It was eleven below zero in Wisconsin, and eight more inches of snow had fallen. My wife Naomi, whom I called Nomi, half prayed and half sighed.
“Please let this be my last winter in all this cold and snow.”
Nomi wanted to live somewhere warmer. She also loved rural nursing and wondered where her work might meet a greater need. I think about both of those desires when I look at a photograph of her at twenty-six, walking across a swinging bridge in Buckhorn, Kentucky.
She had driven her Jeep through the hills and hollers to visit a patient. The last five hundred feet across the Kentucky River she had to walk.
The Bridge at Buckhorn
Five hundred feet of swinging bridge
between her Jeep and the other bank.
Did she look down at the river
or keep her eyes on where she was going?
Was she already thinking about her patient?
I can almost hear her say,
It was my job.
Someone on the other side
was waiting for a nurse.
After the visit, she had to cross again.
Five hundred feet back to the Jeep,
the river beneath her
and the road through the hollers still ahead.
It looks like a warm day in the photograph.
I wonder if she made that walk in winter, too,
with snow on the boards
and cold in her hands.
Before Buckhorn, Nomi wrote:
“If I like this type of nursing so well, why not move to an even remoter area where there is a greater need for nurses”
“All these ideas are just dreams, but it’s fun to plan.”
Naomi wrote about herself as Ann. Just before that line, she wondered whether she could find a more remote place where nurses were needed, while staying within a day or two’s drive of her mother, who was on dialysis. Then Psalm 119:133 came to mind: “Direct my footsteps according to your word…” She wrote that she was learning to rely on Jesus to direct her, and ended with:
“Well, time to quit dreaming….”
She found that greater need in Buckhorn. When I ask myself how God answered her prayer, I think of that photograph. Part of the answer was a patient on the other side of the river.
Together in Buckhorn
Another eight inches of snow had fallen.
It was eleven below zero.
Half praying and half sighing, Nomi said,
“Please let this be my last winter in all this cold and snow.”
She hoped to find a warmer climate
And a place of greater need.
“If I like this type of nursing so well, why not move to an
even remoter area where there is a greater need for nurses”
God’s call led her to Buckhorn,
Where the roads wound through the hills.
At Buckhorn Clinic, day by day,
She served with her friend Lucille.
Two sisters in the Lord, whose faith
Found work and purpose there.
Beyond the clinic’s open door
Were homes that needed care.
A five-hundred-foot bridge stretched
Across the Kentucky River.
On the other side, a woman waited,
And Nomi crossed to care for her.
I think of that cold Wisconsin morning
And the prayer she whispered there.
Then I picture Nomi on that bridge,
Answering God’s call, one step at a time.
