Straight Paths-God Prepared Me for This

God Prepared Me for This

Loren Hardin

For The Ashland Beacon 

Bobbie was fifty-seven years old when she enrolled in outpatient hospice care. I’ve known Bobbie’s husband, Randy, for well-nigh forty years. We both worked at Southern Ohio Medical Center. Randy worked in plant maintenance, and I was a medical social worker. But I never knew Bobbie, which is understandable considering she worked for thirty-three years in the radiology department, which is somewhat secluded. Bobbie stated, “My first five years were doing x-rays, the next five years I did CT scans and for the rest of the time I did MRI’s. I loved doing MRI’s.” 

        I asked Bobbie and Randy how their paths crossed, and Bobbie stated that the radiology department frequently called maintenance for repairs and Randy was usually the one who responded. Randy interjected, “She stalked me!” I responded, “I have a sneaking suspicion that it was probably the other way around”. Then, to my surprise, Bobbie confessed, “I did. I do MRI’s so I’m a numbers person and I made the numbers work for me. I found out what times he took his breaks, and I took mine at the same time. I made sure we were in the cafeteria at the same time.” I asked Randy if he played hard-to-get and he coolly insisted, “I was just reeling her in real slow, a little at a time”. 

            Randy continued, “She always wore her hair all pouffed-out, like she held her head out a car window. She loved those big hairdos. One day when her hair looked flat, I told her, ‘You need to plug your hair back into a receptacle’”. Bobbie exclaimed, “That’s what my daddy always told me; and I’m a daddy’s girl.” I would have never imagined in a thousand years that a girl would bite on a pickup line like that, but the hook was set. When I looked over at Randy, he was looking quite proud of himself. 

            It’s been almost three years since Bobbie was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer. She declared, “God prepared me for this. Around July, about five months before I was diagnosed, out of nowhere, I felt like something bad was going to happen. It was unexplainable. It scared me to death. I didn’t know what it was. I thought that something might be going to happen with the kids. Then two or three months later I had the feeling again and I felt like I really needed to get ready. I was supposed to go to mom and dad’s that Sunday, but I called them and told them that I couldn’t come, that I had to go to church; that it was about me and God. 

            “I didn’t see how all along God was preparing me until I looked back. One day the Siemens representative was working on some of our equipment at work and I asked him, ‘What does your wife do?’ and he said, ‘She’s a preacher’. I admitted to him that I was away from church, and he held out his hands and told me, ‘God is just waiting for you to come back home.’ Then one of our housekeepers saw me in the hall and said, “I don’t know where you are with God, but you can see Heaven from Hell, and you don’t want to see your daddy walking on the streets of gold and not be able to join him.’ I’m a daddy’s girl so that’s all it took.” 

            About two months after recommitting her life to God Bobbie was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer. Bobbie concluded, “God was preparing me all along.” Randy testified, “She’s never been the same since. She can’t sit still at church. She shouts. We were at the church for a bible study, and she went in the restroom. She said they were dirty, so she got a mop and bucket and cleaned all three toilets.” Bobbie explained, “I’m just so glad that God would let me do something for Him. I just want to do something for Him.” 

            Randy also gave his heart to God. I could have never imagined that the Randy I knew would one day be opening church services and leading worship.  Randy shared, “Our favorite song is ‘One Day at a Time Sweet Jesus’”, but the song that comes to my mind when I consider the changes that God has wrought in Bobbie and Randy’s lives is “He Touched Me”, by the Gaither Family: “He touched me, oh He touched me, and oh the joy that floods my soul!  Something happened and now I know, He touched me and made me whole.” 

            I asked Bobbie, “If you had one message to give to people what would it be?”  Bobbie replied, “I would tell people that if God is tugging at your heart for any reason that you need to respond. He doesn’t talk like you and I are talking right now, but you know it when God is talking to you. You know.”

            “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me,” (Revelation 3:20). 

            “Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,” (Hebrews 3:15). 

     Loren Hardin worked as a hospice social worker for SOMC Hospice for twenty-nine years. You can contact him at 740.357.6091 or at lorenhardin53@gmail.com. You can purchase Loren’s book, “Straight Paths: Insights for living from those who have finished the course” at Amazon.