Jim and Barb

Sometime in the early1940's my non-practicing Methodist father, Cliff Husband, and my non-practicing Catholic mother, Ruth Husband, received a message from the Lord. At least that is how I interpret it. One of the churches in Slippery Rock caught on fire in the middle of the night and in the morning a partially burned page of the Bible lay on their door step. I'm not sure of the content of the page but my parents, as a result were, at least in part, motivated to join the Slippery Rock Methodist Church. As an infant I, the Anabaptist, was "baptized" in the church.

In 1948 my mother and one of her sisters attended a Kathryn Kuhlman revival service in Harrisville, PA. My mother came home from that meeting and announced that she had been saved. Although I was too young to appreciate all that was going on in my home, the events were recounted in my hearing over a period of many years. Thus I can give a pretty good account of the event.

Mom began to intensify her attendance at the Methodist Church and as a child prone to car sickness; I can testify that she did not miss many meetings. Many vivid memories of stops along the roadside, to shall I say relieve my nausea; still remain to document her frequent participation. However, after a period of time my mom became aware of "modernism-liberalism" and a failure of the local pastor to preach salvation through the shed blood of Jesus. Hence my mother soon began traveling to Sunday morning Kathryn Kuhlman meetings at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown, Ohio.

Traveling to Youngstown, Ohio verses traveling from the outskirts of Slippery Rock to the downtown was not a pleasant turn of events for a carsick young boy. However many things began to change in our home. Some I remember firsthand and others have been recounted to me. First my carsickness just disappeared and my mother began telling me about Jesus and my dad got saved and began saying grace at our meals. He was "delivered" from smoking after a lifetime addiction. A dear close family friend, Howard Stein, was diagnosed with cancer. Howard became emaciated and had a sort of yellow cast about him. Howard was given just a few weeks to live but as weak as he was he traveled to a Kathryn Kuhlman healing service and came back saying he had been healed. As a boy of ten or twelve years I did not know quite how o process this. What I do know is that without medical intervention Howard gained back his weight and ruddy complexion and died many years later as an old man in an old folk's home.

My dad's conversion lasted about a year before he slipped back. He never smoked or drank again and he prayed and read the word but he almost never attended church. His old attitude and disposition seemed to return, at least in part. He lived his life as hardworking faithful provider, but an angry solitary man who loved his wife, his son, and his grandchildren, but had trouble expressing his feelings. I sometimes think the woman dominated Kuhlman ministry was not a good fit for my dad.

At the age of 14, I rebelled against my mother's efforts to drag me to Youngstown. After all, my dad did not participate in the church thing, so why should I? I also discovered beer and fell into the company of a somewhat rebellious crowd. My pals were mischievous but not malicious. We faithfully attended one of the Presbyterian churches (my new church) and secretly drank a lot of beer. There were times that the drinking was quite excessive and only by God's mercy we did not perish from over consumption of hard liquor or in an automobile accident.

I was graduated from high school as an honor student and a member of the national honor society. My plans were the military or college, but one of my teachers befriended me and encouraged me to consider becoming a teacher. I decided to attend Slippery Rock College and become a math teacher. I lived at home and worked part-time which allowed me to get a college education with no debt. As a college student I did not attend church and would probably, if asked, have said I was an agnostic. At the same time I was a Christian sympathizer and knew the basics about accepting Jesus as Savior and Lord. I was contemptuous of churches that did not preach Christ. As a child, I had prayed the sinner's prayer on several occasions but it had seemed that nothing had happened. I was, however, haunted by Howard Stein's apparent healing and the dramatic changes in the lives of some of the people I met at the Kuhlman meetings. Blacks and whites were having church together in the 40's and 50's. I will never forget the sweet old black lady, Ethel Lyle. She hugged me every time she saw me, and every birthday and every Christmas Ethel sent me a dollar bill. This lady had barely enough resources to care for herself, but she never forgot my birthday or Christmas. My mother and Ethel became fast friends and prayer partners. A common love for Christ knocked down the barriers of race before my very eyes. I vividly remember the scene we caused when my mother, grandmother, and I as a little boy visited Ethel at her work place at "Idora Park." Bystanders were shocked when these white people gave this old black cleaning lady hugs, not at the church but in the park.

I was graduated from Slippery Rock College in May of 1966, was married in August, and began a 33 year teaching career in the Oil City Area Schools. Things really seemed to be going well. My wife, Barb was graduated from Grove City College in 1967 and joined me as a teacher in the Oil City Schools. We were far from rich, but two kids from blue collar families with two teacher salaries - well it seemed like we had arrived.

We bought our first house in 1968 and on the surface it seemed like we were doing very well. However, inside I was a hurting puppy. We had absolutely no church life and I was questioning the meaning of life. Barb had been a faithful Presbyterian in her teen years but had no real deep connection. Our teaching careers were going well but I felt so empty. Alcohol seemed to be my only solace. The internal struggle I was having seemed to drive me to put on some legendary drunks. I know my drinking behaviors were affecting our marriage, but I seemed to be helplessly caught in a destructive pattern.

In 1970 our first child, Jeremy was born. This was certainly a landmark event in our lives. I loved my wife; but the love I felt for my son transcended anything I had ever experienced, and it added a deeper turmoil to my life. I used to sneak into his room while he slept and ponder the question "Why did I bring this little boy into this purposeless, meaningless world?" I continued in my self-centered destructive pattern, but I was now vulnerable through my son.

Jeremy was three years old and we were enjoying a family breakfast when Jeremy suddenly began having a gran mal seizure. Neither Barb nor I had ever seen such a thing before and we thought Jeremy was dying. We called an ambulance; but before it arrived Jeremy began breathing normally, and we rushed him to the hospital by car. This was the beginning of the greatest trial of our lives and in a way it continues to this day.

The Doctors at Oil City Hospital did their best to determine why Jeremy had the seizure, but to no avail. To give an indication of my spiritual state at the time, my Baptist Minister Cousin Ken McDeavitt came to the hospital to pray for us, and I was mortified when he prayed for us publicly in the hospital lobby. Also, Jeremy continued to have seizures with an increasing frequency and no medication seemed to be able to stop them. We were referred to Cleveland Clinic and after many visits and two separate month long hospitalizations; we were told Jeremy was having a type of "myoclonic" seizure, as well as some other types. There were days when Jeremy had more seizures than we could count. His body would suddenly go limp, he uttered a strange sound and his forehead would crash onto the floor between his feet, his body in complete collapse. The Clinic doctors suggested Jer wear a hockey helmet, but at the age of three he refused. As a result, over time he broke his nose multiple times and lost his front teeth. We wore a path to Cleveland Clinic. The first of two crushing blow came when one of our Cleveland doctors told us that there was a 98% correlation between this type of seizure activity and mental retardation.

It is very hard to accept bad news about your children. We headed off to Saint Louis Children's Hospital for a second opinion. This involved a week long hospitalization and the same tests and the same result. We were crushed by the news, but we were still in denial. We tried to find a cause but there was no medical explanation. We thought perhaps we should have no more children. We felt there was no way we could deal with a second child with such problems. Little did we know that as we pondered this thought, Joshua was already on the way.

Joshua brought joy into our lives but also some fears. As our boys grew older, Jeremy's struggles continued. One morning Jeremy had a seizure as he stood at the toilet. His little forehead crashed against the edge of the toilet with such force that it ruptured capillaries and bleeding occurred between his flesh and his skull. The doctors at first thought his skull had been fractured and that spinal fluid had leaked out. Our local pediatrician examined him and a day later called Barbara with a mission. He told her that Jeremy had a degenerative brain disease and would not live to be an adolescent and he couldn't understand why our Cleveland Clinic doctors had not come clean with us. He also told Barbara that we needed to just keep Jeremy sedated until he dies and give our attention to our younger son. I can't understand how any doctor could tell a young woman such a thing over the phone but somehow God would use it for good.. However, the immediate effect on Barb was crushing. Her call came to the school for me to come home for a family emergency. She was in hysteria and the school folks kindly sent me on my way home without question.

It was the worst of times and it was the best of times. I arrived home to a hysterical wife and by the time she communicated the state of affairs to me I think I too was hysterical. The second crushing blow of our lives had landed with full effect. Barb and I wept together and at the same time it became very clear to us that we desperately needed God. The gospel message that I had heard preached as a young boy, the love of Christ that my mother had always shared, and our calamity made us acutely aware of our need as well as our only source of hope. By God's grace our circumstances and His sovereign plan brought us to our knees. We prayed together for the first time in our married life and asked Jesus Christ to come into our hearts. We knew little about theology but we knew that much. I got up from my knees somehow thinking we might be the only couple in Venango County to have ever asked Christ into their hearts. Thankfully we would soon find out this was not true.

I often neglect the fact that through all our travail with Jeremy my mother was praying for us. When I shared the events of the day with her I'm sure there was much rejoicing as well as concern for her grandson. The Holy Spirit used her council to make us aware of our need to be part of a local church. This made us very uncomfortable and I was assigned the task of finding one while Barb cared for a sick little boy. My first choice was the church with the bus ministry that faithfully stopped to pick up the urchin kids in our neighborhood. I'm sure God was guiding me because this loving church body took on the Husband family as a project. They extended every level of care you could imagine. We were loved, discipled, baptized by emersion, taught scripture, and given ministry responsibilities. They helped us get off to a good start in the Christian faith.

Our son Jeremy is now 36, and still with us. He is handicapped due to a seizure problem that is still resistant to medication. He also suffers from apnea, and frontal lobe brain damage. Each day is still a challenge for us but we are not sad anymore. Our whole immediate family knows Jesus, and somehow God used this trial to bring us home. Thank you Jesus!