Written by David Edwards
In a dusty, windblown, tumbleweed-populated out-of-the way place in West Texas, I made a decision that would govern my entire life to follow. I was approaching eight years old in the spring of 1956 ─ spring, when new life emerges everywhere, even in the unforgiving harshness of the desert. The rains had come and the cacti blossomed in resurrected vitality. My sister Vicki was born that year, and this was her first home. This was the right time for my new birth.
In those days the place was known as Terminal and was home to maybe 1,000 residents who lived in old Army barracks built in World War II for bombardier trainees. During the war, the base was designated Midland Army Air Field, and there the training in the ultra-secret Norden Bombsight took place. In 1946 the military ceded the airfield to the city of Midland, which for a few years rented out the extant barracks to civilian families. My family was one of those. We lived across the street from the Tri-County Orphanage, and I recall with delight riding the bus with those children first to Sam Houston Elementary School and then to North Elementary School in Midland. At home we had an old television with poor reception to the two, sometimes three on clear days, area stations, so as often as I could I stole away to the nearby fire station at the landmark red-and-white checkered water tower, where the firemen allowed me to watch their color television, the first I had ever seen. I often crawled through an unlocked window to play in the grain-filled Webb-Davis warehouse down the way.
My upbringing was not a religious one. I recall having attended church only once before that life-transforming night in the spring. It was at the invitation of the large family living across the street from us, who brought me to their Sunday school class. Afterward, I only remembered the teacher writing the word “SIN” in large letters on the blackboard.
Months after that visit I lay on my bed in the dark reciting a poem-prayer that I had recently read somewhere: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” Prior to that night I typically would then drift into sleep. But this night would be different, monumentally different.
I began to tremble in a mysterious fear as I finished my prayer. Would I die tonight? Then in the darkness, Someone pulled the reassuring bed covers up over me, and my trembling stopped. The door neither opened nor closed before or after this experience, yet Someone’s presence became wonderfully palpable to me. Intuitively, I softly called into the darkness, “Lord Jesus, forgive my sins.” Even before my cry found completion I had an unmistakable sensation that the Presence which had been only outside me now flowed inside me. I prayed, “Thank you, God.” and went into a serene sleep.
After that night, I could not fully understand, much less explain, that event. But immediately there was an undeniable consequence of my personal cataclysm: my conscience had sprung to life—I no longer had the ability to lie that I formerly had, and as time went on, I could not participate in the destructive deeds of my peers, such as vandalism, theft, and the setting of fires in vacant lots. All such misdeeds would bring a conscience full of condemnation even in the contemplation of them. Intuitively, I fled from all such wrongs, and my fleeing has continued to this day.
Even more meaningfully, I received God Himself as my new life. Through a difficult human experience, including war combat, I have relied on Him and sought His counsel in all things as my real “inside Man.” In my years since Terminal, I have found that He has well-equipped me with the sensitive spiritual capacities of intuition, conscience, and loving divine companionship. From that pivotal night in the spring of 1956, He has not for one moment neglected me or abandoned me. So for me, to live simply means that I keep my spiritual eyes constantly turned and focused on Him within. My oxymoronic beginning in Terminal set a sure course for the rest of my life, for which I am eternally grateful.
DBE
Thank you for sharing such a meaningful story David.
I very much appreciate your saying so, Ron. It is a continuing story.
David
Thanks for your story, it was very moving. Now please us tell us more about your life after the Terminal Texas event. Most of us terminal kids had amazing lives. Some died without leaving any semblance having lived. I suspect like me and you God/Jesus Christ was a significant reason why we are here. As a Corpsman in Vietnam and then a Doctor I was able to save many lives. And our Terminal living, and North Elementary experience certainly helped us both, I am sure. I also try to go to Mass any time I can day or night.
Tell us more if you can. And thanks for joining the What’s in the Water Blog. Remember we want to hear your stories.
John, thank you for the warm welcome. There were several times over there I could easily have been somebody’s kill, but the Lord had His loving and protective hand over me. Recognizing that, I committed the remainder of my life to Him and asked that He preserve that commitment when I returned to Midland and beyond. Every day I up to now I’ve been clothed in His faithfulness. I’m sure you have had much the same or similar experience. I enrolled in Pre-Med at Tech, intending to be a missionary, perhaps to the Vietnamese, whom I came to love during that year of 1969. But, much to my surprise, the Lord moved me to Houston instead, a place I never wanted to live. In October 1970 I met and was smitten by the prettiest girl on campus. She loved the Lord, and we married the following December. I continued pre-med (biology) there, but she became with child and our precious daughter was born in June 1972. So I found a job in accounting and went to evening school. Soon after, when Leah was six weeks old, we followed the Lord to Philadelphia, another place I never wanted to live, to join about 50 others in planting a church. In 1974 the Lord called us to Boston for a similar work. We lived in Cambridge on Memorial Drive, and we shared the gospel mainly on the M.I.T., Harvard, and Boston University campuses, and the Lord blessed our two years there. Our son, Ben-David, was born there. When my daughter started developing a Boston accent, I pled with the Lord to get us back to Texas (only half joking). I finished my accounting degree and was offered a job in the Harvard comptroller’s office, but my inner feeling was to get back to Houston. While I worked there first as an auditor for Texas Commerce Bancshares and then as audit manager for Toyota, I worked on MBA and Law degrees in the evenings. When I finished, I was recruited by Exxon and returned to Midland. After some years there, I joined a small law firm in Odessa. As boom turned to bust, my practice turned to dust, so I joined the Feds first in Midland, then in San Antonio, Dallas, and Washington DC. After early retirement, I still felt I needed to help people with their health, so I went back to school, and, being a convert to natural health, received an ND degree. I interned for Jerry Tennant, MD, ND in Dallas for close to two years and found that time to be the most fulfilling of all my professional endeavors in the Lord. Feeling then it was time to finally retire, we came to the high desert and settled in a house in the foothills of the Spring Mountains west of Las Vegas.
Sorry for the long recitation, but I thought it a good opportunity to introduce myself to everyone. Thanks for reading.
Love this story.
Max, thank you for saying so.
a moving story!
Bob, thanks.
We’re you in the class with Dickie Glenn, Larry Atchley, John McNary, Ponda Bright, Linda Madison, Michael Hoy, and me, Mike Frizzell?
Hello, Mike! I haven’t seen you since you left Lee and went to Houston. I was a year behind you in Midland, so I don’t recognize the names you mentioned. I was in Mrs. Banks’s second grade class at Sam Houston and can only remember Sally Miller in that class and a little of George Dubya on the playground. I was in Mrs. McKay’s third grade class at North and can remember the Adair twins, Trey Grafa, Chuck Wilcox, Bill Aaron, and Jimmy Gilliam there. Mrs. McKay was my favorite, because she read to us the Bible every day following naptime. After third grade, my family moved to Odessa, where I was fourth-grade friends with Larry Gatlin (he sure sang a lot even then). My family returned to Midland, where I spent eighth grade at San Jacinto. I was at Lee ninth, tenth, and first half of eleventh. Second half I spent at Millikan High School in Long Beach, California (The why and wherefore of this interlude is the subject of a story I will soon submit here.) Twelfth grade at Coronado High School in Lubbock.
David, thank you for sharing this most personal witness from your awareness of our Lord’s saving grace. Wonderful share.
Mike, it’s so good to make contact with you. Deep calls unto deep.
Must have been another David White as I didn’t write this story.