Edith Morgan of Roan Mountain, Tennessee, was in the third grade when the Great Depression swept over Appalachia, forcing her brother Donnie, seventeen, to leave the mountains for work in Ohio. The checks he sent home every week allowed the family to survive. But it was a cruel separation. Edith dearly loved her big brother, and a long year passed before he was given a week’s vacation.
My school desk was in the center of the room, and I couldn’t see out the window. One day as class ended, one of the girls by the window told me she had seen my brother Donnie walking up the road. I got so excited I rushed out the door and started running the two miles home. I outran the wagon that normally took us. I was out of breath when I ran through the door, and sure enough, there was Donnie.
She flew into his arms, crying hysterically. To console her Donnie reached into his pocket and gave her his fountain pen. She had never had a fountain pen before, and very few of the mountain people did have one. It was the kind that, when turned upside down and unscrewed, could be refilled from a bottle of ink. That pen became her pride and joy.
One day I couldn’t find my pen. I had no idea where I had misplaced it. I searched every inch of the house, every room, every closet. It was nowhere to be found, and I was agitated. We had been taught to take our problems to the Lord, so I slipped out behind the pile of lumber in the orchard, got down on my knees, and prayed desperately that God would help me find my pen. But I had prayed many times for other things, and was a little doubtful. So I said to God, “Now, Father, answer this prayer. If you won’t do anything else, I ask you to do this.”
No sooner had I spoken those words than I felt guilty about them. I started to go to the house, but I turned, got back on my knees, and asked God to forgive me for speaking so brashly. Then I asked Him again to help me find my pen.
Getting up, I went immediately to the house, marched straight to the back bedroom, raised the lid of the old trunk that was full of rags and strings from mother’s quilt scraps, and plunged my hand into the scraps. There among the strings and scraps I felt my pen. To this day I don’t know how it came to be there. I suspect my mother threw it in there because it made such a mess when I tried to refill it. But regardless, God had answered my prayer. There was no doubt about it.
“And that,” says Edith Morgan “is how I first learned that Jesus hears our prayers and answers our sincere requests.”
Learning to Pray
