He Uses It for Good!

© 2011 by Mary Biever. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 07/12/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-2655-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-2654-5 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Bad Beginnings

Chapter 2

College—The Lost Years and Adventures

Chapter 3

Building a New Life

Chapter 4

My Mountaintop Childbirth

with Angels Story

Chapter 5

Home Again

Chapter 6

Homeward Bound

Chapter 7

A Copper Lion Adventure

Chapter 8

Trial By Fire

Chapter 9

He Uses My Writing For Good

Chapter 10

Learning by Doing

Chapter 11

Aiming Higher

Chapter 12

The Third Act

Epilogue

There and Back Again

Afterward

The Happy Ending

Written in 2005

To Richard, Elizabeth, and Nick

Preface

You thought evil against me: but God turned it into good, that he might exalt me, as at present you see, and might save many people. Fear not: I will feed you and your children. And he comforted them, and spoke gently and mildly.—Genesis 50:20-21

These words define my life and inspired this book. Corrie ten Boom wrote there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still. No matter where I’ve been, or what I’ve been through, God has been there, ready to help. He takes my struggles and uses them for good to help others. All I have to do is listen to Him and do what He says.

This spring, I started my own business and blogged about finding inner strength. After I began, God told me it was time to write a book about it. We all have our stories of struggles, but God can help us overcome them and use them to help others.

My salvation story is not a single aha moment but a lifetime of God, when I was carried through the darkness, and when God showed me how He would use my struggles to help others. God sent people and angels at key moments to help me in the valley of the shadow of sorrow. He has used many remarkable events to reach and teach me. I do not interpret those events but merely share my experiences.

I could beat Dickens in writing awful childhood stories. When I had my own family, I knew I would make decisions based on their needs, not mine. I knew that when I was a teen, in college, and when I got married. If I could accomplish nothing else, keeping my family as my top priority would remain constant. Children should not be sacrificed upon the altars of their parents’ lives.

Little did I realize when I decided that, that my family (my husband and children) would be agents of grace who would teach me more than I could teach them. They taught me about life and how to seek and listen to God. In short, they taught me how to love.

The most important message? Your pain is real, and you are not alone. We always have hope and second chances. I hope this book will inspire, encourage, teach and delight you.

My biggest thanks are for Richard for supporting me and designing the cover to this book. Thanks also to Elizabeth and Nick for putting up with a hard-driving mother. I will always appreciate Dan Miller and Mary Kochan for their friendships and help in the book’s final edit. Additional thanks go to Cheryl Mochau, Lisa Taylor, Jewell Flick, Kim Delcoco, and my Write-On group with Tri-State Women for encouraging me to write. And thanks to the many friends who have touched and inspired me for a lifetime.

Chapter 1

Bad Beginnings

You Are My Hiding Place, Oh Lord

When I hear of a hiding place, I think of Corrie ten Boom’s sheltering Jews during World War II. The Lord was my hiding place during my childhood, though I didn’t know it. He sheltered my eyes, ears, and heart from that which would have been hardest to bear. Now, 40 years later, I see His role in protecting me so He could later teach me that He works through people and events.

Where do I begin?

I spent my first 5 years living at a children’s home with my parents. My dad was the home’s business manager, and we lived in a trailer on the children’s home grounds, in the middle of southern Illinois farmland. I think over 100 children lived there. A large office building was in the middle of the campus, and our trailer was across the street, set apart from the homes where the children lived. We played on the playground with the other kids. When I was 5, my parents bought a house in Carmi, Illinois, and we moved.

Sunday church was the highlight of our week, as was dressing for church. We had to be picture perfect Sunday morning. That meant Saturday night rollers, white gloves, hats or bonnets, anklets, patent shoes and purses. My parents were church musicians wherever we went. As soon as I was old enough not to be in a nursery, I sat through church services with a designated older lady while my mom played the piano or organ and my dad led the choir.

Even then, dad had a volatile temper. We had broken furniture after he stumbled on it in the dark and threw it across a room. I learned to watch him and know when to stay out of his way because he was going to blow. Sometimes on our way to church, he would lose his temper and rant the entire way there. As soon as our car pulled into the church lot, we were to step out of the car and put on our picture perfect smiles as the ideal family. I grew adept at masking all emotions and staying silent.

I had mastered the art of hiding what I thought or felt.

Troubled Beginnings

When I was a child, I shut off emotions so I could survive. My antenna for my dad’s emotions became finely tuned. Others sometimes witnessed his volatile temper, but no one questioned what he did at home. When he was nice, he could talk blood from a stone and reduce a congregation to tears; who could believe anything bad about such a caring family man? Family expectations were different then. If you were from a stable family, others would ignore abuse—babysitters, friends, family members, and our family doctor. Most of the time, I don’t believe it was a deliberate choice. Unfortunately, denial of abuse doesn’t prevent it.

Ironically, we provided emergency foster care to abused toddlers. When those kids were brought to our home, often in nothing but a dirty diaper, I considered them abused. We weren’t; we were from a good family.

Part of my dad’s job was to raise funds for the children’s home. He visited churches on Sunday mornings and shared stories while he preached. He could tell a tear-jerking story in such a way that those who heard him would empty their wallets and donate all they had.

My job was to be the oldest of the photo-prop family, to smile while he spoke and help keep my younger siblings in line. But there was a problem.

Many of his stories weren’t true. He twisted the truth to his own purposes and sometimes made up outrageous lies. I was a child, but I knew it. And I had to sit in congregations and smile while he lied. Kids who watch their fathers lie from church pulpits get confused. As a photo prop child, my job was neither to think nor speak, but to be part of the Amen chorus to his web of stories. Sadly, the children’s home did need money, and he didn’t have to lie. However, it was easier for him to concoct an elaborate lie than it was to tell the simple truth.

Discipline was key to his photo prop family. Our behavior reflected upon him, and we dared not disappoint. Restaurants were stressful. If we said or did anything out of line, he would quietly take us to the car, knock the crap out of us, and march us back into the restaurant where we were to pretend we were fine and behave better. Once I got it because I ordered fried shrimp, and the waitress gave me cocktail sauce instead of ketchup. I poured it on the shrimp and then couldn’t eat them because they were too hot. My crime: I humiliated him because I didn’t clean my plate.

Our being cultured was very important to him. We had season tickets to Evansville’s Philharmonic, along with to local theatre seasons. We were picture perfect in presentation—most of the time, I wore a formal to concerts. At age 4, I started Yamaha music lessons in Evansville, moving to piano at age 5. My brother was in the first Suzuki violin class at the University of Evansville (I took art lessons). When we went to our weekly arts lessons in Evansville, we attended faculty recitals.

His standard for our behavior at concerts was simple. We were to neither move nor speak. I often slept. When I was in second grade and my brother was in kindergarten, he would set us in the front row for faculty recitals, while he and my mom sat in the back. One time we misbehaved during the 2-hour concerts. I got frustrated at my brother and swatted him on the head with my program. When I glanced back, I saw my dad had seen us and knew we had had it when we got home. During intermission, 2 older ladies told our parents we were the best-behaved kids they had ever seen. I thought they were lying because they had seen me make the swat and were trying to keep us from getting into trouble.

Yes, we did get it when we got home. When he exploded on me, he often told me, You’re a worthless sack of shit. I believed him.

Windows to this World and the Next

I sat in the kitchen sink in a farmhouse, looking out the window. Outside, a rainbow of flowers bloomed. A flower-covered arbor and a low wall led the way to the vegetable garden. Clothes fluttered in the breeze, hanging on a line. A quiet chug could be heard in the distance.

Miss Clark, my more than babysitter, was giving me a bath in her kitchen sink while she fixed dinner. The chug became a roar, and a train rolled past the back of her garden. The wheels went thunk against the track. I was a toddler. The thunk joined with a tap of Miss Clark’s foot, matching its rhythm. She sang, There’s not a friend like the one named Jesus, no not one, no not one. After that bath, she put my hair on rollers so it would hang in curls by dinner. She called me her Barbie doll because she loved to fix hair, and I had shoulder length black hair by the time I was a year old.

Miss Clark and her husband raised ten children on their farm. Her yard was full of flowers sprouting from old tire beds. Chickens pecked in the coop, livestock were in the barn, and I sometimes found peacock feathers in her yard. Once, she raised a pig runt in her bathtub, until it was big enough to survive in the barn. Miss Clark’s heart was full of songs. She hummed from canning to cooking in her farmhouse. Her home was my childhood haven, a place where families were happy and dinner conversation was fun. After we ate and cleaned the kitchen, weather permitting, we went to her living room—swings and gliders in her yard where we could see the flowers, feel the breezes, hear the chickens, and watch the trains. Here was a refuge where weary souls and frightened children could rest.

Miss Clark died the morning after Christmas a few years ago, at the age of 96.

Once while Miss Clark worked through a stack of ironing, I asked her, What did you major in?

She stopped her song, smiled, and answered, Washin’ and ironin, Mary Pat. Married at 14, mother of 3 before she was 18, her life was hard work, babies, and music. Her singing carried her family through peaks and valleys.

Miss Clark’s last son had Down syndrome. When Jackie was born, doctors told her to put him in a home and expect him to die before he was twenty. Miss Clark took him home, loved on him and sang to him, as she did all her children, grandchildren, and kids like me. When I was in early grade school, he was in his early twenties and proudly brought home his school papers.

Miss Clark never complained. She knew everything she had came from God, took whatever God gave her, and made it wonderful. The simplest pantry could produce a feast, and her scrap bag provided beautiful quilts. She canned so much food one year that the floor to her pantry collapsed. They reinforced the floor, and she kept canning.

The last decade she lived on her farm, her husband was no longer able to maintain it, so Jackie did. With his mother’s supervision, he mowed the yards, planted the gardens, and tended the livestock. Jackie helped his parents live on their farm ten more years. He is now in his fifties, lives in a group home, and goes to school daily.

I saw her a few times after they had to sell their farm. When we were alone, she would grab my hand and tell me, Mary Pat, never forget that I love you.

When my husband and I first saw our house in the middle of town, we didn’t want to buy it because it was in the center of noise. Then I went into the backyard, which had a flower-covered arbor, a small garden wall, and room behind it for a garden. Swings and gliders adorned the yard. Vivian, the former owner and our neighbor, had moved from her farm, into town, and spent 35 years transforming her backyard into a retreat. We bought the house because of the yard.

Now, when I stand at my kitchen sink and look out our window in the middle of town, I sometimes see clothes hanging from a line, the flower-covered arbor, my daughter’s backyard chickens, and the stone wall. My children never took baths in the kitchen sink. But they have a secret garden that reminds me of a farm I loved. As I look out my own kitchen window, I remember Miss Clark.

Her window view is the closest I’ve come to imagining heaven. I’m sure an occasional train rolls through and I can hear her, tapping her toe, bouncing a baby on her hip, and stirring all kinds of dishes on the stove for dinner all while she sings and entertains a kitchen full of family,

There’s not a friend like the one named Jesus, no not one, no not one. None else can heal all our soul’s diseases, No not one—No not one. Jesus knows all about our struggles, He will guide until the day is done.

I wonder if she ever knew she was the bright spot in my childhood.

Christ in a Dark Christmas

What childhood I had ended on Saturday, August 31, 1974. I was a 9-year-old fourth grader. We were about to move from Carmi to Springfield. Dad had been such an effective fundraiser for the children’s home they promoted him to the state level. On a Friday night, my dad made time to talk about schoolwork and look at what I was doing. That’s the only time I remember his ever asking about school.

The next morning, he left early to make a solo plane flight (he flew planes as a hobby). At lunch, Mom told me something was wrong because he wasn’t home. I thought nothing of it; Dad kept his own schedule. If we waited for him for meals, he laughed at us upon his return. If we didn’t wait, he yelled at us for not waiting.

A funny thing happened on his Saturday trip to the airport; he made a wrong turn and left. Mom called his mother and later his boss. No one knew where he was. At first, we didn’t tell anyone he was gone. I went to school that Monday and pretended all was well.

That’s when our world crashed. My dad’s boss knew why he was gone. That Friday, his boss had confronted him that they had just discovered he had embezzled from the children’s home for 10 years; Dad asked for a final weekend to say good-bye to his family before facing the consequences. Instead, Dad fled.

My memories become fuzzy—God shaded the starkness to protect me from the horror.

Within a few days, his theft and disappearance made news. When police and FBI agents searched our house, family friends kept my siblings and me in our basement playroom so we wouldn’t see our house scoured by law enforcement. Some kids at school quit playing with me. I was forbidden from talking about anything with anyone. The facade of our prosperity faded one thing at a time. Our cars had been leased by the children’s home, and we lost them. Mom found an old pickup truck that we drove the first month. Because there were 4 kids, my brother and I most often rode in the back bed of the truck. Later, she found an old car.

The challenge became how to pay