Can you remember 40 years ago?

Can you remember details from 40 years ago? Of course not!

Then again, if something very special happened, on some very special day, I’ll bet you could.

I know I can!

Barring Alzheimer’s or some other mentally debilitating disease I shall never forget what happened 40 years ago, yesterday, March 9^th.

It was a chilly Friday morning, and only five or six hours after I’d fallen into an exhausted sleep from polishing door knobs, buffing escutcheons, or some similar such drudgery the afternoon and evening of Thursday the 8^th in the finishing department of the Best Lock Corporation. My wife, Joy, was very pregnant and expecting our first (and only) baby.

Two weeks earlier we thought we were having a late February baby, but no, after a few hours and the typical awkward inspections we were sent home. Even in my foggy brained, sleep deprived condition, we were pretty sure; this time it was the real thing!

We bundled up, and I helped Joy into our rusty old faded blue rattletrap of a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle, complete with one black 1968 front fender. (The memories of that old car we owned for only a year are astonishingly myriad!) The heating channels were rusted away, so it was a cold, cold ride from 168 S. 10^th Street in Noblesville to the St. Vincent Hospital on west 86^th Street in Indianapolis.

Well, in spite of the fact it was definitely the real thing this time around, it was still more than twelve agonizing (for Joy) and exhausting (for both of us) hours later, filled with much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth before the doctor finally decided it really was “time” this time.

Back in those days for Dads to be any part of the delivery process, the anxious parents-to-be had to go through weeks of Delivery Training, or whatever they called it. I was a full time pastoral ministries student with classes every day . . . every day . . . from 8:00 or so until noonish, and I was working the second shift eight hours every night. Needless to say, there weren’t any time slots in my schedule available for Delivery Training.

I don’t know why, but when the doctor determined it was “time”, Mary the nurse, knowing full well I hadn’t had any Delivery Training, with a sparkle in her eye looked at me and told me to don the green garments and join the party, or at least something enough like that I got the message.

From the moment Joy started “showing”, to the final trimester, all the prophets and experienced mothers determined our baby was going to be a boy. Evidence of such claims ranged everywhere from the size of the baby to the way she carried the baby. There was no doubt it, deemed the prognosticators, this was a boy! Neither of us said anything. We just smiled and prayed the baby would be strong and healthy . . . and she was!

When the doctor announced, “It’s a girl”, Joy literally squealed with delight, “Really!?!?” We both wanted that girl, and thanked God the prophets were false prophets.

So, happy day after, Marian Heather Hartman Willeke, and thank you for one of the most wonderful days of our lives, plus 14,610 since.

My First Prayer

Do you remember your first prayer? 

I don’t mean “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep”, or “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food” sorts of prayers. I mean the kind of prayer that honestly reaches out to God, looking for an answer.

                I do. 

I must have been either six or seven, or somewhere in between, because I was standing in the driveway between the house and the barn of the old George Dickerson Farm where we lived at the time, just north a couple of miles or so from the long since razed Chester Center Township School, replaced in the middle 60s consolidation by Southern Wells High School. (http://www.swraiders.com/)

It was here I first remember seriously “contemplating” God, so to speak. 

I remember standing in the driveway somewhere between the house and the old sheep watering tank by the barn thinking, praying, or whatever one might call it at that age. I was telling Jesus that I was trying very hard to be a good boy, hoping those efforts would be good enough, but if he ever did want me to go to that alter (at the close of myriad sermons, I’d watched the congregation stand while the pastor asked penitents to come forward and be “saved”), he was going to have to make me start crying so I would know it was really him. To this day I have no idea what crying had to do with it, but I was pretty shy and dreaded the thought of going forward, so maybe I thought since I’d already have humiliated myself by crying, I may as well use that moment to go forward.

It was at the Little White Church on West Wiley Avenue in Bluffton, Indiana . . . at least two years later . . . when Jesus answered that prayer. 

Elmer Ingle was the pastor and had preached I-know-not-what, as I was busy writing, drawing, or some such thing, rather oblivious of everything until the congregation was asked to stand and an alter call was given. I remember bursting into tears, knowing I had to go forward, so I tugged on my Mom’s dress and asked her to go with me.

It was then and there I gave my heart to Jesus.

That was more than 50 years ago, and unfortunately I can’t honestly say I’ve perfectly walked the “narrow way” (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7&version=NKJV), but I can say I’ve sensed his hand on my shoulder, gently guiding, never pushing, ever since. 

Do you remember your first prayer?