MY DEAR "BORN AGAIN" MOM

By Dick Stoddard

My wife and I have a friend named Sandy who lives in a nearby health care center. She is a young woman who is severely afflicted with cerebral palsy, but she doesn't let that interfere with her activities--she is always ready to be on the go. We often pick her up to take her out to a restaurant, and when we get there she always orders the same thing: spaghetti.

One warm day this summer we asked her if she would like to have a picnic rather than go to a restaurant, and she was all for that. Roberta made up a potful of spaghetti to bring on the picnic, which I planned to heat up on my little portable stove.

I suggested that we have our picnic beside a lake about seven miles from home. Roberta and Sandy agreed to that, so we drove there but soon found it was not such a good suggestion. The pathway to the picnic table was too rough to use with a wheelchair, the place was loaded with mosquitos, and the sky had become cloudy. We then decided to go back to town to another picnic area that had tables with roofs over them so we would not get wet if it began to rain.

When we got there, to our surprise, there was no longer a picnic area--it was just gone. I guess it must have been cleared out to expand the parking area for a fair which is held each year across the street from that location.

My wife then suggested another area on the south side of town where we knew there was a picnic table with a beautiful view. When we got there it looked as if we had finally found the perfect place for a picnic, and by this time we were really hungry. Roberta quickly put a table cloth over the table and began to set out the food, while I rushed to get Sandy out of the van and pushed her to the table in her wheelchair.

Then Roberta opened the cooler and cried out, "I forgot the spaghetti!" (Sandy got a big laugh out of that.) We were just a few miles from home, so we decided that perhaps we should go back and eat there.

Now, I've known the Lord for a long time and sometimes I can tell when He is arranging circumstances to set me up for a blessing, and this felt like one of those times. On the way home I said, "I know there is a reason for us to go home; we may have a visitor or perhaps we'll get a phone call."

Sure enough . . . soon after we sat down at the kitchen table, the phone rang, and I said, "There's the call!"

As I answered, the operator said, "Will you accept a collect call from your mother?" I said, "Sure." (Mom, who just turned ninety, lives in a nursing home, which is about a two hour drive from us.)

My mother sure was excited. She shouted over the phone, "Richard . . . Richard" (she is about the only one who calls me by that name), "Something wonderful has happened to me! I am so happy! I feel so good! This is not in my imagination! It is spiritual! God has done it! I have been born again!"

My reaction was and still is rather a blank numbness. It is simply too much for me to handle all at once. I had been waiting for this to happen for twenty-nine years, eight months and three weeks, and I'll just need a little more time for it to fully sink in.

What a miracle! It just happened. The Lord did it all, and she didn't know what hit her! She asked me over the phone where in the Bible it told about being born again. She has read all that I have written and all the other literature that this ministry has produced, and I have tried over the years to explain about the new birth until I concluded that I would have to simply leave her salvation in the Lord's Hands. Now she is beginning to reread things in a different light.

Now when I visit her I can hardly believe what I hear. She tells how good she is feeling, how well she sleeps at night, and how she does not worry about anything. She said, "The world could collapse on my head and it wouldn't bother me!" Is this my mother?! Year after year, I've heard so much about her aches and pains and worries that I've had to learn to block my ears. Now I'm hearing this? I told my wife to pinch me to see if this is a dream!

One of her big time worries used to be what people would think of her, and even that has changed. Mom is not one to keep something this exciting a secret. She is declaring this miracle to all. A man who works in the nursing home apparently didn't care to hear about it. Describing his reaction to me, Mom said, "He thinks I've lost my mind, but I don't care what he thinks!"

Nights used to be a miserable time for her as she would lay awake fretting over things. Here's how she described one night to Roberta and me when we visited her after that phone call. She said, "I had so much joy during the night that I didn't think I would make it to morning!" I have never, ever, in my lifetime, heard her speak like this or seen her write this way. Here are some quotes from her recent letters: "God has been so good to me"; "I can't express the feeling I have now"; "I'm so happy and feel so glad, God really is helping me"; "So wonderful to feel so good. Can't express my joy in words"; "The Holy Spirit is helping me; I feel so different--happy--nothing upsets me now"; "I have all I need. Can't express the joy I feel." Here's how she signed a recent letter:

Love,

Born Again

Mother

Recently, my niece told me that the last letter she received from my mother was signed: "Love, Your Born Again Grandmother." Even people who don't understand about the new birth are saying they have never seen my mother looking so happy.

One time about six years ago, when she was in the hospital, she almost died. I guess it was more than almost--she left and then came back to tell how she stood at Heaven's edge, and the Lord said to her, "Go back, Ruby!" Now, I can see why she came back. And as for her next departure, I now know that she's ready to go all the way Home and spend eternity with Jesus.