Sunshine and Saltwater
I was asked to give my testimony on a Sunday in September in our Morning Service. I thought about the many things that have brought me to where I am, and how some of the hardest reversals of my first 30 years turned into God’s best for me. Since some of you have asked about it, I’m going to share here what I shared with my church family, with several additions and corrections. Please know that, although this is drawn from the first 30 years of my life, there are so many, many things that have happened in the 42 years since then that are nothing but God’s incredible grace, but these are the foundational happenings that I shared in our Sunday morning service.
I was born to Mark and Alene Yoder on October 15, 1953. I was their third child. I was born the day after their fourth wedding anniversary. Daddy was still 23, Mama was 24. All I ever heard as a child growing up was that my Daddy and Mama were so happy to have a little girl after having two rowdy boys. I was pretty old when I figured out that I was probably not “planned,” but I never suspected that as a child. I was loved and protected and taught about Jesus.
I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior when I was nine, in revival meetings at the Brick Church (as we called it then) and was baptized nearly two years later, shortly before my eleventh birthday. Did I understand the step I was taking? No. Did I act like a Christian? Maybe some of the time, but often, I fell short. Not just then but over and over again as the years passed, I found myself (and still do) in need of a great Savior. The thing is, I knew very young that I wanted to follow Jesus. I wanted relationship with this God whom I believed had a plan for my life, even as a pre-teen, and I often wrestled in prayer during the long night watches, asking for His blessing, and that He would grant me purity and favor.
And life went on. I had dreams of college and a career. I dreamed of being a missionary doctor. I studied hard, was valedictorian of my tenth grade graduating class from Greenwood Mennonite School. It was decided for me that I would finish my final two years at Woodbridge, and in the fall of ’69, I began my junior year. It was the first year of Consolidation. Greenwood people thought I belonged to Bridgeville. Bridgeville people thought I belonged to Greenwood. It was lonely sometimes. I was outspoken about my faith, (probably obnoxious or condescending) but I made friends. I made excellent grades in the college prep courses, and even made friends with my teachers. I was chosen as one of the representatives from Woodbridge High at the state Science Symposium in the spring of 1970, and it felt like things were on track for college and pre-med.
But there was a young man who paid special attention to this Mennonite girl, and I kinda liked him. The relationship was strictly platonic, I didn’t even entertain the idea of accepting his invitation to the Junior Senior prom. But my Daddy found out about him and my Daddy did not approve. This resulted in one of the early, big reversal of my life. One Spring day, Daddy said to me, “Mary Ann, your choices are not acceptable. We’ve decided that you will not be returning to high school this fall. You will be going to Rosedale Bible Institute for the three terms. You can finish your high school at a later date, through adult ed, or whatever, but you are not going back to Woodbridge this fall.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “Daddy,” I said through tears. “If you won’t let me go back to school, I don’t think I can stay home.”
That was not the right answer. “Your attitude tells me that you need to not go back,” he said. And that was that.
Please understand. This was not the loss of the relationship, because it really was not that serious. It did feel like the loss of a dream. And I struggled mightily in the weeks that followed. Lots of Saltwater. I began to pray, “Lord, if this is your will for me, please change my attitude.” And He did just that. I began working at the Country Rest Home as a CNA, and I spent the summer getting ready for the adventure of being away from home for the first time in my life. So complete was the change in my heart that when, just before school started, Daddy said to me, “Mary Ann, if you want to go back to Woodbridge, you may,” I was able to say, “No, Daddy. I’m fine with not going back. I’m going to go to Rosedale.” I will admit that the first day of School was hard. I was working the morning shift and the buses were running, the corner of 16 and University Road. I tried not to look, tried not to think, and decided that pitying myself wasn’t helpful, and God was so gracious to me.
Most of you know the result of that reversal. It became the best earthly thing that happened to me. God knew that I needed a husband like Daniel Yutzy. I didn’t think so at first, but God changed my mind about that, and we ended up married at 19. That was Sunshine.
Daniel and I began our lives on very little. We lived in a travel trailer for the first months, then moved into the unfinished basement of an unfinished house that was supposed to become our home. The kitchen was a board between two folding chairs. We carried water from a line coming into the basement, and heated it for washing dishes We did have a cookstove, and a few pieces of furniture that we bought from The Trading Times, (a popular second hand sales publication in Columbus, Ohio) I was home alone on April 3, 1974 when an F5 tornado destroyed Xenia, Ohio, a town less than 50 miles from where we lived, killing 33 people. I sat in what was going to be the basement laundry room, water pouring into the room through the six inch pipe holding our water supply and prayed. The reason I remember this so vividly is because two days later, I lost a 14-week pregnancy. It was planned (although I’m not sure we had thought it through very carefully) and our grief was coupled by the fact that an Ohio family member told people in the church family, “I don’t know why they are acting like it was a loss. They would be better off admitting they weren’t planning for it and moving on!”
Eight months later, I lost a second early pregnancy. Daniel and I decided to go on with our lives, and we became foster parents. We had two adorable children, Joseph, who came to us at eight months, and Callena, who came to us at three years old. We still wanted a child of our own, and in May of 1976, we were expecting again. This time we had a heartbeat. I was taking injections to maintain the pregnancy, and things seemed to be going better than ever before. But in September, I had a terrible migraine, and something didn’t seem quite right. I went into the doctor’s office, and there was no longer a heartbeat. I couldn’t believe it was happening again.
“Couldn’t the machine be wrong?” I asked the doctor.
He was very gentle with me. “It’s a machine,” he said quietly. “It could be wrong. But I don’t want you to hope.”
I went to the parking lot and cried my heart out against the steering wheel. “Lord Jesus, you know that I love Joseph and Callena but I feel like it’s ‘second best’!”
“If it’s what I have for you, I will make it the best.” The words inched their way into my aching heart, but it wasn’t enough.
“I know, but you promised me the desires of my heart if I delight myself in you, and I’ve done that to the best of my knowledge and—“ my sobs echoed in the empty car.
“I am God, you are human. Who are you to tell me what the desires of your heart truly are?” The quiet words imprinted themselves on my heart, and I know that this sounds really strange, but it was honestly so comforting to me that I dried my tears and went to find Daniel. It was, by no means the end of our tears, but there was a strength and calm that I could not explain..
It was ten days later, September 21, 1976, when the baby would have been 20 weeks gestational age that, after a hard labor of 20 hours, I delivered our stillborn baby boy. We were going to name him “Samuel John.’ Samuel- “ Asked of the Lord” and John –“Gift of God.” And yes, there was a lot of Saltwater. But physical pain can also be cathartic, and I was empty and spent and quiet in my heart.
My doctor came in the next morning and sat down on the chair in the corner. “I need to tell you,” he said, compassion furrowing his face, “That I do not think you will ever carry a baby to term.” I sat in that bed on the maternity floor, babies crying around me and tried not to cry while he explained the technical reasons. “What do you want to do?” he asked me.
m
“I just want to go home,” I whispered.
He looked relieved, and stood up abruptly. “We can do that,” he said. And left me to my tears.
We had no way of knowing that, just 7 weeks earlier in that very same hospital a baby had been born who would become our very own Christina. People say so many things about coincidence and happenstance, but I KNOW that God had Christina for our family. I wish I had time to tell the whole story, but suffice it to say, there came a day when it looked like hope was gone, and I wanted to demand of God that He would allow us to adopt this precious baby.
I felt strongly that God said, “Mary Ann, whom do you choose? Do you choose me, whether I give you Christina or not?”
I remember standing in my sunny kitchen in Plain City, Ohio, while my curly haired toddler played in the playpen in the middle of the room. The battle was real, and I realized that my fists were clenching and unclenching as I battled with this Heavenly Father whom I had learned to trust, but who had not given me what I thought I wanted so many times – and finally bowing my head while the tears ran down and whispering, “I choose YOU, Father God. No matter what, I choose YOU!” And in the relinquishment, there was a peace that held me steady through 6 permanent Custody hearings until she finally became our legal child.
We were living in the back yard of Daniel’s parents at the time. I had come from a home where the father took the Christian walk very seriously. He was very careful with his words, and if he said it, you could count on it. I married into a family where the father made comments like, “I just don’t think coffee drinking belongs to the Christian!” (while his wife drank probably a pot a day). It was very confusing to me. I mean, if my Dad had said that, we would have known that he thought drinking coffee was going to keep you out of Heaven. I had a lot to learn, to be sure. I knew little of Daniel’s traumatic childhood, but I purposed that I would make a difference in this family and I took two sayings from Pamela Reeve’s book, Faith Is . . . as my Mantra.
“Faith is . . .expecting God to do a miracle through insignificant me, with my five small loaves and two small fishes.”
And —
“Faith is . . .expecting a sea of golden grain from a bleak and barren field, watered only by my tears, where I walk alone.” (No drama queen here, right?)
But I believed it, and I put my heart and soul into making a difference. I was happy. We had Christina, Deborah and Raphael. I loved the church we were a part of. I loved our open, sunlit house on the hill. I knew my neighbors, we had lots of company . . . and I thought things weren’t going too badly with the relationship between us and Daniel’s parents. However, the truth was that I was overlooking some very deep hurt in my husband’s heart.
Then came the evening when our pastors paid a visit, and in the course of the evening, Walter Beachy said to me, “It would seem to me that you care more what your father in law thinks than what your husband thinks.” I felt like I had been slapped. I looked at Daniel, barely able to speak and said, “Is that how you feel?” He couldn’t look me in the eye, but he said, “Yes, it is.” I rushed to explain, “But Daniel, you know that it isn’t that I love him more –” He didn’t let me finish. “I’ve always known why,” He said quietly, “but it doesn’t make it any easier.”
That was the catalyst for our move from Ohio to Delaware. The summer before I turned 30 was exceptionally difficult. Our already decrepit orange station wagon was hit by a hit and run driver (thankfully no one was hurt) I had to have a biopsy of a breast lump, Daniel’s parents were hurt, furious and silent, and I didn’t want to move. Not to New York (which we checked out), not to Delaware, not to anywhere! But Daniel believed that it was what we should do, and I decided I had to believe that God wouldn’t make a mistake in my life if my attitude was right towards my husband. So, amidst a lot of saltwater, we moved.
Some months later, I stood in the middle of my “dark and orangely decorated” house on a back road in Greenwood, Delaware and wept. “Lord Jesus! What have you done to me? I’ve lost my church family, I’ve lost my friends, I’ve lost that sunny house on the hill. I don’t know who I am or where I fit!” But some months later, my neighbor across the hedge row gave her heart to Jesus one evening sitting at her dining room table, and I began to believe that God had a place for me here, in this place, in this time, and Sunshine began to peak through.
This is somewhat my life before we moved back to Delaware in 1983. There have been countless reversals, and marvelous interventions time and time again. And I’ve said so much about how God turned what seemed hard into good for me, for us. That doesn’t mean that I can see the good in everything. I don’t know why a granddaughter had to face cancer at four, and still struggles with the effects of radiation on her growth plate that necessitated surgery and a halo and so much inconvenience and pain. I don’t understand why her brother had to break his leg last week playing football. I don’t know why a daughter in law struggles with such deep chronic pain and a rare disease that defies treatment. I don’t know why a beloved grandson chose to leave our family. I don’t know why a daughter struggles with a seizure disorder. I don’t know why another daughter has had so many health issues, including breast cancer. I don’t know why Daniel is suffering like he is with unmanageable nerve pain. I don’t know why I had to fall and bust my face again last week. And hardest of all for me, I don’t know why some of the people I love most have chosen not to follow Jesus. I don’t know!
But this I do know. We serve a God who is good. He will give us grace in times of need. He’s never failed me yet. I’ve given my life to this, and this, I believe!
Delaware Grammy 