I am combining my own true
stories with the life-changing, near-death experiences of my forefathers in
this blogpost.
Interspersed with the text are photos of my latest large detailed watercolor painting, Chariots of Fire, 14x22
watercolor on 300 lb Arches cold pressed paper. The full painting
play-by-play is followed by detail photos of the progression of how I
painted the focal point of men training in the boat, John Graves and Ben
Davison. They are presently competing in the Rowing World
Championships, in Sarasota, Florida for the United States of America. When I run fast, Jennie, I feel His pleasure ~ Eric Liddell.
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| Chariots of Fire, 14x22 watercolor by Elise, September 2017 |
It's easy to believe the lie
you are the “master of your own destiny.”
While I do believe our
daily choices change our entire lives and that we need to take responsibility
for the consequences of our decisions in life, I also believe there are many
people who have really wanted to live longer, but died. And those who felt they
wanted to die, but lived.
People sometimes spend years
waiting for the right timing and funds to take steps to accomplish what they have
always really desired to do.
Sometimes our lives can be
changed in a hurtful manner by circumstances outside our control, or the
actions of others.
Conversely, our lives can be
saved by someone else's care and protection.
I believe our Father in
heaven holds each of our lives in His hand. He designs and allows our challenges
and also opens and closes doors, in the right time and way.
I and II Samuel in the Old
Testament contain chapters full of history surrounding many gory battles. Many,
many people died before they had lived very long. This is true today. And if
you're reading this and still alive, you can be grateful for the immense gift
and the great potential of just being alive.
_________________________
I asked a nineteen-year-old
acquaintance a few years ago if they had ever had a near-death experience. They
said no, they had not. This surprised me, I thought everyone had had times,
early in life where they realized their life had been spared.
When you realize you are
still here, you could have died but didn't, you can then figure you are here
for a Purpose!
There is someone for you to
help comfort, someone for you to encourage. There is something your life needs
to say to the world, through an action or by words.
I nearly died a few times
before being very old. My life has been like a Parkour obstacle course. Just
getting through it has been difficult.
Yet another change of where I
live and work at the end of August led me to some thinking about the Providence
which has allowed me to be here. The relatives in my immediate lineage
experienced harrowing times in life. Had these ancestors not been protected and
died, I would never have been born. But God is in the business of providing and
protecting those He wants to have escape trouble, to overcome trials and
remain.
My Maternal Great-Grandfather and Grandmother, Opa and Oma
My Opa was born in 1891 in
Hamburg, Germany. He grew up by the seaside and became a skilled mariner,
working on three-masted schooners and traveling around the world by sail for
many years.
Opa first went to sea at age
fourteen, and worked his way up from cabin boy to first mate. He once stopped a
mutiny on board his ship by telling the men, “If you want to get to the captain
you'll have to go through me, boys.” Opa was respected and the mutineers stood
down.
When first mate, Opa kept the
ship's log. He spoke at least five languages fluently, and he was a writer and
poet. German sailors of that time had to memorize the names of 360 different
ropes attached to the sails on three-masted schooners.
My Opa nearly died when a
young man, around 1914, after he fell out of the crow's nest onto the ship's
deck, docked in the Melbourne, Australia harbor. The impact of his fall broke
some of his ribs, puncturing his lungs. He was put into the Melbourne hospital,
where his crew waited for three months for him to get well. Opa didn't recover
enough to leave the hospital after three months, so his crew sailed without
him.
It took Opa six months
to leave the hospital. We had his hospital tags. His seaman's papers were taken
from him, because of the start of WWI. Our Opa had no desire to join the German
Navy. It seems he may have lived for a time in South America while fully
recovering his health. He must have been quite penniless after spending six
months in hospital, but he managed to work his way to New York City from
Australia.
Arriving in New York City in
late 1916 with just $37, Opa met my great-grandmother, Oma, a short time later at
a German New Year's dance. They married about eight months later, in 1917.
My Oma was born in 1893. She was
twenty years old when she immigrated to America through Ellis Island from
Bavaria, Germany, in July of 1913, just before WWI. This was fortunate because
inflation became so bad in Germany during WWI, Oma told us, it took an entire
wheelbarrow filled with paper money to buy one loaf of bread.
During the late 19th
century, Germany was full of city states and Oma told me about the robber
barons which still roamed about in her youth, who could jump out of the bushes
alongside roads and hold up travelers who ventured forth from their walled
towns.
Oma first worked in New York
City homes as a domestic servant, and had carefully saved her extra money.
After meeting Opa, between them they had just $200. Oma and Opa used these
precious funds to purchase their first delicatessen in NYC.
Over the years, they owned
and ran four different stores – one in Harlem, another was between 107th
and 108th Ave on Amsterdam Avenue, and one was in Sunnyside, Queens. I
don't know where the fourth store was.
These were the days when
delicatessens made the potato salads, coleslaw and beef roasts from scratch.
Oma and Opa traded off, working together from 6AM 'til Midnight, seven days a
week. When they got too tired out, they would spend time in Wannsee, Germany,
where they owned a beautiful cottage, surrounded by flowers, before WWII.
During the 1917 flu epidemic,
Oma came down with the flu. Opa would stand by their bedroom window and watch
the hearses going by below to funerals. “There goes another hearse” he would
tell his new wife...Oma survived and did not join those hearses. Oma lived to
be 96-years-old and was very well until one week before she went Home to
heaven.
My Grandmother
Grandma was born in 1921,
into a German-speaking family. German was her first language, she learned
English at age five, and she eventually also spoke fluent French, after
spending a summer in French School in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In the summer of 1936, just
before her sixteenth birthday, my grandmother was sent to Germany by her
parents, to attend gymnasium (German preparatory school). My grandmother was
one of only a few unmarried young women passengers aboard an ocean liner which
crossed the Atlantic ocean that summer.
This liner also carried some or all of the
1936 USA Olympic team! “The Boys in the Boat” book and movie was based on the
eight rowers who won their Olympic race. I assume these young men may also have been aboard Grandma's ship.
Note: I have checked the ship's manifest for the SS Manhattan, but her name doesn't appear, so I am uncertain what boat my Grandma was actually on.
Note: I have checked the ship's manifest for the SS Manhattan, but her name doesn't appear, so I am uncertain what boat my Grandma was actually on.
Our Grandma loved to dance.
She used to tell us how, at 10 PM, one of the coaches would tell the Olympic
athletes it was their bedtime. The coach would stand at the top of one set of
stairs, and check off each athlete as they descended, ostensibly going to their
bunks. But Grandma said some of the young men would quickly go up another set
of stairs to one of the ship's dance floors, where she and another young lady
danced with the soon-to-be Olympians far into the night!
It must have been in late
August of 1939, three years later, when Opa heard the news another European World
War was imminent. He called the American Consulate in Washington D.C. and
instructed him, “Get my daughter out of Germany!”
Grandma was eighteen years
old at the time. She was notified she must leave immediately. There was
no time to pack. She left most of her possessions behind as she was rushed to
the Berlin, Germany train station, where she took the last train out of
Berlin, Germany, heading for Switzerland, before all the trains were
used solely for transporting German troops to invade Poland.
She also took one of the last
Atlantic ocean liners from the coast of Italy before German U-boats began
torpedoing ships in the Atlantic ocean. I didn’t realize until doing research
for this blog just how many ships had been torpedoed in WWII – 2,825 merchant
ships, not including warships!
Had Grandma gotten stuck in
Germany during WWII, she could have died. And she would not have met my Grandfather
and married when she did, just nine months after returning to New York City.
My Grandfather
My Grandpa was the third
child of his father's second wife. Grandpa's father was sixty-nine years old
when Grandpa was born, and his father died six years later, at age 75. Had my
great-grandfather on this side not married again and had the faith to have
children at an advanced age, I wouldn't be here.
Grandpa had helped his mother
survive the Great Depression in Republican, North Carolina using his fishing
pole and shotgun, after the local general store no longer had any food to sell.
People had run up their credit lines until the store could no longer buy food.
My great-grandmother on this side planted a large garden, and Grandpa loved to
hunt and fish.
Then, Grandpa attended Massey
Business College, where he learned to take dictation in shorthand, write in
Spencerian penmanship and also type. He worked as a secretary for a North
Carolina Senator for a time and corresponded with President FDR briefly.
Grandpa's life and future was
nearly taken when he was a boy. He had pulled a pot of boiling water off the
stove, and accidentally poured it down his front and into his rubber boots. He
quickly ran outside and pulled his boots off, but the boiling liquid had
already done great damage – the skin on both legs came off with the rubber
boots.
Grandpa developed blood
poisoning in both feet. A doctor said his feet must be amputated, to save his
life. My grandpa's grandmother was an herbalist, as many were then, and she
refused the doctor's advice. She made up a concoction using raw garlic and
onions and applied this poultice to my grandfather's legs and feet. “It
burned like FIRE!” Grandpa told us. It also healed his feet!
My grandfather went north to
New York City around 1933, to take a job in the garment district. Then he got a
job with Canada Dry, where he worked for the next forty years, walking nine
miles each day on those once-burned feet, to feed his family.
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| Chariots of Fire, 14x22 watercolor by Elise, September 2017 |
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| My cropped photo reference |
The original photo I took from a coach's launch
Working to Save Others Lives
In the 1940's during WWII,
because he was married and had a child, my grandfather served as an air-raid
warden in NYC.
For years after the war, our
Grandpa and great-grandfather, Opa would cover their dining room table with
brown-paper wrapped boxes, tied with red-and-white string. They would gather
German addresses, any addresses, even for those they didn't know. Opa knew the
common German people were literally starving after the War, so he sent many
food parcels back to his townspeople, to try to save their lives.
Opa also sponsored immigrants
coming to America. He believed in giving people a chance to experience what
America had given him. We believe around forty-two people were able to start
new lives here in America because of my great-grandfather, Opa.
One family immigrated here
from Paraguay, South America and moved to Arkansas, where they eventually owned
and operated the second-largest pecan plantation in the state. Annually, at
Christmas-time, our family would receive a box of pecans, in gratitude.
My Opa and my Grandfather
understood money was a tool, to be used to help others. Their generosity is a
wonderful example for me. I, too, am here in this world to do all I can to
support and encourage others. To save many lives.
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| Detail progression starts here |
My Dad
I've written
previously about my dad's early near-death experience, at age four, when the
stitches from his tonsillectomy came out and he nearly bled to death in his
crib. He was rushed to the hospital and given type O blood transfusions. We
believe he was given untested dirty blood and my dad had many health problems
as a result over his life-time.
My dad attended a military
school for his first two years of college. It was a hard place, with young men
committing suicide by jumping out of the windows because the physical and
mental pressure there was great. My dad got through it. My siblings and I grew
up getting drilled, learning to properly stand at attention, march, do an
“about-face” and how to salute.
During the Vietnam War, my
dad enlisted in the Marines. He didn't want to wait to be drafted. During his
physical examination he was told by the doctor, “I can't send you to Vietnam!
You've got a rash up both arms, and you'll make so much noise scratching in the
jungle, your entire company will be shot and killed!” “You can't stop me,” my
dad replied, “I already have my orders for basic training.” “Watch me,” said
this military doctor. He picked up the phone and canceled my dad's orders. And
so, my dad didn't join the Marines or go to Vietnam, he got married instead and
had children. This doctor possibly helped save my dad's life.
Another time, my dad went on
a pretty crazy treasure-island hunt, getting caught in the Atlantic on a barge
during a hurricane and very nearly didn’t make it back to shore.
My Own Life Experience of the Protection of God
I can point to four times I
could have died but didn't, although there are probably others our Father
delivered me from without my knowledge. I am grateful for all that has happened
to me, I'm equally grateful for much which has NOT happened to me.
My Leg Cut
We had a small beaver pond on our
land when I was ten or eleven years old. My dad, a WSI (water-safety
instructor), was our life-guard when we went swimming. One day, while swimming
to try to reach my sister on an inner-tube, I felt something brush by my lower leg.
I reached down and my hand seemed to go into my left leg! There was no
pain.
I had to put my right foot
down on the slimy mud at the bottom of the pond in order to raise my left leg,
to see what was wrong.
What I saw was horrifying! I
screamed. There was a four-inch long cut on my left shin. It was very deep and
I could see the artery inside my leg, pumping blood!
My dad, trying to calm me
down enough to understand what was wrong, told me he was going to walk away
unless I stopped screaming. He actually turned around to walk away, so I would
stop my hysteria. I told him about the cut I saw. “Now come over to me, Elise,
and show it to me,” he said.
I exited our pond on the
shallow and muddy far side, and went down across the stream below the concrete
dam over the big rocks in the stream bed, to show him my leg. He saw the cut
before I reached the other side and told me to stop walking. My dad came down
into the stream bed to pick me up, carrying me up the bank and toward the
house. My sister ran ahead to tell my mother I was injured.
My mom quickly came toward us
and I saw her eyes as they met my dad's eyes. He shook his head. My dad was
trained in many medical procedures, but this cut was too big for butterfly
bandages.
We went to the hospital that
day, where I had thirty stitches. I remember my mom talking about packing the
cut with sphagnum moss, so the cut would heal from the inside out...but we
didn't try that method. Instead, I got an intern who applied a “pain-killer”
which I seemed to be allergic to, and only then did I feel enormous pain!
I spent a good deal of time
sitting in bed that summer, waiting for the cut to heal. The very next day my
dad went into the pond with his fireman's boots and gloves on, sifting through
the mud, looking for something sharp enough to have cut me...he didn't find
anything more than a sharp rock. We don't know what sliced into my skin, but
had my leg artery been cut, I know I could easily have bled to death.
Building Rafts and Nearly Drowning
My mother had a rule – we
were not allowed to swim in our mountain stream-fed pond until after June 1st.
But my sisters and I found ways around this by building rafts each Spring, so
we could get out on the water earlier, as soon as the ice broke.
We made up individual
“blue-prints” but usually had to combine our building plans for lack of good
materials. We used poles from the woods and spare boards, nailing them
together. We also had a prized inner-tube which we surrounded with boards and
put in a trap door on hinges, in the center of the tube.
We used empty cider jugs with
metal twist tops on them for flotation devices. After our nails punctured too
many jugs, we used our Styrofoam play surf boards for flotation under our
wooden rafts. We spent a good deal of time brainstorming ideas to make things
float!
We even crafted one raft with
a mast and sheet sail, and we let a friend christen this special boat. I guess
we looked a lot like Huckleberry Finn, with our palm-frond braided hat, poling
around the pond with our pants hiked up to our knees!
Sometimes we did accidentally
capsize. If we leaned too far to one side, the inner tube would slide out from
underneath the boards, and slowly, very slowly, the remaining unsupported
wooden part of the raft would sink into the icy water...and whoever was on the
raft had an awfully cold shock!
One summer day, when I was
around twelve years old, and no one was life-guarding us, I jumped from shore
onto one of our pole rafts. My small brother, who was six at the time and couldn't
yet swim, was already on board this raft. I knew the raft only held one person
and it was really stupid to try to put two on it.
The raft immediately flipped
over and while I was still in mid-air, falling, I twisted around to see my
brother submerged, his straw-colored thatch of hair floating on top of the
water. I grabbed for his hair, lifting him up and he grabbed me around the
neck, trying to stay afloat.
Both of us went under the
water. I remember kicking hard, feeling nothing underneath me except water, as
I came up once. I can still see my sister swimming away from us in the
inner-tube, not realizing we were in trouble. I didn't breath, I just croaked
“help” and then went under again, with my brother on top of me.
It flashed through my mind we
were about to drown.
Suddenly, I felt firm mud
beneath my feet, and I was able to stand up on mud in knee-deep water! I don't
know how this happened except that God saved our lives that day.
A Bad Car Accident
The year was 1987. Our family
was traveling home by car from Florida, where we went annually to see our
grandparents. It was lunchtime and we got off I-95 in Richmond, Virginia, to
find some food. We had gone through the AAA tour book that morning, noticing
Virginia didn't yet have a seat belt law. We made the conscious decision NOT to
wear seat belts that day. This decision probably saved my life.
My mother had twisted in her
seat to ask my sister what type of food she wanted to eat. Turning back to the
road, we headed through an intersection. I was reading my Bible for the day,
and remember glancing up to see the street-light was red. I opened my mouth to
ask why she was going through a red light just as, very suddenly, a
refrigerator fell on top of me. It felt like a refrigerator anyway. It was
really a two-ton truck, whose driver knew the intersection light changed
rapidly. His truck plowed into the side of our car, T-boning our old 1969 steel
Pontiac directly in the side, between the doors. The post held.
I was in the front seat on
the far right. One of my sisters was in the middle seat. The door on my side of
the car came in nine inches. Our car was totaled. The front window glass
shattered but didn't fall. Had I been wearing a seat belt, as was usual, I
would not have been able to slide sideways away from the impact and crushed
door.
The thin page I was holding
ripped on impact and my Bible shot across the three of us in the front seat,
hitting the front door to the left of my mom with a thud. Our car
clattered up against the light pole on the opposite side of the intersection. A
stranger came over and reached into our car to put the gearshift into Park,
because my mother was in shock.
My sister and brother in the
back seat had collided, hitting their heads, and both had bad concussions. My
sister had a serious TBI and spent some time at the hospital because she lost
her short-term memory for a day or so.
I could feel that my ribs
were pushed out of place, in front and back of my rib cage, but I told the
emergency people who arrived with an ambulance I was fine because I wasn't
coughing up blood. I couldn't raise my arms above my head and developed a
cough. A chiropractor helped put us back together after we arrived home in
Vermont.
Pancreatitis
After priming and painting
the outside of our large clapboarded farmhouse the summer I was twenty, I
painted the walls and stained the woodwork inside my bedroom. I slept in the
room that night, against the wishes of my mother. We had been doing a lot of
home renovation, and the toxic fumes from polyurethaning our wooden floors had
also affected me.
My pancreas decided it had
had enough with toxic fumes and synthetic chemicals, and I nearly died the next
summer.I remember having an infection in my abdomen, which caused a lot of pain when I walked. A doctor told me all my digestive organs were shutting down and that I could die...I couldn't eat anything without lots of pain.
The pancreas and spleen
meridian is known to be connected to “over-thinking” and I certainly had this
problem in spades. At the time, I was highly critical of myself and others. I
was inadvertently killing myself.
Our family went to Maine for
a short time that summer, where I spent a good deal of time down by docks on
the ocean, thinking about my life.
I remembered my past times of
physical and emotional pain and thought about facing the unknown future. I
remember deciding I wanted to live. This required faith. I began to heal
following this decision. I also memorized and meditated consistently on
Philippians chapter four, and focused on re-training my brain to think about
beautiful, good things.
Just as a clay pot must be
put in a hot kiln to dry it, and must be put into the fire again, when glazed,
it also spends time cooling, on a shelf, away from being in use.
I feel like a clay pot sometimes. Being moved from here to there. I desire to be a vessel unto honor fit for the Master Potter's use.
Our wise kind Father never makes a mistake as He molds and shapes our lives to fit His perfect plan.
I wish you all contentment and joy where you are in life,
your painting-friend,
Elise
I feel like a clay pot sometimes. Being moved from here to there. I desire to be a vessel unto honor fit for the Master Potter's use.
Our wise kind Father never makes a mistake as He molds and shapes our lives to fit His perfect plan.
I wish you all contentment and joy where you are in life,
your painting-friend,
Elise
