Saturday, July 18, 1998

Missouri woman finds blessings amid a blessed event

By Eric Adler

Knight Ridder Newspapers

Diane Venton of Raytown, Mo., won't say she wasn't scared. Or that there weren't times she didn't question God's intentions. Because she did question. And she was scared - very, very scared.

Thirty-seven years old. Pregnant. Contemplating marriage with the baby's father. Venton was happy about it all until doctors told her, 20 weeks into her pregnancy, that without an emergency operation to support her weak cervix, she might lose her baby.

Confined to bed for months, she ceased school at Avila College, where she was learning to be a special-education teacher. She ceased work, student teaching. Unnerved, the baby's father distanced himself more and more, leaving Venton to cope on her own. She already was reeling when, on Mother's Day, came a telephone call from Oklahoma City. Venton's older sister and brother-in-law, happily married for 25 years, were in a car wreck. Both were killed.

"That just put me 10 steps back," Venton said. "I think it sometimes doesn't matter how deep you are in your faith, you question when there is an illness, when there is a death in the family, you question God, 'Why does this have to happen? With everything else going on, why now? Why me?' "

For a long time the question resonated in her mind, as she cried, as she prayed and as she stood at her sister's grave to bid her goodbye. But the one thing she never questioned, she said, was the one belief that got her through:

God loves her.

"I don't know," said Venton recently, wearing a tiny jeweled crucifix around her neck and a lapel button bearing the images of her sister and brother-in-law. "I just felt like the Lord came to me and said, 'I've always been here with you,' " she said. " 'I've always been here to protect you.' That was a comfort. It kept me grounded.

"I don't think the Lord makes bad things happen to people. I think bad things happen, and you have to rely on him to get you through. He definitely has gotten me through all these obstacles."

In fact, were it not for her faith, her Methodist upbringing, Venton said, she is not sure how she would have endured the last nine months.

"Had I not had the type of life I had," she said, "I would not have anything to lean on. There are people who let go of their faith and don't have anything to hold on to. Some of those people are lost, and I feel sorry for them. I think I'm blessed."

On June 24, at 2:39 p.m., she was, with a 8-pound 1-ounce healthy baby boy - Collan Alexander Harrison - Alexander being her sister's married name. At home he sleeps in a bedroom decorated with images from Noah's Ark.

"I wanted the baby," Venton said, "to be surrounded by a biblical theme."

(c) 1998, The Kansas City Star.

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