TEEN YEARS AND ROMANCES
The girls were almost four years apart in ages, so they only had one year in which they overlapped in Immanuel High School. Cindy was involved in track meets, cross country running, etc. She again brought home many medals for her efforts. She enjoyed Home-Ec and fashions. Although school was difficult for her, she managed to earn the gold tassels on her graduation attire!
Carolyn would like to have been involved in basketball, volleyball, etc. At church camp in her eighth year she broke her hand. It had started healing by the time she came back from camp, and her doctor gave her a sling so that before her surgery we could go to Disneyland with her cousin Corinne and Aunt Esther who were visiting from Nebraska. It was a fun trip, but it became very painful for Carolyn because of all the jostling of her arm. She had the surgery when we got back and they put a pin to mend the break and with the time that it took to heal, that eliminated her from trying out for a team in volleyball. The following year she was unable to try out again as she had tests which involved a spinal tap right in the beginning of the school year. By the 11th grade, she had lost too much valuable practice time to qualify for the teams. She went along to the games and kept scores for them instead; she always took disappointments so calmly.
At her graduation party, Cindy hosted many friends and family in our back yard while Carolyn and Elaine helped to serve the guests. After the party, Cindy joined some friends in going to other graduation parties. At one of these she met a tall, dark handsome guy named Tim Harms. This meeting was to affect the rest of her life, as they soon became best friends and planned their wedding together. What a wonderful mate she was choosing!
First Cindy attended college at Kings River Community College. Fashion designing both in clothes and in home decorating had been Cindy’s love for many years, and she found many courses which helped her work towards this goal.
Cindy’s wedding was the biggest event any of us had ever been involved with planning. Cindy had great ideas! Because of the cost, many of those ideas had to be fleshed out by making them ourselves. My organization skills and Cindy’s creativity worked together for hosting a wedding of 500+ guests that was talked about for months to follow. But even more than the grandness of the occasion, I remember the awe I felt as I realized that a new home was being established and I recall how my heart filled with unspeakable love and pride as my beautiful daughter stood with her lover at the altar. Tim and Cindy settled in a farm home in Dinuba.
Tim worked at Agribusiness and Cindy went back to college! She also worked at Gottschalks part-time as she had done before marriage. This schedule became pretty demanding! Cindy’s talents and creativity became very obvious, but even more apparent was the disciplines to hang in there during tough assignments.
Carolyn continued at Immanuel High School. Because of Carolyn’s musical talents, she zeroed in on choral music. She became a member of the school choir as well as the Sunshine Group for several years. They ended up taking some great honors at the District Music Festival. Carolyn was very good at accounting, and Uncle John in the lunch room really enjoyed and used her a lot in collecting money for the lunches.
Throughout all of Carolyn’s teen years, a strength that always jumped out even in the most difficult times was her compassion and supporting role in the lives of her friends. This was especially shown in her role with her friend Sandy, who was struggling with her parents and her self-esteem. We were no match to the challenges that were to confront us with this event and others in the coming years!
Jean Hammer came to Reedley with a Bible Study—or as she preferred to call it, ‘‘Women in the Word”—which would give some life-changing direction to me personally. Through this new approach to expecting God to show us how to make choices by looking for His direction through His Word, I gained some valuable insight into how to respond to situations in a way that would glorify God. It was during this time I asked God to give me a verse specifically in regard to my children. God seemed to impress Exodus 17:12 and 13 into my heart. Moses was holding his arms up and as long as he did, Joshua discomfited Amalek by the edge of the sword. When his arms became too heavy, Aaron and Hur helped him to hold up his arms. So it seemed that God was reminding me that I alone would not be able to hold up my arms in faith, but I must open myself to others so they could join me in my battle to release my children. A valuable lesson I needed to learn.
An incident I will never forget happened when Don and I left to attend a Bill Gothard seminar in Los Angeles. I had the best curling iron which Carolyn wanted to use and she insisted I leave it with her. Not feeling good about the manner in which she approached me, I asked God to show me how I could best respond to Carolyn. As the time approached, Carolyn was asking me what I would do. I responded that I had asked God and I would let her know. Her response was, “But what if He doesn’t tell you anything?” Before I knew what I was saying, I had responded, “If you asked me something, I care enough to give you an answer. I know God will give me an answer!” Whew—what if I didn’t get a clear answer? The night before I reminded God that I still did not have a direction in how I was going to answer her. The next morning I was reading in Hebrews 10:24, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” I jumped up and ran into Carolyn’s room to share that God wanted me to let her use my curling iron so that it would help her to remember to do good deeds also.
Carolyn also hosted her friends at a graduation party. This time there was her mother and Cindy to help serve the guests. She had various boyfriends but none that really took her eyes as the very special one! She had many girlfriends. She had the honor of singing with a trio at the graduation ceremony.
Carolyn soon moved to Fresno. This was a painful time between Don, Carolyn, and myself, and we had to struggle through many of our relationships. I began to confide my feelings to friends who were interested in me and my maturity, and God began to show me how I could better handle some of the ways that I responded to situations. Dean and Kathy Gray, John and Florene Mendel, Sam and Marvis Bergen, and Florence LaRue had much influence in helping me to find God’s way for my life. Over the years, God has shown me that in order to help people, suffering has to be worked through in real life, and that gives insight to counsel and compassion.
Because of my feeling of being such a failure in my parental role, I also became involved in counseling. Don became involved with me reluctantly, and we were able to resolve some of our differences in a much better way than we had practiced before. In looking back at these very painful years, I realize that God had not forgotten me, and I was not the failure I accepted in myself, but rather that God wanted to break some of the molds that had been wrongly entrenched in my mind. I will share some of these concepts in the chapter of my life at Richland Sales as the Payroll Supervisor.
TEN YEARS AT RICHLAND SALESCarolyn would like to have been involved in basketball, volleyball, etc. At church camp in her eighth year she broke her hand. It had started healing by the time she came back from camp, and her doctor gave her a sling so that before her surgery we could go to Disneyland with her cousin Corinne and Aunt Esther who were visiting from Nebraska. It was a fun trip, but it became very painful for Carolyn because of all the jostling of her arm. She had the surgery when we got back and they put a pin to mend the break and with the time that it took to heal, that eliminated her from trying out for a team in volleyball. The following year she was unable to try out again as she had tests which involved a spinal tap right in the beginning of the school year. By the 11th grade, she had lost too much valuable practice time to qualify for the teams. She went along to the games and kept scores for them instead; she always took disappointments so calmly.
At her graduation party, Cindy hosted many friends and family in our back yard while Carolyn and Elaine helped to serve the guests. After the party, Cindy joined some friends in going to other graduation parties. At one of these she met a tall, dark handsome guy named Tim Harms. This meeting was to affect the rest of her life, as they soon became best friends and planned their wedding together. What a wonderful mate she was choosing!
First Cindy attended college at Kings River Community College. Fashion designing both in clothes and in home decorating had been Cindy’s love for many years, and she found many courses which helped her work towards this goal.
Cindy’s wedding was the biggest event any of us had ever been involved with planning. Cindy had great ideas! Because of the cost, many of those ideas had to be fleshed out by making them ourselves. My organization skills and Cindy’s creativity worked together for hosting a wedding of 500+ guests that was talked about for months to follow. But even more than the grandness of the occasion, I remember the awe I felt as I realized that a new home was being established and I recall how my heart filled with unspeakable love and pride as my beautiful daughter stood with her lover at the altar. Tim and Cindy settled in a farm home in Dinuba.
Tim worked at Agribusiness and Cindy went back to college! She also worked at Gottschalks part-time as she had done before marriage. This schedule became pretty demanding! Cindy’s talents and creativity became very obvious, but even more apparent was the disciplines to hang in there during tough assignments.
Carolyn continued at Immanuel High School. Because of Carolyn’s musical talents, she zeroed in on choral music. She became a member of the school choir as well as the Sunshine Group for several years. They ended up taking some great honors at the District Music Festival. Carolyn was very good at accounting, and Uncle John in the lunch room really enjoyed and used her a lot in collecting money for the lunches.
Throughout all of Carolyn’s teen years, a strength that always jumped out even in the most difficult times was her compassion and supporting role in the lives of her friends. This was especially shown in her role with her friend Sandy, who was struggling with her parents and her self-esteem. We were no match to the challenges that were to confront us with this event and others in the coming years!
Jean Hammer came to Reedley with a Bible Study—or as she preferred to call it, ‘‘Women in the Word”—which would give some life-changing direction to me personally. Through this new approach to expecting God to show us how to make choices by looking for His direction through His Word, I gained some valuable insight into how to respond to situations in a way that would glorify God. It was during this time I asked God to give me a verse specifically in regard to my children. God seemed to impress Exodus 17:12 and 13 into my heart. Moses was holding his arms up and as long as he did, Joshua discomfited Amalek by the edge of the sword. When his arms became too heavy, Aaron and Hur helped him to hold up his arms. So it seemed that God was reminding me that I alone would not be able to hold up my arms in faith, but I must open myself to others so they could join me in my battle to release my children. A valuable lesson I needed to learn.
An incident I will never forget happened when Don and I left to attend a Bill Gothard seminar in Los Angeles. I had the best curling iron which Carolyn wanted to use and she insisted I leave it with her. Not feeling good about the manner in which she approached me, I asked God to show me how I could best respond to Carolyn. As the time approached, Carolyn was asking me what I would do. I responded that I had asked God and I would let her know. Her response was, “But what if He doesn’t tell you anything?” Before I knew what I was saying, I had responded, “If you asked me something, I care enough to give you an answer. I know God will give me an answer!” Whew—what if I didn’t get a clear answer? The night before I reminded God that I still did not have a direction in how I was going to answer her. The next morning I was reading in Hebrews 10:24, “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” I jumped up and ran into Carolyn’s room to share that God wanted me to let her use my curling iron so that it would help her to remember to do good deeds also.
Carolyn also hosted her friends at a graduation party. This time there was her mother and Cindy to help serve the guests. She had various boyfriends but none that really took her eyes as the very special one! She had many girlfriends. She had the honor of singing with a trio at the graduation ceremony.
Carolyn soon moved to Fresno. This was a painful time between Don, Carolyn, and myself, and we had to struggle through many of our relationships. I began to confide my feelings to friends who were interested in me and my maturity, and God began to show me how I could better handle some of the ways that I responded to situations. Dean and Kathy Gray, John and Florene Mendel, Sam and Marvis Bergen, and Florence LaRue had much influence in helping me to find God’s way for my life. Over the years, God has shown me that in order to help people, suffering has to be worked through in real life, and that gives insight to counsel and compassion.
Because of my feeling of being such a failure in my parental role, I also became involved in counseling. Don became involved with me reluctantly, and we were able to resolve some of our differences in a much better way than we had practiced before. In looking back at these very painful years, I realize that God had not forgotten me, and I was not the failure I accepted in myself, but rather that God wanted to break some of the molds that had been wrongly entrenched in my mind. I will share some of these concepts in the chapter of my life at Richland Sales as the Payroll Supervisor.
My health was improving and I felt that it would be good to go back to work—summertime bookkeeping for a fruit-packing shed seemed to be the most promising as far as pay was concerned in Reedley. My experience at Immanuel was a great help in helping me to know how to pick up the skills required for the books at Richland Sales—a payroll position that started with approximately 200 summertime employees and grew to 450 during the time I worked in that department. The discipline required to get those paychecks out each week on a timely basis was just one of the strengths that I was able to give to that position.
Several years after starting at Richland Sales for the summertime, it was decided to go to a computerized timecard system. Just the previous summer I had let Frank, my boss, know that I was being stretched to my limit in the hours per week that was required of me to finish the payroll on time.
That February I had a nightmare. I called out for help and in terror. Just like that a verse that I still do not recall having read before came to my mind. “This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting,” Mark 9:29, and then I woke up. After researching it and finding those words and seeing both the Mark and the Matthew 17:14–23 version, I determined that I must spend a day in fasting before the Lord.
When I made preparations for the day, I hardly even knew what to do. I decided to read God’s Word concerning fasting and let Him direct me to what He wanted me to learn. I was reading in Isaiah and God began to help me to see that because I found it difficult to please my parents, I expected more from myself than I could possibly give. God showed me that I was born with a sinful nature and that if I needed God’s forgiveness to start my Christian life, then I also needed God’s involvement in helping me to become what He had created me to be. I had forced myself to love others, to show kindness for evil even when I didn’t have it to give and by not coming directly to God for help, therefore God wasn’t able to help me in those areas. He loved me not for how perfect I was, but because I was and He had created me for fellowship with Him which could blossom when I personally asked Him to help me.
Isaiah 58:8–12 became God’s personal words to me, especially verse 8, “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.” As a result of that day spent with the Lord, there was such a joy that welled up in my heart that I found myself literally wanting to shout the good news from the housetops—but rather I shared it with some close friends. It opened my senses to look to answers from the Lord rather than to trust in my own good judgment.
That summer as we tried to incorporate the new computerized time clock into our payroll, everything went wrong. Instead of cutting back on my time, for the next eight weeks I put in no less than 65 hours up to 85 hours a week. Again the Lord spoke to me at night reminding me of the part of verse 8 that said “and your healing will quickly appear.” It was as if He was assuring me that I would experience His healing physically in my body. When Frank questioned me how I was handling all those hours, I assured him that the Lord had told me He was healing me and it would be O.K—and so it was, except of course, for the weary body that comes with that many hours. The bonus came in the confidence I could feel in how well I was managing the supervision of a challenging expansion of the payroll procedure.
But even more reassuring was the way in which God was able to direct my responses to the difficult home situations that would arise as Carolyn moved home and we tried to combine two differently functioning homes into one house. During this time Carolyn started to study the Bible together with us; she recommitted her life to the Lord but Satan did not want to let her go! Dean Gray, my boss, became a friend that God used to encourage me to stay on target and trusting in God to bring all of us through this period. I also met with Marvis Bergen often to get Godly advice and help in changing areas of my life that needed to be wised up by God.
Don and I took a vacation into the mountains for study and reflection for about a week. There God led me to read a biography of J. O. Fraser, who was one of the first missionaries to China, and what God taught him about the prayer of faith—and how he found that the work accomplished by labor in prayer depends on faith, “According to your faith” (not your labor) “be it unto you,” Matt. 9:29. God helped me realize my faith would be dependent on how much I believed God and that my prayers must be grounded more on the strength of the blood of Christ and less on pleading. This was a mountaintop experience that God would use while walking through dark valley experiences in the future.
Carolyn moved out of our house. There were difficult times to work through, but God gave me the assurance of support and love like I had never felt before, and this helped me to respond genuinely out of love, rather than by the grit of my teeth.
One of Carolyn’s good friends was Tim Luzania. He struggled with his spiritual life, and then through caring Christians he accepted the Lord and attended the Kingsburg MB Church and Bible Study. We felt it a privilege to have a part in his spiritual development.
Carolyn moved to Visalia and became involved with helping mentally disabled people, a job she enjoyed very much. She still enjoyed making people feel good and to show them support and love. She had done banking while in Fresno and also in Reedley, and soon she began to work in banking in Visalia. Counting out change and dealing with finances was to be something she would always be good at even if not her favorite thing to do.
While in Visalia, Carolyn met Aron Fisher, a bodybuilder. They loved each other. Carolyn brought Aron to meet us and then later came again to tell us they wanted to get married. We enjoyed our times together with them, and we were thrilled to see their openness to growth and maturity.
The wedding was set for September, which meant wedding planning had to happen even while I was working. I was glad that I had gone from Payroll to an Accounting job so that I didn’t have quite the late hours I had had with getting the payroll checks out in time. Carolyn had a beautiful garden wedding! How much love I felt as I watched my beautiful red-haired fun-loving daughter at the altar with her groom!
Aron Fisher’s parents insisted that they pay for half of the wedding, and therefore we were able to keep the wedding costs somewhat in line with our financial status—the White Horse Inn though beautiful was expensive. The relationship we built with Aron’s parents was valuable to us and to how we were able to relate to them in years to come.
This was a joyous time and we had many good visits with both Aron and Carolyn. They were happy about their decisions, and it was fun being a part of that process.
Another friend entered my life at this stage in quite a miraculous way. Esther Enns was working with Don as an office associate. Their relationship became quite meaningful in that they were both working with difficult circumstances in their lives and they found help and encouragement from their conversations at work. Through this medium, Esther began to relate to both Florence LaRue and myself and we clicked! Esther has such a caring spirit about her, and she has been a such a wonderful encouragement to me both in helping me with my self-esteem and even in influencing Don to do fun, accepting and exciting things for special occasions. The threesome that has developed between Florence, Esther and myself is truly a wonderful Godsend!
Several years after starting at Richland Sales for the summertime, it was decided to go to a computerized timecard system. Just the previous summer I had let Frank, my boss, know that I was being stretched to my limit in the hours per week that was required of me to finish the payroll on time.
That February I had a nightmare. I called out for help and in terror. Just like that a verse that I still do not recall having read before came to my mind. “This kind can come out only by prayer and fasting,” Mark 9:29, and then I woke up. After researching it and finding those words and seeing both the Mark and the Matthew 17:14–23 version, I determined that I must spend a day in fasting before the Lord.
When I made preparations for the day, I hardly even knew what to do. I decided to read God’s Word concerning fasting and let Him direct me to what He wanted me to learn. I was reading in Isaiah and God began to help me to see that because I found it difficult to please my parents, I expected more from myself than I could possibly give. God showed me that I was born with a sinful nature and that if I needed God’s forgiveness to start my Christian life, then I also needed God’s involvement in helping me to become what He had created me to be. I had forced myself to love others, to show kindness for evil even when I didn’t have it to give and by not coming directly to God for help, therefore God wasn’t able to help me in those areas. He loved me not for how perfect I was, but because I was and He had created me for fellowship with Him which could blossom when I personally asked Him to help me.
Isaiah 58:8–12 became God’s personal words to me, especially verse 8, “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.” As a result of that day spent with the Lord, there was such a joy that welled up in my heart that I found myself literally wanting to shout the good news from the housetops—but rather I shared it with some close friends. It opened my senses to look to answers from the Lord rather than to trust in my own good judgment.
That summer as we tried to incorporate the new computerized time clock into our payroll, everything went wrong. Instead of cutting back on my time, for the next eight weeks I put in no less than 65 hours up to 85 hours a week. Again the Lord spoke to me at night reminding me of the part of verse 8 that said “and your healing will quickly appear.” It was as if He was assuring me that I would experience His healing physically in my body. When Frank questioned me how I was handling all those hours, I assured him that the Lord had told me He was healing me and it would be O.K—and so it was, except of course, for the weary body that comes with that many hours. The bonus came in the confidence I could feel in how well I was managing the supervision of a challenging expansion of the payroll procedure.
But even more reassuring was the way in which God was able to direct my responses to the difficult home situations that would arise as Carolyn moved home and we tried to combine two differently functioning homes into one house. During this time Carolyn started to study the Bible together with us; she recommitted her life to the Lord but Satan did not want to let her go! Dean Gray, my boss, became a friend that God used to encourage me to stay on target and trusting in God to bring all of us through this period. I also met with Marvis Bergen often to get Godly advice and help in changing areas of my life that needed to be wised up by God.
Don and I took a vacation into the mountains for study and reflection for about a week. There God led me to read a biography of J. O. Fraser, who was one of the first missionaries to China, and what God taught him about the prayer of faith—and how he found that the work accomplished by labor in prayer depends on faith, “According to your faith” (not your labor) “be it unto you,” Matt. 9:29. God helped me realize my faith would be dependent on how much I believed God and that my prayers must be grounded more on the strength of the blood of Christ and less on pleading. This was a mountaintop experience that God would use while walking through dark valley experiences in the future.
Carolyn moved out of our house. There were difficult times to work through, but God gave me the assurance of support and love like I had never felt before, and this helped me to respond genuinely out of love, rather than by the grit of my teeth.
One of Carolyn’s good friends was Tim Luzania. He struggled with his spiritual life, and then through caring Christians he accepted the Lord and attended the Kingsburg MB Church and Bible Study. We felt it a privilege to have a part in his spiritual development.
Carolyn moved to Visalia and became involved with helping mentally disabled people, a job she enjoyed very much. She still enjoyed making people feel good and to show them support and love. She had done banking while in Fresno and also in Reedley, and soon she began to work in banking in Visalia. Counting out change and dealing with finances was to be something she would always be good at even if not her favorite thing to do.
While in Visalia, Carolyn met Aron Fisher, a bodybuilder. They loved each other. Carolyn brought Aron to meet us and then later came again to tell us they wanted to get married. We enjoyed our times together with them, and we were thrilled to see their openness to growth and maturity.
The wedding was set for September, which meant wedding planning had to happen even while I was working. I was glad that I had gone from Payroll to an Accounting job so that I didn’t have quite the late hours I had had with getting the payroll checks out in time. Carolyn had a beautiful garden wedding! How much love I felt as I watched my beautiful red-haired fun-loving daughter at the altar with her groom!
Aron Fisher’s parents insisted that they pay for half of the wedding, and therefore we were able to keep the wedding costs somewhat in line with our financial status—the White Horse Inn though beautiful was expensive. The relationship we built with Aron’s parents was valuable to us and to how we were able to relate to them in years to come.
This was a joyous time and we had many good visits with both Aron and Carolyn. They were happy about their decisions, and it was fun being a part of that process.
Another friend entered my life at this stage in quite a miraculous way. Esther Enns was working with Don as an office associate. Their relationship became quite meaningful in that they were both working with difficult circumstances in their lives and they found help and encouragement from their conversations at work. Through this medium, Esther began to relate to both Florence LaRue and myself and we clicked! Esther has such a caring spirit about her, and she has been a such a wonderful encouragement to me both in helping me with my self-esteem and even in influencing Don to do fun, accepting and exciting things for special occasions. The threesome that has developed between Florence, Esther and myself is truly a wonderful Godsend!
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