ANNE MURR

For three years my parents, Paul and Haven Hasel, were missionaries in Burma, where I was born shortly after the completion of World War II. It wasn’t a completely stable region and I don’t think I realized the courage required of my parents to serve there but they did it on faith.

They were Baptist missionaries so my early years were spent in a church that had the baptistry in a corner at the front of the sanctuary. I don’t remember anything of Burma because we returned to the states when I was three.  We were Methodists by the time I was confirmed so I was baptized then. As an adolescent all I remember of that baptism was that I had to knee one more time than all the rest of the kids, so it held no particular significance for me. I was very self-conscious and unsure of myself.

We moved to Iowa when I was nine. My father researched several different denominations — even Unitarian — and chose Methodism. They chose Iowa because it was halfway between Kansas, my mother’s home, and Ohio, my father’s home. We left temperate northern California for the frigid, humid, often distressing Iowa climate.

We moved to Colo, a town of about 500 population and then to Des Moines when I was a freshman in high school. It was wonderful for me not to be known as a p.k. (preache'rs kid) through high school. I attended Wesley Woods camps and in 9th grade I met a college counselor whose name was Tom Murr. Four years later our paths — crossed at a Youth Rally and a year after that we were married. The first year of our married life Tom served as lay pastor at Woodburn as he had for three years while he was a student at Simpson. I completed two years of college, one at Morningside and one at Simpson, and then our daughter Marte was born.

My life was certainly full as a mother of young children. After Michelle was born, our minister came and asked if I would lead the children’s choir and I did. I have been leading choirs in church ever since then, and Michelle is now 28.

For three years we lived in Gladbrook, where our sons David and Paul were born. When David was one year old, we were "drafted" to be Youth Counselors. The minister was a retired Colonel in the Air Force (Chaplain) and he announced from the pulpit that we would be Youth Counselors, so we did it. As training for that Tom attended a leadership training and met a man from an Ames United Methodist church who told Tom about a Lay Witness Mission they were hosting. Tom said we’d go. I’d never heard of Lay Witness Mission and hadn’t a clue as to what that was. It began on Friday night, and, because Tom was covering a football game as a reporter for the Marshalltown paper, he couldn’t go that night. Since I didn’t know what it was but didn’t want to miss anything, I took the bus to Ames. That evening I heard one of the lay witnesses tell about praying that God would supply their need for garbage pickup in their new subdivision. I was at that mission as a witness but I knew I had nothing to witness to.

That evening in the home of my hosts they were led by God to share with me my need for Christ. They showed me a simple picture with God on the top and me on the bottom, and we are separated. The way to bring us in union was through the cross of Christ. Dan asked me if I needed Christ in my life and I said yes. We prayed together. Then we cried and rejoiced. For the first time in my life tears, cleansing tears, flowed freely. When I was asked at the women’s luncheon the next day to share my witness, I now could say I knew how God had been working and leading me to this point in my life. I knew that I had experienced God’s forgiveness and freeing grace in my own life as a result of the decision I had made the night before.

The Bible came alive for me. One of the first verses I learned was John 16:24: Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete. Up to that time my life should have been full, for I had a husband who loved me and three beautiful children. But I certainly had a discontent and dissatisfaction until I opened my life to receive the fullness of God’s grace and joy. As Augustine wrote, "Our hearts are restless until they End rest in Thee" and that was certainly my experience.

That event began a journey for me, a journey of becoming more aware of who God is and in the light of His truth becoming more aware of who I am. This has definitely been a slow, sometimes painful, but always a growing experience toward reconciliation. "Being saved" is a continuous process, not a final event.

We moved from Gladbrook to Spencer when our fourth child, Paul, was two years old. The first Sunday we sat in church the bulletin stated that choir practice would begin on a certain September date but they had no director. Tom poked me on one side and Marte on the other each saying, "You can do that." I had only directed children’s choirs and had no musical training. In that church for the first time the minister came to call on me, not as Tom’s wife, not as the children’s mother but me. I was still much the same as that 11-year old child who had knelt to be baptized at the altar, so insecure and self-conscious. Directing the choir was a time of growth and joy for me.

Those years in Spencer I also was active in Christian Women’s Club. We studied the scriptures together and it was the first time I really experienced the joy of Christian Fellowship, having Christian friends I could call and say, "Let’s pray together." My growth during those years was in knowledge of God’s grace but the knowledge didn’t lead to the fullness of joy, to the freedom of loving which I am still trying to discover.

It does not follow that knowing God’s truths means that I lived them. I am finding that God works in our lives one layer at a time. God gives us a truth or an understanding or the experience of forgiveness but that experience always leads to another challenge or difficulty in life.

We moved to Waterloo, our children grew to be teenagers and Tom became much busier in his work. I was struggling with who I was as a person.

I returned to college at UNI and began studying music. Since I needed a performance area, I chose voice, although I had never done solo singing. In singing, your body is your instrument. I soon found that I did not know my instrument. One day in frustration my voice teacher suggested that I go to the University Counseling Center, for I needed to know myself. Living in God’s love does not automatically mean we become whole persons. I was not a whole person. There were many areas in my life where I needed to be reconciled.

I was a member of our church’s prayer chain and had kept a prayer list. I did not include myself in my prayer list and thereby felt that I was being very selfless (i.e., putting others first, as I had been trained that a Christian woman should). I remember my mother saying what a revelation it was to her that you must first of all love yourself before loving your neighbor. She never did quite make that revelation a part of her living and neither had I. I did not know how to love myself; but Jesus was leading me toward that goal. Even though I wasn’t praying for myself, God was answering prayer for me by bringing certain books to my attention and people into my life as guideposts on my journey.

Life-changing books at that point in my life were Dance of Anger by Harriet G. Lerner, the Experience of Inner Healing by Ruth Carter Stapleton, Sex Begins in the Kitchen which I found in my Christian book store and the Psalms which express the whole gamut of emotions - despair, depression, fury, vengeance, anger, as well as hope, joy, rejoicing, praise, assurance, and tenderness; always coming back to the knowledge of God’s saving power.

After eight years in Waterloo we moved to Guthrie Center for two years. I l worked at Drake and completed my degree in Elementary and Early Childhood Education with a Minor in Music.

Psalm 32:8 has been God’s promise to me, "I will teach you and guide you in the way you should go." There have been times in my journey when I have not known what direction to take. When I first started commuting to Des Moines from Guthrie Center I was fervently praying that God would provide someone I could carpool with and found no one. After about a month and a half I took the Drake employee directory and began searching for someone who lived west of Des Moines. My second call connected me with the person God had provided. As we carpooled for two years ours became a friendship built on mutual respect and Christian love. The lesson I learned from this was that God answers our prayers, very often waiting until we take action. This is a piece of loving ourselves - actively doing what is needed instead of passively waiting for things to happen to and for us.

Shortly after moving to Osceola from Guthrie Center the opportunity presented itself for Tom and me to return to Woodburn 30 years after Tom began there as student pastor. God did guide us in where we should go, for we felt we had completed a circle in our lives. We returned to a Christian "family" to which Tom belonged almost 30 years before and we have been welcomed and affirmed in so many ways.

One of the gifts my parents gave me was their trust in God and in the power of prayer. As a parent myself this has freed me from great burdens of worry. Each of our young adult children has experienced difficulties which have pushed me to trust and release them over and over again. One incident which illustrates this is last year when I was walking to visit Michelle in the hospital in Boston. The phrase from the anthem the choir had been rehearsing kept repeating in my mind, no matter how stressful life can be "How can I but rejoice!" God put that song in my heart to lift and encourage me at a time I felt sorely stressed.

The decision I came to at the Lay Witness Mission at an Ames United Methodist Church almost 26 years ago was the starting point of my reconciliation with God and with myself, "For God was in Christ reconciling the world (that meant me) to himself' (2 Cor. 5:19). That night I saw a truth about myself, that I was separated from God and that the way for that separation to be bridged was through the cross of Jesus Christ. That was the starting point of my journey of growth toward wholeness, toward the fullness of being ("abundant life", John 10:10b) that Jesus said is ours in him.

God’s plan is for reconciliation nr all areas of my life. On my journey I have I found that I have been separated in many ways - separated from those I love — friends and my family, separated from my inner self, separated from God. I have grown toward wholeness as I have taken action in honesty and love, often with much struggle, to bring reconciliation in my relationships. God has brought these areas to my awareness one layer at a time. They have come through events of illness, of family struggle, and through new challenges in my professional and personal life. I have searched for my truth in the light of God’s truth in the Bible, in books, and with the help of others, both lay friends and professionals, I am discovering new areas of freedom and struggle in my life. The process is one layer at a time, always with hope in God’s promised reconciling power and love.

My "Recipe for Living" is a recipe of reconciliation. Ingredients in this recipe are God’s promises, "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life" (Ps. 23:6); "I am united to Christ, therefore I am made new; the old order has gone, and the new order has already begun" (2 Cor. 5:17 paraphrased); "in thy presence is the fullness of joy" (Ps. 16: 11a): "in spite of all, overwhelming victory is ours through him who loved us" (Rom. 8:37) and so many others that the Holy Spirit has brought to my awareness as I have needed them. These ingredients are the catalysts which have caused and are causing me to change and grow toward the person God created me to be.

All of us...are being transformed…
from one degree of glory to another;
for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.
(2 Cor. 3:18 Favorite Bible verse of
Fern Underwood)

Return to main page for Recipes for Living 1996 by Fern Underwood

Last Revised April 29, 2012