John
16:33
Holman Christian Standard
Bible (HCSB)
33 I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. You
will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”
It seemed that things were going
from bad to worse. It was winter in South Africa. The nights were frosty and
the days grey, drizzly, and cold. Our home had brick walls with vent holes in
every room and every external wall. There was no heat, and the damp cold air
seeped into our every fiber. The children, one still in diapers, had colds that
added to the suffering. Inflation had eaten up our meager savings, and our
wages just couldn’t be stretched thin enough.
My wife was depressed. It was a
spiraling, deepening depression that left her weepy and irresolute. Just
getting up every day and fixing meals for our three kids had become an
impossible chore. I took her to the family doctor. He diagnosed this as a
nervous breakdown and prescribed total rest away from family responsibilities.
Of course, time away in a resort
was totally out of the question. The Coetzee’s, long time acquaintances but not
close friends, offered to let her live in their sunny cottage with them. I had
no idea how long this isolation would be. We bundled everyone into our little
old Peugeot and headed for Coetzee’s. I was almost a basket case myself. The
future looked bleak as I drove over to their cottage. On the way there, a man
in a pickup suddenly hit the brakes ahead of me, and I slammed into the rear of
him. We dropped my wife off, and the four of us drove home in a blackening
depression. Life was bleak, cold, and unfriendly.
But things did turn around. The
sun eventually came out. After a week or so Sylvia returned home rested and
refreshed. The accident was sufficiently minor that I chose to pay for repairs
to both vehicles rather than collect on insurance. We were very tightly
stretched financially for the next two years until we returned to the U.S. It
took well over ten years before we found a doctor who was able to provide
effective and lasting relief for the depression. But through it all we were
given the courage and the peace to face what life had given us.
Thank You, Lord, that You do give us the support and comfort we need for
the suffering that indeed comes our way.
Presumably this was many years after you left Ikizu. What year was it ? Who was your employer?
ReplyDeleteI have always harbored the feeling that the pay you got in SA during the racism era was hefty especially after you had acquired a PhD. At Ikizu you appeared to be quite comfortable. I fail to imagine how come, while working with a big salary, life was tough to the extent that meals preparation became an issue. It is said that , "All that Glitters is not Gold"! Nothing like that ever was at Ikizu.
Thank God in that she recovered fully; and she still goes on strong. In Tanzania one writer, Mohamed Amin, once said 'depression is a white man's disease" never afflicting Africans.
This was close to ten years later. There is a common misconception in many places in Africa that missionaries make the big bucks. It is patently false. In South Africa things were even worse financially for missionaries. But the grace of God saw us through it and it was His decision that we return to the States.
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