The two young adults became friends of sorts after recovering from their initial dislike of each other. They soon developed a tenuous friendship that blossomed into a whirlwind courtship that resulted in a seventy-year marriage. The new bride found herself far from her roots and her new military life only complicated her uncertain future. She faced it with faith, hope, and expectancy and continued her further medical treatment. However, a day came when her gynecologists called in his Commanding Officer who, in turn, informed the twenty-year-old patient—still a new bride, that he was recommending a discharge for her husband and suggested she go to the Cancer Institute in Chicago and enter treatment. They would provide her husband with work to maintain them as she faced the remaining three to twelve months she had yet to live.
With that, he wheeled around and called his friend, the Wing Commander at Langley Field, VA and requested a discharge for his patient’s husband. “We bring men home from overseas for less than this,” he concluded. With no other options, the young couple accepted the discharge, based on her medical condition, and set out from San Antonio to South Haven, Michigan on a Greyhound Bus—a trip of several hundred miles.
Ignoring the recommended course of action, they gradually prepared to return to student life, leaving his parents soon thereafter. They returned to Anderson, IN and through unexpected circumstances they ended up in Portland, OR in early January 1948. She quickly found a job and pushed herself as far as her strength would allow and she worked fulltime, while taking classes part-time. She lied her life as fully and faithfully as she knew how, following the covenant she had made with God—one day at a time.
Although
she had been informed that she could never conceive a child, she eventually discovered
she was pregnant. One night she prematurely aborted twin fetuses in her bed at
home, with only her husband present to assist her. Having been trained to be her
Father’s Physician’s Assistant by her MD father, she had sufficient training
and experience to survive her emergency. Later, a second pregnancy revealed
that well-meaning medical scientists do not always own the final word and after
four years of marriage she conceived and delivered a newborn daughter, five
weeks premature and undersized but hopefully a healthy “preemie.”
The two young adults became friends of sorts after recovering from their initial dislike of each other. They soon developed a tenuous friendship that blossomed into a whirlwind courtship that resulted in a seventy-year marriage. The new bride found herself far from her roots and her new military life only complicated her uncertain future. She faced it with faith, hope, and expectancy and continued her further medical treatment. However, a day came when her gynecologists called in his Commanding Officer who, in turn, informed the twenty-year-old patient—still a new bride, that he was recommending a discharge for her husband and suggested she go to the Cancer Institute in Chicago and enter treatment. They would provide her husband with work to maintain them as she faced the remaining three to twelve months she had yet to live.
With that, he wheeled around and called his friend, the Wing Commander at Langley Field, VA and requested a discharge for his patient’s husband. “We bring men home from overseas for less than this,” he concluded. With no other options, the young couple accepted the discharge, based on her medical condition, and set out from San Antonio to South Haven, Michigan on a Greyhound Bus—a trip of several hundred miles.
Ignoring the recommended course of action, they gradually prepared to return to student life, leaving his parents soon thereafter. They returned to Anderson, IN and through unexpected circumstances they ended up in Portland, OR in early January 1948. She quickly found a job and pushed herself as far as her strength would allow and she worked fulltime, while taking classes part-time. She lied her life as fully and faithfully as she knew how, following the covenant she had made with God—one day at a time.
Although she had been informed that she could never conceive a child, she eventually discovered she was pregnant. One night she prematurely aborted twin fetuses in her bed at home, with only her husband present to assist her. Having been trained to be her Father’s Physician’s Assistant by her MD father, she had sufficient training and experience to survive her emergency. Later, a second pregnancy revealed that well-meaning medical scientists do not always own the final word and after four years of marriage she conceived and delivered a newborn daughter, five weeks premature and undersized but hopefully a healthy “preemie.”
We named our baby Meredith Lyn. I still remember my joyous encounter with an insurance agent I chanced to meet on the Hawthorne Bus en route home from work one evening. “If it is a girl,” he said, there is nothing that plays a tune on your heartstrings like a little girl. That doting dad of four girls, quickly sold me a MetLife Family Policy that we maintained for many years. She was born just a few weeks before my graduation from Bible College and soon thereafter began life as a preacher’s kid in Harrison, AR, where we parents had accepted the call to a new Mission Church.
By the time Meredith could stand beside me in the front car-seat of our Plymouth Green Hornet, she and I were making family visits. She gave me easy entrĂ©e` into our new community. Where I went; she went - until a fever hospitalized her for five days in a marathon with death. Mama, that student that had been forced from college by her own encounter with death, maintained a round-the-clock vigilance in a marathon with death. Meredith’s heart raced helplessly out of control for reasons unknown. When she finally recovered and returned home, she resumed her place and eventually followed us to a new church where they grew tall cotton. She quickly showed a high degree of intolerance for the chemicals used to spray the cotton fields and she was diagnosed as severely asthmatic. Life would never be the same.
Meredith anticipated school and she became a serious student. Accustomed to seeing Dad with a book in his hands she came in one day that I have never forgotten. I was sitting in my favorite reading chair and my delightful daughter came dancing through the house with her finger stuck in her favorite Egermeir’s Bible Story book, exclaiming, “Daddy, Daddy; that’s my Jesus!” Following her finger, I saw her Jesus picture.
She lived life one day at a time, sometimes moment by moment, literally facing a merry-go-round existence. She remained good natured and quickly learned the necessary values of faith as she observed her young mother enduring her own fragile health. The rule of thumb for her mother was the prayer she had prayed when at her deepest depth of her well in San Antonio; it had now become her existence: “God, if you have anything for me to do, give me the strength to do it. Otherwise, I’m ready. . .” Thus fortified; she lived often making her daughter a mere extension of her own will for her. Daughter Meredith shadowed her mother while worshipping her preacher-dad.
She lived to become an excellent student, yet she struggled with P. E. classes that left her breathless, wheezing, and unable to complete many of her school days. Pressed into Aerobic Exercising by school zealots, she escaped P.E. only at the demand of her medical doctor. Yet, her competitive nature found reward when she surpassed some of the local football jocks, like Doug English, who went on to become an NFL player. Frequent steroids allowed her to survive, but produced ballooning effects that exacerbated her insecurities with her feminine identity. All the while, she watched her parents navigate debt-infested waters, patiently dog-paddling in a sea of medical bills. The family physician finally declared her physically unfit for the rigors of nursing but he could not destroy her dream.
School
loans and part-time work became her life. Moving on campus made University life
more vulnerable. Work schedules with midnight
hours and nighttime driving left her vulnerable to an eventual late-night gang
rape on the campus of Anderson University. This assault by several young men,
proved devastating for an innocent girl with a strict moral upbringing! Living
life in a tailspin, her circumstances became complicated by an insensitive
campus Police Chief—a Pastor-peer who reflected the politics of the University
President--a family friend, who proved more concerned with keeping the support
of our sponsoring church body than he was in ministering to the victim. My
relationship with President Reardon and his cohorts in the cover-up has never
been the same, but this has been a story repeated on hundreds of university
campuses by zealous and protective Administrators who were willing to lie when
the circumstances proved self-protecting.
Not until three months later did Dr. Mom share the ugly revelations with me, for fear that I might take justice into my own hands. As a pastor in the university’s sponsoring denomination, I resisted my violent urges, violence not being part of my better self after being raised in somewhat harsh circumstances. From that day to this, however, I am angry with lying, insensitive peers, and I have a fierce antipathy for any good old boy system that protects itself as did the Reardon—McCurdy (Dr.)—Oldham trio that conveniently lost her records in the dead file.
In
the meantime, Meredith hop scotched her way between fear and faith. She managed
an overloaded schedule and completed her nursing program, earning two degrees while
passing State Boards. Having also attracted the attention of a seemingly
sensitive young man, she graduated, married, and moved confidently into
marriage and career. She quickly discovered, however, that her young man was a
rebellious child totally ignoring the monogamous restraints of Christian
marriage and the lifestyle she had known. She invested fifteen years cementing an
increasingly fragile marriage.She survived two ectopic pregnancies; she nearly bled to death twice; she continued to affirm her young husband, was dreamed of. That marriage came to an end after fifteen years when her mother drove in during one of Meredith’s surgical emergencies—auto accident. Mama went to the house to refresh before going to nearby ICU and Mama found son-in-law’s uniform and gun belt laid out in the Living Room while the Officer was in the bedroom in bed with Meredith’s best friend. That became that mother’s worst temptation ever in her life. The unknown story of her life is that she picked up that Service Revolver that she knew how to use and started for the bedroom, intent on shooting her daughter’s betrayer him - only to decide he was not worth it. I am not sure he knows this part of this story even today, but the only question he posed was, “Why did you let Meredith divorce me?”
Accepting herself remained difficult for Meredith. Then an automobile accident while riding with her police officer husband complicated life further. This resulted in a crushed face, a broken body, extensive plastic surgery, and a need for physical and emotional healing she never fully found. When she discovered her mythical marriage was a mirage, she determined to get on with life alone. Although she paid his school bills ahead of her own, a Kentucky divorce left her deeply in debt with her own bills to pay, his debt-ridden house that she never wanted, and no credit—Kentucky being very chauvinistic and male-oriented in its politics.
Her former husband’s credit record made it impossible for her as a single woman to obtain credit and circumstances forced her to depend on her now aging parents who mortgaged themselves to the hilt on several occasions in her behalf.
Taught to achieve and never give up, she grabbed her hold of her opportunities and moved from hospital nursing into Occupational Health Care. When Mom found funding for preparation, Meredith concluded she had “blown” it and called her mother in desperation, confessing failure and disappointment at wasting mom’s time and money. Test scores later told a better and brighter story! She passed exceptionally high and later assisted the agency in improving their Program for Candidates in their testing preparation. Thus, a small girl’s dream of being like Grandpa Doc now became a nationally certified, middle-aged healthcare specialist—COHN-S. As part of that career, she devoted fifteen years to caring for the Medical & Safety needs of a globally-connected network of highly specialized civilian and military personnel, some of whom did not exist in the records (special forces).
Born to a woman condemned to die without birthing her own child, Meredith lived to share a unique and special life-long bond between two women who lived in the shadows of a Granny that prayed at 5:00 o’clock every morning out back at the end of the path of their rural Oklahoma home that doubled as a Doctor’s Office for a large contingency of underserved and impoverished Caucasians and Ethnic Minorities of Oklahoma. Like the mother she learned from, Meredith cherished “Granny” Stiles (no pix available) and found fortifying power and presence in Granny’s prayer-driven faith.
Granny went on to her eternal home after living a full life and Meredith pursued her own journey. Until her recent death, Meredith never found, any situation too great, or any problem too impossible, to prevent her enlisting her Mom’s support. When burdens became barriers, Mom’s counsel always affirmed Paul’s confession that, “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13 NIV, italics added). Meredith continued to watch while her Mom finished her journey-- 9-6-2017, when Mom surrendered her soul to the Savior and went to her home in the celestials at the blessed age of ninety-one, the last of her numerous siblings.
Lyn
went a long distance on her tank of faith; then she endured her own disability
and leaned on her dad Until that time she found renewing in blessing others--like the KY minister’s widow for whom she did special duty in
Georgetown. Learning that her patient was the widow of a Church of God Pastor, who had been unconscious for three days, Meredith looked for something especially meaningful
to the patient. One morning she softly launched into a medley of hymns she had sung
from childhood in her clear soprano voice. Before long, the
ninety-three-year-old patient’s eyelids fluttered. Slowly, her eyes opened. The
patient began mouthing the words. Soon, they were harmonizing happily together.
Strong faith joined two needy people --a lonely widow and a hurting preacher’s kid--in that Kentucky hospital. God affirmed his timely purpose for the lonely widow, sending her a hurting PK who understood her patient. The aged widow wonderfully ministered to her private duty nurse, who gave her needed special attention and in return walked hand-in-hand with her into her Valley of Death. When death did arrive, no one doubted God had brought the two together. It was a grateful family that praised God for their extraordinary companionship and graciously thanked their special nurse.
Meredith was known over town for having saved several lives on more than one occasion and life gradually became a long and full journey of seventy years for Meredith. Much of her story remains yet untold. She has now gone to her celestial abode, having left me and her second husband to take care of ourselves. I will soon relocate to my son’s Condo in Minnesota.
Second husband Hall, who married Meredith nearly thirty years ago now, will do what he has always done—but only he knows what that is. Meanwhile, he will continue courting his real bride – Bud Lite.
One day, maybe; I might come back and tell more of Meredith’s final days with her disability, the difficulty in her suffering, the suddenness of her death … but not just yet ... In the meantime, there is one thing I know for sure: Meredith knew it, and Meredith experienced it many a time, in the seventy years she, her mother, and God, walked together … It takes only one “CAN” to knock out a “CAN’T.”
CAN
will defeat CAN’T every time.
Be blessed Meredith as you
discover what we cannot yet know
—3-29-1951-- 7-10-2021 –
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