Not A Matter of Talk

Never Forget Father’s Day

By Amy Hartmann

 

            I heard a true story where a greeting card campaign was initiated at a local men’s prison.  The prisoners were encouraged to send their mothers a Mother’s Day card.  Cards were made available, with the requests and the response by the incarcerated overwhelming the prison staff.  One month later, that same initiative was then offered again, this time for Father’s Day.  Much to everyone’s surprise, there was little or no demand for this event.

As a young child, I took to my father and his lap more times then not over my Mom.  My older sister was born very prematurely and her fragile life captivated my mother’s time considerably.  When I was born 2 years later, I arrived with a severe congenital heart defect.  At that time, operations on small babies rarely occurred and all the doctors could do was encourage my parents to keep a watchful eye on me until I was strong enough to endure this procedure.  I guess it was my father’s job to focus on me since my mother was so busy with my sister.  Somewhere along the way an intense bond with my father developed in me.  I became a certified ‘Daddy’s girl’.

By the age of 4, at the minimum weight of 30 pounds, I was finally strong enough for open heart surgery.  1964 surgical practices were so far removed from the amazing things surgeons accomplish today.  I remember waking up late in the evening a day after the surgery.  It was raining outside and the thunder caught my attention.  I looked across the room and there sat my father, silently watching me, waiting for me to wake up.

In the fall of 1978, I went off to college.  My father made the 3 hour drive to Lebanon, Tennessee to deposit me and my simple possessions in the dorm room at Cumberland College.  I was there on a music scholarship and I wanted to study medicine.

That fall, I frequently received simple index cards in the mail.  When the plain white envelope arrived, I would be so excited – they were notes from my Dad and sometimes he threw in a little cash.  He was a mail carrier and I think the most he ever made salary wise was about $13,000 a year (I made that salary at my first job in 1982).  Cash from Dad was appreciated but his cards were precious.  I still have them.

The week of December 4^th, 1978 I had a dream.  I dreamed I was in our basement at our home in Chattanooga, TN.  I was watching my father.  He fell to his knees and then his face went to the floor.  My mother appeared beside him.  Then he died.  When I awoke from that dream, I was hysterical.  I had just watched my father die.

There was no consoling me so my dorm mates helped me get up enough change to make the pay phone call.  It was early morning and my parents were asleep.  Once they answered my call, they began the arduous task of reassuring me that my Dad was ok, that it all was just a bad dream.  They reminded me that they would see me the coming weekend for the choir Christmas event, Dinner at Cumberland.   Our choir would be hosting a ticketed banquet attended by the governor of the state and many other Nashville dignitaries.  My parents were making the drive to see me perform in this regale.

That weekend was the last time I saw my father.  My parents made the 3 hour drive to Lebanon, and then they turned around and drove back home once the dinner show was over.  The last thing my father did was hug me, tell me to crack the books and press into my hand twenty dollars.

On December 14^th, 1978 at 11:00 a.m. the coal furnace at our home ran out of fuel.  The basement filled up with smoke.  Dad knew that the best thing to do was to go quickly down to the coal bin and open a window.  He knew not to stay in that smoke and shovel coal.  That day, though, he made the wrong decision.  While shoveling coal into the hopper, he was overcome by the fumes.  He fell to his knees as he tried to get his breathing to calm back down.  At that moment, he suffered a massive heart attack.

My mother knew the basement was dangerous when the hopper was empty and she always fussed at my Dad to be careful.  She also would listen for him to go down and open the windows and then come back up.  That morning she was at her task…she was alert.  She heard him shoveling…then she heard him stop.  When he didn’t respond to her calls from the stairs, she ran down to check on him.  She found him on his knees.  She ran back up stairs and phoned the police but this was 1978 and 911 calls were not part of the emergency response systems of that day.  Help finally came but it was too late.

That morning, my choir director sent word for me to come to his office.  I had just finished up my first semester Chemistry exam and I had gone back to my room for a nap.  My roommate woke me up and hurried me to Dr. Coble’s on campus house.  There, Dr. Coble shared the news that my father was gone and that someone was coming to pick me up and take me back home.  I felt dead inside as I walked back to my room.  There were no tears yet…I just felt dead and all I could think about was my dream.

Hours later, when I arrived at my family home and walked into the living room, my mother looked up from her weeping.  She was sitting in my father’s chair and she was a mess. All she could say to me was, “You knew…”.

For the next nine years of my life, I was mad at God.  I ran away from Him and everything my parents had tried to instill me.  I ran with the boys; I partied and sought solace from alcohol and marijuana.  I sampled the wares of the independent pharmaceutical distributors…I wanted to be high and just forget.

Oddly enough, God began to do something really amazing on my behalf.  He brought me to Atlanta and to the computer software company that would embrace me and raise me up to travel the world and facilitate multi-million dollar computer software systems implementations.  I excelled, especially with the hard to please accounts that refused payment because of outstanding problems.  Favor opened doors and brought incredible results on my projects.  God let me take all the credit.

In 1988 I was sent to Acton, England to facilitate software installations with Elizabeth Arden staff.  I had just finished a very successful implementation with Faberge, International.  Faberge purchased Elizabeth Arden and we began to bring Arden aboard the Faberge systems.  The project spanned their entire international business which included France, Italy and most of Europe.  It was the largest software acquisition I helped facilitate.  This was the era of businesses embracing computers for the first time.  Paper processes were giving way to the dinosaur mainframe software systems.  Languages had to bridged, currencies had to be converted, financial transactions had to be right on  – it was mammoth.  It was also an exciting time to be in the corporate world of business.

While I was living in Ealing Broadway, a friend at work invited me to attend an Anglican church service.  I had not graced the doors of a church since 1979 or 1980.  At that little church I witnessed the outpouring of Holy Spirit in worship.  People were lifting their hands in praise.  Dancers in flowing costumes twirled around up by the altar.  I thought they were crazy but I felt their fire.  I began to weep.

Over the next year, when I was in town in Atlanta, I began attending church at Mt. Paran Church of God.  Mylon LeFevre and his band, Broken Heart were based out of the church and my sister had given me some of their tapes.  It was my first introduction to Christian rock music.  Again, I felt the fire.

My work took me from England to New England and other very successful projects.  Through that season, God met me personally with His presence as I traveled, worked and made time for Him.  I got involved with a homeless ministry through Metro Bible Study; which utilized Mt. Paran’s facilities every Tuesday night.  When I was in town, I was at Metro and on Friday nights, down on the streets of Atlanta with Dad Ellis and his bunch of radical lovers of the most hurting.  It was there I met my husband.

Fast forward to February 2004.  My husband and I were now in Jacksonville, Florida.  It was the season of raising kids, getting them through school; being involved with church activities and the busyness of life.  That February a mass developed in my right breast.  It grew very quickly…I was with the surgeons and the radiologists.  I was very frightened.  I was scheduled for a biopsy and final review for surgical removal in early August.

By June the mass was the size of a plum and its constant presence haunted me.  Very few people knew of my plight.  I would not even tell my husband, I knew his faith was too fragile to handle such a challenge.  I knew my kids would be terrified so I did what I thought was best and kept it between me, the doctors and my close faith girlfriends.   Father’s Day, June 20^th arrived.  We were at church both services.  That evening our Pastor, Paul Zink, made an unusual altar call:  he said for everyone who was weary to come up for prayer.  The whole congregation mobbed the altar, including me.  At that moment, I was not thinking about the mass or my condition, I was just weary.  There were so many people up for this prayer that the ushers lined everyone up all over the large sanctuary.

I was herded to the front platform and told to go stand on the stage with many others…it was just the placement of the moment.  I stood and waited for Pastor Zink to get to me.  He had hundreds of people to pray for so he just went down the rows, touching people’s heads.  He was in a hurry.  When he got to me, he stopped and began to laugh.  He took his index finger and poked me in the stomach, and laughing he declared, “Released!” and then he kept on going.  I, however, flew back like he had punched me out.  I went down on my back and lay on the floor of the platform for at least twenty minutes.  I felt like a giant hot heating pad was on top of me and I was burning!  When this pressure sensation finally lifted, I sat up.  I knew better than to try and stand up so I started to crawl away from all the other people laid out on the floor.  As I began to crawl, I head Holy Spirit whisper, “Check yourself, the mass is gone.”

The platform of a huge church sanctuary is not the place to give yourself a breast check.  I crawled over to where our Pastor’s wife was sitting to get out of the way and get to the edge of the stage.  Pastor Sharon looked at me and asked what had happened.  I told her what I thought Holy Spirit had said.

“Go to the Ready Room and check,” she advised.

I did and the best I could tell, it was gone but I was not ‘sure’ and I was still frightened.  A month and a half later I was back with the surgeons and radiologists.  It was my turn for biopsy and final diagnosis.  Over and over they checked me out; they even sent me back to the waiting area while they changed out the lens on the mammogram machine.  “It’s a $12,000 piece,” the operating radiologist advised as she rechecked me over again.

Finally the surgeon took me to the sonogram room.  She had made the original videos, herself back in May.  She knew where the mass was supposed to be and she was confused.  After an intense examination, in her frustration, she finally turned to me and said, “Where is your mass?  I just can’t find anything.”

Tears came to my eyes.  “God took it,” I whispered.  She shook her head and gave me orders for a recheck in 3 months.

That moment, Father’s Day, June 20^th, 2004 wrecked me for the ordinary.  God had my full attention and I was going to run after Him with all my heart, my mind, my soul and my strength.

Fast forward again to Father’s Day, June 21, 2009 – at this point, I am dealing with other health problems.  I was born with the heart defect that the surgeons corrected in 1964 but I was also born with scoliosis.  By my early 20s I was constantly needing chiropractic care to readjust my frame.  My right leg was over an inch shorter than my left leg.  I managed to stay active and busy all through my 20s and early 30s but once I began having children, my skeletal frame began to groan with the impact of heavy babies and childbirth.  In 2007 after years of intense pain in my right ankle, my right knee and in my pelvis, my doctor finally sat me down and measured my leg lengths.  He showed me the real source of my angst.  He was a sports therapist to many well know athletes and he marveled at my tolerance of the pain.  I told him he had never given birth before so of course, it was hard for him to comprehend.

My family physician also was a skeletal specialist and he measured my bones, showing me that my right femur was the main culprit.  It was over an inch shorter than my left femur.  He wrote me a prescription for built up shoes and he advised me that most women with my condition were too vain to wear the shoes, suffering for fashion over practicality.  At that stage in my life, pain was the great equalizer and all I wanted was relief.  I was fitted for the shoes, which my grandmother declared to be the ugliest she had ever seen.  One pair in particular was my every day pair and the easiest to walk in.  Those shoes started to wear out and I needed another pair.  The cost was going to be over $300 and family funds for such a purchase were just not available, so I began to pray for shoe funds.

Father’s Day, June 2nd, 2009 we went to both services as usual.  That night we were sitting about 4 rows back from the front.  I was sitting on the end of the row.  Just before the service began, I watched a dreadlocked coiffed young man walk down the aisle just past me.  He approached the pastors and was immediately greeted.  Others came forward to give him a hug.  I felt compelled to do the same and he hugged us all with great enthusiasm.  One of the staff pastors introduced him as Todd White, guest speaker from the Power and Love Conferences which were being hosted all over the US. Todd was quickly given the stage and in his west coast home-boy attire, with pants hanging real low and dreadlocks swinging, he began to energetically share his testimony of being a crack-cocaine addict by the time he was 12.  He shared how he grew up running with the gangs, always in trouble and constantly being arrested for possession of illegal substances.

Once his testimony was finished, he called for everyone to come forward who had one leg shorter than the other or serious spine problems, especially scoliosis.  My kids looked at me and said, “Mom, that’s you – go up!”

Curious, I went forward and was shown a seat on the front along with 30-40 other people – young, old, many ethnicities, male, female – an interesting slice of life.  One by one, Todd knelt in front of each one of us and he prayed.  He had all the little kids come up and crowd around him as he did so.  When he got to me, he took my feet in their built up, worn out shoes and he immediately saw my condition.  He smiled real big and then he prayed.  At that moment, fire hit my upper femur and I felt like I had hot lava flowing in my bones.  In utter amazement I watched my right upper leg grow out in front of my eyes.  Just as I watched my father die in my dream, now I was watching my own leg grow.

I had on jeans that night and the image of my right knee stretching forward as it grew is forever burned in my mind.  At that moment I was totally wrecked by the love of Jesus and His finished work on the cross of Calvary.  It was His suffering that paid for my healing.  I felt His love and in my heart I heard someone singing, “Yes, Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so.”  At that crucial moment, God downloaded a new revelation for His love and His power.  He also told me that the real source of my fire was a truth spelled out in the New Testament book of Colossians:  He said, “Christ is in you and He is your hope of glory.”

That night I had to walk home barefooted.  My worn-out built up shoes were no longer needed.  I was free from scoliosis as well.  My doctors examined me and one even came back with me to give a video testimony of his medical opinion of my prior condition and then my healing.  That specific doctor was a hardened Italian from New York.  My healing wrecked his heart just as much as it did mine.  It brought tears to his eyes too.

The interesting thing about that evening is that God did not magic-wand me.  He grew my leg but it took many months for my right ankle, my right knee and my pelvis to recover.  Four months after my healing I was able to start exercising again.  I’ve been faithful to continue my commitment to staying in good shape so that I won’t waste the Divine grace that touched my life.  I’m back down to the weight I used to be before I had kids and my level of strength and endurance now is much greater than any other time in my life, that I can recall.

I’ve often thought about what it is in our lives that attracts the Divine presence like that.  All I can figure is that God sits outside of time and He looks at our life much like the ‘timeline’ concept of a popular social network.  He sees our end from our beginning.  He looked forward, down my timeline, to place were I am now and to the heart that I have for Him and His people.  He looked into my future and saw my praise and humble thanksgiving for His touch.  I guess that foreknowledge enabled His Divine patience when I was wasting my life on alcohol, drugs and people who really had no respect for me as woman and a person.

Since 2004, I eagerly await Father’s Day.  I don’t expect God to fix something in me every year in that same way, but I see the subtle things He mends, such as my hurting heart and emotions.  I see Him reach out, through me, to touch those who are hurting and infirm.  Hugging and loving on the people He puts in my sphere of influence is my heart’s desire because I know the secret:  deep down inside, it is Christ in me, the hope of glory.[1]