When I started writing this blog, I was only going to write about the book of Genesis.  Specifically about the creation and all the theories that are out there.  Yesterday I got my latest issue of Discover and a "new" theory is being proposed by Gemma Tarlach, a biologist.  He says that Darwin got it all wrong about natural selection and that evolution came about through molecular genetics.  He says that Darwin never proved the occurrence of natural selection in nature.

I find it interesting that everyone keeps coming up with these new theories.   All of them skirt the God factor.  The fact dinosaurs were for the most part wiped out about sixty-five million years ago by (most probably an asteroid) and that animals appear suddenly on the scene is a problem they haven't solved yet.  There wasn't enough time for all these animals that "we" have to evolve.

I say all that to say this:  The Bible is a reliable book.  It's truths never change.  When I started this blog, I told you that there are three Biblical points that people will use to try and destroy your faith.
1.  The virgin birth.  That's the one point that you can't argue.  We believe it was true because the rest of the Bible is remarkably and totally accurate.
2.  The creation story.  Go back and read my blogs on creation and the truth of the Biblical account.  I did my degree in zoology and pre-med so I'm not just whistling Dixie.
3.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ.  If you want to read the accounts of the resurrection, read the last chapters in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Read Acts and Paul's account of the risen Jesus.  Read about all the people who saw him.  It is an account of an event in history that was viewed by more people than any other personal witness account that is on historical record.

We are going to celebrate Christ's resurrection soon.  Eternal Life.  That is a gift that God has given us because Jesus gave himself up for our sin and conquered death.  He is risen.

What a beautiful thing a life can be.  Ken's life was just beautiful.  He never complained.  He was always satisfied with whatever he had.  I only remember one time in fifty-seven years that he said he wanted something.  A coat that he could wear when he wasn't in uniform.  (We were living in Virginia and it was very cold.)

He didn't see himself as anything special.  Everyone else did, but he would just say, "Well, I guess I've got them fooled."

He taught a Bible class for over forty years.  The last few months he was alive he would use every last ounce of his strength to get up for church.  "I want to go to church," he would say.  He loved the men he had taught.  He truly loved God.

When he was flying, he spent hours before a flight plotting vectors and flight plans to get to his assigned target.  You couldn't do your job if you didn't know how to get where you were supposed to go.  You needed to plan and design the unchartered flight path.

One of the last things he said before he died was, "I don't know exactly how I'm going to get there."  He knew where he was going, he just didn't know the flight path.  

John 14: 2-3b, 4,6a "In my Father's house are many mansions….I go to prepare a place for you.  and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also.  And where I go, you know, and the way you know… Jesus said to him, I am the way…"

Ken knew the "Way", Jesus.  He was just wondering about the flight plan, "How you get from here, to there." Aren't we all!!!  That's faith.  He lived his life on faith.  My privilege was to live my life with him.

I had taken care of everything in our lives for so long that when Ken finally retired from the Marine Corps, there was an adjustment.  Problems?  I could take care of it--whatever.  That was a very false assumption.  God had been giving me grace to 'manage' and I didn't even know it.  Besides that, all the financing came from Ken's salary.  I hadn't had to get a job.

But when I had heart surgery, when they removed the walls of my heart and damaged the timing mechanism, I was released from the hospital helpless.  They got the tumor, but they destroyed my ability to take care of myself--or anything else.  Ken and my children had to take over everything, including our one year old.  

And I was a guinea pig for medical science.  Since nobody had lived from this surgery, everything they did to keep me going was trial and error.  The drugs made me hallucinate horribly.  After I finally got to come home, after I would go to sleep,  I would wake up suddenly yelling, screaming that the ceiling was falling down.  My rational mind knew it wasn't true, but I would be standing in the middle of the king size bed with my hands on the ceiling trying to hold the ceiling up.  Ken would  tell me everything was alright, it was okay, to lie down, that the ceiling wasn't falling.  He tried to assure me.

But night after night I woke up terrified that the ceiling was falling. Then one night, when I was standing in the middle of  the bed, holding the ceiling up, he stood up beside me, raised his hands, took hold of the ceiling and said, "I've got it sweetheart.  Lie down and go back to sleep.  I've got it."

He loved me even when I was mentally and physically shot.   I could depend on him.  After twelve years of marriage, I didn't have to depend on myself anymore.  That was the moment in my life that I realized how blessed I was to have someone who loved me unconditionally.  He was going to be there for me.  He wasn't leaving.  He was going to hold my ceilings up.

Ephesians 4: 32a, 5:2 "…be kind to one another, tenderhearted,…walk in love, as Christ also has loved us, and has given himself for us as an offering…" 

 

Our lives wound down.  We bought a house, a first for us.  Ken drew a circle with a radius of sixty miles around Pryor (as an acceptable commute) and got a job as an instructor at NEO College teaching Sociology.

"Why Sociology?" I asked.  "I'm just curious, why not something to do with airplanes? Why didn't you take the job United Airlines offered?"

"If I wanted to drive a bus taking people from point A to point B, I would have done it on the ground where there is something to see," he answered.  "Flat and level is not the kind of flying I am interested in.  I want supersonic that you can roll and summersault and chase clouds.  And I've been there and done that.   There's no way you can afford to fly like that unless you are in the military.  So, I am going to do something different."

And he did.  For twenty-eight years he changed lives.  Twice elected by the campus students as the outstanding teacher.  He would walk into the classroom and say, "I believe there are only two approaches to teaching interaction between human beings (sociology).  You believe that there is a God, which affects everything else.  Or, you believe that there is no God which does the same."

"I need for you to know that I definitely believe that there is a God and whether I mention his name or not,  it will directly affect everything I say this semester.  I am a Christian. You have a right to know where I am coming from.  If that bothers you, you probably need to find another class because I am not going to change that opinion.  There is a God."

Exodus 20: 1-3,  "And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out to the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  You shall have no other gods before me."

 Matthew 10:32 "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven."   Those are the words of Jesus.  Ken was always bold when it came to telling others that truth.

The month that Ken finished his Master's, I went in for surgery and they told me I was pregnant and had to have a medical termination.  "You can't carry this baby," the doctors told me.  "Your life is in danger."

"I'm not pregnant," I told them.  It had been ten years since our last child was born.  I was all through with babies and diapers and lack of sleep.  All of our children were in school.  I had finished a degree in Pre-Med and had plans to go to medical school.  But God had a different plan.

I had learned my lesson about unexpected pregnancies when I was pregnant with our third daughter.  God decides when life begins.  I explained to the doctors that I had lost a child twelve years earlier, and that I wasn't going to lose another one.  "I will carry this baby."

"You can't," they told me.

I did.  But to tell the truth, it did almost kill me.  I had a tumor inside my heart.  It was robbing me of oxygen and strength.  I had open heart surgery after Jonathan was born.  Everything turned out fine in most ways.  I didn't get to go to medical school. I didn't get back on my feet for years.  But he was worth it.  I wouldn't change a thing.

He was like a toy.  We just passed him around.  It was a lot of fun.  I teased him after he was grown.  "You didn't learn to walk until you were three or four because someone was holding you all the time."

But I was done.  No more babies.  It's a bad thing to lose your health.  But there are a lot of things that are worse.  I am thankful for my four children.

1 Thessalonians 5: 18  "In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."






Ken went on to teach an NEO for twenty eight years.

I have left out so many stories.  Some funny, some horrible.  But life is zillions of minutes, most of them routine.  As Ken always said about being a single seat fighter pilot, "It is hours and hours of boredom followed by seconds of sheer terror."

After he retired, he went on to get a degree in Aerospace Studies at Oklahoma State U. (with a 4.0--I told you he was smart), and a Masters in Sociology at Tulsa University.  He had gone there on a football scholarship when he graduated from high school.  As he put it, "I went to play football and have a good time."  I think he must have done both because at the end of one semester he had a grade point of 00.04.  He didn't go to class.  Someone must have given him a D or it would have been 00.00 He was out of options so he enlisted in the Marine Corps.

The registrar asked him (when he applied for entry to the Master's program,) "Are you the same person that went here over twenty years ago.  What happened?"

"Twenty one years in the Marine Corps," Ken answered him.  "It makes a difference in a person's life."

After he enlisted, the Marine Corp did something very rare.  They opened the door to flight school to enlisted personnel if they could pass a college graduate equivalency test, and could pass the flight physical.  (You had to be in a certain height range.  If you were too tall you would lose your knees when you ejected.)  Ken passed both.  A few of them did.  Fewer still could pass the written exams in flight school--there was a ton of advanced math.  He was commissioned.  As he put it many times when he was teaching young people in our church, "It changed my life."

Ecclesiastes 9: 10  "Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might."

Ken finally came home, thank God.  Vietnam wasn't like Afghanistan, or Iraq.  In Vietnam, the pilots flew multiple sorties over and over all day.  They didn't have drones.  They didn't have a lot of things.

He had to serve four more months before he could retire, so he came back to Oklahoma in January on leave, but then had orders to go to El Toro, California.  "I think it would be best for the children if they stayed in school here.  I hate to move them again.  So, why don't you all stay here and I'll go do the four months and come home on the weekends when I can get a plane," he said.

I argued with him, but he didn't want the three kids to change school in the middle of the year.  So off he went to California.  He had a hard time saying goodbye again.

He had been gone a couple of days when I called a conference.  The four of us sat down at the kitchen table and I said, "We are going to take a vote.  How many of you would rather move to California for the next four months?"  Four hands went up.  "Then it's settled.  Go pack your backpacks with three changes of clothes and a bunch of books to read and we will leave in the morning."

I threw every thing we might need to "camp out" for a few months in the trunk of the car.  And we headed west.  I called Ken, "We voted and you were outvoted.  We are already in the car on our way."

You could tell he was pleased.  He had wanted to do what was best for the children concerning school, but was very lonesome and glad we out voted him.  "Come on," he said. "I'll get housing and have one of the guys fly me to Albuquerque.  Meet me at the airport and I'll drive the rest of the way with you."

It was an excellent decision.  We had a blast for four months.  Beaches, free tickets to Disneyland for returning vets and families.  Sometimes, you have to have a family conference and take a vote.

Ruth 1:16 "…Entreat  me not to leave you, or to return from following after you: for where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge…"