The day I arrived on earth I entered a family swarming with children. Escapees from the Kansas Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, some of my older brothers and sisters weren’t excited about an addition to the family.

The house where I was born was tucked against the red-rocked Colorado National Monument’s Mountains in peach country—and Mom and Dad owned 10 beautiful acres of irrigated land.

Our home had a bedroom for our parents, and one for the children. The three boys slept on one side of the curtain; the five girls on the other. We had a small living room, a kitchen with a wood-burning range, a back porch and an outhouse.

I opened my eyes to people striving to have enough to eat by planting a massive garden while Daddy and my oldest brother worked for $1 a day shoveling coal from railroad cars into trucks.

I soon started filing away memories of laughter, joy and singing because my siblings and parents found Jesus in the little white church on the corner of Fruita—and they considered themselves rich in the things that count.

I experienced the hand of God early.  My 2-year-old brother emptied a salt shaker into my eyes when I was an infant.  Mama knew how to pray, rinsed by eyes  and I’ve never had a serious problem with my vision.

Then a couple of years later, my sister gave me a bath and not knowing someone built a fire in the cook stove at the end of the summer, sat me down on the top. I still have the scars, but I survived. I’m sure the family stormed heaven for my healing then.

At about age 12, I froze my feet when I disobeyed Daddy and went ice skating on the edge of the Colorado River.  It was a long way from our newer two-story house on the other side of town. Without telling anyone, I shoved my numb feet into hot water. They turned black and swelled. Of course, my sins found me out as the scripture says. I quickly repented and my feet healed without seeing a doctor other than the Great Physician.

I accepted Jesus as Savior at age 5 and often experienced His power and mercy at work in me. I became youth president at my church at age 15 and discovered God can use anybody.  I started writing service ideas for a youth leaders’magazine, then the youth magazine, and soon sold articles to other Christian publications.

The Word talks about God directing our footsteps, and I saw God work in amazing ways—even when my husband and I ended up in a small town in Utah with no church. I thought we missed the Lord’s guidance until He did a work in me and I started a Sunday school there.  Almost every child in town enrolled and on Easter a few parents came.

I kept writing, became a newspaper correspondent and then was hired as a staff reporter. I worked 2 ½ years, and then stayed home for nearly 20 years with our children (another gift from the Lord). Then needing to send the five of them to college, I completed my degree, landed a reporting job at graduation and worked 17 years in the news business.

All during these years, I could see God leading, and most of the time I was aware He cares about us. Answers to prayer and miracles came frequently. But when our oldest daughter, Carolyn, became ill with Burkitt’s lymphoma and died two months after the diagnosis I wondered if I believed what I thought I did about God and eternal life.

As a medical reporter, I began researching to see whether science shows we are more than a body, and I went through the Bible again studying everything about living forever.

As a result, I’ve written a book, several years in the making, Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal, which will be on Amazon in November 2011. I discovered medical science shows we are much more than a body—and scripture proclaims it loud and clear. I found Jesus was the same Lord when we lost our beautiful daughter as He was throughout my life and the Holy Spirit is the Comforter.

The reason Jesus came to earth was to do something about death—and He did!

When I look at the cross I see a symbol that Jesus cares. God the Father cared enough to send His only Son that we can live forever.

I am thankful.

—  Ada Brownell

Visit her website at http://adabrownell.com and her blog at http://inkfromanearthenvessel.blogspot.com

Image from Greg Olson/Google

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