Light from the dashboard threw a pale glow on the haggard face of the aging man.
Gripping the steering wheel, he peered into the night. Let's see, now, he
thought, wrinkling his brow, how could it take me twelve hours to drive sixty
miles?
Earlier that day he'd driven south from Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, toward our
small town, but somehow he'd taken a detour, ending up three hundred miles east
in a neighboring province.
"You need to retrace your path," a stranger told him. "You need to turn around.
And head west."
But the detour continued. Five hours later he arrived in Edmonton, a city far to
the north, and now he was standing on the side of the road rubbing burning eyes
in bewilderment. In his hand was a piece of paper with directions to another
city far from home. Climbing back into the car, he turned up the radio. Someone
was missing, possibly lost. Someone who was sick.
Twenty-four hours later, George Martin quit searching for home and pulled into a
tiny service station in a town east of Edmonton. Exhausted, hungry, and thirsty,
he approached the woman behind the till. "I left my wife somewhere and I don't
know where," George said through cracked and bloody lips. "But I have her
sweater here."
When two of his children arrived to pick him up, George looked at his daughter
Janis and said, "Oh, thank goodness, they've found you."
For thirty-six hours, search parties had scoured the country by land and air,
looking for the retired garage foreman who'd driven away from the Red Deer
Regional Hospital during some tests. Officials watched at border crossings.
Radio and television stations aired the alert. Prayer chains formed.
And at home his wife waited.
Hoping.
Fearing the worst.
When George came through the door, she embraced him tightly. "Ah, honey," smiled
Avonelle, "you took the long way home, didn't you?"
But George wasn't really home. As the poison of a dread disease began to spread
through his body, he felt like a stranger in his own house, not knowing that
Home waited too far down the road in a land not made with hands.
Years before the doctors diagnosed the problem, Avoneile had her suspicions.
When he burned up the car's motor for lack of oil, she began to wonder. When he
stood in a doctor's office, wondering what he was doing there, it began to dawn
on her. One day he jumped suddenly to his feet and insisted on making a
delivery-though he'd been retired for years.
And then she knew. George had Alzheimer's.
"It took me a long time to get the keys away from him," she remembers with a
laugh. "I finally discovered that if I told him it was my turn to drive, he was
fine with that."
For three and a half years Avonelle cared for him constantly at home. She
watched his strong body shrivel into a skeleton. She read the stories of
Alzheimer's wards. Places where dignified saints wear diapers and swear like
sailors. Where families stand with tearstained faces wondering at the strangers
they once called Daddy. Or Mommy. Or sweetheart. Places where God-fearing
partners clutch their sanity, clench their teeth, and walk away. For good.
But not Avonelle Martin.
"There was no other option," she says now. "Decades ago I vowed I'd be there for
him whether he was sick or well. It wasn't always the easy thing to do, but it
was always the right thing."
One day George made a visit to the hospital and never returned. Sick from
exhaustion, Avonelle went home and for the first time in years had a good
night's rest.
The next day she began a seven-year pilgrimage of daily visits to care for her
man. To hug and kiss him.
To sit on his lap and talk.
To take him out for walks and ice cream. To feed him and change him.
She also grieved deeply. "I'd be thinking about George, about our early years
together, and the memories would come back." She recalls. "I would break down
and cry and cry." On one occasion, she stood in the rain outside the hospital
and trembled under a load of despair.
"I thought, I just can't face this another day! And I turned and ran back home
and got in bed and pulled the covers over my head."
She laughs about it now. "But after a couple of hours, I found myself going back
up to the hospital. I walked in the same way I always did."
Like a magnet, her smile in the midst of turmoil drew other patients to her.
Doctors and nurses sought her advice. Her pain seemed to prepare a shoulder for
others to cry on.
Four times she walked beside George through the valley of death, only to have
him recover and defiantly live on. But at last, the withered shell of a man
began to crack. Bedsores dug deep and turned gangrenous. Parkinson's disease
curled him up stiff in a fetal position. Each heave of his chest became a
gurgling fight for air. For three eternal weeks, Avonelle fed her dying husband
with a dropper.
Then it was over.
One August night she said good night for the last time. "The doctors said he
must have had 'ministering angels,"' says Avonelle with a broad smile. "I'd like
to think I was one of them."
Angels like Avonelle shine like stars in this dark night of me-ism, of selfish
rights and easy divorce. Surprisingly, their marriage was not exactly engraved
in custom nor cradled in the support of friends and family. "That's right," she
admits with a grin, "we...well, we eloped! It was a little more common in those
days." But the roots of her unusual courage and loyalty run deep.
In a kindergarten Sunday school class, she received a small plaque with the
words "Be Thou Faithful Unto Death." Though she didn't understand them, the
words would become her life motto. At the age of twenty-one, for the first time,
she believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and she made a vow that would
shape the rest of her life: "Lord, as long as I have breath, I'll be a
missionary right where I'm at."
Neighborhood children became her mission field. And amazing things happened when
Avonelle prayed. A Russian boy believed in Christ before his did was deported.
The three children next door became Christians. Then their atheist parents. And
after fourteen years of marriage, George too gave his life to Jesus. Avonelle
started Bible studies and later, as a church deaconess, she began visiting the
sick and shut-ins.
Did she pray for George's healing? "Oh yes. But my main prayer for George was:
'Lord, he's in Your hands. The timing of his life and death are Yours. Whatever
You have in mind, I believe You love us both, so I trust You completely.' I
guess I learned to commit it all to the Lord from the very beginning."…
"I am a simple person," agrees Avonelle. Not simple-minded. But I have a
childlike Faith in God. I believe that if He said He'd do it, He will. And I
just carry on with that. But I also want people to know that l m no better than
anyone else. That always seemed important to me--that I'm no better than anyone
else."
Callaway, Phil. Laughing Matters. Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2005, p. 92-96.
The Illustrator: This daily newsletter is dedicated to encouraging
everyone to look towards Jesus as the source of all the solutions to our
problems. It contains a daily inspirational story, a Bible verse and encouraging
messages. HTML and plain text versions available.
The Nugget: Published three times a week, this newsletter features inspirational devotionals and mini-sermons dedicated to drawing mankind closer to each other and to Christ.