As the years are mounting up in the lives of hubby and me, I like to sometimes think back to happy moments in life that will forever make me “stand in awe!” The newspaper on Sunday had a smaller paper enclosed in it with an article about feeling awe in life may be the secret to health and happiness. I got out my concordance and read Psalm 33;8 “Let all the earth fear the Lord: let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him.”
It started me thinking…there have been many times throughout the years when I felt awe-inspired by something God did in my life.
That summer night in August of 1936 when our neighbors took me to my Aunt Martha’s for the evening because my 6-year-old sister, Luella, had been shot by the neighbor boy. When my dad came to pick me up, he looked so sad. I didn’t quite understand it and when he told me she “was in heaven,” I felt happy and awe-struck that she could go but I had to stay.
As the years went by, I looked forward to the time I could go too. I enjoyed attending Kindergarten at Allen School and the teacher talked in a gentle voice but taught us important truths. One day when one of the students made fun of a student of another race, she told him in no uncertain terms that was not to be done. She played a hymn on the piano when we took our naps and I felt secure.
We moved to my dad’s family farm when my grandparents moved to the town of Buhler. I loved it and my mom and dad said they were going to give me a baby sister. They named her Carol Jean. I loved baby sitting and explaining the complexities of life to her and she took it all in.
My dad’s cousin, Ike, and his wife Stella, came all the way from California to Kansas to talk my dad and mom into moving to California for awhile. Mom told me how wonderful it would be and it was. I would always find a church to go to Sunday School and kept trying to find out how I could go to heaven, too. We moved four times and finally came back to Kansas, arriving at my grandparents house on Christmas Day of 1942, during a snowfall.
We were back on the family farm and I enjoyed two wonderful sisters who were the country school teachers at different times, …Mary and Esther Willems. They had the Rural Bible Crusade come to our school and have us memorize 500 Bible verses. I finally understood how I could be saved. I asked Jesus into my life and really became awestruck because now I knew I would go to heaven.
We moved back to Hutch and as the 9th grade came around I was determined to attend Buhler High School…which I did. I loved it, took singing lessons, speech and dramatics and worked as co-editor on the school paper. In the process of living in Buhler, I got acquainted with John, we dated and fell in love gradually, and got married two weeks after I graduated high school.
We went to Colorado on our honeymoon…neither one of us had been there before and it was like a dream come true. We loved the majestic mountains and pine and fir trees. Our two children, John and Judy came along and we all enjoyed our Colorado vacations each summer. We were given the opportunity to rent a lovely cabin near Woodland by Wanda Walsh and felt like it was a taste of heaven.
God led us into the carpet business (Schroeder’s Floor Fashions} and though there were ups and downs, we enjoyed it. One year the wife of Fred Pauls, a carpet distributor, talked her husband into taking trips to different places in the world. The only way he would go was if he could take his clients with him. We enjoyed trips to Mexico, Hawaii, Spain, Italy, St. Thomas, etc., sometimes also taking our children with us. It was beyond any of our expectations and we enjoyed meeting people from all parts of the world.
Much as we enjoyed the different places, would we want to live at any of them? Absolutely not. Would we want to live in any other state or town for that matter? Absolutely not! God has put us here and unless He changes his mind, we are here to stay,,,at least until He calls us home to heaven where He is preparing a place for those of us who have accepted Him.
We love the town of Hutch where you can live the wonderfully simple life if that’s what you want…you can enjoy the Hutch News every morning, placed on your front porch by the door, you can converse with the town people at any time and be respected as you do them. What more awe-inspiring thing could we ask?\
By Doris Schroeder
Doris loves to hear from you at [email protected]
