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Chapter 2

From Darkness to Light

"Even the darkness will not be dark to you,
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you".
Psalm 139:12

“Carol, Carol, is that you out there?"
I knew my mother was squinting through the back door screen trying to make out the inert, blanket-wrapped form that lay on the cool summer grass.
"What are you doing? It's time for lunch."
"Oh, nothing," I replied dreamily. I peered down through a part in the enfolding blanket at ants tripping along through blades of grass. Looking at the vast expanse of lawn, I pondered the extent of their tiny world. There was so much more than they could see and understand.
"Hey, this way to the dead beetle." I scooted one gently toward a possible lunch and probably broke three of his legs in the process. "Whoops. Sorry."
Slowly I unwrapped myself and headed back to the house.
    As a chronic daydreamer I missed some of the details of what was happening around me. This was especially true in school, where my typical response to a teacher's question was "Huh?"
My family was a mixed-up, patched-together bunch that finally numbered eleven--one mother, three fathers (serially) and seven children. It was your basic modern American family, except that Mother was Australian (a fact that probably made it even more modern and American). In fact, I was born in Australia. My American serviceman father married my mother, a widow with one small daughter, shortly after the end of the second World War. After I was born we moved to the United States--Spokane, Washington, to be exact. There two more children were added to the family.
    My father was a deeply troubled man after the war. Nightmares of screaming soldiers burning to death haunted him after the airplane he piloted crash-landed. He alone survived to battle the memories with large doses of alcohol. One day when I was four years old he left, just disappeared with no explanation. My mother heard nothing until the divorce papers arrived.
    A couple of years after my parents' divorce, my father's parents asked if their grandchildren could come to California for an extended visit. During this time I saw little of either my grandparents or my father, who lived nearby. Maggie, the housekeeper, was in charge of our care.
When my grandmother died suddenly in her sleep, Grandfather was distraught. Convinced that her death was our fault, he sent our father to tell us we were being sent home immediately. He did not want to see us again.
    We arrived back in Spokane to find a new stepfather in our home. He was a quiet man who also struggled with alcoholism. The next several years were full of conflict as a result. But while the other children in the family (three more joined the family in my teen years) did modern American things like fighting with each other, riding bicycles and watching the Mickey Mouse Club on television, I was content to quietly escape into daydreams, off by myself.
"Hey, are you sucking your thumb again, baby?" "Bucky Beaver, where did you get those big front teeth and all those freckles on your nose?"
Hot tears burned my face. These standard taunts were excruciatingly painful to my extremely sensitive nature. All I could think to say in my anger was, "Yoouuu!" Nothing more original or clever ever seemed to come to me, though I longed to be able to retaliate. Verbal virtuosity was not my gift.
They could always make me cry no matter how hard I tried not to do it. Soon I was known as "the girl who cried at the drop of a hat."
"There's a hat, Carol, time to cry."
They teased and I complied. I hated this routine and determined each time not to let anyone make me cry ever again. But someone always did.
    When I was thirteen, it was getting on toward time to grow up, but that did not look like an attractive proposition. Adulthood hunkered on the horizon like a hungry lion. Soon it would pounce and its teeth would crush me. Who would I be once I was swallowed up into the world of grownups?
"Mom, is there a God?"
I genuinely wanted to know if there was something beyond my current experience of life, or maybe even something for which I could look hopefully to the future.
"Of course there's a God," my mother replied.
Staring into the starry sky, I searched for a sign of God's existence. "If You're real, then where are You, God?"
    One day an enthusiastic-looking man stood outside on the front porch when Mother opened the door to his knock.
"We're offering a free week of summer camp for kids in the neighborhood," he said, smiling as he handed her an application form.
The Salvation Army youth center was across the street, and even though we rarely went in, somehow we qualified for their summer camping program. My two brothers and I were quickly signed up for the second week in August.
It turned out to be a rough week. There were more "Bucky Beaver" and stupid freckle remarks from mean boys. I had kicked the thumb-and-blanket habit two years before, so this, at least, was no longer an issue. But the last full day of camp saw me once again in tears.
    The final night I lay on a top bunk in the rustic wooden cabin wondering if God existed and if He was able to see everyone on the earth. I prayed a simple, desperate prayer there in the dark: God, are You there?
I had heard about God that week in the camp chapel services but did not understand anything. What was it they were talking about? I had walked down the chapel aisle to pray with a staff person when the opportunity was given. Afterward I waited for something to feel different, but it didn't. Did this mean God did not want me? Maybe He was not real.
Nor could my counselor offer much help with my burning question, "How can I know for sure that I'm really a Christian?" I had asked her this question hoping not to arouse too much suspicion. I thought everyone who lived in America was supposed to have been born Christian.
"Just pray and tell the Lord you want to be a woman of God," was her reply.
It sounded simple enough. To be a woman of God—what an awesome thought! So I gave it a try, prefacing my prayer with a few disclaimers just in case:
God, I don't know if You're really there. I don't even know if You exist. But if You do, and if You are there, I want to be a woman of God.
Immediately a silent hand moved. A shroud of darkness was brushed aside and bright light filled my consciousness. It was still pitch-black in the tiny cabin, but somehow the room glowed with a warm and loving presence. Wrapped by a powerful security blanket of assurance and peace, real and much greater than anything I had ever experienced, I drifted off to sleep sensing that all my questions would find answers. There was something worth living for. I was going to be a woman of God.
The only friend I made that week was a girl my age named Charlene. "You must come to our church camp next week," she said. "It'll be lots of fun." She invited me persistently day after day.
So the following Monday morning I found myself sitting beside Charlene on a lumbering old Sunday school bus, headed for I knew not what.
    During the chapel time I sat on the edge of my seat as the youth pastor talked about Jesus Christ. I could not remember if I had heard this before, but suddenly it all made sense. God was real. Somehow, from wherever He was, God looked down and saw little me, one among millions, and He loved me.
Not only that, but He had given His only Son, Jesus, who died as a sacrifice to take away my own sins and the sins of everyone in the world. All I had to do was believe in Jesus, who He was and what He had done, and I would receive a whole new life.
    I thought back to the last camp, to the dark night when something remarkable happened as I asked God to make me a woman of God. He had been present in that cabin, filling it with light and assuring me of wonderful things to come. It had to have been the Spirit of God Himself! There my new life had begun and I had been born again.
The answers I had so hoped for in the dark cabin were now a reality. I had never known such joy. Life was going to be so good after this! I determined that I would be the best Christian who ever lived. I would try harder than I ever had to be good.
    An additional feature at church camp that week was a stout Asian missionary pastor. I sat in the front row, cheered by his bright smile and hearty laugh and mesmerized by fascinating tales of spiritual heroism in foreign countries.
"Trudging up the muddy hill," he recounted, "the missionaries came at last to a village in the jungle interior. They were tired and hungry, but they didn't stop until they had preached the message of hope to the savage natives. Hundreds received the grace and joy of Christ as a result of faithful service to God by those dedicated people."
The image of courageous, victorious missionaries was forever etched in my imagination. I heard Isaiah 9:2:
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.
Surely I had been in darkness and was now in the light. Thanks to God, I would never be in the darkness again. And any future I had ever dreamed of could not compare to that of being a missionary.
"How many people in this room will go on to serve Christ at the ends of the earth?" asked the speaker. "Of the hundred teenagers here, there will be only three or four, no more. Will you be one of those three or four?"
I could hardly wait to respond. Yes, I want to be one, I said loudly in my head. Visions of tearful natives flooded my mind. They were kneeling at my feet thanking me profusely for the Gospel message. I knew it had to be this way. That was the way I had felt when I heard the message of salvation. And God would be so pleased with me, I was sure. Why, I could almost feel the warmth of His smile as I made the commitment.
With this decision firmly under my belt, I had settled the direction of my life twice within one week. I would be a Christian, and what was more, I would be a missionary to some faraway people. If I had been joyful before, now I was delirious.
    All the way home in the bus I rehearsed what I would say to my family. I would tell them about Jesus giving me something to live for, and they would be so happy for me. I imagined the whole bunch of them falling to their knees, repenting and asking God to do the same for them as He had for me.
After arriving home, I carefully chose the right moment to break my marvelous news. A shock wave reverberated through my body as I heard, "I forbid you ever to go to that church again."
    Much later I could understand Mother's reservations. She did not like the sound of this sudden conversion. What kind of funny business could cause her daughter to get this excited, especially since little Carol had been so quiet and solemn all her life? All this enthusiasm was quite out of character and just a bit alarming. It made very good adult sense.
"And I want to be a missionary when I grow up, just like the man who spoke at the camp," I added, since it was now pretty hopeless anyway.
"You're not taking my grandchildren to the jungle. Don't you know jungle natives boil people in pots?"
I was shattered. Was my new life to end so soon? As I headed at full speed for my bedroom, the floodgates burst. Although I tried to hide the pain, I wept loud and long. My puzzled family shook their heads in disbelief.
"They're probably all Communists," my mother said to me as I lay on my bed and cried. "The nerve of those people, telling my daughter she's a sinner! There now, don't worry," she said with disgust. "We won't let you go back to that place."

Chapter 3>