Leaving The Blizzard
Three years later, much of the vision would take place in the natural. We were in the middle of a record breaking blizzard in Petersburg, Indiana that just would not let up and the men couldn't get out to work. All the water, plumbing lines and toilets were frozen. Cars wouldn't start, fuel trucks could not get to our homes and deliver fuel for heat. Driveways that were bulldozed out would drift back before a truck could get to your home, if the roads were passable at all.
We had one old VW that would run in any weather and we drove it out and brought our oldest married daughter, her husband and daughter back to our house. They had no heat and we did. We crammed into a two bedroom trailer for weeks on end, driving each other crazy and cabin fever was at high pitch!
You can only play so many games and spend so much time in a small place with that many people and you will do about any thing. I lost my job, because I couldn't get into work in a town about an hour away for three days. So my job was gone, our money was gone, our credit was ruined and here we sat.
Our son in law was reading encyclopedias (that is how bad it had gotten) and was reading about California. He suddenly said, “If I had a car that would run, I d go there tomorrow.” And my husband said, “well if I had any money, I’d leave for good old sunny California tomorrow too.” And I piped up (I don't know where it came from) and said, “well you have the VW that runs and you have a little money, so why don t you two just go?”
They left for California the next morning at 7 a.m. leaving the children and I sitting there in the midst of a lingering blizzard. The shaking was taking place!
I was in church on a Wednesday night and my Pastor came and knelt down beside me crying. Our telephone line had been shut off and he had gotten a call from my husband. My Pastor cried as he told me, “they are coming back for you all and you can only take what you can carry. They have found jobs in the mountains of California in a place called Desert Center.” (Nice place for God to send you when you just had found a good church family and peace for the first time since you were fifteen!)
A place called Kaiser Steel had a mining operation there that was hiring and we were to leave everything behind and be ready to leave in a couple of days! They had one week to come back, get their families and be back to start work.
I made up my mind - I am not going! I am not going first of all with this man that doesn't take care of us and abuses us so badly and can’t be trusted, to leave everything we know and just go with him to the middle of nowhere and have to leave my home and belongings and my friends in the church. I loved my church, it was my sanctuary. No, No, I was not going!
I had told all the church about the desert vision three years before but we all had forgotten it. The Pastor, knowing our circumstances, didn't feel it would be God's will for me… such a baby in the Lord, to leave my church and go to who knows where. He didn't feel I was supposed to go and take the children there. I had made up my mind I was not going and that was that. Besides I had a daughter in a nearby college and she couldn't go. Where was she supposed to go on weekends after all the rest of her family moved off? We had to move off and leave her. It was devastating for her. I was not going!
Until God gave the vision back.. I remembered it and my church friends did also and then who could say it was not the Lord? I don't know who did the most crying the Pastor, the church, the kids, or me.
What a challenge. To remain and be comfortable and safe with loved ones or go with this man we all feared, to a place we had never been and so far away from anyone we knew. That didn't even include the fact that we couldn't take our belongings. They had to be whittled down to bare necessities. We had to find a travel trailer that would sleep two teenagers, a boy and a girl. So there had to be two single beds for them as well as a double for us. We were many feet deep in ice and snow; not a time of year to be finding nor buying a travel trailer and there was no money nor credit!
Our middle teenage girl was fighting tooth and nail. She said she would make us sorry if we made her go. I told her, “what am I suppose to do with you?” She was made to go and she definitely made us pay dearly for a long time!
God had a two year old trailer that had never sold set out along the highway with a for sale sign on it saying “For quick sale.” It had been wired backwards, but my husband was an electrician and could redo the wiring. We still had no money. It came three days later and we were on the road to Desert Center in the Mohave Desert and only God knew what else.
I was sick as a dog from working so hard in such a short period of time and from having to leave my second daughter, all my church friends and belongings. But I was being His mother. I cried out for Jesus. I was heartsick, but I knew I was in the center of God's will even if I didn't like it one bit!
The trip was a novel in itself, with many miracles along the way. It would take a whole book to tell it all, but I tell you when you are obedient, you are blessed by God no matter how you feel at the time or how awful things may look. They won't stay that way. He brings you out to bring you in and that cycle continues as he keeps you just where he wants to position you for whatever purpose. Only His will is going to accomplish His purposes and His mother and brother are those that do His will.
I saw things in that original vision that have spanned over 30 years already. The first lesson and impact that it had on me was the fact that I chose to be willing to do his will at all cost even though it often hurts and the price is dear. It is worth it.
We arrived in Desert center California during the sand storms of the season that I had never even known about except what I saw in the vision. I guess God didn't want to make the timing any more plain to me then or I would have been packed three years too early.
How detailed is our God! It is interesting to think also that Jesus said “when you have done it to one of these little ones, you have done it unto me.” Whatever we are doing to or for another we are doing to our Jesus. He told one of his disciples on one occasion in reference to those coming against them, “they are not persecuting you, they are persecuting me. They are not hating you, they are hating me.”
I want to be able to stand before God and say I have tried my best to be a mother to your son, to be obedient to your will, that your will shall be done on this earth as it is in heaven.
You should hear the rest of the story.....
Betty Nelms
