and her two sons, swept away when they tried to pull another truck, the truck the husband and boys were riding in, out of the water. 

 

Martha may have been in shock, scared, maybe unable to process what had just happened to her, but she was determined that her daughter would survive.  No matter how tired her arms grew, she was going to hold that child above water. 

 

It was nighttime, the time when scary thoughts love to appear and torment the thinker. Who knows what Martha was thinking as the truck filled with water? Am I going to die, Lord? My boys are gone. My husband is gone. Will I join them? 

 

But my daughter will survive.

 

The morning came, and rescuers also came for Martha, her daughter, and the two other relatives.

 

When the shock of the flood and the deaths of her husband and sons receded, Martha knew that it was she and her daughter now, on their own. 

 

So she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, mustered all the faith she had (and probably some she didn’t have) and moved to Abilene, Texas to start her life over. 

 

Her first step was to enroll in Abilene Christian University.  Her goal: to eventually have a degree that would help her to raise her daughter. People rallied around her, and six years later, she graduated with a degree in home economics and early childhood education.

 

She eventually started teaching kindergarten, and was surprised on the first day of school to have a five-year-old call her a profane word. Had that been me, I might have quit.

 

Not Martha.

For 19 years, she poured herself into her students, and not only did her influence affect them, it affected the teachers around her.  Perhaps they were attracted to an inner strength that Martha may not have realized she had. 

 

Seventeen years after that horrible year of 1979, the daughter Martha held above water level in the truck, her daughter Debbie, got married and moved to Atlanta. While Martha was happy for her daughter and welcomed a son-in-law, Debbie’s marriage meant that Martha would be living alone for the first time in her life.  

 

She came to Atlanta to care for Debbie while Debbie was on bed rest during her pregnancy with twins. And after the twins were born, Martha found every reason to visit Atlanta as often as she could. 

 

Martha retired from teaching in 2011. The next year, she had a heart attack, and after rehab, she came to Atlanta to live with Debbie and her family. They welcomed her, arms open. So did their church. 

Family, by blood, marriage, and church, meant a great deal to Martha. She was a familiar presence at ladies’ Bible study class on Tuesdays and later, in the seniors’ Bible study classes on Sunday and Wednesday mornings. She was the one who kept up on the prayer list for her small group. She made sure that birthday and get well cards were sent out from the senior class to those who needed them. And for a time, she helped teach a Sunday School class full of kids from eight to ten years old. 

Martha Elliot died of cancer on January 8^th. Her funeral was yesterday. I was not able to attend but did watch the livestream. Her daughter Debbie posted a long tribute to her mother on Facebook. She wrote, “Martha did not consider herself to be a strong person. Her life proved otherwise. When Debbie mentioned at one point how strong and independent Martha was, she said, ‘No, I am not. I just did what I had to do. I didn’t have a choice.’”

I beg to differ. I think Martha did have a choice. She could have chosen, after the death of her husband and two sons, to figuratively curl up in a ball and live the rest of her life in bitterness and self-pity, angry about what had been taken from her so suddenly. 

 

She could have communicated that attitude to her daughter. 

 

But she drew on a deep faith in God, believed in Him, and then set about doing what she had to do.

 

A speaker at Martha’s funeral mentioned her “empathy”. Upon hearing that, my mind flashed back several years to when we had an auto accident.  While no one was hurt, our car was totaled. It was Debbie’s family that said, we have an extra car. Please use it. I believe that car belonged to Martha. 

After hearing about Martha’s empathy yesterday, I knew where Debbie had gotten her own empathy from. 

 

That daughter, held above chest-high cold water, grew to be a wonderful woman with faith of her own and creativity with her twins and her younger son. 

 

I did not know until after Martha died that she had lost her husband and sons in such a tragic way. Being the researcher I am, I was able to find a short article about the flood and Martha’s loss of her husband and sons.

 

Usually, the word “forge” is associated with heat and metal, as in forging a suit of armor or forging horseshoes. 

 

In thinking about Martha’s life, and her faith, I believe that that faith was forged by cold water on a horrible night that she never forgot. Cold water may have taken her husband and sons, but it did not take her daughter and it did not take her faith. 

Instead, it acted like a fire in a forge, shaping her into the strong, empathetic, faithful and kind woman she was and that we remember. 

She will be missed, missed by her blood family, her family by marriage, and her church family. 

And she will be remembered as a woman who, with her faith in God, overcame a nightmarish loss and left us an example of faith forged, not by fire, but by cold water.

 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.