The Anchor Holds

Chapter 11 - Alone

I was harassed by people telling me what to do, criticizing me for not being a good son. She was suffering. Couldn’t I see that? I was not making excuses. This was reality—I had no transportation. But that was not all. There was so much drama involved in the simple activity of going to the hospital to see Susie. Nobody realized what a number that did on me.

I was in a period of life-renovation, you might say, everything had either changed or was in the process of changing. About the only blessing amid all those changes was living near Crestway Baptist Church and having Ron McAtee for a personal friend. He helped me immensely during that time in my life. I owe him a debt of gratitude. I hope I thanked him properly.

After about six months, I landed a job with an electrical company. Freeman Electric. Great brother, Freeman! God, in His providence, gave me the job and a mode of transportation. I was isolated, ostracized. Literally looking up through the bottom, reduced to nothing, when God came to my rescue in such strange and miraculous ways. He does that, you know. Mysteriously performs His wonders when we least expect it.

One day I had to run an errand for the company which meant I would need to go to Freeman’s house to get supplies. There was a truck sitting in his yard. I’ll never forget that truck. It was a Ford Ranger, green, a five-speed shift. I said to Freeman, “What are you going to do with the truck?”

He replied, “Do you want it? Three hundred dollars and it’s yours. No, wait. What am I thinking? Just take it. It’s yours at no cost.”

Freeman had obviously and instantaneously remembered that I was destitute. Destitute, but now ecstatic. I was so appreciative of this extraordinary gift of love. I must have acted a fool. If I recall, I jumped about three feet into the air and shouted, “Glory!” Having my own ride meant I would be self-sufficient again for transportation. And I could visit Susie in the hospital without asking anyone for help.

My visits were not that frequent. We were still so far from anything that resembled mother and son. She wanted nothing to do with me. It was difficult to sit there and listen to her insults. She attacked me every time I went. Her friends and other people attacked me if I didn’t go. I could never do anything right as far as Susie was concerned.

But you have to know this—when I left her hospital room on that one particular evening, I experienced a peculiar peace that I couldn’t explain. I began to understand the difference in darkness and light when it comes to dying. Children of light have an entirely different viewpoint, and thanks to my godly grandmother, I knew the real and wonderful side of the death experience. Was God, in His infinite wisdom, preparing me?

That day, the hour or so I was in Susie’s room, I was totally weirded out, if I may express it in modern lingo. I had been to McDonald’s for food for both of us. I sometimes brought her fast food just to break the monotony of the hospital stuff. She couldn’t stand to eat much anyway. A sinister atmosphere pervaded the room. It made me uncomfortable. I nervously threw the food in the trash can and called somebody, don’t remember who, but I do remember saying, “I’ve got to get out of here.” It may have been Teresa. She was still in Clanton with her family.

Teresa had a natural perpetual bonding with her own mother. The relationship, or lack thereof, that I had with Susie was hard for her to comprehend. But I wanted to talk to someone, to hear a familiar voice that might be able to relate. Or maybe I just wanted to talk to my wife. The demonic oppression in the room was getting to me.

I closed my cell phone, left the room, and walked out onto the street, glad for the cool April breeze that hit my face. I practically ran to my truck. That special blessing from God. I sat behind the wheel of that beloved worldly possession and, like I said, I began to feel some relief. When I got home, in the dimness of the late afternoon, I lit the candles and put a few hours between me and the dark and marked unpleasantness I had experienced in my mother’s hospital room. I couldn’t explain how, in the midst of the turmoil, I had an upsurge of peace. Quite possibly a preview of good things to come. My God in Heaven, I hoped so! I would take the smallest measure of peace. Anything but this oppression, this inner turmoil that I didn’t understand and that was dragging me to the depths.

But in spite of the rush of peace, this was one of the loneliest times of my life. To say that I was looking up through the bottom was an understatement. But when I look back, I have to know that it was nothing compared to the loneliness of the Cross.

With His precious mother standing beneath Him, blood spattering to the ground, Jesus relinquished the pleasantness of a mother’s comfort as His Heavenly Father turned His back upon sin and allowed His Son to die in shame. Alone. All for the love of you and me. Now, that’s real love, but also real loneliness we cannot comprehend, for none of us has ever endured such, though we think we have. It is hard for us to fathom that God in the person of His Son, Jesus, that day at the Cross, focused His love and attention on a sinful world and turned His back upon His only Son as He was becoming sin for us. Although Jesus knew He would die for the sins of the world, in His humanity, as the God-man, the loneliness of the Cross must have been incomprehensible.

In my dark and lonely hour, God, in the person of His sweet Holy Spirit, was lifting my burden.