The Alcohol Path toward Destruction—

Who Can Escape?

The Miracle Baby

By Marcia Morehouse

Prologue

“Choose you this day whom you will serve . . .

but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” Joshua 24.

     This Bible verse talks about choosing sides. My experience in my family is that those who choose to drink alcohol begin to love it and like the verse says, serve it. The love grows and so does the serving. But I have seen that God is merciful and “choose you this day” is an open invitation from Him to come to His side—anytime.

     As I write my story, I can say without a shadow of doubt that God provides opportunities to turn to Him, and that He answers prayer. My own life is a miracle answer to prayer.

     I was born into a family with generational alcohol drinking problems. My grandfather drank. His love affair with alcohol led him to take his oldest daughter Hazel, age 14, to a bar, and as her parent, introduce her to bar society and teach her to drink. Hazel became my mother.

     Hope for the family came through my grandmother who served the Lord. She was a praying woman who called on God for all her children. Although she saw my mother slip helplessly back into alcohol after witnessing God’s goodness in my miracle birth, she lived to see God using me to bring her beloved eldest daughter to His side. The day my mother chose to believe in the Lord, God granted an overnight change in our immediate family. Alcohol lost its grip; the terrible bondage that affected us all for so many years was broken.

      To all who read my story I say, “Don’t deceive yourselves into thinking you are not vulnerable to a mind altering drug like alcohol. Don’t deceive yourself about the effect of your drinking on your family. Most important of all, don’t belittle God. Don’t say He can’t help you. You do have an option. Prayer works. Choose this day to serve the true and living God of the Bible.”

     Whatever you do, please do not make excuses to give your children alcoholic drink in any form.

Call Her the Miracle Baby

     “She’s a miracle baby,” people said, and they were right. On January 18, 1943, the temperature outside in St. Paul, Minnesota registered 30 degrees below zero. That day, with no doctor or other help for mother or me, God allowed me, a tiny little premature two and a half pound baby girl, to enter the world—and live.

Flashback to the generations before me

     My story starts with my grandparents who lived in rural Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota. My grandmother Judith, a Bible believing Christian, was twenty when she married a young railroad worker she met at church. She did not understand that although Eric loved her, he already had another love in his life—alcohol.

     The time was the early 1900’s and it was common for families to live in a farm setting. The young couple found a farm place and it became their home. Grandfather’s work on the railroad meant that he was usually traveling with only short periods of time off. Grandmother was left with cows to milk, chickens to feed, a garden to plant, fuel and water to haul, washing, baking, cleaning and all the other tasks of a homestead in her hands. She had no conveniences, and soon she also had the care of a growing number of children.

     The oldest of her ten children was my mother, Hazel, born in 1905. Hazel was a shy, quiet child who grew up loving the new babies as they came. Grandma count-ed on her responsible help in the ever increasing work load of the growing family.

     Grandma Judith was a good manager and Grandpa had steady work. The railroad company made him a railroad foreman. Even so, the family was very poor. Yes, big families have many needs, but the reason for the poverty probably can be answered with one word—alcohol. Grandpa couldn’t leave the alcohol alone. And Grandma? She turned to the Lord for strength to face a hard life. She taught her children from the Bible at home and prayed for each one daily. From her example they learned that God was living and that He answered prayer.

A big change in my mother’s life

     The children attended a country school. In 1919, when she was 14, Hazel graduated from eighth grade. Suddenly she was face to face with money problems herself. How could she afford to go to a distant high school? Her father didn’t take long in making some decisions for her. She would, he said, have to go to St. Paul and get a job. He would take her there himself. That was settled.

     There was no question of my mother’s obedience. She was not the argumentative type and her father had spoken. Besides with the money need what else could she do?

     Grandfather took his 14 year obedient daughter who respected him to St Paul. Thinking of mother’s shyness, the switch from country to big city, the change from a big family to being left alone, the stress of having to find a job and make her way in an adult world, I imagine how she must have felt that day.

     Yes, Grandfather did help her find an apartment. But in St. Paul his compelling thirst for alcohol surfaced and it is a Bible truth that drinkers like to see other people drink. His social life involved drinking. Whatever the case, he took his vulnerable daughter to a bar, introduced her to bar society and taught her to drink. Today his actions would be considered criminal in many states. The National Institute of Health now warns that 40 percent of young people who start drinking before age 15 become alcoholics at some point in their lives.

     Hazel accepted her father’s judgment on alcohol and social life that fateful day, and later in life became just what current warnings predict—an alcoholic. As for work, although only 14, she got a job as a telephone operator. One year later, at age 15, she was hired by a St. Paul newspaper publisher. She stayed with the company 50 years, and in spite of drinking, advanced until she had a responsible position.

Mother’s marriage

     Although my mother went home for occasional visits, St. Paul was where she lived. Life there became a round of work and drinking with friends she met at the bar. When she was 21, she attracted the attention of Leslie, a companion in the bar crowd, and he took her home to meet his mother. The mother took a real liking to the still shy, docile and respectful Hazel. Some months later when Leslie’s mother was on her deathbed, she made her son promise to marry Hazel.

     They did marry, and after that they went to the bar together. Not long after the wedding Hazel found out a few facts she hadn’t taken into account about her husband—he was an atheist and he didn’t want children. She drank and didn’t go to church, but she would never deny her mother’s teaching about a living God. And her family upbringing had given her a big heart full of love for children

     During those years, Hazel and Leslie visited her folks and her siblings fairly frequently but nothing altered Leslie’s position on children. When Hazel became pregnant he delivered an ultimatum. “Get an abortion.” Although she wanted a child badly, she was too shy to tell anyone what was happening or to ask for help. She did what she was ordered to do. A second pregnancy also ended in abortion. Both a baby girl and a baby boy were killed. Hazel almost hemorrhaged to death both times. Unhappy, guilt ridden and afraid, she did call on God. She hated what was happening but she had no desire to change the lifestyle that brought it about.

     Meanwhile, Leslie’s drinking was growing heavier and he got involved with other women. One day he bluntly told Hazel that he loved someone else. “I want a divorce,” he threatened. “You’ll divorce me or I’ll kill you.”

Another step down on the alcohol road

     The divorce was soon finalized. Hazel saw her life falling apart. Her husband was gone, she had killed two babies, and she lived with the fear she might never have children. Her drinking escalated to nightly partying to let alcohol wash away her memories and her fears.

A ray of hope

     In what seemed to be a hopeless situation for my mother, her own mother, my grandmother Judith, was a ray of hope. She couldn’t have known how bad her daughter’s situation really was and she wasn’t able to be there to help in person, but she could pray. She never failed to name her children before the Lord every day.

A wanted pregnancy

     Then came World War II. Hazel met Tony, an attractive soldier who sang in bars and partied like she did. They started going together and she became pregnant. In great fear, she told absolutely no one about the pregnancy. She knew she could not cope with another demand for an abortion and she felt she could not lose this baby.

     In her desperation Hazel prayed for God’s help and a healthy baby! She would confide to me later that she did not have one drink or one cigarette while she was expecting me.

Jan 18, 1943

     On Jan. 18, as I wrote earlier, the temperature outside was 30 below zero. Mother was at work, feeling uncomfortable. She was only seven months pregnant but she was sure I was going to be born. She made an excuse to co-workers, got a cab and went home to her apartment. Since she had helped a midwife deliver several of her brothers and sisters, she now counted on those experiences. She felt she knew what to do.

     More scared than she had ever been before, and praying to God for help, she gave birth, cut the cord and took care of the afterbirth.

     I was so tiny. I only weighed two and one half pounds but it was evident I was alive! There was no special treatment for this premature child. Mother called her sister. Excitedly she said, “I have a baby girl,” and then told her to come on the next street car, and to stop at the dime store to buy some diapers, shirts, pins and blankets.

     Next she called her mother who was now living in California. Grandma didn’t hesitate. She said, “I’ll be on the next train to St. Paul and I will stay with you and help raise that baby.”

     They put me in a shoebox on the oven door to keep me warm and fed me with an eyedropper.

My first days

     When my father learned about me, he wanted to send me to his two sisters who were in a convent. But Grandma was already on her way and Mother could not give me up.

     The weather was so cold it was not safe to take me to the doctor for six weeks. My father finally took mother and me to the doctor and that same day he put his name on my birth certificate. After that he was never around.

     To say the doctor was shocked to see me is putting it mildly. He said to Mother, “With your history of drinking and abortions, it is nothing less than a miracle that you had this baby and that she is in perfect health.”

The mercy of God  and a decision

     A miracle yes, because of Grandmother’s prayers and God’s great mercy. A miracle because God understood my mother’s agony of heart over those past abortions; He showed my mother by my birth and survival that He still cared for her. He gave her what her heart cried out for—a healthy baby that she could love.

     Mother’s family rallied to help her. Grandma Judith, my Aunt Dorothy and my mother lived together during my early years. Grandma was my spiritual mentor. Aunt Dorothy and Mom both worked to put food on the table. And I—I was the apple of mother’s eye. But God’s mercy to her, and all her love for me, did not keep my mother from the overwhelming craving for alcohol. The moment came, when instead of turning her life over to the Lord for His forgiveness and His victory over drink, she chose to follow alcohol back into the world of the bar.

Growing up years

     I was growing up. Other relatives came forward to help me. My Aunt Ruth and Uncle Lloyd took care of me in their home and loved and treated me as their own child. Aunt Mable and Uncle Kenny were also there for me. When I was 12 years old, I accepted Jesus as my Savior at a camp meeting. My future husband, Curtis, was at the same camp but we did not know each other at the time.

     The older I got the more I came to realize the power alcohol had over mother. I hated what I saw. She always managed to keep her job; but otherwise her life was dominated by alcohol. One day she looked at me and said, “I was sure Marcia, that one day you would follow in my footsteps.” I answered her with firmness given me from the Lord. “No mother. Not after what I have seen—how could I?”

My marriage and the turning point for mother

     I met Curtis in Sunday school when we were 20 and 21 years old. We were both Christians and after dating for ten months we were married.

     When I was in the hospital with my first child, my mother called and my heart ached as I realized she was intoxicated. I trembled at the thought of my dear baby having an alcoholic grandma. The Lord gave me a desperate plea and words that I knew later touched her heart and mind. “Mother,” I said earnestly, “I have one request.”

     She said “What is it?”

     “Please quit drinking. I don’t want an alcoholic grandmother for my children.”

     What flashed through her mind after she heard my words about the alcoholic grandma? Did she finally admit what alcohol was doing to her life? Did she think back to her joy at my miracle birth and feel the sting of rejection because I had to follow in my grandma’s footsteps and not in those of my own mother? Did she fear that she would not have a place in her grandchild’s life? Whatever happened, Mother had an encounter with the Lord. I believe it was in answer to my grandma’s prayers. He gave my mother another opportunity to choose and she chose to serve Him. He delivered her from alcohol.

     Mother quit drinking overnight.

Epilogue

     I praise the Lord that He allowed me to be born and to live to know Him. Yes, it was a miracle, a miracle that led to the miracle of delivering my immediate family from the bondage to alcohol.

     What would have happened if Grandpa had been an abstainer from alcohol? How different might my mother’s life have been? I wonder how many generations back the drinking went in his family.

     My own father was not in my life. Grandma witnessed to him about the Lord when I was 35 years old. Some years later I looked him up in St. Paul, Minnesota. I told him I was a Christian and that I was praying he would turn his life over to Jesus. He died at age 94. My hope is that he asked God for forgiveness and that he is now in heaven with Mom.

Marcia Morehouse Story. SD WCTU Journal, P O Box 292 Canistota, SD, May 2006