3 Orchids for Miss Betty
By: Cynthia Snapp
3 Orchids for Miss Betty by Cynthia Snapp
Published by Cynthia Snapp at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition
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Editorial Consultant: Laura Gray
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Chapter I Walking in the valley of the venomous serpent
Chapter II The power of agreement
Chapter III The valley of decision
Chapter IV Psalm 23:4 / “Yea, though I walk through”
Chapter V 1 John 5:4 / “And this is the victory”
Chapter VI John 11:9 / “Are there not twelve”
Chapter VII James 1:2 / “My brethren count it all joy”
Chapter VIII James 4:13 / “For what is your life”
Chapter IX John 3:15 / “Should not perish”
Conclusion
Dedicated to:
I want to acknowledge the grace and mercy of God in my life. I thank Him for loving me with an unconditional love.
I acknowledge the mighty work of the Holy Spirit in my life as my Comforter.
To the Lord Jesus Christ, who without His love and compassion, I would not taste of the gift of eternal life.
To my husband, Dicky, who stayed in the boat no matter how rough the storm got, he rode it out.
To my children, Hope and Richard, who will never understand the depth of my love for them.
To my children, Chad and Carrie, who will never understand their role in my life in making me who I am today and my love for them.
To my sister, Barbara and her husband, John for their unwavering support.
To David, my brother who I love.
Preface
As a young girl growing up in the rural landscape of Kentucky, I never imagined the Lord could use me as a mouthpiece. As it was with David in the field tending the sheep, I was a middle-aged, working class woman who raised her children, cooked dinner and did laundry.
I consider it a privilege to share with you the miracles the Lord performed in the life of my Mother and in the lives of those around her. There are many books written on cancer survivors and I praise God for those who are healed and delivered from cancer. It is my desire to encourage anyone who is fighting cancer and may not be listed among the survivors the victory is still yours - I believe your victory was attained through Love.
In order to protect the confidences of some, a few names have been changed but the story is based on true events and this is my memoir. May my sharing the final events of Miss Betty’s life bring encouragement and faith into your life and may it bring glory to the Universe from which she came and returned home victorious.
Cynthia Snapp
Wherefore seeing we are surrounded with a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and sin, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Christ, the author and finisher of our faith;
Hebrews 12:1
Introduction
“And on the seventh day God ended His work and he rested”
Genesis 2:2
It’s a Saturday afternoon in mid June. We have witnessed the dawning of the 21st century. The world is moving at an unbelievable speed with technology and inventions. However, one thing hasn’t changed throughout history of time. Babies will be born. From the moment we are born, death’s pursuit is upon us.
Today is no different.
I see ahead of us the Fayette County police blocking traffic in the left lane and stopping traffic in the intersection. We’re following close behind a white hearse. There is a sense of protection in my spirit over the passenger in the white hearse; after all, the hearse is carrying my mother. Today was very different than I would have ever imagined. Today, I regarded her as a mighty woman of God, an evangelist in her own right, not just my mother.
Today, I realized and recognized who she was in Christ. I could feel the presence of angels traveling with us and for the first time in my life I sensed a presence of royalty.
How could this be? After all, this was Betty Jane, my mother born in 1927 in poverty, an only child, raised in an apartment and married at sixteen. She was widowed at age thirty-eight, and now at age seventy-two she was working fulltime as a cashier in a local dime store. Did she work there for the social interaction? Not as much as she did to make ends meet. How is it as we passed the cars along the highway, I felt like I was part of a royal caravan? I’d been in funeral processions before; my father died when I was eight.
Today was different.
How does someone go from being born poor to being carried to her final resting place in a white hearse? How can you feel as though a team of white horses are pulling your chariot when you barely have the money to fill the gas tank? Why did it seem as though the whole world stopped for just a few minutes while someone with less than a celebrated name passed by?
There is only one answer to all of these questions. Jesus. My mother had accepted Him as her Savior in the early 1980’s. For almost twenty years she had come to know Him intimately. For the first fifty years of her life she was a good person by the world’s standards but had fallen into many of the traps of the world and suffered from alcohol abuse and chronic cigarette smoking. She had given birth to four children, had lost her first husband to an early death, and then married the man who stood beside her first husband as his best man.
She traveled many highways in her lifetime. When she married at sixteen, the couple left their home in Kentucky, and worked in the iron industry. They owned a trailer and pulled it around the United States following the jobs. They lived in almost every state west of the Mississippi River. She also experienced more valley adventures than she mountain top experiences that is until she made a promise one-day. She and her second husband were traveling back from Florida and he was intoxicated. It was normal to have the bottle of whiskey underneath the front seat. Although she participated in the drinking, she had reached a limit in fear for her life. She prayed a simple prayer that day. “Lord, if you will get me back home alive today, I will live for you.” She had never been born-again; she wasn’t raised in a spiritual atmosphere and had lived in the bondage to things of the world.
The Lord heard her prayer. Upon returning home she would no longer drink to the access she had for the past fifteen years. She began to attend church, received Jesus as her Savior, and worked daily at overcoming the substance that had controlled her life for almost two decades. Although she became free from the clutches of alcoholism, she continued to live with a husband who chose not to seek the same freedom. She attended church by herself. The persecution she endured for the next twenty years would make her the woman of God she was as she prepared to enter into Eternal Life.
This is the account of the last seven days she spent on earth. The Lord poured out His mercy upon her for her faithfulness to Him during the last twenty years in ways that would even surprise her.
I have no doubt her reward was great as we stood by and watched the Lord walk beside her during those last seven days.
I hope this book will encourage you, family members, or friends who may be facing a life threatening disease. There are many cases of supernatural miracles, of miraculous healing. I don’t deny existence of disease. I only deny the right of the disease to destroy the life of a believer. The fact remains God is in control and some people are healed of incurable diseases for His glory while others are called home and the impact their lives has on others produces fruit for future generations. Seeds planted by those who don’t see miracle manifestations still grow in the lives of those around them and the work continues, even though they have crossed over. God is still in control.
“by whose stripes you were healed.”
1 Peter 2:24
Chapter I
Walking in the valley of the venomous serpent, Cancer
Mother knew she had a mass in one of her breasts but fear had kept her from seeking medical attention. She was working at Terry’s 5 & 10, a local dime store, and needed every penny she made. She thought she couldn’t afford to take off or the medical expenses would exceed the Medicare she received. She would share with her friends as they came through the store what she had found and would get advice from them. The advice was unanimous; get it checked as soon as possible. Mother was seventy-two years old and as a young girl had bright red hair so to say that she was headstrong was an understatement.