by Kay Heitsch
When your child dies, parents respond in different ways. Emotional pain is hard to deal with. Bill and I reacted differently.
Right away, I was offered drugs by a doctor. From experience, I knew this was not going to be good for me. Also, from experience, I knew alcohol was not going to help me either. So, I chose to give myself and Todd over to the LORD. However, my husband Bill decided to drink to numb the pain.
I grew up with an alcoholic father. I learned that harping at a person didn't stop the drinking. So I decided to say nothing at all about the drinking. Instead, I prayed that the Lord would replace the drinking with something else.
Every day when Bill got off work, I was in the bedroom praying he would not bring home beer and the Lord would replace his drinking with something else.
I hadn't been a Christian very long, so I didn't think to tell God what I thought He should replace the drinking with. Weeks went by when I did not see any results from my praying.
I had started to attend a small church. The people were friendly, and they had a music ministry. So one week, I asked Bill to come over because we were going to have a potluck. Unfortunately, Bill was less than enthusiastic with his response, "Someone has to work for a living." I must say I was pretty surprised when he walked in the door of the church.
A lady was sitting in a pew in front of us when she heard Bill singing. Betty turned around and touched Bill's hand and told him what a great voice he had. She expressed the idea that he might think about joining the music ministry. Bill hit the door!
When we had another potluck, I told Bill about it, and he came back over. As we were eating, one of the people from the music ministry stopped by our table. Carol said she had heard from her mom Betty that Bill had a great singing voice. So Carol invited Bill to stay after the potluck to join the group to practice for the upcoming Easter program. Much to my surprise, Bill agreed.
To make a long story shorter, Carol and Joe gave Bill keys to the church. They packaged up a box of performance tapes, showed him how to use the music system, and told Bill he could come in anytime and practice for the Easter program.
Instead of stopping to buy beer, Bill went over to this little church to practice singing for the upcoming Easter program.
My prayer was answered unexpectedly! I will never forget this! I would never have thought God would replace drinking with singing Christian songs, but He did!
