Sardis Baptist Church, Birmingham, member Patricia Redmond completed writing her book, “In the Fullness of Time: My Faith Journey,” last spring but the story is far from finished.
The book chronicles Redmond’s life as she has cared for Jamilah, her special-needs daughter who has developmental disabilities. Circumstances haven’t always unfolded as Redmond hoped they would, but she said she’s learned that God is faithful.
“It was a high moment for me after I finished writing it,” she said.
“I thought I had been waiting on God to heal Jamilah but I realized that He was more concerned with changing me than her. I thought I wouldn’t have a testimony until after her healing,” Redmond continued.
“But I’ve learned that faith is standing on God’s word even in unchanged circumstances. It’s evidence of things you don’t see. God gave me a promise back in 1979 that everything would be all right and He’s kept His word.”
Redmond and her husband, Steven, first noticed something was wrong with their infant daughter when she was only months old. “She wasn’t sitting up or developing in other areas as she should have,” Redmond said of her now 25-year-old firstborn.
Not until Jamilah was 16 did doctors determine that she had a chromosomal defect. The Redmonds were excited to finally have a diagnosis but were discouraged to find that there is no name or treatment for this disorder.
“It impedes her neurological development,” Redmond said. “There’s no hereditary link. It was a fluke thing — things like this just happen.”
The Redmonds used to have a sitter stay with Jamilah during the day while they worked. But in 1995, after 25 years of working at Bell South, Patricia Redmond retired and decided to stay at home with Jamilah. This is when she began working on the book.
Seeing growth
“I had kept journals all during Jamilah’s life,” she said. “My husband encouraged me to put the notes in a book. It was a retrospective work for me to see all that God had done and how I had grown in Him.”
Since 1996 Redmond has spoken to various groups concerning her story and life with a disabled child.
“My message to people is clear: God’s people need to hold on and hold out to the end. It’s God’s time, not ours,” she said. “He works things out for our good and His glory.”
Redmond added her final chapter to the book last spring. She called this chapter “Surviving the Middle” and lists seven things that she believes can help Christians endure between the time that they receive a word from God and when it is manifested.
“Waiting is often involved,” she said. “Things usually go so quickly in our society, and we don’t wait very well. Waiting means you don’t know or see it, but you still trust God.”
Redmond said she shares her struggles and victories in hopes of teaching others not to look to instant cures but to have peace within circumstances that seem impossible.
“God gives me the confidence and faith to hold on. When is the end — when it’s all right — going to be? When He heals her? When I die? I don’t know and that’s faith,” she said. “I do know He hasn’t taken His word back.”
Redmond, who earned her master of arts in public and private management from Birmingham-Southern College, now works part time as a marketing coordinator for the master’s program. She stays at home during the day with Jamilah while her husband, a schoolteacher, is at work. When he comes home, she leaves for Birmingham-Southern. “We swap hours that we watch Jamilah and it works well,” she said.
Besides being an author, speaker, wife and mother, Redmond is a Sunday School teacher and a deaconess at Sardis. Until recently she also served as director of the church’s women’s ministry.
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