Hold My Hand…: And I’Ll Walk with You

By Batia Meira

I was raised in a German Roman Catholic family. Many hardships resulted from alcoholism, poverty and loss of three children at a young age. She was married at 17 and her children experienced child abuse at the hand of their father with a dismal outlook in breaking free. Through the grace of God, she was able to escape this daily abuse and she became a single parent of five children at the age of 32 with no child support and no finances.
Having a love for Jesus caused her to use her faith in many traumatic times. She leaned on the LORD as she overcame one trial after another.

When she was 44 years old, she answered the call to follow the LORD. She was then able to overcome obstacles with a new energy and strength. Working on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation was a huge blessing to the Lakota Sioux Indians in introducing them to training and in obtaining employment. Many anointed experiences occurred while ministering with her late husband to the Native American people throughout Canada and the U.S.

She moved to Canada with her husband, leaving her job for the State of North Dakota where she worked for 16 years. She left all behind her to travel to new territory and into a new culture, going forward to minister full time for the LORD. She traveled to North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico, and provinces in Canada such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia with her late husband teaching the people the love of God and deliverance from bondages and unforgiveness.

Since her husband passed away, she now touches many lives as she ministers and she continues to work full time as a job counselor in Minnesota, being a blessing to many.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Aug 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504362764

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Copyright © 2016 Batia Meira.

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Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-5043-6275-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-6276-4 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 07/18/2016

Contents

Acknowledgement

Introduction

God’s Blessings are Real

Curse Before I Was Born

My Place in the Family

The Black Buggy

Tears of Loneliness

The House of God

The Accident

Uncle Florian

Uncle John

Married at 17

Home From the War

Marty

Life on the Farm

Lenny

A Doctor in Town

Now How Should I Cope?

A Way Out

Rebellion

Forgiveness

A New Beginning

The Call of God

Losing My Father

A Real Job

Born Again!

The Awesome Presence of God

God, Please Take Her Home

Discerning of Spirits

The Dreamcatcher

Unforgiveness and Healing

Healing

A New Job

Indian Relics Inside the Church

A True Man of God

Trust

A Curse

My Canadian Family

Summary

Endnotes

Acknowledgement

This book took many years to write because of many tears, nightmares, forgiveness and going forward for every major struggle in my life. I tried writing in 1975 or so but then it was too painful. Other times it took twenty years, other times, less. I have begun and quit, begun and quit. This one of my major achievements, praise God. It is only through Him that I could complete the work that I know that God set before me.

Healing from the loss of my sons, suffering under the hand of my ex-husband and wiping the tears from my children’s eyes, and going forward to going backward sometimes through the hand of relationships in my life. Yet today, all is forgiven. I believe that through it all, I can help others who are struggling in the pain of their lives. My God has been with me through all of them, as He states in His Word.

This inner strength showed me that there will be a better life through it all. I believed that there was a reason that I experienced so many things, but I had faith in my fellow man. I believed that my parents did the best they could and that there were people in my life for a purpose, even if it was for a short time.

Believing in God as a very young child was my blueprint. After going through the pains under the hands of many and overcoming the death of my sons, I tried to look at the bigger picture. Before I was born again, I went through periods of anger, solitude, despair and depression. But praise God, God had mercy on me and my family. His revelation gave me a vision of what He wanted me to experience, and how to use those times to help others.

His Word is the way, the truth and the life. There is life in every word in the Word, which is the inspired word of God. It is His plan for our salvation so that everyone will be someday with Him.

Up to the time that I am no longer on this earth, I leave this legacy to my children and others’ lives that I have touched through my work and in my daily life.

God bless you while you are reading this book.

I am a child held in Jesus’ arms and I look to Him with the purest love that a child has for her Father. She loves Him with all of her heart. She examines every feature and curve of His nose andchin. Oh, how she loves Jesus! He means EVERYTHING to her. He is on her mind at all times when He is near or far away. He rocks her and consoles her. He tells her that now she has no troubles. She has Jesus, and that alone fulfills all of her needs. She is covered with the blanket of love and security. As He walks, she follows Him because she trusts Him with her whole heart. His light shines on her path. He blesses and anoints her every day of her life. His promises are fulfilled, one by one. In return the child loves Him and obeys His commands. What a beautiful relationship a daughter has for her Father!

Meditation from the Holy Spirit

When I first found out about my sister’s physical and sexual abuse in her family, I thought I had a nightmare and finally realized that it wasn’t a nightmare at all, but real. A spouse or partner should never have that much control over another person(s). Many views have changed in the past 40 years towards domestic and sexual abuse. There are now Women’s Shelters, help lines and counselors who are available to help and strengthen the abused person so the abuse does not have to continue for years.

My sister’s strength was her love for Our Lord and still continues today with her walk with Him. She believes in the Word of the Bible which helped her become a very confident and forgiving woman.

Blessings always, dear Sister!

Introduction

My mother and father were thirty-four years old when they met in a bar, and within three months they were married. When they asked the monsignor if they could get married, the monsignor agreed, because he figured they were old enough to make the right decision. If they didn’t know for sure by that age, would they ever know? That was what my mother told me how she met and married my father.

My mother was a praying woman and she thought before she spoke. She reminded me of where it says in the Bible, and she pondered these things in her heart¹. Mom spent many hours reading her prayer book and the Bible. We loved sitting around her and looking at our big family Bible on Sunday afternoons. This Bible was the one that most people kept on their coffee table to impress visitors. My mother kept our family Bible and her prayer book on top of the dresser, and it was set aside for reading on Sundays, not at other times. The colored pictures of Jesus in the Bible were so wonderful, and I just stared at them for hours. After Mom was done reading, most of us (but not me), would take a nap for a good share of the afternoon.

My mother was very short in stature – 4’10" – and she weighed about 180 pounds. Her older sister, Sister Mary Edgar, spent most of her life at the convent, and Sister would tell my mother how wonderful it is to be a nun.

When my mother was twenty years old, finally her mother gave her permission to go the convent. Mom was very happy! She wanted to pursue her life-long dream of serving her Lord. She was studying and progressing very nicely when she suffered from tuberculosis. After trying so hard to get to the convent, she now had to leave. Mom spent the next year recovering. After she was healed, Mom went back home to help her mother. She was no longer accepted to be a nun, which was her lifelong dream.

I know this bothered my mother when she had to leave the convent, feeling as a failure and missing out on her dream of being a nun like her sister. My mother thought very highly of those who entered religious life, especially priests and nuns, and she spoke of them often. Some of the nuns at the Roman Catholic hospital in our town knew my mother personally. In my mother’s family, there were many of my cousins who went into the priesthood and into the convent. It was commonplace for us to have relatives who entered into the religious life.

One in particular was Sister Emmanuel which was my mother’s niece, my cousin. Sister studied pharmacology and she worked as a pharmacist in the Catholic hospital in my home town. She was so intelligent and soft-spoken. We just loved being around her as there was so much peace about her. We stopped to visit her quite often and she gave us newspapers with such interesting articles about world issues and how the Catholic Church was reaching out to people in the remote areas. One unique trait Sister had was to memorize all of the telephone numbers of her relatives so that she never had to use a telephone book. She practiced her distinct memorization her entire life until her memory began to fade.

Sister Emmanuel told me one time that she wished to play the piano, as to her it was one of the greatest gifts that God gave. When she was in her 70’s, she had an opportunity while she was retired at the convent. Little did she know that that was one my dreams from age 12 to the present time.

Dad was a small man, about 5’5 and he weighed about 120 pounds. He was a very good-looking man with brown hair and beautiful blue eyes. He smoked tailor-made" cigarettes and his pipe, and he enjoyed drinking beer. My father came from a large family (17 siblings), and he was one of the youngest children in his family. My grandmother was a small woman with red hair and blue eyes. She had a very bad temper and she had set her own set of rules. She walked to church every morning to begin the day, and when she returned she began baking bread and homemade egg noodles.

As young children we were not allowed to go into her guest room, as she wanted it to remain clean and not messy. The floor was linoleum with a very pretty floral pattern, and this floor was always waxed and shiny. My sisters and I were scolded to remain perfectly still, don’t speak, and don’t fidget. We had to be on our best behavior, and we were warned ahead of time by my father to be still while we were at Grandma’s house and not to get her angry.

Because of my father’s upbringing, he was also very strict. He believed in always doing the right thing – going to church², working hard³, being honest⁴, getting an education, respecting your parents⁵ and all those in authority⁶.

Since my mother and father waited to marry until they were 34 years old, my aunts and uncles were elderly when I was a child and my cousins were already attending high school when I was in grade school. There were no cousins my age to talk to, and it seemed that my parents were extremely old and old fashioned.

Due to my father’s drinking, my father raped my mother while they were dating, and my mother conceived. When my mother married my father, my