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with Brenda and Gary, Dad Perkins would sit by my bed day and night. At certain periods he would stand beside me and pray. Oh, how I remember those prayers! The words were like living water dripping into my veins, a healing balm for a fever-ridden spirit. Dad’s prayers were so real, so true, so powerful that they were better than any life-support system. He said things like:
    “Lord, we are so weak, but You are strong. How we love You, how we trust You, how completely and totally we depend on You. Betty is Your child, Lord Jesus, and she needs Your love and Your tenderness and Your compassion and Your healing touch. We do not beg for her life for any selfish reason of our own. You loaned her to us for a few years and yet we know she has always belonged to You. Oh, how we praise You for Your goodness to us during these years, for the blessings You poured upon us, for Your day-by-day presence in our home. We can sense Your love filling this room now. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your comforting Presence.”
    As the words of my father’s prayer sank into my mind, I was suddenly convicted of something. Jesus was very real to Dad. Was He to me? For years I had prayed to Him, sung to Him, quoted Him, but I had to admit that I did not feel close to Jesus.
    The fault was obviously mine. I had become too involved with my worldly life and felt no need for Him. Up until now I had never really been sick. My parents and John had provided comfort. Brenda had given me fulfillment as a mother. When on earth, Jesus had responded to the needs of people. Up to this point I had had no needs.
    A series of scenes flashed before me. I was thirteen. It was Sunday night and Dad had preached a moving sermon on our need to accept Jesus Christ as Savior. We were to be ready for His Second Coming. No one wanted to be left out of the marvelous life which He promised us in eternity.
    We drove home from church that evening through northeast Terre Haute, not far from the Paul Cox airfield. From the window of the car I saw a light in the sky descending toward that small airport. Remembering my father’s sermon, I wondered, “Could that be Jesus coming back? Was I ready for Him?”
    It was a plane coming in for a landing, but my mind remained stimulated. Later, lying in bed in the darkness of my room that night so many years ago, I found myself repeating the words of a prayer I had stopped saying years before:
    Now I lay me down to sleep;
    I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
    If I should die before I wake,
    I pray the Lord my soul to take.
    The third line then began to bother me: “If I should die before I wake. . . .” Could this happen? If so, would I miss out on all that the Bible promised? “I’m not ready to die,” I thought to myself.
    I jumped out of bed and went to my parents’ bedroom door. Their light was out. I knocked anyway. “What is it?” my father asked sleepily.
    I was embarrassed, then blurted out the first words that came to mind: “I’m not ready to die.”
    Instantly both parents were wide awake. In his sensitive spirit, Dad knew exactly what to do. He took me by the hand and he and Mom led me down to the living room.
    “Betty, are you ready to commit your life to the Lord Jesus?”
    I nodded.
    I knelt between my mother and father in front of our three-cushioned brown floral couch, one hand in Dad’s, the other in Mother’s. “Lord, I accept You as my personal Savior. I surrender my life to You for You to do with it what You will.”
    Then Dad read me some passages in Scripture where Jesus is talking to Martha just before He raises Lazarus from the dead: “Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die ” (John 11:25, 26).
    Thirteen years had passed since that night, during which I had gone to church faithfully and tried to live virtuously. But there in my hospital bed I felt His gentle correction: I had