Sound of My Song

By Karmen Worden

The prose and poems in this book tell the story of young Susanne Stephenson, growing up on the land in central Iowa, where early European settlers brought their Christian faith along with their need for land, a church, and a school. She marries her like-minded love, and after her husband earns advanced degrees in an Iowa university, they move their family to Virginia for her husband's work and for school for Susanne and the children. Susanne learns in the early years that she carries the defective gene for depression, but with specialty doctors providing the proper medication, she earns her degree, cares for her family, and teaches in the Virginia schools. The passion for writing becomes a catharsis that she uses to research the family's history. Susanne openly talks to God throughout her life, believing that the Creator walks with her through each of life's events. As she grieves through her husband's early death and the tragedy of the death of her sister's child, it becomes clear that depression is striking someone in each of the sibling's family, tragically - one by one. The poems listed in the book, follow her grief and gradual recovery - evident in the world of her words. As a single person wanting to marry again, she meets people of different cultures, religions, and values, but now, would God send this man to her door? This could not be possible, and she faces a diffcult decision. After changes from her earlier life, she is still talking to her God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640284999

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Karmen Worden

Sound of

My Song

ISBN 978-1-64028-498-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64028-499-9 (Digital)

Copyright © 2017 by Karmen Worden

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

A Humble Beginning

As my new Israeli husband and I were traveling to my home town in Iowa for a wedding, I knew he would suffer a culture shock when we reached the farm where I grew up. He had never seen a farm in the United States. He was born in Israel and lived there during his grade school years during World War II when Israel was surrounded by war. We had been married just a few months when we left our beautiful home in a suburb of Washington, DC, for a wedding near my own home in Jackson, Iowa. This man had served in the Israeli Army before he came to go to a university in New York. Now he is a professional engineer working in the city and living in the suburbs. In the Middle West, he couldn’t believe that while driving miles and miles, one could see only corn and bean fields.

With a bird’s eye view in my earlier life, you would look down on our farm laid out in colorful patchwork squares like the country quilts that Mother and Grandma made for all the children and grandchildren. In one field of green, black and white Holstein cows grazed in a pasture of clover. The soybeans added another shade of green and the oats were like knee-high golden grass when the crop was ripe. That picture of harmony existed while I grew up on the farm as farmers had their own composition: which field needed to be used for different crops, the kind of fertilizer and seeds that would be planted depending on the winter moisture, and the timing of preparing the ground for planting. Timing comes with any discipline like in music or completing a list for going to town.

A Cinderella Story

With a different setting,

a country farm where we see her

walking to the well for water.

She carries a pail,

avoiding chicken droppings on the ground

on her way to the pump,

a necessary household job each day.

She passes an outhouse,

and near the barn she reaches the well

To pump and fill the

pail with water.

She didn’t meet the world there.

It was still outside her radar,

entrenched, as she was,

in the daily life she lives.

Her insecurities ever firmly in place

near her home near where her Grandma

lives. Her favorite grandma who loves her.

Home on the flat country farm

with no hills in sight,

the beginning of early life

with its traditions and

narrow road we followed.

But it was the only life you can know

where you grow up with others like you.

Where was the world?

Back to the car to where City Man, who knew opera, classical music, and could sing the next line of either song is. Why would he choose an original country girl like me, who is now teaching in Virginia? This next fact adds intrigue to Christian readers. In high school, I was a fundamentalist believer in Christianity, while he was Jewish. You need to read my story to know why I would marry him, and why he would marry me! Could this composition make for a happy marriage?

In high school, I met my first husband. He came from another farm in the German part of the country, who also planned to go to the university and find a job somewhere else. I only dreamed of getting away. It would never occur to me while living in Iowa to marry outside of my faith. My sister and I shared a bedroom with a window where I could see the stars at night. Every night, I looked out of our upstairs bedroom window and say, Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight. I dreamed of leaving the farm.

The stars looked down from colorful place, but no one had time to look at the beauty. The days were full of work on our country farm, but Mother had become the family’s weather watcher. I don’t like the looks of the sky, Mother would say one evening as she walked down the lane at the day’s end while looking at the clouds in the western sky. Mother recognized when the clouds looked threatening and a storm might be coming our way. She understood the feeling in the air when the danger of a tornado was eminent. Sometimes in the middle of the night, Mother would wake us up, saying, Quick! Kids, grab your shoes. We’re going to the basement. And we would stay in the cold, often damp, basement just below the kitchen until the thunder was off in the distance and Mother felt it safe for us to go back to bed. A tornado could strip a farm with only the crops or just the home.

Then, my wish was always a prayer as I was close to God all of my life. I wished to find someone and get away from this awful farm that was smelly and dirty, and I hated chickens and wouldn’t clean them. I had no idea what getting away meant. I had never been to a city. Mother would have been hysterical if I had chosen a Catholic, but we didn’t have any of those in our town either. While I was growing up we were poor. We were landlocked from any water around except for the water in the gravel pit close to the town, but you had to be fearless to jump into that deep water-logged cavern. We didn’t learn to swim.

I thought the stork had dropped me into the wrong family. I didn’t believe in a stork. That was part of the joke of getting away. God knew I needed my first marriage to get away from the country, as well as to marry a Christian man who would be the father of my children. He was a loving, Christian husband.

Only God knew I would lose him young in life, and this Jewish man would be the next startling love for the second half of my life. How we got together is a strange but beautiful story. It’s like a Cinderella story. Then later, a writer friend gave me the plan that I followed. After Eddie died, she said to pray about it and wait for the open door. That I did, and went on with my life after grief and met other men to date. After being with country husband, Eddie my whole life, I knew nothing of a city or people from the world outside of the Middle West.

Young country girl who liked to be barefoot outside, climb trees, and make bow and arrow from pieces of wood meets handsome businessman from Israel, who had been a child in Israel during World War II when fighting battered and pummeled around them. Then, Farm Child, Susanne, was a young child. He said that during the war, Israel was for R and R, which means soldiers from other countries fighting nearby could come to Israel for a rest and for good food on the beach. I asked Michael if he ever went down to the beach when soldiers were there. He said he and his friends did go to the beach, as the soldiers would throw them coins.

I didn’t know then about his knowledge of books in the past, of authors, and of classical musical where he could sing the next phrase. Besides, he knew opera, and I repeat, he could sing the phrase following an aria. I didn’t know I’d be marrying an encyclopedia. It was hidden, like finding a treasure that would to be explored. I learned this information about him as we sat around a table for our meals and afternoon coffee. Then, I’d go to my computer and continue writing a journal that tells the stories he told me about growing up in Israel. This would later be another book, for I was a writer throughout my teaching and into my retirement.

I have to stop the story to tell you how I knew the Jewish man was the right person for me. I was a facilitator of the support for widowed people for several years after my husband died young. A new man appeared one evening. He didn’t seem to be the support group type, but I waited to see more of him. The last potluck of the Widowed Person Service, I saw him sitting in a corner with an ottoman in front of him. He didn’t mix at all, and I stopped by to talk to him. We wore name tags, and my name (different from Susanne) had an unusual spelling. He said he remembered it when the announcement for the support group came again and my name was there. I had led the group for five years. This man seemed to be going everywhere I went without my giving him any encouragement.

After being single for several years and dating a number of men in the group, Jewish man asked me twice to accompany him to the Kennedy Center. I called my sister who was always my counselor. I said, You know, I prayed about it and my friend said, ‘Wait for the open door.’ Now what do I do? This Jewish man has asked me again. He came from work wearing a suit. He is persistent, coming again, like he’s coming to see me. He’s such a nice man, but I don’t want to lead him on. Would God really choose this man for me?

My sister reminded me to Wait for the open door, as my writer friend had said. So, I went to the Kennedy Center twice and then he asked me again. This wasn’t a good move. He took me to see his home and he came by my house to talk. This was when he talked like we were