How I yearned to be a child; to enjoy my life as all the other children. Yet as a missionary friend of our family’s cited frequently, “Janie, you were born an adult. You were never permitted to be a child.” I now realize that God was preparing me for a life filled with challenges beyond comprehension. Had I not learned to be self-sufficient and a care-giver at my young age, when the tempests of life came, I would have been unprepared.

During those years in OH as our family moved from house to house and town to town, there were several memorable incidents. One of the most paramount was  during a summer in the 1950’s. As the eight-year-old care giver of my siblings, I was fulfilling my role as the family laundress on the first floor of our house when I heard an agonizing shriek coming from upstairs. I left the hot iron and ironing board, vaulting up the stairs to discover my brother awe struck while my three-year-old sister stood on the bed, a bloody hair brush in her hand, blood pouring down her arm, as the sun glisten off a jagged, broken window.

Certainly, at age eight, I had no training as a nurse or doctor, but God imparted me with the calmness and knowledge to do what was necessary in this dire emergency. As my brother and sister were jumping on the bed, the hair brush which Sharon held in her hands, was thrust into the window. Still grasping the brush, as she pulled her arm into the room, the window tore a large and deep gash in her upper arm. I clutched my younger sister grabbing a blanket from the bed as I raced down the stairs into the kitchen. I gently sat her on the blanket on the kitchen floor, while dashing to grab a towel and tightly wrapping it around her arm. At age four, my brother understood the urgency as I screeched, “you stay here with Sharon, while I run to get Mom and Dad.”

Following my Dad’s recovery from his injury, my parents opened a drapery installation business in the town where we now resided. It seemed as though I was running for miles to alert my parents of Sharon’s accident. Upon arriving to the security of realizing my parents could now come to take care of her, I screamed, “come quickly, Sharon was badly hurt.” Returning to that house and town, years later, as an adult, the home was at least two miles from my parents’ business. I then realized why it seemed like such a long distance for an eight- year- old in distress.

When my parents returned from the hospital emergency room with my sister, my father was crying. It was the only time in my entire life Dad was sincerely appreciative of my actions. As the tears washed his face, he said “Janie, if not for your actions, the doctor said your sister could have bled to death.” Before the summer ended, there were other mishaps, but I was grateful, not as serious as my sibling’s gymnastics on their bed.

I Timothy 5:8 ESV, “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”