Crying and Praying: Keepers Respond to Crisis

Florence’s Story 2 (Look below for more about Florence)

Two days before I was to visit Florence, I called to confirm our appointment. One of her sons answered the phone and told me that Florence was away and would not be back for a week. She, who rarely left the reservation, had gone to be with her grandson in a hospital fifty miles away. No one had called me to cancel my visit because everyone had been focused on the events of the moment. I called a few weeks later, and we rescheduled our time together.
During our visit, I asked Florence what had happened to her grandson. She told me that she had had to manage intense emotions during this time:
“My parents were Christians,” Florence said, “and I learned to rely on the Bible along with the Lakota traditions. The Bible pulls me through the hard times, and gets me through the day and just recently, I needed those prayers. It was very strong. My grandson, he is only sixteen, and he was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. The week you were supposed to come they had to amputate his arm. I was there with him in the hospital, and I broke down. I only could pull myself together because I had to be strong for my son. I told him that they had to take that arm to save his boy’s life. Now my grandson is healing, but we don’t know what is going to happen. The boy and my son have to go back and forth for chemo. I cry, and I pray, and it gets me through. Once in a while I go to the church, but mostly, I pray at home.
“My dad taught me about the Bible. As an old man, he had diabetes, and they had to amputate his leg. He had his Bible with him, but he finally gave up, and he died. When he passed away, I was going to put his Bible in his coffin because he had thought so much of it. My conscience kept saying however, ‘Keep it. Just keep it.’ A cousin of mine came down for the funeral, and I asked her what I should do. She said. ‘Maybe he wants you to keep it.’ I listened to her, and I kept the Bible. A while later I looked through it, and I found notes my father had hidden in different sections. One note said, ‘If you get lonesome read this chapter.’ I thought then that he had meant for me to keep his Bible. I was real glad to have the Bible with me when my grandson got sick.
“The Christian tradition and the Lakota tradition go together because we all pray to one god. The Bible says to spread the word in all directions and this is what we believe too. In our dances, we acknowledge the four directions and this is similar to the Christian way.”
Crying and praying go together for Florence. For her they are as natural as breathing. She also trusts her instincts based on traditional beliefs about what she should or should not do when she has to make an immediate decision in a dangerous moment.
Look for next Post: Florence trusts intuitive wisdom to make crucial choices in moments of crisis.