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 Della Denise
Well, this ought to be different! I’d like to talk to you about one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever known in my nearly
66 years. OK, go get your coffee. Have some Breakfast Blend this morning!
Born fifty years ago as Della Denise Melson on January 1, 1955, she was born into an Okie family transplanted to Washington State. I’m not using the word in a negative sense. Her family had lived in Granite, Oklahoma for a couple of generations after leaving Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia.
At the age of four, Della began to have experiences of seeing angels. At the age of eight, she had a unique experience one night when the Lord Jesus Christ visited her. What made this particular night so different was that the Lord also appeared to her mother that night and said to her, “I’m coming to take Della for myself.”
Her mother was almost panic-stricken because she interpreted what the Lord was saying to her to mean that Della was going to die that night. It took some struggling in her spirit before she released her daughter and said, “OK,” to the Lord.
As the Lord awakened Della, He told her to follow Him. She jumped out of bed and followed Him outside the house where, to her utter astonishment, she saw a ship. Now you have to understand just how strange this sight was. There are no huge rivers or lakes in the Yakima Valley in Washington such that one would expect to see a ship. She couldn't quite figure out what she was seeing, and why this ship was there, but she dutifully followed the Lord up the gangplank. Just before reaching the deck, the Lord turned to her and said, "Don't forget your bottle." She remembered a glass bottle on the mantle of the fireplace that was her special bottle.
Again, the command didn't make sense, but she wasn't questioning it. She ran back down the gangplank and back into the house to get the bottle. When she got back outside with the bottle, she realized the ship was getting ready to leave and shouted, "Lord, don't leave without me!" She ran for all she was worth and leaped up on the gangplank as it was being pulled back on the ship. Out of breath, she handed the bottle to the Lord. He thereupon took the bottle and threw it as hard as he could so that it vanished in the darkness. Then Jesus turned to her, took her by the hand, and said, "Now everything will be all right."
In the years that followed, the experience was so real that Della was never sure whether it actually happened or whether she had a dream. More than 20 years elapsed before she understood what had happened. Important foundations were laid in her life that she would need in the coming years. In the years to come, the Lord would remind her of the bottle -- and its significance.
Until she was twelve years of age, however, she had several more experiences with the Lord in which He made clear to her the fact that He would never leave her nor forsake her. Good thing, too, because she was about to go through a living nightmare that would last for some 14 years.
In her early teens, Della Denise began to experience the rebellion that so many young people go through. At age fourteen, under the influence of drugs, she concluded that she really didn’t belong to her parents and decided to strike out on her own. A young man who she decided she was in love with had left for Missouri, so she decided to hitchhike to see him.
Bad decision.
She was picked up by a 25-year-old man (whom I will refer to simply as Daniel). He figured things out pretty quickly and took advantage of her youth, innocence, and rebellion. Compelling her to go with him, he forced her to agree to marry him. We won’t try to figure out how he pulled that one off without being seized by the Law and thrown in prison, but under threats of physical harm she stayed quiet and eventually settled into some semblance of married life. “Daniel” was never prosecuted for his crimes.
It isn’t necessary to go into the horrors of the next fourteen years, the abuses she suffered, the constant betrayal by “Daniel’s” affairs with other women or his illicit drug distribution and hiding from the Law. What is important is that, at age eighteen, her youthful experiences with the Lord began to take effect. She had left Washington to move to Alaska where her father was working with his construction business. In Fairbanks for a few short months, her father suddenly dropped dead one day of a heart attack. He was 47 years old. The loss was traumatic.
Now the mother of a young baby girl, she began to attend a church in hopes of reconnecting with that same Jesus she had known as a child. It was late in 1973 or early in 1974. Baby Shelley was very ill. She couldn’t walk. Her legs were crooked. She had an extreme case of colic. She came down with a fever that just got worse and worse.
Della’s family doctor had told her that the baby needed to be hospitalized, but they had no insurance and feared the financial impact of the doctor and hospital bills. Shelley’s temperature continued to rise. On a Sunday morning, Della took the baby’s temperature, and it was 106. She got dressed, got Shelley dressed, and took her to the church where she had begun to attend. It seemed like she had to go through an army of folks who tried to slow her down, but eventually she stood in front of the pastor with the baby in her arms. Shelley was unconscious, lying limp and motionless. “Pastor, my baby is dying. I need for you to pray for her.”
The pastor gently took Shelley into his arms and began to rebuke the fever. He spoke healing as he prayed. As he held the baby, Shelley’s legs straightened in front of their eyes. The fever dropped instantly. She opened her eyes and looked around, alert for the first time in so long Della couldn’t remember.
It was a major turning point for Della. Two years later, a similar event would occur with daughter number two. Danielle was born stone deaf. She couldn't hear or respond to the loudest noises around her. Not until she was several months old did Della realize that something was really wrong with Danielle. She took the baby to the regional audiologist for testing.
The reports showed no responses whatever to sounds at 120 db in her ears. For those who don’t understand the significance of 120 db, 108 db is classified as “concert level” for music. 116 db is the noise of a steam locomotive. Each 3 db represents a doubling in sound pressure level. Thus, 120 db was well over twice the noise level of a steam locomotive.
The audiologist told Della that Danielle was stone deaf, and that she’d better start learning sign language immediately because that was how she was going to have to communicate with her daughter.
The promises of God made in her youth rang in Della’s entire being. She absolutely refused to accept the diagnosis and demanded additional tests. The doctor shook his head sympathetically saying, “It won’t make any difference. However, you bring her back in one month, and we’ll conduct one more test.”
The appointed day came, and Della brought friends along because she was sure the Lord was going to heal Danielle. They sat down together in the testing room and the doctor placed Danielle in his lap. There had been absolutely no indication of any change in Danielle. Della whispered to the doctor, "OK, Keith! Let's do the tests." Suddenly, Danielle turned and looked at her. The audiologist shook his head. "Can't be. This was an involuntary reaction -- perhaps to air movement on her face when you spoke." Della began to laugh. She knew what had happened.
This time, the doctor whispered very quietly in Danielle’s opposite ear. She turned to see where the sound was coming from. Now the doctor was frustrated. This just couldn’t be! All of his previous tests had been run using standardized testing techniques. They had proved conclusively that Danielle was deaf. Again, he whispered in the other ear, and again, Danielle responded. Della’s friends were standing on the other side of the glass watching things unfold, along with a couple of nurses.
Tears began to run down their faces as they realized that the Lord had healed Danielle right while she sat in the doctor’s lap.
All of the tests were re-run again. This time, the results showed that her hearing was better than perfect. She could hear sounds so faint the overwhelming majority of folks never hear.
Despite the birth of two more children during the next four years, Della’s “marriage” continued to deteriorate. The day finally came when “Daniel” agreed that they needed to get a divorce and go their separate ways. The abuse towards Della had never really gotten too physical, but it had reached monumental proportions emotionally and mentally. Unfortunately, the abuse had gotten physical with the children.
Fast forward now to the year 1982. I was President of the Christian Broadcasting Network of Alaska and pastoring a new fellowship in Fairbanks called The House of Praise. The CBN operations had begun to be moved from Barrow to Fairbanks two years earlier. I was in the midst of separation and divorce from my first wife who had recently left me for the third time in our married years. The duress from the persecution and constant threats on our lives in Barrow had far exceeded her breaking point, and she had decided she wanted no more of the ministry. I’m not throwing rocks at her. She had endured things that would have taken lesser women to the looney bin.
Della had joined the CBN operation in late 1981 and become the administrator for a social services program we called Operation Blessing – Alaska. She had become my closest confidant and the best friend I’d ever had in my life.
One day, she brought her four children to me and asked me to pray over them. While I was praying for them, the Lord spoke to me and said, "I'm going to give these children to you, and I want you to be a father to them." That was different! I wasn't quite sure how to take that, but decided to let it stand and see what happened.
It was only a matter of months before Della and I found ourselves exchanging marriage vows with each other. It isn’t necessary to get into the developments that led to our marriage other than to say that we both experienced some back-to-back-to-back events that clearly demonstrated to both of us that the Lord was putting us together.
Not more than three months later, I suffered a massive heart attack in the shower and dropped dead. The only answer I could come up with was that the same stresses that led to the departure of my first wife and subsequent divorce also contributed to my death.
Della and I had just moved into a new home in North Pole, Alaska. We hadn’t even had the chance to get a telephone turned on, and our nearest neighbors were almost a mile from us. There was no chance to call for a doctor or an ambulance. Della simply reacted with instant anger at being robbed of the love of her life and new husband. She dragged my body out of the shower, out of the bathroom, and into our bedroom where she heaved and shoved my body onto the bed.
You’ll appreciate that feat when you realize that I stood 6’2” and weighed (at the time) around 250 pounds compared to Della’s diminutive 5’ and 113-pound frame.
She proceeded to begin commanding life back into my body and yelling to God that she wasn’t going to put up with losing me. Between shouting at Satan and commanding death to depart and ordering me to come back to life, “in the Name of Jesus,” an incredible sense of faith sprang up in her being in what God had done in putting us together, and a certain knowledge that my life here was far from over.
It was no instant event, however. After about fifteen minutes, I suddenly came to with Della straddling my body, her arms upraised, and shouting,
“In the Name of Jesus, you will come back!” Her eyes were closed, and it was a bit of a shock for her when I reached up and grabbed a fist that seemed certain to come down on my chest.
We look back now and laugh at that day, but it was serious business at the time. Della demanded that I get a physical checkup. I had seen a family doctor about a year prior after receiving healing from tuberculosis, so I went to see that same doctor for a complete physical.
The doctor was extremely thorough with his tests once Della told him what had happened. He walked out of his lab with two sets of X-rays in hand, shaking his head. “This is miraculous,” he said. “Here are the X-rays I took a year ago showing the scar tissue left over on your lungs from the tuberculosis; and here are the new X-rays I just took. There is no trace of scar tissue!”
His tests showed that my blood pressure was normal, an EKG was perfect, bloodwork came out with perfect balance. Regner, your health is that of someone 20 years your junior. Congratulations, my friend. You are in wonderful shape!”
It’s been that way ever since. Folks have commented throughout the years on the fact that I seem to have boundless energy and act like someone who’s a lot younger. I am! <smile> The Lord raised me from the dead and restored my health so that my “youth was renewed as the eagle’s.”
This event repeated perhaps ten years later with a friend of ours, Marcia Treend, when we were in Atlin, British Columbia visiting and sharing with some folks. Through the years Della had become a tower of strength to many folks. One of our minister friends in Spokane, Washington – Dale Peterson – would get really tickled at Della when she would light up and begin to wax eloquent on some spiritual issue.
Dale would grab a chair or make like he was getting a box and say to Della, “Preach it, Sister Della! Here’s your soapbox. Let’s go put this in the park and you can preach to folks.” Everyone would bust out laughing.
Della has always felt that she was not qualified to be a preacher because she didn’t have the educational background of her peers, but we have encouraged her many times that the anointing of the Holy Spirit takes over for the lack of education. And so He does! Whenever the Holy Spirit anoints Della to speak on some spiritual issue, she is as eloquent and forceful – perhaps more so – than any degreed preacher you’ve ever heard.
In any case, we were in Atlin helping some friends, Kitty and Rene Loyd, fix up a building on skids into a pretty rough guest house. Rene, Earle Treend (Marcia’s husband) and I were laying linoleum while Della, Kitty and Marcia were sharing together at the Loyds’ log home.
Outside the log house was a sidewalk of sorts, constructed on timbers and logs with 2 X 4’s, 2 X 8’s, and 2 X 10’s for planks. The sidewalk had been constructed to provide a walkway across an area where the spring melt caused a lot of water to flow, creating really muddy conditions.
The ladies decided to walk down to the building where we were working and check on our labors. As they were walking, Marcia stepped on a 2 X 10 plank that had come loose. The combination of where she walked and the weight of her body leveraged the plank, and it flew up, striking her on her temple.
It was a pretty good blow, and it stunned her. She lost her balance, of course, and began to fall. The weight of her falling body hit it just right, and again it flew up, striking her in virtually the same place. This time, she dropped like a rock. Della was there to catch her and cushion her fall.
As Della cradled Marcia in her arms, her eyes rolled back in her head and she expired. The color drained from her face. Della heard the same death rattle from her throat she had heard from me when I collapsed nearly ten years earlier. Kitty was in shock at seeing her friend killed like that, but Della had presence of mind to say to her, “Kitty, go get some pillows so we can lay her head down.”
Kitty turned to leave and headed for the house. In that moment, Della saw the Spirit of Death visibly coming for Marcia. Instantly, she shouted, “No, you will not!” The Spirit of Death continued to approach. Something rose up in Della. In that instant, she felt as though the Holy Spirit had poured Himself into her being. Again, she pointed at the Spirit of Death and shouted, “I said, NO! YOU WILL NOT!”
Then she looked down at Marcia and simply spoke her name – loudly, of course, “MARCIA !!”
Marcia’s eyes opened, color flooded her face and she looked up at Della. “What happened? Where am I? Please don’t leave me.”
The sound of Della's voice speaking so loudly brought us out of the building where we had been working. We were perhaps a hundred and fifty feet away, and when we saw the sight of Della helping Marcia to her feet and Kitty waving her arms, we ran to help. Marcia was escorted back into the house where she laid down on the sofa.
I grabbed my guitar (I rarely travel without it) and began to worship the Lord. The rest joined with me, and we worshiped for perhaps 45 minutes. Marcia got to her feet, shook herself and said,
“Wow! I feel great!” Later that same afternoon, we all went hiking up into the mountains. Except for some bruising on her face and the side of her head that disappeared within a couple of days, you would never have known that anything untoward had happened.
I wish I could take the time to tell you of Della’s songwriting, her scripture songs, her singing, her playing the keyboards, her preaching, her authority in God, her strong stance with all of our children and how they’ve come to depend on her. It would fill many books.
Oops! I almost forgot one thing: the bottle. Psalm 56:8 says,
"Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?"
There has long been a tradition at Jewish weddings in which they take a glass after they have drunk together and smashed the glass. It comes from an ancient tradition of smashing a bottle at a wedding. The bottle represented the tears of the bride in the years before her wedding -- tears shed from suffering, tears shed from awaiting the coming of her Beloved.
When Della and I were married, the Lord spoke to Della and reminded her of the bottle. He said to her, "I have thrown away all your tears. They are gone forever." For a wedding gift, Della made me a diamond and gold nugget tie tac. It is shaped as a tear, and it is a constant reminder of the promise of the Lord. I made an identical pendant for Della to wear on a necklace.
Della Denise Capener is my wife. She is my counterpart, my other self. I tell her constantly that she is the best gift the Lord has ever given me. She completes me. She makes me a whole person. And she is the Gift of God to more folks than I can count. There isn’t a day that passes that I don’t thank the Lord for her.
Blessings on you. Finish your coffee and enjoy your day! This is the day the Lord has made!
Regner A. Capener
EKKLESIA HOUSE
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355
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