HCI History, Part 1: "I'm Calling You to Start a Healing Center."

It all began when I married Sam. I was a single mother of a three-year-old and was in the dissertation-writing phase of my Ph.D. program at Stanford. To marry me, Sam had to leave his beloved Virginia and move across the country. We married in Los Angeles County in Glendora, the town just north of where I had grown up. After the wedding, Sam moved into my tiny townhouse on the Stanford campus with Nina and me. (That story is told in Crossroads Before Me.)

For about six months Sam patiently attended the church where I was a member. Eventually he confessed that he was not a fan. He had secretly found a church that he liked better, a charismatic Episcopal church about 40 minutes away. We agreed to alternate churches weekly until we sensed a clear leaning from the Lord. In other words, until one or the other of us yielded.

The new church had a strong focus on healing. They had a therapist on staff, and every Sunday they offered prayer at the rail during communion. I was a complete mess and there was something about being married that made my wounds rise up like great sea monsters. Outwardly I was performing well. I was considered a rising star at the U.S. Geological Survey and excelling at Stanford. But I had yawning infant maturity deficits—in particular I could not regulate my shame, fear or anger. Sam was a former alcoholic and had traded one addiction for several more socially acceptable ones—consuming carbs and impulse spending. I was doing my best to rein him in but was not succeeding.

We all know how well that works!

Sam was 38 when we married. I was 31. He wanted to have more children right away and I wanted to finish my Ph.D. first. We had married in February and by August I was pregnant. I went into high gear. I had to get it all done before the baby came! Despite my earnest efforts, I didn’t finish my dissertation until two weeks after my infant boy was born.

It was even worse than it sounds. We knew we would have to move out of our on-campus townhouse the moment I turned in my dissertation, so we had purchased our first home—an adorable 1100 ft.² bungalow, with two bedrooms and one bathroom in the nearby town of Menlo Park.

Looking back, it seems unfathomable. We moved from our campus digs on my due date. I went into labor a week later, on May 22, 1987. Two weeks after that I handed in my dissertation.

Yes, I am not making this up.

In three weeks we had moved, and I had given birth and handed in my 323 page dissertation. I could not believe the number of people who praised me for having it all: Education, career, and children. Though for me, the one living out this amazing life, it felt as if I had lost my sanity in the process.

I spent the summer unpacking at glacial speed and taking care of the children.

We were now full time at the Episcopal church. Nearly every Sunday I would go up for prayer during communion. The team would listen to me with compassion. I would shed a few tears and feel the Holy Spirit touching me. Those sessions gave me the strength and solace I needed to soldier on.

I was also taking every class the therapist offered. I loved the classes—forerunners of the ones we teach today as Listening for Heaven’s Sake and Speaking the Truth in Love. Sometimes the therapist, Mary Carole Hansen, would call me up to the front for an impromptu role-play with her. I will never forget one we did where she pretended to be my mother. She was upset about the kind of detergent I was using to wash my clothes. I had to reflect back over and over again, “Mom, I hear that you feel strongly about this, but I like the detergent I’m using.” Then on the next round, “Mom, I hear that this is very important to you, that you feel passionately about this topic . . .  but . . .”

Isn’t it funny the things we remember? 

Mary Carole was a great teacher and her classes were illuminating my life.

Sam and I also participated in an itinerate ministry called Victorious Ministries Through Christ run by a woman named Anne White. She and her group would come to the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains to lead weekend prayer times where we circled our sins, which were listed, single-spaced, on a legal-sized sheet. We then confessed and repented. They then prayed deeply and thoroughly for us. It was exhausting and freeing.

It was in that Episcopal church that I began to grow in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I began to hear his voice more clearly. I gained perspective on just how much I had been wounded as a child. I joined the prayer ministry team and steadily grew in my ability to hear from God while praying for other people as well. It was a garden where God had planted me and I grew.

After five years in our new bungalow, Sam decided he wanted to move back to Virginia. In truth he had never stopping pining for Virginia. I had also loved Virginia when I lived there. During my first sojourn there, I too had not wanted to return to California. But now we were settled in there and I did not want to budge. I loved my job and our church. I loved the schools our children attended and our little home. It was little but it was our home! And I still had a slew of friends from my years in Palo Alto and Mountain View. Although I had only occupied this home for five years, I had lived in the Bay Area for nearly 12.

Sam wanted to return to the Stalcup fold where his parents and seven brothers and sisters (and their spouses and children) lived. There was more extended family than I could count. They were peppered throughout an area that extended from McLean to Lovettsville to Warrenton. Sam longed to be in that triangle.

I used to ask him, “How do you expect this to happen? Are we going to quit our jobs, rent a U-Haul and head East?”

Then Sam lost his job in California. Sam has such a winning personality that he used to always say if he could get an interview, he would get a job. But despite his stellar past experience, Sam applied for job after job and did not get a single offer.

I was pregnant again, this time with our third child. I was still employed as a geologist, working about 30 hours a week. I went back to full-time when Sam became unemployed.

He then suggested that maybe God was calling us to move back to Virginia. He had been approached by a headhunter who lined up five interviews on the East Coast in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. He went east and came back with five job offers. He accepted one with Ford Aerospace in Maryland.

The USGS agreed to give me a temporary duty station in Reston. That summer Sam took 10-year-old Nina and five-year-old Sammy to the East Coast, while I headed north to Alaska to do field work while pregnant. I was in my second trimester, a relatively safe time to travel. Sam’s new job was with the same company that had laid him off, so they agreed to rehire him in California and pay for our move. I was in a remote, unreachable part of Alaska. During one of my rare phone calls home I learned that Sam was being sent to England for several months.

I finished my field work and flew to Virginia to be with my family. We had merely three days together before Sam would fly to Yorkshire. During those three days we managed to sign a contract on a house. I then returned to California to clean out our house. A week later the moving truck pulled up in front of the house we had agreed to buy in Reston. We had committed to buy this house as soon as our home in California sold. Once the boxes were unloaded, I took the two kids and my very pregnant self to England to be with Sam.

It was all so overwhelming. Over and over I sought prayer ministry. I prayed. I journaled. I worked hard. I had meltdowns on a much more frequent interval than I would like to admit.

When school was about to start, I returned to Reston with the children, while Sam stayed in England. I feared many things. That our house would not sell. Yes, the owners let us move in and rent until our house on the west coast sold. Then we would buy the house we now occupied. That Sam would be in England when the baby came.

By the end of November, we had closed on the houses in California (sold) and Reston (bought), Sam was back in Virginia, and Baby Sarah was in my arms.

We returned to Church of the Apostles, the church where Sam and I had first met, once we were both back in the DC area. Sam wanted to jump in with both feet, but I hung back, hesitant to get involved. Sam especially wanted to join a small group that met in someone’s home, but I resisted. I was still pregnant, working six hours a day, and slowly unpacking boxes from the move.

I managed to hold Sam off until after the baby was born, but in January he became adamant. We visited a home group near our house. During the meetings, I became more and more aware that I had fallen into a huge pothole on the road of life. God seemed distant and not all that trustworthy.

During the second meeting, I shared my struggles with the group. They offered to pray for me. Gathering round, they laid hands on my head and shoulders. I don't remember the words they said, but while they were praying I closed my eyes and, in my mind, I saw Jesus. We were standing next to a raging river that cascaded down a steep rocky slope. Jagged rocks poked out of the swirling, foaming water. There was a narrow plank of wood spanning the river, maybe eight inches wide. "We're going to have to cross the river," Jesus told me.

I love the out-of-doors and have crossed many rivers by walking on logs or hopping from one rock to another. I studied the plank. I knew the river crossing symbolized my cross-country move. Difficult, but not impossible. A challenge, but not terrifying.

"Just keep your eyes on me and hold both of my hands," Jesus said. Then he took both my hands in his and stepped onto the plank backward. He was walking backward, so I could walk forward!

For a short distance I kept my eyes on Jesus. But halfway across the narrow bridge, I glanced at the water. Oh my! I thought, Look at those rocks! Look at that water! I'll drown if I fall. Then I let go of the Lord’s hands, dropped to my knees, and wrapped MY ENTIRE BODY—arms and legs—around the plank. My head hung over the side, as I stared, mesmerized, at the jagged rocks and swirling water.

Jesus was still standing next to me, but as far as I was concerned, he was gone.  Out for tacos in L.A., perhaps?

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I saw our cross-country move in a new light. God knew the move was going to be rough, but what had made it traumatic was my constant, unrelenting fear. I had taken my eyes off Jesus and had let the 'what ifs' consume me. What if I lost my job? What if our house didn't sell? What if Sam was still in England when the baby came?

God hadn't wanted the move to be so difficult, so wounding. It was my fear that had wounded me because it had kept me from experiencing God's peace in the midst of trying circumstances.

I had lost sight of God. I had let go of the belief that his way is always best, that he had a purpose for my difficult crossing. That he saw me, loved me and was with me. He had never left me. I had stopped looking into those loving eyes, dropped to my knees and wrapped my whole body around my fear.

Weeping, I told the Lord that I was sorry I had misjudged him. I had blamed him for my pain. I asked him to heal the wounds. I viscerally experienced his presence, his peace. We were united yet again.

I stayed home with baby Sarah for six months, then returned to work at the Geological Survey. I continued to work for the Alaska Branch even though all the other scientist in my branch were located either in Alaska or California. I was a lone ranger, an errant branch, so when the Reston office was ordered to lay off hundreds of personnel, I was loped off. I had warned my boss in Anchorage that I thought I was at risk, but he assured me that I had just been promoted. But that did not protect me.

On August 14, 1995, I, along with hundreds of others, were let go.  I was devastated by the loss of my career but also saw an opportunity to stop spinning plates, to stop trying to do it all, to have time to be with my children. Job wise, I took a few small positions, teaching science to high school and middle school students at a Christian school. I got more involved at Apostles and served on the prayer team under David and Margie Harper. I began writing for Christian magazines, then ghost-writing books for a friend who was starting a publishing company. Every time I interviewed a person, I asked them to pray for impartation for me. They would lay hands on me or pray on the phone that God would give me what he had given them. John Arnott, Che Ahn, Samuel Doctorian.

Then quite unexpectedly, in 2003, I heard God call me to start a Healing Center. It came as a thought that kept coming again and again. Once every few days it would peacefully rise to consciousness. I was not sure what he meant and it made me jittery to think of it. Just a few weeks before, I had been talking to Hayes Perdue, one of the priests at Apostles, after church. We were delighted to discover we had both taken a number of classes from Equipping Ministries International. He had participated while in seminary at Ambridge Pennsylvania where they were taught by a local church. I had done the same in California. “You’re a teacher,” he said. “I would love to see those classes at Apostles. Would you consider teaching them here?”

I was already plenty busy and in my mind, I needed to replace the salary that I had earned as a GS-14 working for the Survey. But then there was that voice, that persistent thought. I am calling you to start a Healing Center.

I went up for prayer at the rail a number of times. I remember one time when two prayer ministers I deeply respected told me, “This is much bigger than you think.”

I was not reassured. Why me? I wondered. Why is God calling me? But it did not matter. It was him. I knew his voice, so I started asking him, How do I begin?

Next month we will feature another installment of our HCI History.