To Hell and Back installment 1

Good evening those of you that read this.  I hope that you had a wonderful day. I had a perfect day.  It is well with my soul.

In a previous blog, I said that Will and I both independently had intended to write books about our lives and I feel like this blog is a place where I can make some installments towards that goal because I promised 7 years ago that I would chronicle the power of God and His ability to take wretchedness and damage and pain and turn it into an amazing glorious victory. 

I am going to go backwards.  I am going to start with the happy ending that is in progress right now so that the faint of heart can read on and gleen from my experiences that no matter how damaged you are, if you will bravely face your past, with God's help you can heal and can have relationships and love and a life free of pain.  What has been done to you doesn't define who you are.  Everyone is damaged to some degree because we live in a fallen world with sin.  We get damaged by our own sin and bad choices and by the sins and bad choices other's have committed against us.  Fear not.  The spirit of fear does not come from the Lord.

You might be wondering why I am choosing to start this tonight.  Today was the first day of Directing a children's bible study that I have been called to lead.  It is a culmination of lots of years of training that I have received to lead children and teach children.  All because God has woven my path to be exactly here today with exactly this training and ability and desire and obedience.  It was a victorious day because God was in our midst and He gave all of us the Words and gave all the children the open hearts and my heart overflows with thankfulness that I could be entrusted by God to undertake this. 

I was talking to Kaye Gosdin, my teaching leader, about today and reporting to her how the day went.  It was chaotic and crazy and filled with anxiety compounded by the fact that I haven't slept well in days building up to this.  I told her that working all summer on this, writing the children's lessons, designing the program, walking step by step as God led to the next thing seemed like there wasn't any work or sacrifice at all. Watching those babies faces light up as they were learning to praise God and were learning how God has created the heavens and the earth was worth everything I have ever learned in my entire lifetime.  If I had remained the damaged nothing that I was 11 years ago, I would not have been in that spot teaching the children and would have missed that glorious moment. 

Thank you God for showing me the light and widening my path to heal my damaged soul.  I told Kaye that this is the first time in my life that I have been truly happy.  I am 49 years young and I cherish it more because I really have always wanted to be happy.  It took God's grace and mercy and Holy Word along with lots of work and courage to face the demons and overcome.

So, the happy ending you say, what's the happy ending?????

I have a relationship with God, I have deep faith in God, I have Will (Royce) Willard, I have my chickens, I have my horse, I have my home, I have my puppy at my feet, I have food in the refrigerator, I have a relationship with my sister, I have healthy nieces and nephews who are amazing adults that I am proud to love, I have my Jennifer (my sister....sister-in-law), I have the love of my brother, I have a ministry, I have students that I have previously taught that I love, I have amazing beautiful loving ladies that I study God's Holy Word with and who are my friends. I have faith, I have hope, I have trust, I have love.  Abundant, abiding, amazing, awesome love.  I make much less money than I have ever made but I am rich, not materially, emotionally.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 NIV

 ¹ If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
 ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
 ⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
 ¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The first time that my Christian Counselor Robert Newton had me read this about love, I wept for 2 weeks because I realized I had not ever been loved the way God defines love. I thought at that time that I would not ever experience love God's way. Robert (who you will read lots about) encouraged me to ask God to heal my damage so that I would one day be lovable. I will say the people in my life loved me as much as they knew how to love, but they had never received this kind of love either. It's Godly love but I lived with godless people. 

I HAVE LOVE from everyone in my life.  The happy ending!