God Is With Me

I haven't talked a lot yet about my faith in God. He showed me so many times that He was there with me. I have carried my faith with me all through life. I'm not going to bore you with all the times that I've seen God's hand at work, but I'll tell you a couple. Mormor i Groende lived a pretty lonely life. It's how it was those days, living out on those farms. Morfar would go to Kisa once a week with his horse Stjärna and the buggy, but Mormor only went part of the time. They used to say that in her whole life, she went to Linköping twice and that was only seven Swedish miles. Well, when we showed up at her house, she used to say, "Where is your mama? When she got married, she said she'd come see me every week, and she hasn't been here for so long." Her daughter, Moster Maria, lived further away so she couldn't expect her to come home so often, but AnnaLisa, Moster Maria's oldest girl, used to spend summers at Groende.

This is a little statue of a praying child that Mom kept all her life.

Many times, Margaretha and I were sent to walk to Groende and visit with Mormor for a while. Well one day, we were doing to take Lennart along on this visit. It was the first time we had taken him on one of these walks. Mama said we were responsible for him, and since I was the oldest, of course, the biggest responsibility was mine. Mama said we had to be home before dark. Well, Mormor was so happy to see us and especially she was so happy to see Lennart. We had so much fun and time went so fast. All of a sudden the time came to me, and I said we had to go so we could make it home before dark. Off we went but Lennart was tired by then and didn't walk so fast. Well, we were maybe a fourth of the way home when we got so scared because we just knew we wouldn't make it home before dark. I said we should pray, so all three of us got down on our knees at the edge of the road and asked God for help.

While we were still on our knees, we heard a rumble and racket coming up the road. After a minute, we realized it was a motor, but we didn't know who it could be because nobody up there had a tractor or a private car then. Well here came a truck! It was a man who had been hauling timber out of the forest there in Groende. His name was Rolander. Mama and Papa knew him and we had seen him many times and knew who he was. He stopped and said, "What are you kids doing out so late? Jump in here and I'll give you a ride home." We jumped into the truck and we were all excited because we hadn't ridden in a truck before, especially Lennart. He was really excited and could hardly sit still. So we did make it home before dark. It has puzzled me many times since then that Rolander didn't have a load of lumber on his truck. Never did he drive out of the forest without a load but this time his truck was empty. You can say what you want about that story but we were all so sure that God had answered our prayer, little children though we were.

Another time, I was really upset. Mormor had died, and it really hit me. I was 14 years old. First God had taken Morbror Kalle and then Farfar and then my brother Henrik and now Mormor. Morbror Kalle died in 1929 and Mormor in 1937 so in those few years, four of the people I loved the most were gone. I got kind of mad at God. I wasn't going to believe in him anymore. I was the rebellious kid anyway. Then one night I had a dream. I dreamt I was walking home from Mormor's house. There was a little hill you went up and when I got up to the top of that hill, the whole sky looked like a big ship! There were portholes in the sides and I could see the big smokestacks high up in the sky and there was the railing around the edge of the ship. Behind that railing there were all kinds of people waving at me. I saw Henrik and Farfar and Morbror

Kalle and Mormor all standing together waving at me. And I saw others, neighbors and other people we knew who had died. They all waved at me and they looked so happy. As I woke up, it was the middle of the night still, but I sat straight up in bed and the whole room was lit up. I looked around and saw the door to our room -- it was painted blue. And I looked at Margaretha, sleeping in the same bed. She was fast asleep and hadn't seen anything. Little by little the light faded away around me, and it was pitch dark again, as I was still sitting straight up in bed. I crawled back under the blankets and I knew that was God telling me, "Don't worry. They're all here with me."