Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 12, 2019 | Expresso - Sammy Peck

Transcript

November 12, 2019 | Expresso - Sammy Peck · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: The first picture up there is my mom and dad.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: They were really instrumental in who I am.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure all of you understand that.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just going to start.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: My life has been in God's hands before I was born.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a product of rape and incest, so you can understand on the bills that people put out that they want to allow babies to be aborted for rape and incest.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't be here.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't approve of that.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: God didn't seem to care, which is one of the reasons for my life verse, which is Romans 8.28.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we know that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: For thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst weave me in my mother's womb.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I will give thanks for thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 139.14, if you've never read it, it's something to read.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: My dad named me after my grandmothers, Selma and Elizabeth.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: He revealed this fact to my mother three weeks after we were home.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: She was calling me Penny.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: He said it sounded like a poker steak since our last name was Hi, which should tell you a lot about my dad, even though you don't know him.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Selma means protected by God, which I like.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: But going through first grade with the name of Selma, it was not cool.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't care for that at all.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So my my name preference is Sammy.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: My life began in Oregon, where dad was born, then North Dakota, where mom was born, and finally Kansas due to a job change for dad.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a happy drunk, which made my mom an unhappy wife.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Usually dad only did heavy drinking while selling insurance on the road trips he made frequently.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: He'd go out to get the mail, and he'd be gone for a month.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: He went by new cars instead of new tires because back then you could put cars on time where you had to pay cash for tires.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we the plus of that is we always had new cars at our house.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was extremely honest, drunk or sober when selling insurance, verified by several fire chiefs, we've always known.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: He always told the same story, drunk or sober.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: My dad taught us honesty was absolutely necessary in life.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: He finally settled down and we purchased a home instead of another rental in the Highland Park area, and we spent our junior and senior high years in Highland Park.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Both my sister, my brother, and I all graduated from Highland Park.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I graduated in 1960 at the age of 17.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Dad finally joined for the final time the AA program.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: He tried it before.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: We learned very fast not to celebrate birthdays, his birthday, AA birthday, because he always celebrated and got drunk.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we didn't do that.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: He worked, dad's dry date was June 25th, 1963, four days after my first son was born.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I met my future husband and my present husband the same night in our front room in June of 1960.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: My sister was dating my present husband and had brought Jim home with her, with she and Ed.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I never have asked her.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: I need to ask you why he came home with you.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'd always known Eddie, but never even considered myself as someone that he would date.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was just so out of my league.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: My sister was social and into all the fun stuff, younger but much more outgoing than I was.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I had never seen or heard of Jim Talbert, but the second I met him I knew he was the one.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: He had dark green eyes, you could swim in, eyelashes any girl would kill for.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a bodybuilder.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was the one.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: We dated for three and a half years, were engaged, married, had our first child within a year while still in college.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And after graduation, I taught second grade at Pauline South and third and fifth grades at Tecumsee South Elementary Schools.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Jim went to work for Southwestern Bell after graduation and hated it.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: He eventually got a job as insurance buyer for the state of Kansas after Eddie, my present husband, told him there was an opening there.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was required to get a flu shot as a teacher, which gave me the flu.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Back then it was a live virus.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then pneumonia, and a six-week stay in the hospital, separated from my family, which by then a second son had been born.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband had to deal with it all, plus moving into town from the farm, into our new home, because my father-in-law was retiring from farming and we had lived on the farm since we'd been married.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: He handled it all well because my mom and our inn took over on the medical side of things and pretty much saved my life.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: My liver had not tolerated all the antibiotics given to me for the pneumonia and was failing big time.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: My mom, knowing the doctors, finally found one who figured out to get me off all the drugs, and I started to heal.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we basically moved in with mom and dad until I was able to move to our new home with help.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: We hired a high school girl to basically be mom to our boys who were then six and four, six and two, and cook and clean until I could do it again.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And by the end of summer, I was up and going, never to look back, and two years later our daughter was born.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: At three months, she developed H.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: flu meningitis after the Russian flu, which she caught from a contractor working in my mom and dad's house.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I only took her to grandparents, I never took her out in public.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was up all night with her screaming, and at 7.30 in the morning she had a convulsion.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: I woke up Jim, sent the boys to a neighbor, and we headed for the doctor's office.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: He took one look at her and said she's got pneumonia, and I said, No, she doesn't.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: He took one look at me, grabbed her, telling me he was doing a spinal tap.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because mom was an R-E-N, I knew what that meant.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jim looked at me and said, What?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I said, he had no idea at all how serious this was.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I said, he's looking for meningitis, and he was back in the room immediately and he said, It is meningitis.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Take her to the hospital, I'll meet you there.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: He did.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Her dad and nurse and doctor stayed and worked to stop the convulsion.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Mom and I sat right outside her door and prayed.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I found out then that I couldn't watch my daughter die.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: She had a 45-minute convulsion.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: We my mom said, Don't pray that she'll live.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: There are much worse things than death.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we prayed the serenity prayer.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And after 45 minutes, I felt unbelieving warmth go from my head to my toes.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: A peace that passed all understanding.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Totally enveloped me.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be laughing, Larissa.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I told mom, something's happened to Robin.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know if she'd gone to be with God or if he had healed her.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew that he had control, and whatever happened, he'd get he'd get us through it.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: The door to the room opened, the doctor came out, she was out of the convulsion, and I knew God had healed her.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Doctor sent us home, the shower and changed clothes, as I'd been up all night with her, and said he would stay and keep watch with her over with my mom.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: He told mom after we left our daughter would be a vegetable for the rest of her life.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: In all probability, deaf and blind.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know that she'd been healed, but I did.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: We spent 13 days of hell while she continued to heal in the hospital.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: But that 13th day we brought home a happy, healthy, hearing, seeing little girl who did this day.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of my biggest blessings.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Life goes on fairly steady with Jim becoming director of purchasing for the state of Kansas until my brother, who had been the Attorney General for the Trust Territories, and when they became the states of Micronesia, he stayed and went to work out there in a construction firm.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he called to see if Jim would be willing to be a construction manager out there.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And Jim jumped at the chance and we started making plans to move to the South Pacific.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we lived on the island of Panape.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: We also lived in Hawaii before we went to the Pontipe, and Jim worked on the island of Truk.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: God worked so many miracles during our tenure in Hawaii and Pontipe that people asked me how certain things were happening to us.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: I have too many stories to tell, but that would make a whole nother deal.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was amazing, totally amazing.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: After Pontipe, a year total, we came home, and after a year, Jimmy went to work for the State Insurance Department.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And a year later, on May 9th, 1987, he was killed in a small claim crash.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Many stories concerning that and how God's hand was in it all happened.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: The next morning was Mother's Day.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: I told God to glue me together, or I wouldn't make it.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: He did.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: God let me know Jimmy was with him, and I was it was okay.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: It took three months after I told God, and I didn't ask, I told him.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: He better glue me together before this glue wore off, before his glue wore off.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as I was sitting in the bedroom on my bed, and Rob was across the hall in her bedroom, she was 15 at the time.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I I uh I looked up and I said, God, if you don't take this pain in my heart away right now, I'm gonna die because it's gonna break in two.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I knew exactly how Jesus felt when he died.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: The pain left immediately and it has never returned.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: The missing gym has never left, but the pain no longer exists.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I thank God for that every day.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was 44 years old.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually saved in my 30s.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: We attended a church where neither pastor seemed to know God.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: They knew of God, but not God.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they'd invited a lay pastor to speak that day, and my sister and I had were the only ones in attendance.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: All our families had stayed home for some reason.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that lay pastor said, Can you give as much of yourself as you know to as much of God as you know?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yes, I can.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm gonna do it right here in the pew.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not one of these that goes up and hugs people and does that kind of stuff.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: Next thing I knew, I almost knocked everybody in the pew down, going up there to get through the front of the church.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I got to the front of the church, and the man was praying with me, and the next thing I heard an audible voice say, now, stop interpreting my word.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was an English major and a language major in college.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't know it from reading this, but anyway.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Stop interpreting my word.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: If it's in the Bible, that's what it means.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: I remember looking up and going, okay.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: From that time on to right now, if the Bible says it, that's what God means, and I will not let anyone argue with me.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it is.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: If he said it, that's it.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I had known who God was all my life, and I had felt like he was Abba.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was my dad.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: I saw no reason for Jesus.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just figured they were the same, and God and I were tight.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: My sister will tell you that because she kept talking to me about Jesus and I kept going, go away.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: When I was three or four, my grandmother asked me about a paper I brought home from Sunday school.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I told her, God made the world, but I pasted it on.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And basically that was pretty much my attitude throughout our throughout school or throughout the rest of my life, including when Robin was so sick.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: God just always took care of me and I allowed it.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Three years after losing Jim, I was able to read our letters to each other without breaking down, and I felt I was through the worst of it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: You get through it, you don't get over it.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was finally ready to move on, figuring I'd be single the rest of my life, since I was the only one I ever loved.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: I told God if he wanted me to marry again, he'd have to bring him to the front room just as he had brought Jim.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The next seven years included getting two kids through college, our oldest one was already through, going back to college to get my master's in education degree, because I was going to be a principal someplace, and I dealing with aggressive breast cancer.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I got the degree, graduated, and was reacquainted with my present husband while he went through a tough time ending his marriage.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: God didn't bring him to my front room, he brought him to my parents' front room.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: I worked for my dad and we had the insurance agency office in my dad's home.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Eddie showed up one day at dad's, and we had a brother-sister relationship for over 30 years.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was my husband's best friend.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was best man at our wedding, and he's godfathered to Robin's two brothers.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: He and Jim were best friends, so uh having him visit wasn't strange at all.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: He told his wife, Jimmy's cousin, so all of our kids are related, that he wanted a divorce, and he came to tell me.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was the beginning of a very strange and unsettling period in my life.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Going from brother to other was weird and chaotic.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: We ended up being married 11 years after losing Jimmy, after breaking several commandments, having my wonderful daughter, who was in college at the time, tell me I was going to hell and seemingly causing unrest wherever I went.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was a lot of fun.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: As weird as it may sound, I learned a lot of life lessons God wanted me to learn during this period, such as don't judge others.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was huge at that.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let God deal with it.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: Our job is to love others.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Eddie had a heart attack a year after we were married from stress and had a stent inserted in an artery.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: His cholesterol was great.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Doctor assured us it was an old stress injury caused by his arteries to have weak spots.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have now been married almost 22 years, and he and my daughter were my rocks through the breast cancer, the surgeries for TranFlap to replace my breasts, which were removed, the hip replacements, both.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the next surgery at KU.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, my head was ready to fall off.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And recently the heart oblation and the watchman to prevent strokes.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like taking blood thinners.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: One, if not both, Eddie and my daughter have been with me all the time through many trials.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've had six children between us, all cousins, all loved, all had trouble with our marriage, all have seemingly adjusted.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was very difficult at first, but with time it has softened.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: And as all our believers, the transition has been a bit better due to the love factor our Lord and Savior advocates so strongly.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: I keep forgetting to switch all this stuff, sorry.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, the next one would be that's Jim.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, I'm zipping through these, all right.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is Eddie's, these are Eddie's kids, that's okay.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the next one is my kids, and then we're ready for the next one.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, thank you.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot all about that.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um this part's important.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh once again, our marriage has had its ups and downs, but thanks again to my daughter with a degree in marriage and family therapy that she doesn't use except dealing with people, who told me, Mom, remember, second marriages always carry problems from the first marriage into the second one.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not aware of that, the same mistakes can break the second marriage up too.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Invaluable information, and she was right on the mark.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Second marriages can have wounds that have scabs on them without realizing it.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Something can be said or done that the scabs that rips the scabs off and bleeding starts all over again.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as this happened, we would stop, realize what had happened.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: That it was not our marriage that caused the problem, but our reaction to whatever we were dealing with.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: A leftover from the first marriages that was causing the problem.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: So little by little, our reactions to problems readjusted, calmed down, and put a new relationship back on a smoother path.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Our marriage is stronger now than it has ever been.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Our love for each other has deepened with each day.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have lived on a farm he purchased when we were married that he'd been farming for years, and five years later, we built our new home and removed the old farmhouse.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's always loved farming, has had a job in town so he could farm.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Eddie's had two full-time jobs all of his life.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: He gave up farming the day we received the melanoma diagnosis and had a farm sale of machinery two years later.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're still on the farm.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: We are now dealing with the nastiness of melanoma.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Considering Eddie was supposed to die a year ago, God is in control and has told me we will come out of it okay, and I believe him.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: My husband has been through so many surgeries attempting to close a huge open wound on his head over the last two and a half years.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: The doctors finally decided on a flap, they took a large piece of his upper thigh, put it on his head to cover the wound, and we all prayed it would take.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It did, but it isn't exactly nice to look at, so he wears a hat in public.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: The melanoma has returned in a couple of lymph nodes in his neck, and two surgeries later, he is cancer free again.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: Melanoma is not curable, so this will be our life.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: As I tell him every day, as long as he's alive, I don't care.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Every day is a challenge.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: We have added two Shizu puppies.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I remember the puppies.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Their names are Pip and Piper Peck.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize that was, I was I just like Piper and Pip.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're two little girls.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: They were the only two in the litter, and they're little sisters, and they are twins.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they're two years old now, and we honestly do not have any idea how we would ever live without them.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: The scriptures, which are coming up next, there's just a bunch of them, on the PowerPoint are the ones that have helped me to survive.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: The most important thing I can tell you is to get to know and accept Jesus Christ as your Savior.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: He'll take care of you, He'll protect you until He comes back for us.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And a few things to remember without storms there would be no rainbows.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've read it in one of our books.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And earth has no burden that heaven can't heal.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 28 20, and most important, keep looking up because that's where he is, and that's who cares.