Dorthy the Little Nobody

By Dorothy V. Browning

Dorothy VanHook Browning dropped out of high school and married at the age of seventeen. One year later, she became a mother. She o en felt like "a little nobody," but her devotion to church and God led her on a very special path. At times struggling to make ends meet as a waitress, she turned to factory work, where her ability to learn fast

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Oct 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9798893333480

Dorothy V. Browning

Dorothy, was raised in the rough-hewn region of Virginia in the 1940s, and her large, blended family faced many economic challenges and personal tragedies. Though raised on love and Christian values, the shy and naïve Dorothy was ill-prepared for the life she was to endure as she grew into a young woman.Married to a sexually abusive man at the age of seventeen was her first awakening to the evil that life had in store. In her book, Dorothy recounts her ongoing journey of faith from childhood through marriages, motherhood, and ministry.

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Dorothy,

the Little Nobody

Dorothy VanHook Browning

Dorothy, the Little Nobody

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2024 by Dorothy VanHook Browning

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information, address Trilogy Christian Publishing

Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, Ca 92780.

Trilogy Christian Publishing/ TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 979-8-89333-347-3

ISBN 979-8-89333-348-0 (ebook)

Dedication

To my daughter,

who has been beside me through

good times and bad times.

In loving memory of my parents,

who taught me about God

and the good principles of life.

Acknowledgment

First, my acknowledgment goes to the True Living God of heaven and earth that kept speaking to my heart to write this book. Without Him I would never be able to accomplish anything. He is the source from which my help comes from. I give Him the praise, glory, and honor above all.

I sincerely want to thank Sharon Thatcher and Sam Waldroop without whose help this book would have never been completed. I appreciate their willingness and patience to work with me on this project.

Foreword

The pages of this book contain charming warmth that is so hard to find in our fast-paced lives today. Many of the events in this compilation are followed with scriptures from the Bible that directly relate to the subject matter. The reader will also find warm poetry inspired by passages from the Bible. The central theme found on these pages is clearly about a loving Heavenly Father. And a collection of stories about loving earthly parents determined to teach a houseful of children about the love of God. The stories carry you over the course of many decades of a powerful personal walk with Christ.

The reader will also learn of the heartache one might find at the hands of the very ones called to encourage the saints. I hope each reader finds the hope to press forward in their Christian walk after reading the heartwarming words on these pages. I’m sure many of the stories will strike a chord in the reader’s heart…

Those with a heart to feel and an imagination to see with their mind’s eye will find themselves feeling a certain sentiment of days gone by. I found myself smiling and shaking my head, and at times, the words on the page grew blurry through tears from the times my heart was touched. The warm rhetoric of the stories of days gone by reminded me so much of the stories I’d heard my own mother tell. I recalled a few stories from my own youth and was able to relate. Even though I grew up on the north side of the Mason-Dixon Line, the customs of Appalachia in the early twentieth century were not strange to me. I was one of the late baby boomers, born to parents who held our Creator in high regard.

Sam Waldroop Jr.

Preface

My story begins at birth and travels through life with joy, hurt, and disappointments. My God always being my best friend as He kept His hand of protection over me through the many times my enemy Satan tried to take my life. All along the way, my Lord gave me visions and dreams that allowed me to know what was around the next corner. Other times I was blessed with a song or poem that encouraged my heart. When I walked through the many storms of life, God was always there to protect and keep me. My prayer is that sharing the testimony of my successes and failures along with the good, bad, and ugly of my life might be an encouragement, help, or blessing to others who are walking a long, hard road as I did.

Introduction

As far back as I can remember, my greatest desire and enjoyment was going to church and following the teachings of God’s Word (the Bible). In order to discuss my feelings about my long journey, I was inspired by God to put on paper my experiences explaining the love and protection of God through a life of struggles and enjoyment while pouring out a heart in honest confessions of disobedience, failures, and success. Never forgetting the One who walked beside me through my journey: the Lord of all lords.

Chapter 1

First Beginnings with a Combined Family

I was born June 2, 1939, to loving parents who loved God in a little house sitting in the mountain area of Adkins, Virginia. I was delivered at home by my great-grandmother, joining a family of four sisters and two brothers.

We moved from Adkins, Virginia, while I was still a baby.

Now living in the Meadowview, Virginia, area, far back in the hills, with no road going past our house, we were going to have another brother and a set of twin brothers join our family. The twins only lived a short time after birth. Being delivered at home, they didn’t have the survival equipment needed to stay alive.

I was only eighteen months old when they were born, but I remember that day. That may seem impossible to some, but I believe I remember that day because I thought I saw God.

I remember Daddy telling us children that God had taken the babies.

Don’t ever think little children don’t hear what the preacher is saying during his or her message at church, even though they may be playing between the pews as I was. I heard clearly when the preacher said, No one has ever seen God!

But, oh yes, I had! I had seen God! I saw Him when He came and took my twin brothers. So why had the minister said no one had ever seen God? I needed an explanation.

It was sometime later before I found out the truth: I had not seen God; it was the undertaker who came and took the babies.

This was an early awakening for my little mind. Of course, I only remember the things that had a bearing on my life the first few years of my life and the things I was told by others.

My mother was my dad’s second wife. His first wife passed away from complications of giving birth to their last child, who survived.

So Daddy had six children when he and my mother were married. I was the first of my mother’s children. We grew up loving and caring for each other as one big family. We never looked at each other as half-sisters and half-brothers. We showed no partiality between each other; we were just sisters and brothers.

My dad’s mother kept the last child who had been born to my dad’s first wife after her death and refused to allow him to come live with the rest of the family after Daddy married my mother. Later, when my grandmother became ill and could no longer take care of herself, she was brought to our house to live along with my brother she had been caring for. I don’t remember much about my dad’s mother. I just remember her being really sick. At this time, we had moved into a large farmhouse with plenty of room. My grandmother had been moved upstairs, along with my uncle and his friend and her two children, as they cared for my grandmother.

I had an aunt who had two boys who would also come and help with my grandmother. My grandmother passed away in that house.

Back then they would have what they called a wake in remembrance and for respect of the family member who had died. This would last all night. The funeral directors would prepare the dead body for burial and then return it to the family’s home in a coffin. Family and friends would come and stay the night with the body of the departed loved one. I don’t know how many people stayed that night, but it must have been several of Grandma’s children, along with our family.

The younger children weren’t allowed to stay with the adults in the room where the coffin was. My mother took the children to another room and made places on the floor for the children to sleep.

Some of the children had gone to sleep, but I was still awake when there was something strange happening. There was the appearance of something flying near the ceiling and the walls of the room. It just looked like a shadow. This wasn’t a small shadow; it was very large, or at least to me, it was. Since I was a young child, it was very frightening.

This went on for some time, and my mother watched closely but could never figure out what was causing the flying shadow.

There was another incident that frightened several of us children after our grandmother’s death. It was starting to get dark, and some of us children decided we were going to go upstairs. When we got near the top of the stairs, we heard a noise coming from the room that had been Grandma’s. We could see inside the room. Grandma’s old trunk was sitting at the foot of the bed, and some belts were hanging over the footboard. These belts started swinging back and forth, not falling to the floor, just moving like someone was shaking the bed. We started running over each other trying to get back down the stairs.

This was so frightening that I cannot remember ever going back up those stairs as long as we lived there.

The Old Farmhouse

This was an old farmhouse with plenty of room inside for our large family. We had large open fields to run and play in, a large barn, and a wonderful spring house.

Most children today would not even know what a springhouse is. It is an outdoor building that sits over a natural spring of water. This is where we would get our water for drinking and cooking. There was a stream of water flowing continually from the natural spring that didn’t dry up or get contaminated by standing water. This was where my mother kept her containers of milk and butter. The water stayed nice and cold enough to keep the milk from going bad and ready to drink. We had no such thing as a refrigerator. Daddy would bring watermelons home and put them in this cold water until they were chilled and ready to eat. Then we would have the perfect feast—oh, how good!—and buttermilk. My daddy would get a cup or glass and say, Dorothy, come on, we are going to the springhouse to get us some buttermilk. I loved following my daddy around, and if he liked buttermilk, I would like buttermilk.

The creek running from the springhouse is also where we got water for laundry and baths. We had to carry water to the house and put it in a large wash tub. I don’t remember how we heated the water.

Daddy drove a cab and worked on the farm for a living while we were living there. I remember good times and bad times there. I was about three years old when we moved there and almost seven years old when we moved away.

I started the first grade of school while living there. We had to walk to school, and it was quite a walk for a first-grader. The schoolhouse sat upon a hill, and I remember the uphill climb more so than the long walk.

This was such a fun place to live for our family, and it left me with many memories. My oldest sister married before we moved there. I don’t remember her ever living with us. She had gotten married shortly after my mother and dad married.

She had her first child while we lived there. He was born in May of 1943, and I was born in June of 1939, so I was only four years old when he was born.

I remember I got my first and last spanking from my daddy because of the baby. I remember very well that the little baby was crying, and I thought he shouldn’t be left alone crying. He was born with a growth on the back of his head and needed surgery, but it could not be removed right away. The doctor advised it would be safer for him to have the surgery when he was a few months old.

Soon after he was born, my sister, her husband, and the new baby came to our house for a visit. The baby had gone to sleep, and my sister had laid him in the middle of the bed to be sure he wouldn’t fall out of the bed if he woke up. She was in the kitchen talking to my mother and other siblings. The baby woke up, and I heard him crying. I ran to the kitchen, where everyone sat around visiting. We did not have a living room to gather in even though the house was large because we had a large family that required sleeping spaces. So I ran to the kitchen saying to my sister, The baby is crying! My sister was caught up in visiting and ignored me.

I went back to the bedroom and tried shaking the bed to soothe the baby, but he kept screaming. I went back to the kitchen to tell my sister again that the baby was crying. She said, I know. I’ll be there.

When I went to check on the baby again, he was still crying. My sister kept talking to the others. I was just four years old, and I couldn’t understand why my sister didn’t rush to the baby.

I did this three or four times before I decided I was going to take care of the baby myself. It was very dark in the bedroom as it had now turned into nighttime. We only had oil lamps back then, but not one for every room; we carried them from room to room. There was no light in the bedroom, and I could not see the baby. I only heard him crying.

I started tiptoeing, trying to reach the baby, and finally I touched his blanket, and then I grasped it with both my hands. I pulled his blanket with him lying on it until I got him to the edge of the bed. I picked him up and was shaking him back and forth as I held him in my arms, trying to get him to stop crying. Then my sister entered the room.

Because it was dark, she couldn’t see me standing there with the baby in my arms. She began feeling all over the bed for him and couldn’t find him. She began to panic; where was he—what had happened to him!

I answered, I have him.

As a young child, I thought she would be happy to know I was holding him. But of course, she wasn’t. Because he had a growth on the back of his head, she thought I might have hurt him further.

He was still crying, maybe even louder than before.

My sister took the baby from my arms and told Daddy I had hurt the baby. Maybe I did hurt him, but there was no evidence that showed he had been hurt. If I did, it wasn’t intentional. I thought I was helping him. So Daddy gave me my first and only spanking for hurting the baby.

Later, when Daddy found out that I kept trying to tell my sister the baby was crying and she had waited so long to check on him, he set me on his lap, apologized, and gave me a nickel. A nickel was enough to buy all of us candy.

Daddy never spanked me again for any reason. I don’t know to this day if my nephew ever knew I got my only spanking because I picked him up from the bed.

Daddy had a special love for all his children, a love you could feel, and he showed no partiality between his children. I heard him say many times that he loved all his children.

My oldest brother went to the army and got married while we lived there. Another sister and my youngest brother were also born while we lived there.

One day, my mother was going to go to the hospital to have our baby brother. All the other children had been born at home, so there had to be a reason for going to the hospital for this birth, but at the time, I didn’t know why.

We were told that Mother had milk leg. I didn’t know then what that was. Today I know it is also called iliofemoral thrombophlebitis or phlegmasia alba dolens. It’s an inflammation of the femoral vein, the principal vein of the thigh, with formation of a clot that blocks the channel of the vein. The leg becomes swollen, pale, and painful, and if the blockage persists, ulcers may develop. If the clot detaches, there is danger of pulmonary artery blockage.

When Daddy came home, he brought news that our mother was going to be staying at the hospital for a while. She was having serious problems and could not leave. I was under six years of age, and I didn’t understand.

I do not remember how long the hospital stay was; it just seemed like a very long time. I wanted my mother home. Daddy had our aunt (Mother’s sister) and his brother’s friend—taking terms—staying with us while our mother was in the hospital.

I remember well the day Daddy told us our mother was coming home. We were excited to see her.

My aunt made every child take a bath in the same water, and I was the last one to get a bath. I refused unless she allowed me to have clean water. I wouldn’t give in, and neither would she, regardless of how much I pleaded.

From the road to the house was quite a distance, and once they drove up to the house, my mother would need to be carried in. I held out for clean water until I was told that the car was at the road and it was my last chance to get a bath. My aunt reminded me that I was the only child my mother was going to find dirty, and I only had a few minutes to change that. So I crawled into dirty water and took a dirty bath but put on clean clothes. I was so thrilled my mother was going to be coming home and she would allow me to bathe in clean water again!

There were many other memories of the old farmhouse, the barn, cows, dogs, and the wide-open space around us. God really blessed our family in a very special way. I enjoyed my young life there.

My dad was a small man weighing around 139 pounds, never putting on any weight in his whole life. Even though he was a small guy, no one could outwork him. He would get up early and go to bed late, always working at something.

This farm and farmhouse seemed to be the perfect place for our family. I loved to meet Daddy when he was bringing the horses in from the field. Sometimes he would stop and help me or my older sister onto the horse and let us ride to the barn.

As children we loved to play in and around the barn. One day, we were playing in the barn loft where the hay was stored. There was an opening the size of a door going to the outside of the loft. I was playing in the hay, and the hay began sliding beneath me. I was trying to hold on with all my strength, but I shot out of the second-floor loft with the hay I was holding onto. I hit my head on something, cutting a place that would leave a scar I carried for many years.

I remember more about living in this big farmhouse as a child than any other place we lived. It seemed like we always had a busy house. I suppose it was because we had a large family and frequently had family members stopping for a visit.

One of my aunts had two boys I would play with. One of the boys and I decided we were going to play horseshoes. He threw a horseshoe and accidentally hit me in the head. We ran to the house with me screaming as blood squirted from my head. I was scared, for I didn’t know how badly I was cut. When we were questioned, I was afraid my cousin would get into trouble for hitting me, and I blamed it on a boy who lived down the road and happened to be passing the house at the right time to get blamed. Equally afraid, my cousin never said a word.

Being on the farm, we had dogs hanging around. I don’t remember if the dogs belonged to us or someone else. I do remember when two dogs attacked a skunk. One was pulling from the head while the other one was pulling from the back. Curious over the confrontation, my siblings and I got too close and got sprayed by the skunk.

When we got home, my mother wouldn’t allow us into the house. Instead, we were sent to an outbuilding where we had to take a bath in a wash tub and put on clean clothes.

Again, I was the last one to get a bath, and all the other kids had gone to the house. That’s when I was confronted by bad cow Old