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Finding Hope in the Storms of Life

 Jan and Mike

Transcribed from Testimony tape.  

By Pam Whitley 

I always like to start out by making sure everyone knows that I'm one of those GRITS girls....Girls Raised In The South…and I am telling you that for a reason. Even though I've lost most of my accent, and believe me I have, because when I first moved to Oklahoma, people would say things like “let me hear you say so and so again. Then they'd practically roll in the floor laughing when I said whatever.  So even though I've lost most of my accent, I still use different terms for things than some of my Oklahoma friends do.  For example, they go out and start their cars; I crank mine. They go to the grocery store and find a parking place, I find a park. They go into the grocery store and get a shopping cart; I get a buggy!  By the way, just for my own information, how many of you get a buggy? 

You may be wondering how this Mississippi gal became an Okie...well, I fell in love. It was the summer before my freshman year of college, and a typical Sunday morning at my little church (which was twelve miles out in the country) until all of us girls on the back row saw this good looking young man walk in. I think we all thought God had just answered our prayers….and one and one half years later after he graduated from OSU, he and I were married in that same little church.  We lived near my folks for two more years and then he transferred back to Oklahoma. On the day we moved, I found out for certain that I was pregnant…I'd thought I was either pregnant or dying because I had thrown up for weeks. Seven months later our first child(a wonderful little boy) was born. 

When our son was two, my first big trial occurred. My dad was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

Now as a child growing up, in that same little church where I met my husband, I also met Jesus. I'd always known about Him from the time I was a toddler, but didn't really understand until I was eleven years old that I needed to accept what He had done on the cross and invite Him into my life….in fact, I still to this day have my old diary where I wrote about my experience. It reads, “Today is the most important day of my life because I invited Jesus Christ into my life."  So as this trial hit, I knew where to draw my strength from, I just wasn't doing it…I was looking at the storm instead! 

The Draining Trips 

Over the next six months I flew back and forth to Mississippi to help take care of my dad. If I was in Mississippi, I felt like I needed to be in Oklahoma and I worried about my husband trying to get by without me, and if I was in Oklahoma, I worried about my what my mom and dad were going through in Mississippi. Pretty soon, worry consumed me and I developed Colitis. The doctor gave me Valium and B-12 shots to keep me going.  During one of my trips home to Oklahoma, a friend brought me a copy of a book called, “The Hiding Place” by Corrie Ten Boon… I didn’t have time to read it and left it in OK….arriving in Mississippi, my Aunt came up to the hospital and she brought me a copy of…you guessed it, “The Hiding Place”. So sitting at the foot of my dad’s hospital bed, feeling very sorry for him and very sorry for myself, I started to read Corrie’s Ten Boom’s story. Imprisoned in a concentration camp in Germany, Corrie shared how her sister Betsy was the one with the really strong faith. Betsy would talk about how good and faithful God was and as they sat in the midst of the concentration, Corrie had a hard time agreeing with Betsy.  Betsy said they should praise God for everything and Corrie spouted off… ”I bet you even think we should praise Him for these fleas….to which Betsy said “yes”..and then praised Him for the fleas!….Later Corrie would find out the reason their barracks were left alone and the women were not bothered by the guards and they could hold bible studies with their little hidden Bible was because of the fleas.  Corrie eventually lost her entire family but while in the concentration camp, God met her vital needs one day at a time. As I read her story, God spoke to my heart and said, “Pam, I love you just as much as I loved Corrie, I want to meet your needs just as I did hers but you have to turn to Me and trust Me just as Corrie did. So far, I had just prayed “heal my daddy, heal my daddy” but that day I started to open my Bible, and read the same passages that Corrie had read in that concentration camp and God begin to strengthen me.  I threw away the valium and by the time my dad died, I had Peace.

 January's Baby