GRIEF IS NOT MY FUTURE

Interview with Marla Aycock

by Deborah Malone and Rita Prochazka

Marla, would you share some of your testimony with our readers?

Although I’d barely started 1st grade in public school, my salvation experience is crystal clear in my mind to this day. Our family started attending Emmanuel Baptist Church; a new thriving church in Pontiac, Michigan. Oddly enough our pastor, Dr. Tom Malone, a passionate southern gospel preacher, had moved from Alabama to our town in the far north with the intention of building a church, a Christian school, and later a seminary.

As I think back historically, many people from the south were relocating to our area in the north during this time. Not so long after WW II, it was rich with employment opportunities. All the big-name auto, truck, and bus companies were beginning to build factories from Detroit northward in all the larger industrial cities along the new I-75 expressway. Maybe plentiful, stable jobs and warm food in their stomachs were preferable to the warmer climates they left behind.

Every Sunday, the gospel of Jesus Christ was preached and alter calls given at Emmanuel Baptist Church. It made a huge impression on me, and I knew I wanted to be “saved” but wasn’t sure how to go about it. Definitely an abstract concept to my young seven-year-old mind. One Sunday I became caught up in the fervor of the alter-call and my timid self, stepped forward to “be saved,” whatever that meant. I was taken to a prayer room off the main auditorium and the lady working with me could see my confusion. When the worker connected me back with my family, my mom could see how much I wanted to understand and be saved.

My mom took me into my bedroom that evening and knelt by my bedside with me and explained the simplicity of receiving what Jesus did for me by dying on the cross and paying for all my sin. She walked me through a simple prayer, stating I wanted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and all my sins to be washed away so my heart would become white as snow. Living in Michigan, I knew the wonder of white dazzling fresh snow. I still remember the pink chenille bedspread that caught my tears of repentance and the supernatural light that seemed to flood the room when I opened my eyes. My mom mentioned the light more than once in the days to come.

I felt clean and new. I ran to the phone to make an important call. “Grandma,” I cried, “guess what? I just got saved.” The next day at school, I stood patiently in line waiting to tell my public-school teacher about my grand occasion.

Guess what Miss Kenny? I got saved last night!

With a furrowed brow, she nodded and told me to take my seat. Saddened and disappointed by her reaction, I felt misunderstood, and took my seat.

Soon after, I received my first Bible. I coaxed my next-door girlfriend, Amanda, to go across the road and sit in the open field under a huge lone Hickory Nut tree we often played under. After showing her my new treasure, I opened the Bible and tried to find a place that would explain what had happened to me and how she could be saved, too. So many pages and words. I felt overwhelmed, so closed it and explained as best as my seven-year-old self could, how believing in Jesus would make her feel clean and white as snow, too.

I entered second grade attending the new Emmanuel Baptist Christian school. We were across town from the school location and had to walk a half-mile to the bus stop. Once on the bus, we continued to pick up other students while singing silly songs, hymns, and choruses to pass the time. Since these fellow travelers were all ages from kindergarten to the older grades, I eventually learned to sing harmonies by listening to the older teens.

The best treasure I carry in my mind to this day is the daily Bible scriptures we memorized. Such a great foundation was laid, and I am forever thankful my parents provided this wonderful base for my life.

In your walk with God in this season of life, what have you learned along the way?

I always hesitate to say I’ve learned anything as so often I have to relearn things I thought I’d finally learned. Anyone identify? (Deborah here raising her hand furiously.) I found a better way and simply say, “I’m learning…”regarding whatever God is teaching me in a particular season. Those two words display humility.

On a physical level, as I entered my late 70’s God has taught me a new sensitivity and respect for elderly people who moan when the rise from a chair or get out of bed after a night of bodily inactivity and have to limp around until things loosen up a bit. (Personally, I’ve found it helps to stay faithful to my water aerobics classes and lighten up on the sugar intake. It does make a difference!)

On a more serious note, after losing our 26-year-old daughter to cancer, I thought my faith was so strong in God’s provision and presence, I’d never be shaken to doubt Him again. I’d written a book, Grief is Not My Future, laying out all the pain and struggles I and all my family had walked through. How God met us in the darkest nights and through her story people are now encouraged and finding inner healing from grief. It’s becoming a ministry as I speak at retirement homes, book clubs and women’s meetings.

Well, I was wrong about never doubting God again! We have an enemy who doesn’t take defeat lightly and will come back at us from different angles again and again. He NEVER quits and that’s why we must ALWAYS stay alert, stay on our knees and keep like-minded friends full of God’s Spirit and Grace nearby…prayer warrior-types. We live in a warzone!

The last ten months I’ve felt like a puppet on a string, and it’s been embarrassing and shocking how my flesh has taken me captive in a whole new way. As an HSP (Highly Sensitive Personality), I desperately need order to function in the dailies of life. I’m a planner and my husband is an ADHD fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, type of guy; smart as a whip but not so organized regarding day-to-day life.

The past year I felt forced to move physically to a small 100-year-old house, in a new city, away from our church and friends, into a situation with family, where three generations are cozied under one roof. Why would I go along with such a thing that made no sense to me?

We’d spent the warmer spring and summer months of 2022 building on added space to our daughter’s home. The plan was for my daughter, her husband and our 18-year-old grandson to have finished out the building on their property next door and be moved in there. It was not nearly finished when the move date arrived. (We’d sold our townhome and had rented it temporarily.) I felt forced to move from my literal mountain-top townhome of 18 years called Shiloh Hills (Shiloh meaning a place of rest, a place where God meets His people), to a place I honestly named, “My Nazareth.”

Here’s one of hundreds of sunrises we enjoyed while living on Shiloh Ridge.

If you’re thinking of what the scriptures states about Jesus’ hometown, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” You’re getting the right picture. My son-in-law is an amazing auto mechanic. He works hard, is kind, with a sense of humor that rolls off his tongue like a seasoned comedian. But he collects stuff. Through my eyes, stuff like that looks like junk. He has an eye that sees possibilities of usefulness and worth – as in dollars and cents, where I see only useless old junk you’d find in a second-hand store or a dump. (Therefore, my Nazareth!)

One day while packing up to move I spitefully spit out the words, “Lord, I get moving to Shiloh, but why in the world do I have to go to a place called Butterworth?” Not expecting to even find such a word, I googled it. Butterworth means “Enclosure!” That to me said safety. In the crazy world we live in my Nazareth is a safe place, just as Nazareth was for Jesus. I took a deep breath and said, “Alright, God, there’s never been a time in my life and present world where safety sounded like such a great idea.”

Moving day came. The Lord rescued me from the moving event via our church’s women’s retreat that weekend. God knew it would be the only way I’d survive my prior lovely well-ordered home being taken to a place where there was no place to set up a home, by non-experienced movers, and the resulting chaos. Why couldn’t my husband see that?

After my weekend trip, the scene meeting my eyes as I unloaded my luggage from the car caused my heart to plummet. I felt as if all my blood drained through my open-toed sandals into the red Georgia clay. It had rained and beautiful maple and oak furniture sets were out in the open with make-shift moving blankets and plastic covers that bad been blown askew by winds. Pieces of broken furniture, like drawers, storage and filing containers were laying in the rain. Some furniture was unrecognizable. I was so traumatized I could barely breathe.

Already weeping as I entered our partially built bedroom an unbelievable rage erupted! Our beautiful “un-scratchable” new bedroom flooring was scraped and gouged. I flung myself across the mattress as our bedroom furniture did make it to its appointed positions, but through tears of traumatic outrage I stated loud and clear, “I can’t live like this! I will be gone in the morning!”

The only reason I stayed is because my husband knew I meant it and the next morning in a state I’d never seen him in of heaving sobs, he begged me to trust him. He knew we were doing the right thing even though for the present it looked like anything but right. He’s a BIG picture person and I’d seen God work through him in impactful ways. Where was I going to go anyway that would make me more peaceful and be moving in a God ordained direction? I sure didn’t know.

Since the next-door house renovations where my daughter, her husband and her grandson were to live, were not even started, and our space was only half completed, boxes were piled everywhere. I felt like a hoarder with only narrow aisles available to navigate through in an unreconizable landscape. I didn’t know I had the compacity for such seething rage and despondency.

I became sleep deprived as nights felt like my brain and insides were literally on fire. The words internal combustion came to mind. Was that possible? I felt trapped and expected to keep house, cook, organize and figure out how to live in this upside-down mess. I ended up in the E. R. one time and Urgent Care two other times that first month. Oh – did I mention I had a torn rotator cuff and Keith, my husband, had been in a car accident resulting in a broken arm and L-5 rupture in his back?

Little by little, event by event, I found calm and sanity at the oddest times and in the strangest places. One thing that kept me putting one foot in front of the other, was a prayer and longing, our daughter, Esther, had verbalized so often during her illness. “Lord, please make a Masterpiece of our Family.” It’s not perfect yet, and won’t be until we’re all in Jesus’ presence, but I’ve seen God’s Spirit at work these last months. Relationships that looked impossible are coming together in an inexplicable good way.

I need uninterrupted quiet to write. With all the coming and going at the entrance to the house, plus PJ (my prodigy of a grandson) practices his music there and does Zoom lessons and plays computer games with teams. Occasionally, he has friends to come over to play chess. Lately he’s picked up his saxophone again, too.

Closing in on our first full year here, I’m alright. There are too many interruptions to write seriously in the front of the house where my desk is parked for the moment. The piano and some files use the same area. It’s not a place I can get my writing done. But guess what? I’m okay with it. Now, after almost a year I sit here with my computer sitting on top of a TV tray and I’m okay.

How have you prepared or been prepared for your ministry?

Do I dare risk saying – “through suffering?” Not suffereing without purpose though. Being willing to look at the painful heartbreaking parts of my life and allow God’s Spirit to walk me through those black broken places and learn how tender and faithful he is.

Also, years of attending Bible Studies, starting from the mid 70’s, of Kay Author’s Precept Ministries to leading studies by Beth Moore, Lysa Terkeurst, Priscilla Shirer, Angie Smith to the present day where I’m involved with a lady’s group from our church and are working through the Bible Study books on the crow-funded series The Chosen. God’s word has given me an unshakable foundation. I didn’t realize, until I wrote my book, Grief is Not My Future, how much wisdom and knowledge through scriptures I’d downloaded over those many years.

When I knew I was to write Esther’s (my daughter) story I spent at least seven years attending writing workshops, conferences and critique groups to learn how to write well. That’s been a long time coming, but actually since April 2021, about two weeks after Esther’s book was published, Grief is Not My Future was released on Amazon, a series of God-coincidences converged.

God brought Doug Hammett into my life through a dear friend and he became not only a friend but an advocate to promote Esther’s story. After meeting with him, he went home and ordered ten books and started giving them to people as the Lord led him. He’s done this many times since. He connected me to Watchman Broadcasting TV program in Augusta, Georgia where Keith and I shared Esther’s book and story for almost two hours. Dorothy Spaulding hosted the program.

The Lord has used my husband in so many ways to challenge, encourage, and engage me in much of his own personal walk with God and study of the Word.

What would your advice be to other seasoned women on how to stay active in the ministry?

Get yourself involved with helping at least one other person.

Regardless of your situation: Loss of a loved one, physically challenged with medical issues, or depressed for any multitude of reasons – ask God to bring one person across your path. Keep it simple and doable. A friend sent me a hymn a day via Facebook that was such a blessing. The lyrics so rich and embedded in my memory from our era: Great is Thy Faithfulness, It is Well With My Soul, or A Mighty fortress is Our God, etc.

Form a prayer team of women you know you can trust. No prayer = no power and leaves you open to attack from the enemy. Matthew 18:20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Keep it simple!

Journal your journey! You never know how the ugly heavy rocks we collect on our life path may turn into precious jewels. (Read the timeless lessons in Hannah Hurnard’s book, Hinds Feet on High Places.)

The last thing I ever expected was to be an author. All of these ugly circumstances have been central to my ministry. Early on, I knew as much as it’s possible to know, Esther’s life, illness, and death would launch me into writing and sharing how God’s love is real even unto death. It has become central to my ministry.

BIO: Marla spent most of her life in music education and ministry while raising a complex trio of three daughters alongside her husband, Keith, in Marietta, Georgia. She’s amazed as she looks back over her fifty-five years of marriage with all their family’s dramatic and traumatizing seasons. She sees God redeeming the years and
events that stalked them determined to destroy their family, their marriage and even their faith. Now she sees light and beauty where horror and death seemed to reign. New doors are opening for her to share the story of hope and beauty God has written across her life. The story of her third daughter, Esther, inspired
the book, “Grief is Not My Future.” The last vocation Marla ever thought she’d have was to be an author.