Grace from on High: A Novel

By Elaine Martin

Our marriage was in trouble. In desperation, I cried out to the Lord for help. I don't know why I waited until I was desperate. God is our only way out of trouble and is ready to answer us. When I went to the Lord in prayer and read his Word, I realized how much he loves me. The Lord showed me how to love in the sermon the next Sunday. The Lord called Larry, and he responded. The Lord bonded our marriage to be better than ever and sent us on a great adventure.

By grace, the Lord showed us the way. He saved us, filled us, healed us, gave us miracles, protected us, and guided us to where he wanted us to be. All we had to do was listen to his voice and trust him. That is why I titled the book Grace from on High.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543415896

Book preview

Chapter 1

CRYING OUT TO GOD

Hi, my name is Elaine Martin. It’s a warm September morning in 1975. The alarm just went off, so I rolled over and shut it off, then sat up and slipped into my housecoat and slippers. It was time to get up and start breakfast, so my husband Larry, could take off for work, and I could get our five children ready to catch the bus for school.

Larry got up and headed into the bathroom. He shaved and combed his almost black hair with long sideburns, then went back into the bedroom to get dressed for work. He has a carpet installation business. He works with his helper, Steve, out of his new 1975 silver van, that he recently had customized with custom windows, and a raised bed in the back, that he carpeted. He could hide most of his carpet tools underneath the bed. He also bought some cabinets and an icebox, installing them inside the van. He calls it the silver streak.

Larry had come home late last night smelling like alcohol. He’d been out drinking with his drinking buddies again.

I had reamed him out when he got home, for not coming home earlier to be with the children and me, and for missing the dinner I had prepared for him. I wasn’t too surprised that Larry and I didn’t have much to say to each other at the breakfast table this morning after that argument we had last night.

Where is the newspaper? I want to check if my installation ad is in there today. Larry demanded.

It’s in the living room. I’ll get it for you, I answered.

After breakfast, and checking the ads, Larry left for work.

I did the hustle-bustle of helping our five children, Mae, Daniel, Joseph, Renee, and Dale, get ready for school. I packed their lunches and sent them off to their bus. I got myself dressed after the children had gone to the bus stop, thinking how quiet the house was. I started to think about everything that was going on in my life lately.

I was depressed about the way our marriage was turning out. Larry wasn’t home a lot of the time. He was spending more and more time with his so-called buddies and less and less time with his family. I didn’t know what to do to get us to do things together again. It seemed like we hardly knew each other anymore.

I started my chores by making the beds, straightening up the bedrooms, and cleaning up the breakfast dishes. After I straightened up the house, I went to our bedroom and threw myself down on the bed. I started to cry and pour out my troubles to the Lord. Lord Jesus, I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t believe in divorce, but what else can I do if Larry doesn’t want to be with me anymore?

41305.png

Memories of when we first got married came back to me. We had lived in San Jose, California, when we got married on February 4, 1961, in a small neighborhood church we had started going to. That afternoon, after our wedding, we went to the Santa Cruz coast overnight for our honeymoon, and rented a motel room. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon. We walked to the river across the street from the motel. Larry had brought his fly rod, so he tried to catch some fish while I sat on a rock on the shoreline watching him. He didn’t catch any, but it was a relaxing time together.

Later, we drove to the pier where we grabbed a bite to eat from one of its small food places, then walked around looking in the different shop windows. We came to Stagnaros Fishing Charters and booked a fishing trip for the next day. After that, we decided to go for a stroll on the beach, hand in hand, and talked about when we would get our vacations later in the year. We would go away together for a week somewhere.

Larry had been working at an auto parts store, and I had been working at a bank.

The next day was a fun day out on the Stagnaros fishing excursion. When we got back to the pier, Stagnaros cleaned our catch and put them on ice for us. They thought it was neat that we went fishing on our honeymoon.

41308.png

That summer Larry’s dad and mom and three sisters drove from Pennsylvania to California to visit us. I hadn’t met them in person yet, and was a little nervous, but I didn’t have to be, because we got along great.

We had offered our bedroom to Larry’s parents to sleep in because we only had a one bedroom upstairs apartment that we were renting, but they had said they didn’t want to take our bedroom from us, so they slept on the sofa bed in the living room.

The two youngest girls, Cary and Joy, slept in bedrolls on the floor, and Lynn, Larry’s oldest sister, talked her parents into letting her sleep overnight with my sister, Jo Ann, in her apartment.

Our apartment building had a swimming pool in the center of all the apartments, so Larry and I and the girls went swimming the next day. Larry’s parents didn’t go in the pool, but they sat at the poolside. We all had a great time visiting together. Before they left, Larry and I had showed them most of the sights around our area. We all went to the Santa Cruz coast one day too.

Later that year, in September, Larry and I had finally got our vacations at the same time, so we could take a little trip together.

We had just found out that I was pregnant a couple weeks before our vacation. We were excited and had called Larry’s parents right away about the news.

We decided to go camping at Huntington Lake.

When we got there, we set up the tent that Larry had borrowed from his friend at work, and then rented a rowboat to go fishing. We caught some brown trout, so Larry cleaned the fish, and he made a campfire that evening and cooked them up along with some canned potatoes in the skillet that we had brought from home.

I had got a little dizzy while we were fishing that day, and my stomach was doing flip-flops. Smelling the food just made me feel worse, and I couldn’t eat, so I went to bed in the tent. The smell of the tent didn’t help my stomach either.

Other than being sick to my stomach off and on that week, we had a nice relaxing time together.

I found out after we got back home, that being sick to my stomach was because of the pregnancy. That went on for a couple more months.

It took a long time before I would eat trout again, and I still don’t like canned potatoes.

41310.png

On Mother’s Day of the next year, May 13, 1962, Mae was born. I thought it was great that I became a mother to our beautiful daughter on Mother’s Day.

Later that summer, we went to Yosemite National Park for a couple of days.

We had left Mae with my sister Jo Ann and her husband Phil to babysit, who had a new little baby girl of their own named Leah.

When we arrived in Yosemite in our little Karmann Ghia, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, we found a place in the campground area, got the box of food out of the car, put it on the picnic table that was provided, and made a campfire in the fire-ring to heat our food for dinner.

When we finished our dinner, we went to the main lodge area to watch the firefalls display. That was really fascinating.

When we got back to camp, we took our sleeping bags out of the car and spread them out to make a double sleeping bag between the car and the fire-ring. We didn’t have a tent with us this time. The table with the box of food supplies was on the other side of the fire-ring.

After we got into the sleeping bag, Larry noticed a couple of raccoon coming around the table. He threw rocks at them to get them to leave. He gathered some more small rocks that were close by, and made a little stack so he could scare them off if they came back.

We were settled in our sleeping bag, almost asleep, when Larry heard something again. Those raccoons are back again, he said. He turned to get a rock and saw a big bear by the table.

Elaine, there’s a big bear by the table. I’m going to run to the car.

I knew that I couldn’t get out of our sleeping bag in time to run anywhere, so I said, No, I can’t get out of the sleeping bag fast enough, so let’s just be still until it leaves. I held on to Larry and tried to keep still, but He was shaking like a leaf.

A minute later, I heard the bear sniffing at my head. I tried my best to hold still, but Larry had his eye on the bear and couldn’t stop shaking.

The bear finally turned around and left us alone. We heard the campers in the tent next to our campsite hollering, and we knew this was the best time to get out of the sleeping bag and into the