This article is condensed
from a March 1975 account written by my mother, Eva Crain, a former
Faith Temple Church (Taylors, S.C.) member who worked at Roger Huntington Nursing Center in Greer,
S.C., for over 20 years and died in 1989 at age 67.
As a child, I was carried to church. At age 12, after accepting Christ as my Savior, I was baptized in an outdoor pool close to Double Spring Baptist Church where we attended.
After
high school (Mountain View High School, Taylors, S.C.), I failed to trust God to keep me after
he had saved me. I let Satan make me doubt that I had ever been saved. Through
the counseling of our pastor and Scriptures, peace and assurance flooded my
soul at about 19 years of age.
The
first desire of my life after finishing high school in 1938 (when there were
only eleven grades) was to go to Winthrop College to be a home economics
teacher. I (one of eight children) was reared on a farm. My father said he wasn’t
financially able to send me to college but would let me commute to a junior
college, if I could find someone to ride with. I decided I’d stop my education,
since I couldn’t go to college and stay.
My
father consented for me to work in a sewing room. I’d said I’d never marry, but
a certain young man changed my mind…for which I’m very thankful. (Eva and J.B.
Crain married after he completed U.S. Army basic training.) My husband spent 18
months in Germany. God answered prayers and brought him home safely. After
three years of marriage, God blessed our home with a son and then three years
later, a daughter.
I
thought about being a registered nurse, but that plan did not materialize
either.
For
18 years, I was content to be a housewife and mother, though after the children
were in school, I worked in a sewing room for a while. When efficiency experts
came to the plants, I wasn’t able to make the production they seemed to think I
should be doing. I was also sick part of the time. The doctor couldn’t discover
the cause for several years, so I just went on hurting and working.
The
doctor treated me for gall bladder trouble, but my condition worsened. A specialist
took x-rays and found a large ulcer. I really had a battle with Satan. He tormented
me with the thought that I wouldn’t make it through surgery. After a few days
of torment, I prayed and believed God would see me through. I accepted the
words of Paul in Philippians: “For me to live is Christ, to die is gain . . . .” God
had been with me through forty years, and if it was his will for me to go to
heaven, it would be my gain. I feel God guided the surgeon’s hands, and my
health has been better with a third of my stomach (left) than before.
After
meditation and prayer, an inner Voice kept telling me there was something
better in life. There was a new nursing center being built near our home in
Greer, and the Voice kept telling me to apply for a job there. I went to work two
weeks before the building was opened and worked two years as a nurses’ aide.
One day I heard about a program for Practical Nursing. I investigated and found
they would take women up to 45 years of age. I was nearing 45, so I knew if I
was to fulfill a desire I had since school days, I’d better get busy.
I
started to school a week or so before our son entered his first year of
college. When it came time for my books to be thrown at me, I felt I just
couldn’t start back to school, but my son said, “Mother, you wanted to do this
course, and you’ve got to stay in.”
So,
I buckled down to the fact that it was God’s will that I was in nursing school
and by His grace and help, I’d do the best I could. It proves out one of my favorite
verses of Scripture: “He will do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or
think . . . .”
I
don’t claim to be perfect, but I feel that by obeying God’s voice after asking
His help to go into nursing, I have come the nearest to being in God’s perfect
will than ever before in my life.
