Angels, Miracles, and Heaven on Earth by Joan Wester Anderson

Author:Joan Wester Anderson [Anderson, Joan Wester]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL067010, REL012040, REL012000, RELIGION / Christian Theology/Angelology and Demonology, RELIGION / Christian Life/Inspirational, RELIGION / Christian Life/General
ISBN: 978-0-8294-3762-1
Publisher: Loyola Press
Published: 2012-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Thanksgiving Angel

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

—Harriet Beecher Stowe

For many years, Ivy Olson privately pondered what came to be known as The Miracle, keeping it in a safe place in her heart. “I was afraid that if I shared it, people would say it was just a dream,” she said. What other explanation could there be?

But the event was real. Ivy never doubted it because it transformed not only the life she was leading at the time, but her entire future as well. How could a mere illusion have such an effect?

Ivy grew up as the daughter of Seventh-Day Adventist missionaries. She spent her teens in a boarding school and went to nursing school in San Diego. Shortly after graduation, she married Michael, also a Seventh-Day Adventist. “The sect was very strict,” Ivy said. No dancing, no movies, no parties, and so on. The young couple obeyed all the rules, shielding themselves as much as possible from what they regarded as the sinful world around them. But after the birth of their second son, Ivy became restless. Her life was so rigid, so restricted; all she did was work in a doctor’s office and then go home. She longed for friends, for new experiences, for laughter and fun. “I tried to explain this to Michael, but he felt other people weren’t to be trusted.” Michael was furious when she began bringing home library books that presented worldviews different from their own. Yet she lacked the self-confidence to challenge him.

Then one day Ivy passed a movie theater where The Sound of Music was playing. She had never seen a movie, but she longed to, especially one like this, with music and set in another land. She had heard that the story was inspiring, the music enough to move one to tears. “Can we go?” she asked Michael that evening.

He was horrified. “Absolutely not. You know the rules.”

The rules. Ivy couldn’t imagine a God so harsh that he would prohibit the pleasure of music. For hadn’t he created it?

And so she went alone. “Sitting there in the theater, swept up in the experience, I faced the fact that I no longer believed in the faith of my youth,” she said. But what could she do? Leaving would open her up to ostracism by the entire religious community, even by her own parents. Yet staying would involve living a lie.

During the next several months, Ivy tried to share her concern with Michael, but he could not accept her questioning. Finally one day she packed up the boys and some possessions in her car. Perhaps if she got away for a while and thought things over, everything would become clear. Michael followed her to the curb. “If you drive away now,” he told her quietly, “don’t ever come back.

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