Introduction
On February 18, 2002, I visited with Bobby and Marti Fallin at their place of work, Christian Healing Ministries in Jacksonville. They shared something of their testimony with me, and I typed it almost as fast as it was narrated. As a result, the following is close to their words, although I put a few things in chronological order and changed from first person to third as they spoke. After writing it, I sent it to them to make sure everything is exactly as it happened.
Bobby and Marti's Witness
Bobby and Marti were high school sweethearts. He carried her books to school. They fell in love, he proposed, and they were married April 2, 1965. At that time they were living in Dallas, Texas. On April 14, 1966, their first child, Robby was born. While holding his son's life in his hands, something came over Bobby, a deep desire to be the best father he could possibly be. This started Bobby and Marti on a journey to seek spiritual things. Many other things could have done this, but Robby's birth brought Bobby to faith as a Christian. Two years later, a second child was born, July 20, 1968. Her name was Teri.
As Christians, they had a very happy family. Financially, it was tight, they barely made it from week to week. But they had happiness and they had love. Almost every day they had family devotions together. One thing they would do was to act out bible stories. It was fun to see kids do this, and to know that these children were their own. They will never forget the story of Moses. They asked Teri to be Moses. She didn't want to be Moses, but she did just fine with the part. These were some of their fondest memories, their times of devotions together.
Sometimes, in order to teach their children to trust in God, they would blindfold one of them. Then the others would give directions to made their way through the house. At the end, they would ask the blindfolded person to fall backwards, promising to catch them. That one devotion, more than any other, remains in their memories as the lesson on how we need to trust God. In their words, "We are not going to fall, he is going to catch us." This sense of trust would help them through the years ahead.
These early years with their children were some of the happiest times of their lives. Bobby and Marti had been given the one thing they most wanted out of life, a happy loving family. And indeed, those early years with their children were wonderful.
When their son Robby was about eight, he was rushed to the hospital with a ruptured spleen. His parents called a local Christian radio station who put out a call for prayer. Robby was slated to have an immediate operation. Just before the operation, however, the doctor noticed that his color had returned to normal. They checked him again and discovered that there was nothing wrong with his spleen. His parents were convinced that God had healed him.
One of the things that Bobby and Marti loved the most was watching their children establish their identities. When young, their son Robby played the french horn. He was very good at it and his music teacher told him that if he kept it up he could get a scholarship to college. But one day he announced to his parents that his goal was contact sports. With reluctance, they agreed and he became a football player. His mother told him that if he ever injured himself he would have to withdraw from football. He also started lifting weights, going through several sets of weights, each heavier than the last. Soon, he became exceptionally strong.
As Robby grew up, everyone came to love him. He was a gentle giant, courteous and kind with a heart of gold. He was constantly helping people in need. Girls loved him, although he never had a formal girl friend. He was also a Christian, very devoted to his friends, to God, and his family. In 1984, He entered into a weight lifting competition. He lifted 700 pounds. As he lifted, blood oozed out of his eyes and the pores of his skin as it had with Jesus in the garden. All other competitions were suspended at the moment of his final lift. He was going for the world record. The watching crowd was dead silent. When he did it, on the first attempt, the place erupted into pandemonium. It was a world record, not just a Texas record, but a world record for a high school student.
Often, at night, Robby would come in and talk to his parents. At first, he would stand by the door, then little by little, make his way into the room. Finally, when he would get to the matter on his heart, he would be lying across the bottom of the bed as he spoke with them. It brought them great happiness, seeing him flower into an wonderful young man in every respect.
Their daughter, Teri, was also an exceptional person. She was brilliant, beautiful, talented, and very creative. She wrote poetry and was always in the accelerated classes. When Teri was thirteen, however, things began to go wrong. She ran way from home, got into drugs, a bad crowd, and alcohol. This broke her parent's hearts. They did everything in their power to reach out to her. Nothing worked. They often wondered what they had done wrong. She became increasingly alienated from them, from God, and from a wholesome life. Everything they did to bring her close only served to drive her further away. This was very difficult. At one point, they took her to get braces for her teeth. Shortly thereafter, she ran away and tore out the braces so the police would not be able to identify her. She got involved with the occult, becoming known for her ability to see the future. Her revelations were given to her by a spirit guide. Eventually, she left the Dallas area and started living in Alabama. By then, she was beyond high school age. Bobby once visited her in Alabama. She was living in a trailer. The windows were broken out, the refrigerator did not work, nor the stove. She cooked her father a meal on a hot plate. It broke his heart. People from all over came to her for Tarot readings.
After high school, Robby left for Tyler Junior College on a football scholarship. He was lonely there, and after a year, he came home. One day, in March of 1986, he had a motorcycle accident. He didn't seem seriously hurt. He rode his motorcycle home and his parents doctored his scratches and bumps. He went to bed while they went out to a party. When they got home, they found him dead. They reacted in horror, running away from his dead body, calling 911, crying out in terror. As the coroner took his body from the house, they wept and screamed. The date was March 21, 1986.
In the days, weeks, and months that followed, they were simply numb. They remember the funeral, and afterwards, a service in the high school auditorium. Hundreds of students were there. After the initial horrible shock, a terrible darkness came over them. They felt betrayed by God. Teri felt betrayed as well. She responded by running even further from God and from them. Months would pass and they would never hear from her. Bobby and Marti could not understand why God let this happen. It was so strange that he had once healed their son of a ruptured spleen, only to let him die of the same thing some years later. This seemed cruel. They had lost the one thing they loved, their family. Their darkness was so bleak that they begin to think they could not go on. They discussed suicide, but did not do it because of their daughter, their parents and relatives, as well as friends. Day and night they mourned, deep groans and sighs wouldnÆt go away. For many many months they cried themselves to sleep every night.
They never went to a grief support group, although they did get their newsletter. This helped a bit. Church was difficult, especially the comments of friends. People didn't seem to know what to say. The worst comment was that God loved their son so much that he took him home to be with God. When that was said, Bobby felt like slugging them.
In spite of everything, they chose to run toward God rather than from him. They started going to a charismatic church. This was not because they had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but because they could raise their hands in anger with tears running down their faces while others raised their hands in praise. The people left them alone, thinking they were praising God. Warming a pew was all they could do, seeking to receiving the comfort of the Holy Spirit. In their pain, God came to them. He would speak to them, encourage them, give them comfort. This would happen in many different ways. They might be standing in the check out line at the grocery store, for example, and someone would say something that spoke to them, a word of hope from God.
At one point, the man who had been Robby's coach invited them to attend a little Methodist church. They started going there, feeling an affinity with the people. The people were genuine, they reached out with compassion, and so they joined this church. After a while they were asked to teach an adult class. They felt that this was stretching it, God asking them to lead a class given their bleak condition, but they went ahead. Even though they were uncomfortable, they stepped out. They called their class the Koinonia class. From the beginning, the class seemed to attract misfits, but they were happy together. At first, class members were focusing on their sins, trying to give up drinking or smoking, but Bobby and Marti said they should not focus on their sins, but on the Lord Jesus. As they did that, real fellowship began to occur, and to this day, Marti and Bobby are in contact with the members of this original group.
Little by little, the Lord began to lead them forward, calling them to step out in news ways. One day they laughed together, and felt guilty as if it were a betrayal. In 1990, Bobby was transferred to Jacksonville, Florida. He was a trucker, and had worked for Yellow Freight for thirty years. Prior to moving, they asked for their parent's blessing. They and their parents, brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts, had been living in the Dallas area for many years. Leaving Dallas was a big step. They received the family blessing and set off to Florida and a new life.
Throughout this entire time they prayed daily for their daughter, but rarely saw her or heard from her. She was so poor she did not have a phone. She worked in a sweat shop in Alabama, sewing clothes. It wasn't unusual for the machine to run into her hands, and she continued her life of drugs and fortune telling.
They moved to Jacksonville and got an apartment. One day, they were sitting in their apartment reminiscing about old times, days with their children. They remembered how they had bought Robby a BB gun. Marti stood up and suddenly felt something under her foot. She looked down, it was a BB pellet. Suddenly they felt that God was with them, that heaven was only an instant away. They had no idea how the BB pellet got there, they kept their floors cleaned and vacuumed.
Even though God was gradually healing them, they were still haunted by the past. Almost every night Bobby would have nightmares of discovering Robby's body, and they ached daily for their daughter. They joined a Methodist church in Jacksonville. The people were very loving there. Once they heard Teri's story, they began to pray for her, that she would come home.
They also got to know Francis and Judith MacNutt, the founders of Christian Healing Ministries. One evening, they were house sitting for the MacNutt's who were away in Europe. As they were praying , Bobby and Marti found themselves thinking of the Stations of the Cross, particularly the station where Mary receives the body of Jesus into her arms. Suddenly time came together, the time of Mary with her son Jesus in her arms, the time they discovered Robby's body, and present time. They were there, at the cross and with their own son, and as Mary received Jesus into her arms, they received Robby into their arms. They kissed his dead body and told him they were sorry they ran from him in horror. They blessed him and gave him back into the everlasting arms of the risen Lord Jesus. Tears poured down their faces as they told him goodbye, and yet, even as they did, they received him back again, risen with the Lord. In Bobby's words:
I never dreamed that God could be so original, that he could take us back to that station of the cross. That was such a creative thing to do. For my therapy, no one would have ever thought of such a thing to do. It was a God surprise. If you had asked me if I was over my grief, I would have said yes. I had gone thought all the steps, but did not realize the depth of the pain that I had in that one area. God said, "Surprise, I want to heal this too." This was the critical moment that said that death is not the end, death has not swallowed up our family. I realized in the station of the cross that I still had my family, my son is still my son. I realized the real truth of the resurrection there. When Mary was holding Jesus' dead body, she believed he was resurrection and the life, but it was a dead body and she loved it still. There is such beauty in that. There is such beauty in death. And I think there is beauty because death is not the end.
After that, Bobby's terrible dreams of finding Robby's dead body went away, never to return.
In 1995, their daughter came home. It began when her spirit guide left her and she could no longer read the tarot cards. She realized that her parents were praying for her, and that God had bound the spirit, making it dumb. To her parent's surprise, she suddenly called, saying she would like to visit them. She did, and that Sunday they went to the Methodist Church. It was the first Sunday of Advent. While sitting in the pew at the start of the service, Teri saw a little card to be filled out by visitors. She picked it up and noticed that it asked if there were any sermons the visitor would like to hear. She pointed it out to her parents, making a typical sarcastic remark. But then she filled it in, saying she wanted a sermon on hope. At that moment, an advent candle was lit. The narrator announced that this candle was for hope. Moments later, the pastor got up to preach. His topic was hope. Everything said and done in that service that Sunday was a Word from the Lord for Teri. When it came time for communion, she practically ran down the aisle to receive. Her parents came with her, weeping. Everyone saw what happened, and they began to weep as well. They had been praying for her for five years. The prodigal had come home. The family was together again, in heaven and on earth, and from heaven to earth.
Teri was instantly healed of her drug and alcohol additions. In the following months, she and her parents relived the years that were lost. Teri was almost like a child at first, and then, as she grew up, she made her way into the world while keeping her strong ties with her parents. She is now a youth minister and is getting a degree in computers and early childhood education. She is also married. Her husband is a seminary student. Bobby and Marti have a new life as well. They are now co directors of volunteer prayer ministers at Christian Healing Ministry in Jacksonville, Florida.
Bobby and Marti have a word for us: "God is good all the time."
And our response, "All the time God is good."
Jesus also has a Word for us: "Whoever believes in me, even though he die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me, will never die." (John 11:25 6)
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
