Carol

b.1939, divorced, 3 children, 3 grandchildren, retired social worker.

Carol was raised in the Midlands, in a family that was materially secure but incapable of giving her a happy childhood. Her older brother had very severe Downs Syndrome. He spent his days in his chair, making a repetitive rattling noise with bricks in a suitcase and rocking his body back and forth. In those days, there was nothing made available by the community that could provide some relief for the family from its duties of care. The strain told on Carol's parents. At meal times they were either united in a resentful criticism of something or they argued with each other. They did not expect Carol to contribute her views and made her feel guilty if she spoke out of turn. Only a few closest relatives ever visited their house.

Carol sought solace in reading books from the local library, using up the quota of two per day that the rules allowed her to borrow. In good weather, she enjoyed reading a book in their garden, sitting in her favourite apple tree. Her birthdays were happy occasions to remember too, for her mother made a lot of effort for them.

Carol was bright in school, and eager to please her teachers. In the private Catholic girls' school where she was until age 15, this earned her some bullying from her peers. In the state school where she did her sixth form, however, she had both academic success and good friends. One of her new friends introduced her to the Methodist Church and its Young People's Fellowship. This enabled her to advance her Christian faith beyond a simple belief in God and heaven that had been instilled in her by the nuns in the Catholic school (her own family being entirely non-religious). Carol finished school with flying colours and proceeded to London University, where she started on a French degree course but, in an unprecedented act of self-assertion, transferred to sociology. After graduation, she stayed in London for another three years, to train and work as a medical social worker.

Another thing she did on her graduation was to get married. She had first met her husband at the Young People's Fellowship at home, and then again in London, where he came to take up his first ministry after graduating from a Baptist college. She saw him baptising people in waders but her love for him still grew strong. He got disillusioned with the ministry before long, however, and became a teacher instead. The couple moved to Sheffield, where they could afford to buy a house, and had two children of their own before adopting the third.

Finding their Baptist church in Sheffield rather dull, they responded to an advert in the Observer and started attending a Quaker meeting. They were so impressed by its spiritual atmosphere that Carol's husband took a new job in a part-boarding school in Lancaster in the belief that, because its premises were in the Friends' House, it was a Quaker school. It was not, and the sense that this was a wrong move for them was sealed when Carol found herself an acting housekeeper for the boarders, in addition to looking after her three young children. After a term, she succumbed to exhaustion and suffered a bout of depression.

They moved to Great Ayton near Middlesbrough, to a proper Quaker school. Here they found spiritual nourishment in a lively Quaker meeting, and Carol's recovery was further boosted by an opportunity to teach sociology. The children settled easily in the local village school and the whole family was doing well. Then Carol's husband broke the news that he had started an affair with a 17-year-old former student of theirs who was staying in their house for a while, after she had left the school. He expected that Carol would accept the situation and their marriage would stay intact, for he loved both Carol and the girl, and "love is from God". But Carol was heart-broken. They both went to co-counselling sessions. At a co-counselling weekend away, Carol met a man, a birthright Quaker, whose marriage was likewise breaking up. They found new love in one another, set up a home in York together, and married as soon as legal divorce procedures allowed.

In York, Carol resumed her social work career on a part-time basis, in addition to which she became a marriage guidance counsellor. She also ran a busy household because, in addition to her three children, her husband's three children came to stay quite often. And, she met new people: not only those she met at the Quaker meeting she and her husband started to attend, but also neighbours who turned out to be a small community of members of St Michael-le-Belfrey's Church.

Carol joined St Michael's and had her born-again experience not long afterwards. As she was reading a book about Christian marriage one Saturday night, she got a distinct message from God that, far from putting her husband first, she was not putting anyone but herself first (except for the children, which did not count, because they were a part of her). She was self-centred and always wanted her own way, which she had managed not to notice before. God told her: "from now on, you don't follow your own decisions, you refer all the decisions to me". Carol was terrified and not very happy, remembering that she had followed her parents' decisions before, and they had not been the best for her. In church next day, however, she told people about it and the peace and joy flooded in. Now she had her special relationship with God. Then one of the elders' wives prayed with her that she would receive the gift of tongues, and she did.

In 1981, a Friday night meeting took place in the church, in which a group of visiting American evangelists invited people to come forward for prayer. Carol struggled with herself, because the visitors were very young, although full of the Spirit. In the end she came forward and got prayed for and hands laid on her, and her head got very hot. They prayed for her to recover from coeliac disease, which had been recently diagnosed. She felt the heat in the head, went home, ate some bread, and remained well. The dreaded allergic reaction never came back. Carol was careful and did not revert to an entirely normal diet for a while, but soon proved that she could eat normally. The doctor who had performed all those painful tests and diagnosed the coeliac condition could not understand it. Later tests confirmed that the coeliac disease was indeed gone.

Carol's ten years with St Michael-le-Belfrey's ended at a religious weekend retreat where she got the distinct message that she should be going back to Quakers. One of the good things about the switch was that it rekindled her husband's Quaker commitment and they attended the Meetings together. Like in Great Ayton 16 years earlier, all seemed well with their marriage when her husband went on a weekend course and met a married woman who was 20 years his junior. It was a platonic relationship with no sex, but no less intense for that. When Carol discovered from a discarded rail ticket that he had made a daytrip to see his spiritual friend while pretending that he was at work, a crisis came to a head. Like her first husband, he wanted to keep the marriage but his other relationship as well. Carol was a lot more hesitant about initiating a divorce than before, and asked for legal separation, but her husband refused and they got divorced. Soon, she moved into her present house, to live on her own.

She enjoyed the freedom and comfort of her new home as well as her busy involvement with the New Earswick Quakers, to whom she had switched when her marriage had broken down. Nevertheless, she suffered two bouts of depression, after which she came down with what at first seemed to be severe influenza. Eventually, however, diagnostic tests revealed a rare and incurable disease in which muscles gradually waste away through chronic inflammation. She returned home from hospital after three months, in early Spring 1994, knowing that there was to be no return to her previous life.

She had to give up work and go on incapacity benefit. The drop in income caused financial worries but God's truly amazing providence became manifest only three months later, when her mother died. Carol inherited a portfolio of investments that her late father had set up from a £500 windfall many years before. Its current worth was such that it met her needs and left some money to spare, so that she could have the pleasure of giving it away. She got a call from God in regard to a communal fund-raising effort for a cause that was close to her heart, and made good the 90% shortfall between what the cause needed and what the communal effort raised. Carol still recalls with delight the face of the fund-raising committee chairman, when she sought him out in his garden with her cheque.

The illness also made problematic Carol's involvement with the running of New Earswick Quakers. That got resolved when she had her toenails seen to at her local health centre one Wednesday. A nice young Scottish chiropodist, who normally worked elsewhere, and only on Mondays, told her about the York Community Church, where her husband was the pastor. Carol went to try it next Sunday, heard Don Palmer preach on Zacchariah, and was riveted, she had never heard bible taught in such a lively and relevant way. She enjoyed the singing too, finding it uplifting and moving, because there had been no singing in the Quakers. Carol felt that she was guided towards this church, where she had no special responsibilities but got the tender loving care and nurture that she needed, and stayed.

Carol has been living with her illness for almost 12 years now. It is treated with steroids, which can have a wide range of unpleasant side-effects and she has had them nearly all. The steroids slow it down but do not reverse its progress. Since two or three years ago, the tissue inflammation has been in the lungs too, and Carol has to boost her breathing with bottled oxygen and use a wheelchair. This does not stop her from enjoying things she can still do. She reads a lot and meets regularly with three groups that discuss books and ideas. She keeps in touch with her family and supports them as and when needed. Her friends seek her company to delight in her conversation. And last but not least, she comes to church almost every Sunday, where she sings her heart out to give thanks and praise the Lord.

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