Healing Hope Newsletter
September 2009
Theresa* was driving home from work on August 5, 1995 after a graveyard shift when she suddenly sensed a presence in the seat beside her. It was her orthopedic surgeon who was scheduled to perform surgery on her knee in three weeks. “He didn’t say a word, but I blurted out that I couldn’t have the surgery without my nurse.” The vision of the man faded.
The nurse she referred to was her husband, Doug*. “He had taken wonderful care of me after each of nine major surgeries. I burst into tears and cried all the way home. “I didn’t know why I was crying or what all this meant.” When she got home, she found the front door locked. Doug, who was retired and in bed at that early morning hour, always left it unlocked and open just a crack.
“Immediately, I knew.”
She rushed inside where she found Doug dead in his recliner where he’d been all night. Although he’d survived a heart attack, damage from asbestosis contracted when he was a Merchant Marine had caused his breathing to become more and more shallow. Eventually, he had to stop the smallest chore to catch his breath.
“Doug was the love of my life.” We did everything together. He taught me to golf but he didn’t go off and join the men’s club. I didn’t join the women’s club. We always played the course together.
“The first year after his death I was very suicidal. I simply didn’t want to be in this world without him. I’d go to work, come home, cry myself to sleep, and stay in bed all day.” Theresa kept thinking about buying a gun. “Or I thought maybe I could run my car off the road and no one would know that I’d killed myself.”
“It was my mother who kept me from committing suicide even though she didn’t know it.” Theresa’s mother and Doug were very close. “He treated her as though she was his own. So of course, his death had a profound effect on her. I knew that if I committed suicide she’d be completely destroyed.”
While other members of her biological family had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, Theresa did not. “I thought I’d never be good enough to be a Christian. I resisted so strongly that when I went to a Billy Graham crusade and he gave the altar call, I kept my hands glued to the arms of the chair.
“But when my nephew got in trouble, my sister-in-law and I prayed for him. Then one Sunday I visited a church and the pastor gave an altar call, “My hand seemed to shoot up of it’s own accord.” The whole experience terrified her.
Read about Theresa’s encounter with a second mystery man, her new birth and fruitful ministry, the day that darkness fell and the faith that sustained her in the October 2009 edition of The Healing Hope Newsletter.
Blessings,
Marion Duckworth
*Theresa and Doug are pseudonyms
Websites:
http://www.marionduckworthministries.com
http://www.healinghopeonline.com
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