During my years of relationship with First Nations people, I have had the privilege of being connected with pastor, counsellor and elder Lorne Shepherd. Lorne has been consistently involved with my story: he counselled me and became my spiritual father. His comments in the “Pause and Reflect” sections are written from a counsellor’s perspective to bring understanding and revelation to various experiences in my story.
Also, I am honoured to have the involvement of pastor and Native American Music Award recipient Becky Thomas in this project. Her contribution of the “Discussion and Study Guide” has enriched and given depth to my story. It motivates people to explore their own hearts and relationships to bring wholeness and healing. She also wrote the questions for “Pause and Reflect,” giving readers a chance to consider and apply Lorne’s nuggets of wisdom within the context of their own lives and circumstances.
I pray that the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened in reading my story and that God would lead you, as you consider the wisdom Lorne and Becky share, to discover the blessings God has reserved for you.
Belma Vardy
Introduction to
Pause and Reflect and
Discussion and Study Guide
Dear Reader,
While reading Belma’s story, you may identify with her experiences. It may open old wounds and trigger painful memories. When such memories surface, we can choose to stuff them back into the dark recesses or dusty attics of our minds or to face them and begin a lengthy cleanup.
Cleaning old wounds can be extremely painful; it takes a brave soul to choose this route. However, in facing the pain we come to understand that a broken heart, like a broken bone, needs to be “reset” to function properly. If we care about our emotional and mental health like we do our physical health, we won’t stuff the painful memories back even deeper into the dark places of our minds. We will seek healing for their causes rather than apply a Band-Aid of addictions to mask the festering outward symptoms of our brokenness.
Belma neither hid her pain nor became her own doctor, spending years in self-help groups. Instead, she faced her troubles as she waited on the Great Physician and Wonderful Counsellor to examine her and choose the method of treatment. A good patient, she obeyed His instructions—a habit she continues in other areas of her life. This book is a narrative of how God redeemed and restored her and shaped her life into a masterpiece of great victory and miracles as she focused her worship and devotion on Him.
As you read Belma’s story, we invite you to slow down enough to hear and capture God’s heart for yourself. Lift your eyes heavenward. Invite your heavenly Father to reset your heart. Find out where He is and what He is doing in your own story. Allow yourself to get “unstuck” from past and present circumstances. Know that you’re not alone.
To this end, we provide two resources for you, intended to give you, dear reader, an opportunity to come closer to God, our Healer. “Pause and Reflect” sections at the end of several chapters provide reflections from Lorne Shepherd, a Christian counsellor and Belma’s friend, and following the epilogue is a “Discussion and Study Guide.” Both resources can be used for personal use or in a small-group setting.
Healing came to Belma as she focused on loving and obeying God and allowed some of her needs to be met through faith-filled, faithful friends, like Lorne Shepherd. We encourage you to get the support of friends and to use the study guide in a discussion group to gain insights from others.
Whether you choose to use one or both of these studies, be blessed with health, hope and understanding. The promise of Jeremiah 29:11–13 is for you: “I know the plans I have for you…to prosper you and not to harm you…to give you hope and a future…You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (NIV).
On behalf of Belma and Lorne,
Becky Thomas
P.S. If you haven’t yet yielded your life to the Great Physician and Counsellor, why not do it now? Use this prayer as a guide:
Heavenly Father, thank You for loving me today. I know I have erred many times. Please forgive me for these wrongs, and heal me and those I have wronged from sin’s effects, even as You heal me from effects of wrongs committed against me. Thank You for providing Your Son, Jesus, who paid for all sin by taking the punishment on His own body through death on a cross. My Healer and Counsellor, I invite You into my heart and choose to live life on Your terms. Amen.
Chapter 1
Terror in the Night
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge…
You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day.
PSALM 91:4–5, NIV
It was hot and sticky in Berlin one August night. I was five and a half years old. My grandmother, restless in her sleep beside me, pushed the blanket aside. We shared the only bed in the back of the electrical store and needed no covers on our sweaty bodies. I couldn’t sleep, wondering what she had meant when she said, “Something big is going to happen.” It didn’t sound good.
Oma always seemed to know things before everybody else did. Many times I’d heard the story of Oma’s premonition years earlier that something “very bad” was coming. She had stockpiled canned goods and preserved vegetables and fruit from her garden. She had been right. Her preparations helped Oma, Opa and my mom survive World War II while many people died of starvation. For about six months now she had been having similar feelings. When Oma sensed something was about to happen, Opa paid attention.
I could hear Opa snoring beside her. He had come home to our little store late after making house calls to fix electrical problems. He seemed concerned about the intensity of political unrest in Berlin at that time and often talked to Oma about it.
I drank in my beloved grandparents’ conversations and, in spite of my age, was aware of the politics in our city.
Since the war the Russians ruled the city’s east side and the Allied nations ruled the west. Opa said everyone was talking about the Russians being “very angry” that many people from the east were coming into West Berlin looking for better jobs. The Russians were losing good workers. Just this week 12,500 had come across. That was 2,000 more than last week.
Oma huffed that it was “their own fault! Who would ever want to stay in East Germany under Communism anyway?” After all, the unfortunate East Berliners were fed up. There were no jobs, and there was no food for them in the Russian-controlled east. I had heard her say she and Opa were relieved that when the city was divided, both our apartment and store were in the west and we didn’t have to live under Communism. Now rumours were that the Russians would tighten up the borders so people couldn’t get out.
We didn’t know that Nikita Khrushchev, the Russian prime minister, had told East Germany they needed to close the border because the mass exodus of citizens was wreaking havoc on the economy. It was all a big secret—until that night!
It was two o’clock in the morning. Unable to sleep, I was lying staring into the darkness when a sudden roar broke the stillness of the night and intensified rapidly.
ATTACKED
Before I could react or process what it might be, the darkness was split by great strobes of light flashing through the store’s windows next to the room where we were sleeping.
Oma and Opa were suddenly awake. “Stay! We don’t know what’s happening,” Oma urged me as they jumped out of bed and ran to the front of the store to look outside.
Our little black-and-white wirehaired fox terrier, Purzel, was barking hysterically. Frightened, I stood on our bed crying, trying to see out a window. The street was lit up as if in daytime.
Beams from hovering