Women of Hope: Major Beth Sturdivant

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. Welcome to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Welcome back to Words of Life.

I'm Bernie Dake. And I'm Cheryl Gillum. Our series studying 12 women in the Bible God used to do the extraordinary ended last week.

But before we launch into our new series on leadership, we wanted to share a few testimonies of incredible women God is using today. And joining us for these episodes is our friend, Ashley Escobar. Hey, thanks for having me.

Yeah, welcome. It's good to have you here, Ashley. Full disclosure, she is a friend. Yes, she is. And she has a very cool husband named Ed. He's all right.

And a beautiful son named Ever. He's the best. He is the best. And I love your social media. Yes.

Thank you for sharing it with us. Ashley is a very talented woman. She's a dancer. She's a dancer. She's an artist.

Absolutely. She's a singer. Anything else you want to tell your public?

Beautiful woman of God. I actually have a new passion, which has been interviewing people. Wow. Which is actually a part of what we're talking about today. But I think there's such value in allowing people to be heard.

And because a lot of people may not feel heard or may feel that their story doesn't matter, but you're giving someone power when you just sit there and listen to them. And that's not something I've always been good at doing. But I'm just in this season of life where I'm soaking it all in hearing someone's story. So yeah, that's my new passion.

And I've watched some of those interviews. It's beautiful. So thank you. Well done. Thank you. Well done. So today we're going to hear from Major Beth Sturdivant. And so Ashley, can you kind of set up this testimony for us?

Yeah. So Major Beth Sturdivant, I did not know her very well prior to the interview. But if you know Major Beth Sturdivant, if you've heard her story, it is very focused on her husband when he got COVID and was not looking like he was going to make it when that happened. And during that time, she also had COVID and was hospitalized and they were separate. They were separated from each other and one was in one hospital, one was in the other. And it just was looking like a very hopeless situation. At one point, they called the family in thinking he wasn't going to make it.

Yes. I mean, they were making plans for his departure from this earth. And so to go through that experience and to make it out to where they are now, they're both happy and healthy.

And I think that's incredible. So when I heard her story, the focus was on him. But I thought in my mind, I want to hear her side.

I want to hear what she has to say. Who am I? I'm Beth Sturdivant. To most people that know me, young and old, I am Mama Sturdy. And that sums up who I am.

I just want to mother everybody. That may be a gift. That may be a flaw.

I'm not sure. But for me, that is exactly who I am. I just want to take care of people. Where does that come from? It probably comes from my childhood. My biological mother abandoned me when I was just a tiny baby. And so I had a mother who raised me who did not biologically give birth to me. And so she loved me as my mother would. She was my mama. And so I believe that from early on that I knew that I could do that, that I could love people.

I didn't have to birth them to love them. And so that has just grown in me over time and just people I come in contact with. What is hope to me? Hope is knowing and feeling that things are going to be all right, no matter the process of that. Sometimes it is the most hurtful process that we have to go through. Sometimes it's the best process we can go through. But to know that in the end, God has a plan for each of us.

And we don't always know what that looks like. But having hope that He sees the big picture. One of my first stories, I didn't always have hope. Even though I had a family that raised me and loved me, I think there's something primal in you that knowing that your mother gave you away. You know, I grew up thinking I always needed to be smart enough, which I fell short, or pretty enough, right?

I fell short. You know, all of the things that I thought I needed to do in order to make people love me. And it took me a long time to realize, first of all, there was a Heavenly Father who loved me so much.

It didn't matter what earthly people did. And that was a long road for me to realize that. When I had my first child, the turning point for me came.

Because I knew then I could begin to pour in to someone else. I realized with each child that I had, that was God saying to me each time, here you go. Here's more love for you.

Here you go. You know, I've birthed three children. I've raised, you know, more than that. I've birthed three children, so each time God just showed me, He was pouring that much more on to me.

And He would say to me each time, here you go. I've got you. I have so much love for you. I'm sure people that know me very quickly, I am Gary's wife. Not only am I my children's mother, I am Gary's wife, you know.

But people who know him know me. Some of the darkest days in my life is during my time when he was so sick. Not that I doubted God, but I was afraid. Because for so long I have been Gary's wife. And I thought, what would I do when I was not Gary's wife anymore? What would I do if God saw fit that He needed not to be on this earth anymore? And I kept saying to the doctors and the nurses and to God, as if God didn't know, that Gary is my world. You know, my family is my world, but I need him in my life.

Not just want. We want people in our lives, but on my lowest days, He keeps me going. He went to the hospital and he was sick and I couldn't go and see him. And you know, I couldn't get to him when our son called to say, Dad is not going to make it. And all I remember thinking is, I have to get to the hospital.

I have to get to where he's at. And I had a nurse and trying to get, if you could picture this, me trying to get out of the room and she is physically restraining me to prevent me from getting out of the hospital. I had no idea which direction I was going, but I was going to go. And she was there for me.

And I know that God placed her there just for me. I was absolutely scared, terrified when Gary was sick. And people often ask me, how did I know the moment that I knew that he would be all right? When I was released, when Gary got sick, we were at separate hospitals. And once they stabilized him, it was several days, he was brought to the same hospital that I was. And so I thought, oh, they'll let me go up to be with him.

That didn't happen. And so I left and he was there. And so for almost 40 more days, I didn't get to see him. I only got three calls from the hospital. And each time they were early morning and it meant something had gone wrong, something.

And so this was the third call and it was early in the morning and I was very afraid to answer the phone. And she said to me, I just want you to know that his COVID test was clear today. And it took me just a second. And I said, oh, does that mean I can come and see him now? And she said, yes.

And I probably busted her eardrum because I literally screamed into the phone. And she laughed and I laughed and I was so excited that I was going to be. And I was like a giddy girl, you know, because I quickly got ready and I was trying to get to the hospital as quickly. And I walked in and I saw him and he knew me. I was really afraid that he wasn't going to know who I was because he'd been so sick.

And he saw me and I knew, I knew that he was going to be all right. For those who may be going through the same thing that I went through or something similar, I would say, first of all, listen to God. I really believe that had it gone a different way, God would have told me. God would have prepared me that he was going to take Gary. And there are instances in our life that things happen to us that may seem odd to other people or may go against the grain. But I would always say listen to God because he always has your back. He always has your best interest. And when things don't seem probable, I know with our story with Gary, no one, no one thought that he was going to leave the hospital. We look for our answers in other people and they don't often come from other people.

But the right answer always comes from God. Wow. I love Mama Sturdy, Bessie, Beth, all those things, she is, she's an inspiration to me. She is. You know, I was, I know Beth very well, but as I was sitting there listening to her story, I just kept on thinking only in God's economy can you go from being an orphan to a mama who loves everybody. I mean, God totally redeemed her story in that way to be used for his purposes to love a world that needs a mama Sturdy. And so I was just awestruck by that, that God just turned, flipped her story around. And through her shows unconditional love to so many people.

Yeah. I'm going to piggyback off of what you just said, because I think a lot of times we think that something is unattainable or we can't become something because that hasn't been displayed to us in our lives. But that's obviously not the truth based off her testimony that we can be who God called us to be because we are his child and it's not dependent upon the family that we're born into or even the one that we have, our friends, whatever status, but that God called us and he chose us. That's why we're here. And that's an opportunity with that alone. Well, we hope that you're encouraged by Mama Sturdy's story.

She is awesome. And we've got a few more weeks of more stories just like this. We hope that you'll tune in and be encouraged. salvationarmysoundcast.org.

God bless you. at uss.salvationarmy.org. Tell us how we can help share prayer requests or share your testimony.

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