We had been in Spain for a little over a year, when I received a call to come home. We were on our second tour to that country with the U.S. Air Force,. My mother was very sick when we left the states and wasn't expected to recover. I feared when we left her, that I may never see her alive again. I had watched her disappear in my rear view mirror, when our car pulled away from their home and I cried for most of the trip north. There we'd leave the states for Europe. Knowing how sick she was, I talked to a friend the night before we left and told her to call me only if she thought Mother was not going to make it. I knew I couldn't be coming back and forth every time she went into the hospital, but if my friend called, I would believe her and come home as quickly as possible. She promised me she'd do that.
It was just before Christmas (December 22) and Ted was Temporary Duty (TDY) in Turkey when the call came in. Ted's Commander and friend, Major Miller, came to our house and said, "Laura, we just received a call from Texas. Your Mom is in the hospital and you need to go home." I began to cry and asked him to have a seat in my living room and wait for a moment.I ran upstairs, sat down on the bed and cried and prayed for a few minutes. My mind was scrambling. What would I do with my kids? How am I going to get home? (We were always broke.) Would Mother live until I got there? Who is taking care of Daddy? How can I leave my family? How could I not go home? I felt frightened and alone. I grabbed my bible from the night stand and opened it. I didn't know what I was looking for but I began to pray. I needed a word from God. I flipped the book open and looked down at it. My eyes fell on John 14:18 where Jesus said, I will not leave you comfortless but I will come to you! I closed the book and wiped my eyes. "Okay," I said aloud, "I'll believe that, no matter what happens in the days to come!"
I went back downstairs to find the patient Major sitting on my couch. "I need to talk to Ted. I don't know what to do about a whole bunch of things and I need his input."
"Okay, we'll go to the chapel and I'll put a call through to him." (We didn't have phones in our homes and only in an emergency could one call a husband on TDY.) Major Miller didn't need an emergency, even if this one didn't qualify. So within the hour I was talking to Ted on the Chapel telephone.
"There's no way I can come home right now but you can ask someone in the Fellowship to take the kids until I get there, I'll probably be home in a week." he said. I felt a little better after I talked to him. "Pray for me!" I said and hung up.
When I left the Chapel office the Major said, "My wife and I will take your kids until Ted gets home and I've booked you on a transport leaving the Navy base at Rota tonight. The Chaplin said he'd run you down there. Can you be ready in an hour?"
I felt like I was in a whirlwind, but I nodded and at the same time worried about money. I went home and packed a suitcase and a big purse, made sure I had my passport and left in our car to drive to the chapel where it would be parked until Ted got home.
Chaplin Mixon met me in the parking lot and handed me an envelope of money. "That should be enough for food and a ticket to Texas, when you reach to states." I accepted the money with a lump in my throat, so big I could barely thank the man. I never knew where it came from.
When we arrived at the Rota terminal, I went straight to the check-in desk and told the sailor on duty that I was booked on a transport leaving tonight. I gave him my name and my Air Force I.D. and he never looked up. He just asked, "Do you have a passport?"
"Yes," I said, confidently and began digging in my massive purse. I dug and dug and searched and searched. Finally, in a panic, I went over to a chair and dumped the contents of the thing onto it. I then picked up my suitcase and put it on the chair and started rummaging through it. Chaplin Mixon began to "help" me, much to my embarrassment, as he took out items that were meant "for my eyes only". Finally, I walked back to the desk and said, "The answer to that question is, no, I don't have my passport. It's probably back in Sevilla."
Without looking at me still, he started shaking his head, then he said, "Sorry, you can't board that plane without a passport."
I looked at the Chaplin, once again close to tears and he had a look of panic on his face, but he quickly got it together and asked, "Where do you think it is?"
"I checked it before I left the house and it was in my purse. I took Timmy over to the Major's house but I didn't take my purse out there. I don't know what happened to it!"
"Don't worry about it. You just have a seat here and I'll go back to Sevilla and look for it until I find it. You just pray. The Lord will lead me to it. I'll try to be back before the plane leaves. If not then there will be another one. I'll have the Major call back down here." Chaplin Mixon was so confident and comforting, I wanted to hug him but I just said, "Don't speed, be careful. I'll be sitting here praying."
He left for his two hour trip back to Sevilla and I sat down on a chair next to a window so I could watch the planes come in and take off. I was still sitting there at 7:00 p.m. when my transport went wheels up on the tarmac! I went back to the desk to find that the indifferent desk clerk had gone off duty and been replaced with a friendly guy, so I poured my story out to him and he listened with compassion. Finally he said, "I wish I could tell you there would be another plane in soon, but all we have scheduled at the moment is one coming in tomorrow evening, headed for the states, but it's loaded with ammunition and civilians are not allowed to fly on it...I'm sorry."
I swallowed hard and continued my story. I told him why I had to get home as soon as possible and that my husband was TDY in Turkey and I really wasn't too savvy about military travel and my Chaplin, who had brought me down here, had gone back to Sevilla to look for my passport and I had left my little kids... he just looked at me and I could see him thinking, What a mess! But he shook his head in pity and said he'd do everything he could to help me get on a plane.
I went back to my window seat in the now empty airport and sat there silently, vacillating in my mind between sheer panic and determination, bouncing between worrying and trusting. I'd worry awhile then I'd grit my teeth and repeat, "I will not leave you comfortless but I will come to you!" After a while I heard someone call my name. It was Chaplin Mixon. He was walking toward me waving my passport!
I gasped then asked, "Where was it?"
"In the floorboard of your car. It evidently fell out of your purse when you put it in or took it out of the car. Fortunately, I looked there first, so I was able to come right back."
Then I did hug him. He turned about three shades of red. (He was a shy, single man.) Then he wanted an update on the flight situation. I told him how I'd watched my plane disappear into the "wild, blue yonder" without me.
"Laura, that wasn't your plane." he said. "The Lord has one for you. You're just going to have to wait for it."
I told him then about the one coming in tomorrow evening loaded with ammo and he said something like, "Hang in there, Sister!"
He left me there with some trepidation. He even volunteered to stay with me until I left but I assured him I'd be all right and asked him to check in on the kids for me. I hadn't been able to say good by to Joel and Kelly who were in school when I left and I was concerned that they would be upset. He told me he would and that he would report to the "Fellowship" about the days events.
I'd settled back down to wait with my passport tucked safely inside the zipper pouch of my purse when my "friendly sailor" came to fetch me. "Your husband is on the phone." he said. I almost ran to the desk and grabbed the phone, so happy to be talking to him one last time. I poured out my tale of woe, cried a little, laughed a little and felt a lot better. He said he was so sorry he couldn't be there with me and assured me he had talked to the Major and the kids were okay and he'd try to call me again after I got home.
When we finished talking I went to the vending machines to buy something to eat then, started back to my chair. The sailor at the desk stopped me and asked, "Do you want me to call a taxi for you?"
"No, I'll just sleep in the chair, thank you."
"Oh, you don't have to do that." he said. "There's a lounge down the hall where you can wait. It has a cot and a recliner where you can stretch out. It's an officer's lounge, but there are none of those here tonight. I'll call you if something comes in."
With that promise I dragged my weary body to the lounge and laid down with a book, hoping I could go to sleep and forget about my troubles for a while. I tried the cot and found it very uncomfortable so I switched to the recliner and before long I was sound asleep.
About midnight a knock on the door awakened me. The sailor stuck his head in the door and said, "Sorry to wake you, but your husband is on the phone for you again." I looked up and thought, For goodness sake! Why isn't he asleep? He must be worried too.
I went back to the phone at the desk and picked it up. Ted said, "Laura, can you see the flight line from where your standing?"
I asked, "What do you mean?"
He asked again, "Can you see the flight line?"
I stretched the phone cord as far as it would go and looked around the end of the desk. I looked through the glass doors where the planes taxied up and deplaned. There sat a big one, its engines still whirring and lights blinking. It had just landed.
"Yes, I see a plane." I said.
"Hang up the phone and keep watching it." he said.
"But why?" I asked the empty phone line, so I hung it up and walked over to the doors and watched as men began to come down the stairs. Suddenly I saw a familiar face! It was Ted! He was smiling and waving and rushing down the stairs toward me. I burst through the doors and ran to him. We stood there hugging and both talking at once, me with the questions, him trying to answer them. He explained as we walked toward the terminal that Major Miller had pulled some strings and Ted had been given permission to leave for home as soon as he could get a plane out of Turkey. One hour after he got the word, he was on a plane to Rota. (It just happened to be flying from Athens to Rota instead of directly to Sevilla.) We laughed and wondered if our kids were already driving the Millers crazy. "Way to go, kids!" said Ted.
So here he was in Rota, the very terminal where I had been detained for the night. We went in and explained it all to the desk clerk and told him we'd be spending the night in the lounge and if Ted couldn't get a plane to Sevilla the next day, he'd call a friend to come get him.
We went back to the lounge to settle in for thr night. we were trying to fit our two bodies into the one recliner when the sailor stuck his head back in the door. "There's a Navy car going to a motel on the beach to pick up an officer. Would you like to hitch a ride with him and get a room for the night?"
Ted looked at me and asked, "Do you have any money?"
"I have about a thousand pesetas." I replied. That was about $10.00 in American money.
"That will be enough," said the sailor."
Must be some motel! I thought. But we grabbed our luggage and rushed out to the car. We drove a while through the city of Rota and finally wound our way to the beach on the Mediterranean Sea. The view was breath taking. Moonlight bathed the water as the waves crashed on the shore. It distracted me until I heard Ted said, "Laura, look at this place!"
I turned my attention back to the "motel" and couldn't believe my eyes. It looked like a Spanish castle. We drove into a marble overhang that was lit by a sparkling chandelier. Ted said to the driver, "You'd better wait for us. I doubt we'll be able to afford this place."We went in and walked up to the desk. Ted asked the desk clerk, "Do you have something for a thousand pesetas? I was blushing and hiding behind him.
The man smiled and said, "Well, since it's off season and you are two of four guests in the whole place... I'd say, yes we have something for about 800 pesetas."
Ted went and retrieved our luggage from the Navy car, before the man could change his mind, then a bell hop led us up a wide, white marble staircase to a large room. My mind was reeling from the first sight of that room. The walls were white and the floor was white marble. All the furniture was dark wood and everything else was a rich red color including the drapes, the bedspread, the pillows, the scarves and the ... it was beautiful! The bell hop walked over and opened the double doors to the balcony and as the cold December air rushed in, we caught a glimpse of our view. Once again we watched the sea roll and crash and simmer in the moonlight.
The man started to close the doors but Ted stopped him. "Leave them open, please. The view is so wonderful!"
He smiled at Ted and said, "You have the honeymoon suite."
Later we bathed in a round tub with gold plated accessories, then drifted off to sleep snuggeling under layers of blankets and listening to the mezmerizing sounds of the sea.
The next morning we were awakened at 10:00 a.m by a knock on the door. There stood a waiter with hot coffee, rolls, butter and honey. It was then that I realized that God was being faithful to His promise to me from John 14:18. He had not left me comfortless. He had sent my husband to me who had real arms to hold me and had given us a night together, on the Mediterranean Sea in a Spanish palace! It was a night I will never forget and I was a little emotional as I accepted the tray from the waiter.
Ted and I got sandwiches out of the vending machines, then walked a couple blocks to the base Chapel, where we spent the afternoon singing while I played hymns on the piano. We felt at home there in the empty Chapel. After that we shopped a while in the BX where Ted bought several sacks of gummy bears for the kids, then we took a bus back to the terminal. We made it just in time for me to board. Ted walked me out to the plane, kissed me good by and instructed the steward to "take care of me".
I entered that plane confident that God really was in control and that I would make it home in time to see my mother again. I felt the comfort of Ted's love, the prayers of Christians and the care of my Heavenly Father, as I settled down on a long jump seat in the noisy, cold transport. Just before I drifted off to sleep the Navy steward covered me with a scratchy, wool blanket and said, "Sleep well!" ...and I did.
(To be continued...)
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Laura, all I can say is that I loe you... and your true stories of life...
ReplyDeleteThank you, Karol. I love telling them to those who like to read them. You always encourage me.
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