CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER TWO
ALL IN A WHIRL
epee dane and talented, the girl flew ahead of others with her characteristic ability to excel.
On entering high school, Isobel won the Governor-General's medal for all British Columbia. Later at the University of British Columbia, she consistently won the highest marks.
Besides, her brother comments: "She was an excellent actress and later toured widely with the University Players' Club. She could easily have become professional, only Mother didn't approve.
As for dancing, there are few girls I have ever found equal to Isobel." Though "Mother didn't approve," it was Mother who had previously seen to it that her daughter studied elocution and dancing. Mrs. Miller had always trained her children to love the Lord. Yet, as they grew older, she wanted them to "move in good society." This was the aspiration that unwittingly pushed
Isobel into a crowd where Christ was ignored.
Isobel did not realize that hidden in the gay whirl of the campus was a battleground. She did not suspect that the popularity and pleasure she craved could lead her into treacherous booby traps.
There were so many attractive things scattered within ici fect They all seemed to be labelled, "Fun, and all the good things of this world." She did not realize that by these, her soul's enemy planned to trip her into a pit of worldliness, and snap the trap on her for life.
Isobel tells it all with such fascinating frankness in By Searching}, that only selected bits of those important years need to be reviewed in this story.
The battle began in one of Isobel's freshman classes. It was started by a professor's affable scorn for what he considered a myth: the Genesis story of life's origin. Assuming once for all that no thinker could believe the Bible, he questioned: "Is there
1 China Inland Mission, 1957.
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anyone here who believes there is a heaven or hell?" Isobel, in a roomful of students, found that only her own and one other hand were raised. The two extended arms looked as lonesome as two solitary telephone posts in a wide desert! Then came his teasing sneer that slid Isobel down into the wide expanse of drifting sand: "Oh, you just believe that because your papa and your mama*told you so!"
That did it!
It was like decisive Isobel that she made up her mind quickly.
At the end of her walk home from class, te had come to the conclusion that she would not accept a theory of life which she had not proved personally.
If only she had turned to the old proverb from the Book she was so lightly discarding! Right there in black and white was a warning and solution for her immediate need: "The fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.'' By trusting Him, what emotional misery she could have saved herself! But no! She must figure things out for herself.
And so she walked into the deceiver's trap, and the snare snapped.
' facet of the end to which that attitude would lead me...
I was only conscious of a sudden welcome freedom from old duties."
For a while, life drifted along pleasantly.
Since it was a popular thing to question "the ancient faith,"
Isobel in her doubts, had plenty of company. As one of the crowd, she was regarded as a modern and intelligent person.
Her Christian foundation, however, held her to belief in Jesus Christ as a historical character. "'Even though I had ceased to seek
Him, His purity and holiness made me hate besmirching things.
The effects of my home training still stayed with me. So when I broke with the old religious habits and frankly went into the world, I still was choosey in what I did. I never smoked, and I did not drink—all because my father and my mother had taught me so. In the gay group at college, I was considered a good girl, and even a Christian! I knew myself that I wasn't. Urgently my ~ mother pleaded with me to attend the Y.W.C.A. I went, but . was bored, so dropped it."
Dancing and the Players' Club (the amateur dramatic club of
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Phila!
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the Sita b absorbed most of Isobel's spare time. Gifted in acting comedy parts, she soon won life membership in the club, an unusual honour for a freshman.
More honours came. The popular girl was elected secretary of the Students' Council in her second year, at that time the highest elective position possible for a co-ed. This threw her in with the leading students, and before long she met Ben.
Vivacity and wit like a playing arc light drew many admirers to the girl with the teasing Irish eyes. But when Ben's long legs strode across Isobel's path he no doubt looked every inch a hero. He was several years older than she, and a returned soldier from World War I. Besides, he starred on the Varsity rugby and basket-ball teams.
"We went together for nearly two years," she relates, "and my path was opps downgrade." en, one day in Isobel's senior year, her chum came to her with a story that upset her completely. "Isobel," she said, "I think I should tell you something, even though it may hurt.
Everybody but you asa: your fiancé is not loyal to you. He is taking another girl out behind your back." Isobel found herself writhing under the unwelcome facts as if they were heavy heels gtinding her into the dust.
She saw it now! With the outflowing of her first love, she had laid her very heart at Ben's feet, and he had walked on it.
When she confronted him, Ben responded: "Isobel, you don't suppose, do you, that after we're married, I'm not going to take other women out sometimes?"
She was stunned.
"Then we part!" she whispered.
Isobel found herself wounded in the enemy's trap, the whirling rubble of all her air castles falling about her. Was this the promised "fun and all the good things of this life'?
"Pride wounded me, love afflicted me, sleep departed from me. I was working hard, I had signed up for the honours course in English Literature which entailed more work than a mere pass degree. I needed to sleep at night, but couldn't.
"One night when all the house had been asleep for hours, I was still "comm . Dad, for days, had been sympathetically silent about my troubles. But that night sensing my need, he came into
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my bedroom. There he knelt down beside me, and nea God to help me.' si "Thanks, Dad,' I said wearily, 'I know you mean it well, but it doesn't go beyond the ceiling, you know.' I never forgot the groan with which he turned and left the room."
Her father had a long wait for the answer to that prayer of his.
But, despite Isobel's unbelief, his groaning surely went higher the ceiling that night. A real father, he longed to lift his daughter in his sturdy arms and transfer her into the Everlasting
Arms of the God of all comfort! But the dust of despair had so blinded her that she struck out against all proffered help.
Then breaking into another dark night, the most climactic fight of Isobel Miller's life came rushing upon her.
Overwork, sleeplessness, a heavy heart. These added up to desperation.
Oh! to be done with this unhappy life!
Slyly, the Tempter pulled her out of bed and pointed towards a little bottle in the bathroom. The vial was marked with skull and crossbones. But with her hand on the door, the Lord stopped her. In the next room her father moaned in his sleep. Startled by the sound, Isobel suddenly realized what her tragic death might mean to this dear father.
"Daddy!" she swallowed a sob. "How could I do anything to break your heart!" The thought turned her back to the edge of her bed. There she sank in despair, e xperiencing what she later called the darkest moment of her life.
"I didn't want to live and I couldn't die."
Finally, with hands uplifted, she whispered into the black shadows, "God (if there be a God), if You will prove to me that You are, and give me peace, I will give You my whole life—do anything You ask, go anywhere You send me." Then she climbed into bed and pulled the blankets over her.
Immediately she fell asleep and slept like a baby. Next morning, true to her bargain, but still hardly believing that God had met her, she decided to search for God through the teachings of .
Christ in the New Testament. Her Bible was on a shelf. There it lay unused, just as it was when her father gave it to her on the day of her high school graduation. She began praying again, too.
But not before three months of this had passed sald she point
ALL IN A WHIRL
to unmistakable evidences that God was answering. He even helped her when she prayed for trivial and unworthy things— dates for dances, bids for parties!
She still never went to church nor spoke of her spiritual experience. Yet her parents sensed a change in her.
One Sunday afternoon, because of her mother's urging, Isobel went with her to.a Bible study class at the Vancouver Bible
School. She found the teacher, Professor Ellis, a remarkable combination of conservative scholarship and Christian kindliness. " Watching the radiance of his face," she said, "I instinctively knew he had personal dealings with God, and I decided that this was the preacher for me. . . . I was willing to learn from such a man as Professor Ellis."
After one of the first of those Bible classes, a white-haired gentlemen, her father's friend, said to her, "Isobel, I'm glad to see you here." Then with eyes flooded with tears he added,
"I've been praying for you for seven years.' The girl's eyes overflowed also, as she tried to thank him. She explained the tears by saying: "It was about seven years since I had decided to dance and go in for worldly things against my father's pleadings."
A pleading father, a <7 OS mother, a sincere Bible ote a praying elderly friend! Perhaps it was the memory of such spiritual Rees as these that in later years made Isobel so keen to help tempted young people with their problems. uly afew months i in her middle-of-the-night anguish, she had cried out to Someone whom she hardly believed existed.
If He would only prove Himself to her! Amazingly enough, it was as if the Lord stood listening at her door, key in hand, He was only waiting to hear her sincere cry so that He might release her from the dungeon of her doubts and despair. While she imagined herself searching for God, it was really God who had been secking her!
"True worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth:
For the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a spirit."
This she had learned out of a long, dark night of personal But she did not arrive at spiritual maturity all in a i238