Sixty-nine. I turned 69. Why that’s only one year from being seventy. Is it possible? Of course it is and yet, I look back and wonder. I have survived. I have fought for my life and health. This birthday brings happiness I am still here to see my grandchildren grow up. But this year has brought sadness as well. It is hard to realize that while I live, I have lost my brother unexpectedly to a heart attack just a couple of weeks before my birthday January 24th. My younger brother, Paul Fredrickson, who was always there and ready to help.
I look back and realize how much the world has changed since I was born in 1950. We now have the Interstate road system that connects the country east to west and north to south. My father was a minister who served churches in several different states and in Canada. When we left a church in Wisconsin for one in eastern Wyoming, dad took a couple of months of vacation time. We headed south to Texas, across the southern border, seeing the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert, up the west coast of California and east to Wyoming. Before we left Wyoming our folks took us to Yellowstone Park. They wanted us to see our country and we did.
I was glad because I was a child who loved the outdoors and horses. So much changed when dad served a church in northwest Kansas. That’s where I got sick and ended up in a wheelchair for about the next ten years. During those years, I was taken to any number of hospitals and rehab centers, some excellent and one that was so awful I had nightmares for months after my parents fetched me home. During those years, my sister got married. We watched the moon landing at her home in McPherson, KS.
I’ve lived through landmark court cases, both good and bad. I’ve lived through conflicts in which our soldiers fought and died. watched our soldiers treated like dirt after Vietnam and hurt for them. We moved to Iowa and then to Kearney where, after college graduation, Dr. Ellis changed my life by giving me replacement knees on which to walk and later hips. I was able to walk down the aisle of the church to get married.
Other surgeries followed over the years with metal parts inserted from neck to ankles. And I survived. So much history and I’m still here. Why? God still has a plan and purpose for my life. I may be slower and more fragile now, but I can still communicate that God is real because I’ve seen Him at work in my life. I can pray for those around me and for so much more.
Most of all, I can share His love and care for as many days as He allows. Though right now I grieve for the loss of my brother Paul and am in pain more than I like, I am content knowing I am in the safest place possible–in God’s hands.
By Carolyn R Scheidies
Published in the Kearney Hub 2/18/2019
Read more about my life in The Day Secretariat Won the Triple Crown