My father got out of jail one year later. In prison, he met Jesus through a pastor who kept visiting him. He received forgiveness from Jesus for his involvement with the Germans.

Pa came home and three months later my Mom was pregnant again. As we were still staying with the parents of Mother, we needed to find our place to live.  Through uncle Mathew, Pa was hired to be the church caretaker in Oudewater (a small, old town between Utrecht and Gouda). The salary was: free living in a “two room plus a small kitchen” caretaker house in front of the small church. We had to walk through the church to go to the toilet. The sleeping room upstairs we divided in two. My oldest brother Izak was as a fifteen-year-old, drafted in the German Youth Army.  Before the Ardennes offensive started, he deserted, taking the risk of being shot by the Germans. (His whole platoon got killed). He met amazingly in Maastricht, a friend of my father, who gave him money to go to Groningen. We didn´t know that we were in the same town and he too had no way to find this out himself. Izak returned from a youth rehabilitation center, and our family was again complete.

Mother had developed severe rheumatism; her hands had grown already crooked. I saw how much it hurt her to do the laundry by hand. My father bought her one of the first washing machines available after the war. I was about 12 years old and asked if I could help her, so she taught me to do the laundry, iron, clean the home and cook. My reward was her grateful smile. 

 

One day Mom said:

I didn´t notice anything.

I looked again then I noticed. I wasn´t color blind, but I didn´t notice colours. It was a problem that years later still has bothered me. My school marks were also week. Looking back, I would say that I probably suffered under a form of Asperger like behaviour (1). Often absent- minded I looked out of the window of the classroom, making pictures out of the clouds. I would have to read a page about ten times before I would ´get it.”  I wanted to learn, to study more after I finished the six years of primary education. My father told me that more study for me was financially impossible as my older brother Rien was already studying. He couldn´t afford to pay for both of us. I would have to start to earn money to augment the very low-income family budget. He also knew that I didn´t get good grades.

In the primary school, I had heard about the atrocities of the Germans. When I was twelve, I confronted my parents and blamed them that they had worked with the Germans. It was the first time that I wept with tears running down my face out of anger. (Neither my mother nor I can recall that I cried before I was 12 years old). My father scolded me for not understanding what he wanted that would happen as he cooperated with the Germans. After this, we didn´t discuss the war for a long time. My stoic silence again came to my rescue.

A schoolteacher taught us a song that we sang in canon: Dona Nobis Pacem, (Lord, give us peace). A missionary gave a lively presentation of his work in Indonesia and made a lasting impression on me. At home, on the way to the toilet through the church, I passed by the small offering box: For Missions. On the way back, I stopped in the middle of the church and said:

It was my first conscious prayer in my life.

The small church didn´t have a pastor, but on Sundays, the leading elder would read a sermon. My mom would be so touched. I wondered what is it that made her cry, what did she hear that I did n´t?

There was a book with sermons on a little bookshelf in our living room. One Sunday morning I dared to ask my mother if I could read for myself a sermon, instead of going to church. She looked at me with thoughtful eyes and said:

I took the sermon book and looked in the index for the shortest one: only a few pages. “Wow, then I could also read the book that I got from the Village library.”I started to read sermonette titled: “On the hardening of hearts.”  It spoke about the Pharaoh of Egypt who hardened his heart against what God told him through Moses. The preacher described how some people heard the Word of God and reacted to it. Others stayed cold under the same message. “This preacher is talking about me,” I thought, Mother is hearing something from God, I don´t… The writer said: “I will make it brief, because when your heart is hardened, God can´t do much for you. Just get on your knees now and say: Please God have mercy”. That Sunday morning, I prayed on my knees before the couch

 Mom was wrestling with God. As a member of an ultra-Calvinistic-Church, she wasn´t allowed to accept Jesus as her Savior. She would have to wait until the Lord would reveal Himself to her.  Mom told me thirty years (!) later  how she couldn´t wait for this revelation anymore and said to the God 

She told me how at that moment waves of power went through her body, how a deep peace filled her heart and she started to say words she didn´t know the meaning. God had filled her with his Holy Spirit, and she thought that this was normal if people met God. In a short time, her crooked hands were straightened out. God had healed her rheumatism.

I proved to my parents that I wanted to study, ending up with 4 to 6 hours of homework each school day. My parents allowed me to take extra classes for the entrance exam preparations of Junior College and I passed!