Chapter 39 - Beams of Cedar and Rafters of Fir
Life slows down for me after the honeymoon. Larry and I decide I won’t work in nursing…I will stay at home with Nick and we’ll live on his salary. I love the three-bedroom townhouse, recently decorated. It’s a 25-minute drive south from the church, set midst open fields in Bloomington. We settle in my furniture, and I sew unbleached muslin curtains for our bedroom, hang pictures.
We invite Mom and Dad and Danny for dinner one last time before they return to Irian Jaya. David has already left for Dalat High School. “Your new home is beautiful, Marlene,” Mom comments. “I like that painting above the stereo—what kind of wallpaper is behind it?”
“Grasscloth, Mom. I enjoy it also. I’m sure going to miss you all when you go back in June!”
“Yes, we’re going to miss you too,” Dad responds. “Especially now that Nick is growing so fast. Our first grandchild…and now Romaine will have another soon!”
“I’d love to fly out and visit you sometime with Larry and Nick. It would be so amazing to show them what the Ilaga is like, and our home among the Dani's.” I sigh. “Someday!”
“We’ll pray it can happen,” Dad answers.
“Well, if the Lord can bring you to Larry so quickly, he can certainly make it possible for you to visit the Ilaga,” Mom smiles.
“We want this marriage to last,” Larry says thoughtfully one evening after dinner. “So, we should pray together every day. Spend time in intercession. I used to pray with Jerry my good friend for hours some evenings. Prayer will bind us together, move the Kingdom forward.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “I was reading in Song of Solomon lately about ‘the beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir,’ wondering what that means--maybe godly principles and practices. We can have devotions with Nick, then pray when he’s in bed. Also, it’s important to me that we share our day together when you come home. We could sit and visit while dinner is cooking. I believe good communication was missing in my first marriage. Sometimes we just didn’t understand each other. We need to take time to listen from the heart. Every day!”
So, each evening when Larry arrives home we sit on the couch and communicate. Usually I have much to talk about, and Larry listens attentively. "How did your day go?” I ask. He stops to think. “Well, besides painting and my lunch, not much happened.” He smiles as I slowly draw out details with questions.
“I never learned to talk about my life so much.”
“Well, in my family we shared at length at the dinner table. Mom and Dad would have long discussions alone, also.”
Later that summer we attend the Basic Life Principles Seminar taught by Bill Gothard. Larry has taken this course several times, but much is new to me. The seminar emphasizes the power of a clean conscience, scripture memorization, principles for training children, and how not to allow a root of bitterness to develop.
So now, in addition to our individual quiet times with the Lord, Larry and I work on memorizing verses together. In the mornings I practice with Nick after breakfast. It only takes five to ten minutes, beginning always with the first verse, and adding on. We memorize about two verses a week and move from Proverbs chapter one to two…and on slowly through three, four, five, until we reach, “let her breasts satisfy you at all times!” We halt then, laughing, and begin to memorize Psalms.
After moving from a simple Bible storybook with pictures for Nick to one with more words, I decide to tear the first book apart and frame some of the Frances Hook drawings. I hang them in his room: Samuel listening to God’s voice, Moses in the basket waiting for the princess to find him, David the shepherd boy who praised God as he watched the sheep.
Visually, audibly we want our new home to be filled with God’s glory. We eventually carry the TV to the closet, and even agree to listen only to Christian music, or classical. “Are we being too narrow, do you think?” I asked Larry one day.
“Well, we know what it is to struggle through pain and stay close to the Lord. We’re just keeping out distracting influences. We get news through radio and newspaper. And we are reaching out to help others through this single parent group.”
We watch as Nick grows more secure and less hyperactive through regular routine and Larry’s consistent discipline. Every Saturday night is our fun night for bike rides, games, popcorn, or stories. Like when I was a small girl in Homejo ("Homeeyo") with my parents.
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At the single parent Sunday school class, I begin to teach with Larry. We pray consistently for the members, and I begin to telephone some each week. Our group become good friends and begin to eat out together Sunday nights after church. Lucy is one of the most faithful—direct, outspoken, she has a way of putting the class at ease when she shares her needs and how God is answering prayer for her and her kids. In I Corinthians 12 members of the church are likened to parts of the human body. I decide Lucy must be the adrenalin gland in our group…with her openness life surges, flows. Calm, dark haired Julie begins to come faithfully. She has a strong, beautiful voice—she used to sing in nightclubs. Now she is an accountant, raising two teenagers. Ken Peterson, Ken Freeman, Chuck Melena, and Ty Story. Patty and Debbie, both fervent for the Lord, training their children.
When Pat Gasparac offers her home for a Friday night Bible study, we become even more of a family. “The Group” we call ourselves. Sunday mornings we cover principles in the New Testament, and Friday nights begin going through the Old Testament. At first, ten chapters a week…then we slow down for more in depth study. And Friday night is date night for Larry and me. We eat out and discuss what we will each teach, then enjoy The Group, with dessert at the end.
We begin to sit together in the church services, also celebrate Thanksgiving and Easter as a group. We are a large family, an organ in Christ’s Body at Souls Harbor. Hurting members who have been healed, now helping others.
One evening two years later we meet at our townhouse for a meal with some of the leaders. It is July 7, 1977. We sit around our living room after the meal, sharing. “This date of 7-7-77 only happens once in a hundred years,” I remark. It must be a momentous occasion for this group.
“Yes, and there are twelve of us,” Lucy adds.
We all pray awhile for the ministry, the church, our lives. “I feel impressed that like Jesus’ disciples we’ll be eventually sent out two by two,” I said. “We should make a covenant that as the Lord uses us, we’re joined for life, committed to Him and each other.”
“Yes, Lord,” Ken Freeman prays out. “We are yours. Use all of us in this group for your glory, and as we covenant, may we always be united in your purposes.”
We parted that night with a deeper sense of God’s presence upon us.
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