Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing (25 page)

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Authors: Stormie Omartian

BOOK: Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing
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Michael and I decided that it was crucial to my dad’s health that the house have a “face-lift,” and the job was too monumental for any of us. So we hired people to paint it inside and out and to install new carpets, drapes, and bedspreads. With each step I could feel my dad’s spirit lift. The unhappy memories faded, the place felt new, and so did Dad.
Amid the cleaning I found that old green diary of mine that I wrote in when I was 14. I had thrown it out, but Mother had obviously found it in the trash and retrieved it. Over the next few days I read it from cover to cover. My life back then was far worse than I even remembered. I was shocked at my ignorance; I knew nothing of the right way to live. As I finished reading the diary, I thanked God for the reminder of how far He had brought me. Time and much healing had dimmed the pain in my memory.
I gazed out the window to the yard, where Dad was pushing little Amanda in the swing he had constructed for her in the large willow tree. She giggled and chirped, “Higher, Gampa, higher!”
Over the past few weeks of cleaning and sorting, it was Dad who had basically taken care of Amanda. She went with him to feed the cows and pick the oranges, and he attended to her every need. Their mutual love was apparent. Now that Mother was gone, we were at liberty to visit Dad anytime, and he was free to be himself. As he blossomed, so did our relationship. He had always been a social individual, but a shadow of fear that he would say something wrong in front of my mother and set her off had shrouded his every word. Now all that was gone.
For years he had been hard-of-hearing. After Mother’s death I suddenly noticed one day that his hearing was normal. Could it be that in order to cope with her he had stopped listening? Was his poor hearing an act of survival? Maybe that’s why he didn’t suspect she was dying. She had complained for so long that he had partially tuned her out. I used to be impatient with Dad’s hesitant speech and poor hearing. Could it be that all these years I blamed him for things that were just a part of his coping with Mother? God knows we all learned to cope with her in our own way. How cruel to blame someone for surviving the only way he knows how!
My eyes were opened like never before, and I saw what a great man my father really was. Even though Mother had been heartlessly cruel to him, he still took good care of her until she died. Most other men would have left years ago. Once he developed a painful case of shingles and was so sick he couldn’t get out of bed. Mother made a huge dinner and refused to give him anything to eat. In spite of that, he brought her every meal in bed during the three weeks before she died, and he harbored no ill feeling toward her. He never even said a critical word about her after she died. His example of forgiveness was greater than any other I had ever seen.
“You can’t hold a grudge. You gotta forgive and forget,” he said over and over. Mother’s death brought no regret to him. He had given above and beyond the call of duty. He was clean.
As I continued watching through the window, there was fulfillment in seeing my own daughter being swept up in Grandpa’s arms to go out and feed the cows. I suddenly saw myself in her, as if that was how it might have been for me years ago. My eyes filled with tears and my heart filled with gratitude to God as I thanked Him for not giving up on me until my healing was complete.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
COUNTING FOR SOMETHING
The last of the three sets of large steel doors slammed shut with a finality that made me shudder as I entered the women’s prison in Oregon. All my earthly possessions were left outside, and I carried nothing in with me but one necessary piece of paper.
As I walked down the long, sterile corridor with the prison chaplain on one side and a female guard on the other, the heels of my shoes clicked against the hard floor and echoed throughout that wing of the prison. My hands and forehead perspired, my heart pounded, and my legs were so weak and shaky that I was concerned I might fall. The dryness of my mouth made it difficult to swallow, and waves of nausea came up into my throat. I wondered why I had made certain choices that caused me to end up in this place.
“What’s going to happen to me here?” I thought. “What if the inmates hate me? I’m really afraid, God. You’ve got to help me through this.” As I prayed, I remembered His words: “I will never leave you or forsake you.” I repeated them over and over to myself, thanking Him that He always means what He says.
We entered a large room with a low ceiling and many metal folding chairs set up in a loose formation of rows, facing the front.
“This is it,” said the chaplain.
“This is it?” I questioned, trying to mask my disappointment that the conditions weren’t a little more inviting.
“Yes, we’re very proud of the fact that we have a new tape deck in this room. You’ll be able to play your background tapes on it. Do you want to use the bathroom before the inmates arrive? You have ten minutes.”
“Yes. Yes, I do,” I said eagerly. Long having used the bathroom as a place of solace where I could pull myself together, I went around the corner with the guard, who unbolted the door with one of her many keys and waited for me just outside. Inside, I locked myself in one of the stalls, got down on my knees beside the toilet, and prayed, “Lord, help me. I need Your strength, Your power, and Your words. Be Lord over this prison tonight.”
When I walked back to the large room, I met the lady who had been instrumental in bringing me into the prison. It had taken her over a year to get the necessary clearance from those in authority, allowing me and several others to be there for three days to speak with the inmates.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“In Jesus’ name I feel great,” I said positively. “In my flesh I feel sick,” I confessed.
She laughed and agreed that this was how she felt too.
“Okay, the inmates are on their way,” the chaplain informed us. “Take your seats along the side wall up front.”
We sat down and waited tensely as one-by-one the inmates filed in. They started filling in the chairs at the back of the room first, and then worked their way reluctantly toward the front. They moved as if they were not thrilled to be there.
“I didn’t know they were letting the male prisoners in tonight,” I gasped to myself as I observed the ones in work jeans, black leather jackets, heavy black boots, short greasy hair pulled straight back on the sides, and cigarettes hanging out of the corner of their mouths. They looked tough, hard, and angry, as if someone had given them a choice of going into this room or cleaning toilets all night.
Then I looked closer. “Those aren’t men at all; they’re women!” I whispered to myself in disbelief.
I had been praying all along, but now my prayer rate nearly doubled. “God, do I have to speak here? Maybe it’s not too late to call this whole thing off. God, please, I don’t think I can do this.”
“I am a Redeemer,” I heard Him say to my heart once again. “I redeem all things. I make all things new. I can take all the hurt, the pain, and the scars, and I can not only heal them, but I can make them count for something.”
“Yes, Lord, I know. I know You want me to tell them that, but I’m afraid if I open my mouth nothing will come out. Help me to speak, Lord, and make what I say come alive in their hearts. And God, forgive me for trying to find a means of escape when You’ve sent me with such an important message to those You love.”
I glanced down at the paper in my hands that contained the notes of what I planned to say. I had copied them so neatly on the plane, but as I looked up at the prisoners staring at me suspiciously with their arms folded across their chests, I knew right then that these prisoners didn’t need my notes. They needed my heart. They also needed my love, and they needed to know that God was waiting with open arms for them to turn to Him. I put my paper aside and decided that if I ever lost eye contact with them, it was all over.
The room filled with inmates at the same rate it filled with smoke. Nonsmokers were definitely a minority here. As I was being introduced, I prayed to God that I wouldn’t start coughing. I also thanked God that I had chosen to wear my leather pants and boots as opposed to one of the pretty silk speaking dresses I use for churches. I needed all the credibility I could get.
Finally it was time to speak. I got up, looked each inmate directly in the eye, and in my best street language began to tell my story. I described how I was abused as a child and grew up feeling rejected and unloved. I told them of my search for acceptance and the way it led me to make wrong choices that got me into trouble. I mentioned the drugs, the abortions, the suicide attempt, and how my life finally collapsed. I described the day God met me where I was and I came to know Jesus. They listened intently as I graphically revealed the hell I’d known and contrasted it with the peace and wholeness I had found.
When I came to the end of my alloted time, I said to them, “There was a point soon after I came to know Jesus when I looked over my life and I saw it scattered into a million pieces. I grieved over that because I couldn’t see how it could ever be put back together again. But God spoke to my heart and said, ‘I’m a Redeemer. I redeem
all
things. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, it doesn’t matter what’s happened to you. I can take all the hurt, the pain, the scars, and I can not only heal them, but I can make them count for something.’ ”
Then I told them of the song I wrote that day God spoke those words to me. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and sang it to them in the slow, tender way I first heard it in my mind.
Pieces...pieces,
So many pieces to my life.
Scattered all around
And some of them are gone,
And I know that I can’t ever
Put them back together again.
Pieces ... pieces,
So many pieces to my life.
A puzzle left unfinished,
Jumbled and unformed.
Who can really ever
Fit it all together again?

 

In a vision like a daydream
That filters through your mind,
I saw Jesus coming closer,
Holding all my dreams combined.
He spoke with great compassion
As He put one hand on me,
And in His other hand He held
What I could never see.

 

He said, “Pieces ... pieces,
I’ve got all the pieces to your life,
A thousand tiny fragments
Of every single day.
I can put them all together
So they’ll never fall away.
I can put them all together
And there’ll never be another one who can.
No, there’ll never be another one who can.”
17
I opened my eyes on the last note of the song to see what I’ll always know was a miracle. Nearly everyone in the room was crying—even some of the guards. The tough inmates that I at first thought were men were wiping away tears from their eyes. Some had Kleenex and many buried their faces in their hands and sobbed quietly. The hardness of their expressions had melted into a gentle beauty.
For one brief moment I felt the combination of all the pain in that room, and it was unbearable. “Oh, God, there is so much hurt here,” I cried along with them. “Thank You, Holy Spirit, that You have come to meet the need and help these women come to know You.”
The inmates began to clap, quietly at first, and then it grew into a loud cheer as they stood and applauded. I knew they were clapping for God’s presence in that room. Whether or not they understood that this is what it was, no one could deny that it was there. The ice had been broken, the walls penetrated, the defenses laid to waste. God’s love had broken through.
Over the next three days, nearly half the women in attendance received Jesus, and many were healed of past hurts. Every life was touched that weekend, and many, including mine, were changed forever.
All the way home on the plane I cried and praised God that He had used me as one of His instruments. “Lord, I can’t believe what You’ve done. You’ve taken my broken life, and You’ve not only restored it but You’re using it to restore others too.”
God had kept His promise: My life had meaning and purpose now. But it didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it took 14 years. Yet during those years there was ongoing healing and deliverance, a layer at a time. No, it certainly didn’t happen overnight, but it
did
happen. God took all my pain and scars, and He not only healed them but made them count for something.
That
is God’s total restoration!

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