Joanna's Story

Joanna’s Story

By D. C. Jollimore


         “Bye, Mom!” yelled Joanna Harmon as she headed out the door. Quietly, I mouthed a quick prayer for my daughter’s safe trip, started a cup of tea, and sighed wearily at the busy schedule – so many prayer meetings to plan for, the weekend retreat I was supposed to speak at, the youth group I felt responsible to help my daughter Joanna plan. It wasn’t that my grown child was lazy or uncaring about leading. In fact, she had even held a sparkle in her blue eyes when she had so joyfully leaped at the opportunity to help others grow spiritually. It was just that she was so untouched by the world around her, frenzy free. Such a beautiful person to know.

         “Hey mom, what’s for supper?” Matthew, my teen-age son asked as he barged in from school. I grimaced slightly – didn’t he realize I had enough to do without continuously picking up after him? “Mom?” he asked again.

         “Hm? Oh, well, I thought you might like to make whatever you like best, this time. I have to lead the praise and worship at the prayer group tonight. And take your books to your room. You don’t want your father to trip over them walking in the door, do you?”

         “Mom! I’m supposed to take Cindy to the movies tonight, remember? I don’t have time to cook dinner! Is Joanna eating at her place tonight?”

         I didn’t have time to answer, because just then the telephone rang. “Hi, Mom?” sang Joanna’s voice when I picked up the phone. “Do you know what Matt’s doing for dinner tonight? I just wanted to treat him to Mc Donald’s or something. You know, I feel like I need to spend a bit of time with him.”



         It was nearly half an hour after Joanna made arrangements for Matthew’s dinner on her cell phone, when the door bell rang. I was a little surprised and, upon opening the door, shocked to find a policeman standing on my doorstep.

         “Mrs. Harmon?” he asked.

         “Yes,” I answered in anticipation. What could he be wanting?

         “Ma’am, do you have a daughter named Joanna Harmon?”

         What could he want with her? She couldn’t have done anything wrong, unless there was a mistake. “Yes,” I merely answered.

         “Ma’am, she has just been involved in a car collision, about ten minutes from here. The ambulance is taking her to the Community Hospital, and I suggest you go. It doesn’t look good.” The officer gave a worried, concerned look. “If you need a ride, I can take you in my cruiser.”

         My knees turned to jelly in the shock that jumped from my heart’s scream. My daughter, my baby, my precious little one that would blow raspberry kisses into my cheeks as a toddler and made a chocolate pudding cake for her daddy on her tenth birthday, my baby that always made you smile inside when she just looked at you! Such a work of God! Please, please God, don’t take her now, please!

         I found myself collapsed on the floor, surrounded by the policeman and my son. I looked up at them wearily, and horror gripped my heart once again as I remembered what was just said. “We’ve got to go, now. Matthew, please help me off this floor.”

         “Take it easy, ma’am. I’m sorry, usually when we give bad news we ask people to sit down first. I think I should take you in my cruiser, it’ll be much better if you don’t drive.”
         
         After a few quick calls to notify certain members of the prayer group, we took off. The officer explained some of the details on the way. Apparently, after she had gotten off the phone with them, Joanna had a green light and started to cross the intersection when a truck driver, for whatever reason, ran the red light at a good speed. The initial collision wasn’t enough to stop the heavy semi, but its driver had finally begun to swerve, causing Joanna’s entire vehicle to be pushed right into the traffic waiting at the red light on the other side. “She had no way to escape. Her car was crushed between two vehicles,” again the officer looked scared. “It was a good thing the fire station was right there – we had to use the Jaws of Life to get her out. I hope you believe in angels. She’s alive, but barely. She’ll need a ton of angels.”

         She wasn’t in good condition when we got there. My husband, who had arrived first, met us at the entrance to the ER.

         “They are not letting us in. She’s in critical condition and she’s unstable. I caught a bit of a glimpse of her through the operating window – saw her right shoe and her leg, all covered in blood. I think we just have to wait.”

         Matthew groaned and walked away to pace by the window. I sighed, glancing after him, then back at my husband who had started pacing by the door. Reaching out with my thoughts toward the one area where I had always found peace, I started to pray silently under my breath, repeating verses I had once read from the depths of my Bible. “Why don’t we go to the chapel and pray?” I suggested.

         My husband shook his head. “There isn’t one.”

         “Well then,” I drew myself up, “we’ll just have to pray right here. Honey, do you have your Bible in the car?”

         And so we walked and paced while we prayed. People coming in turned their heads to notice. After asking about what was going on, some joined in. “Please give our daughter another chance at life. Thank you for saving her life. We know that she is yours, only temporarily on this earth – but let her enrich it for a little while longer. She is a servant of yours; let her do your work.” And when we finished what seemed like hours of praying, we read the Bible and meditated. Matthew joined in at first, then stood back and watched. The nurses came by and gave reports. Even though none of them were good, I felt confident that the Lord would hear my prayers and answer. “Let your will, not ours, be done,” I prayed. News cameras flashed by, and a reporter stuck a microphone in my face.

         “How do you feel about what happened?” the reporter asked.

         I must have truly looked at peace as I answered, “God has given me the opportunity to have a wonderful daughter, and He may choose now as the time to bring her home. But I feel that God is touching her and healing her, and I know that everything is going to be OK.” The sincerity with which I spoke only reflected what peace was in my heart.

         We took turns sleeping, until finally a tiny young nurse with a clipboard folded into her arms came out and said, “She’s stable, but critical. You can see her now, one at a time.” The nurse looked very tired and ready to go home.

         Joanna was covered in tubes and wires and casts. Machines breathed for her, pumped her blood, and beeped. Her jaw had been crushed and the entire left side of her body was in a cast. “She’s in a coma,” said the nurse, “and may not ever come out again. Did she have a living will?”

         We stayed by her bed, one at a time for hours. When the newspaper delivery person came by, my husband picked up a copy. On the front was a picture of the accident, with a description of how the drunk truck driver slammed through the intersection. A smaller article showed a picture of everyone standing in a circle praying in the ER waiting room. Matthew went to McDonalds and brought breakfast back, commenting on how she had been about to take him out there for dinner the night before. Exhausted, we continued our siege of prayers. Day in and day out we prayed; for four days. On the fourth day Joanna left, her heart refusing to beat any longer. The blood loss had simply been too great, and the rest of her brain had shut down.

         Exhausted, the family went home and wept. So much to do, the funeral to plan, the house to clean for the guests, and a child to mourn. Why? How could God be so inconsiderate to let this happen! Slowly, I went through my daughter’s things in her apartment, giving away most of them as I saw fit. If only I could have my daughter back! But God seemed a very cold and distant God now.



         Some twenty years later in life, I went through yet another stack of magazines that had accumulated inside the corners of my sheltered life, inside our newest condo near the beach. Out loud, I complained to myself over Matthew’s keeping distant, his losing custody of our grandchild again in the latest twist of his ongoing divorce, and my husband’s lack of responsibility, always trying to join up with some prayer thing or the other while he ought to either be working or spending time at home. Bitterness swept through my soul as I tried to understand why, no matter how hard I tried, my life just couldn’t stay together, not since Joanna had died. It was something that I’d never managed to be at peace with, and I blamed the God who had deserted me. Or rather, if He hadn’t been there, then He probably didn’t exist. All the work I had done for the glory of God in my younger years had amounted to nothing. People were still out there doing drugs, and drinking, and who all knew what. Naturally, serving Him just seemed pointless. It made Joanna’s life pointless. Mostly though, I just tried to avoid thinking about it.

         I started piling all the magazines my husband had acquired over the past months in a separate pile and stopped to glance at one that showed a middle-aged man standing over an endless sea of people with his arms flung up toward the clouds. INSIDE JEREMY CHRISTIN the cover read. I bit my lip. Already I had been distracted by too many articles, but this most recent popular name had been on so many tongues, I just felt compelled to open it up and peek at a few lines.

         Jeremy’s story was that of a man thriving as an evangelist against all odds. He had grown up in many bad places of many different cities, finally arriving at a point of stability when he moved away from his bipolar mother into his own place. Almost no Christian influence had touched his life at that point, but several new friends started inviting him to church, which he attended but found uninteresting. Years later, he suddenly turned his life to Christ and began touching lives with the ferocity of the Holy Spirit. Without any funding at first, he worked his way through a seminary and arrived at a point where he ran many ministries. The people he helped were many, and thousands of people had come to know Christ through him. Judging from the interview, he had learned to rely so entirely on God that the pressures that would normally drive most people insane barely bothered him. His greatest stresses, though, were people who, so trapped in their world of being Christian, didn’t take time to really know Christ, and the many people who rejected Christ altogether. “These people are the ones who don’t realize that what God sees and what people see are two entirely different things,” he told the reporter. “God sees what is in your heart. People see what is around them, in this world.”

         “So what is it that motivated you into your faith so suddenly?” the reporter inquired.

         Jeremy guffawed, and smiled a moment before turning somber. “There was this time, when I usually didn’t read the newspaper, but because it was a Saturday with nothing to do, I picked one up on a whim. On the front page there was this picture of a terrible accident, and a story on this girl who had been crushed between two vehicles. I think her name was Joan. Anyway, it was a miracle that she was even alive. And then I saw a picture of her family all praying for her, and how much love and peace her mom expressed. And I wanted it. And then I heard on the news a couple of days later that the girl had died, and I couldn’t understand why. And that was the first time I ever got on my knees and prayed.” Jeremy wiped his face with his sleeve. “From that moment, I found peace, and I found the Lord that my friends had been trying to lead me to. I still think of that woman that I never met, because she is the one who led me by being an example with her peace, and her love. May God have blessed her heart.”

         I closed the magazine and pushed it back for a moment, then picked it up again and placed it on the kitchen table for my husband to read when he came home. Carefully, I prepared a cup of tea, and placed a call onto Matthew’s answering machine. “It’s OK, even if I don’t get to see your son again. I still love you and think you’re worth loving. Give me a call and I’ll treat you to a dinner at McDonald’s.” Quietly I sat, watching the sun melt into the ocean beyond my kitchen window. Lord, I prayed, let me into your presence. Bring me your comfort and your peace. Take me back as a servant, and let me do your work this time instead of mine. Thank you for working through me, and letting me see the work you’ve done through me. Amen.