This was quite possibly one of the biggest lessons I’ve ever learned in my life. I only learned it after years of hurting myself and my son by holding onto betrayal and believing I was somehow owed some sort of apology. I had a husband who fell in love with my best friend and neglected to deal with it until we had a son and had purchased a new home. I gave them both the benefit of the doubt, even when my own mother suspected them, continuing for some time believing they could never possibly do that to me.

I was wrong. They could and they did. When I finally found out it became a soul crushing betrayal by two people I thought cared deeply about me. It was difficult for me to recover and continue in relationship with them, yet I had to because we shared a 1 year old son when he left. She left her husband a year later and they were married for over 25 years before she died much too young of cancer. We continued with a polite but empty communication style for years, often snagging when my son spent vacation time there.

Fortunately, long before we lost her and while our son was still in college, I had an amazing conversation with God that changed everything. I was crying out to him that they were causing great emotional harm to my son and therefore to me. Everything seemed a horrible triangle, with my ex blaming me to her and her to me, for anything that had to do with the financial support of our son. It was always difficult to get to the truth of anything. In the very old days I might have trusted my friend over a cheating ex husband. But this was the friend he had cheated with. An absurd mess that I didn’t want my son in the middle of, ever. He loved all of us, and did not want to choose sides. Nor should he have to. We were supposed to be the grown ups. I cried my heart out to God and asked Him to please intercede on our behalf. What I heard back in the silence was ” are you willing to forgive them?”

Nope. That was easy. I was not willing. Yet, as I sat with the pain of my son caught in the middle, I tried to find some way around that question. I didn’t do it, why should I have to forgive them? Silence. At this point my mind started to query whether I had ever done anything for which I should ask someone’s forgiveness. Of course there was less than total clarity on that issue. In my mind, I could find at least some questionable behaviors of my own, even within my marriage. There were certainly many other relationships I had been in where I might not have behaved well, or as well as I could have, all the time. Yet I did not remember any specific apologies on my part. The thing I wrestled with most was the agony caused to my son, when he had done absolutely nothing wrong and got caught in the middle of our adult drama.

I reframed the question I felt God had asked me, rolling it around in my head. While my response didn’t change, I did realize that an act of God might be absolutely necessary for the results I had requested. I then quietly whispered to Him “I am not willing, but I am willing to be willing”. I thought that was a way of somehow distancing myself from the consequences of my reluctance to obey. Wrong. What I had forgotten was the fact that God changes hearts, and I had effectively just given Him permission to change mine.

It wasn’t a minute later that I realized I had nothing but love for my ex husband and my friend, who had now been his wife for many more years than I had been. What? Wait a minute here. What? Where did all my justified anger go? What about all the…(^$%*&($#@!) things (that I suddenly could no longer remember) that hurt me? Ironically they had been replaced with thoughts of …why shouldn’t a child enjoy the love of two moms, both his Mom and his step Mom, when that love was offered to him so genuinely? Why would any person want to come between that? And so it went from there, for at least five more years.

If there is any story I have shared more in Christian circles and prayer groups, I cannot remember it. Even when it is hardest to change our stubborn minds and hearts, I always offer this advice: Tell God you are not willing to change, but you are willing to be willing to change. He will do all the rest because all He needs is our permission and He goes right to work! I never knew what hit me, but hit me it did. And I was the one who experienced the loss of our deep friendship when she passed away so young and who understood my son’s heartbreak at losing her. It is I who have missed her bright illumination at our future family gatherings with the amazing grandchildren she never got to meet or love “to the moon and back!”. God restored a deep, respectful relationship between us that, while not exactly the same as it had been before, was magnificent, made even more precious because of the cracks that had been so delicately and purposely filled within it.

I got a sweet thank you note from one of my nieces yesterday and included in her response to my joy following the birth of her daughter was an admission similar to many others I’ve received from my nieces and nephews (and sons!) as they welcomed their first child into the world. That first week or two and often again, even much later, were moments where they became fully aware that having a child (especially on your own, lacking a supportive spouse, nearby family and financial stability), was suddenly a daunting revelation to them. Add into it being a single parent already raising an amazing five year old with a 7-day-a-week storefront to run, ten employees to schedule, supervise and pay, and you have an even better glimpse into my complicated life 43 years ago. I really don’t remember that much of it, yet moments like this when I can pause and reflect are somewhat mind boggling to me too, for sure!

How did I do it? Well, that’s I guess that’s how it became the point at which I asked God into my life, having my actual ‘come to Jesus’ moment on Dec 9th, 1983. I knew I was truly outnumbered now with two small sons under six and I was definitely going to need some help. It is definitely the anniversary I most remember and celebrate in my life, one my Mom always phoned me to mark as well. Not because it was so special on the actual date. It was a just a day that a single mom from my church had come to help clean my house, while I was home recovering after the birth of my second son. Her money was tight, but she always tithed ten percent of her time to the Lord and I was the grateful recipient of her love and service that particular day. Although I had regularly been attending our Presbyterian fellowship for the past three months, she didn’t take anything for granted so somewhere in our day she asked me if I had ever asked Jesus into my heart? I replied something along the lines of “not in so many words.” Having been raised Christian, baptized, confirmed and having always attended church, I didn’t know there was anything missing, at which point she said ‘Well, let’s make sure’, and then she gently led me, with my permission, in the sinner’s prayer. It was not an event followed by lightning bolts from the sky and yet, looking back now, it was definitely the most important moment in my life.

After that, all my decisions were no longer made alone but with the quiet guidance of the Holy Spirit, as the Lord took up residence in my heart. As with any move-in, there were things to be sorted out and cleaned up, some to throw away, some to move to a secondary position, some to add to the existing mores and celebrations that were already in place with my little family tribe. We made room for a newcomer, Jesus. And my life was never the same after that; by that I mean never as lonely, never without joy, never without provision or the hope of provision for me and my boys. Life changing.

I guess this website is the story of some of those times as my memory is jogged here and there, just a note or a quick story, to pay tribute to the all encompassing love that came to fill my heart that day, assuring me that I would never run out of that love, regardless of any other struggles and circumstances sure to come my way. Such complete fullness, impossible to describe, though I do try.

Psalm 27:5-7 NIV

A year ago I received a call from the lady who plans the annual Gala that supports the crisis pregnancy center in St Petersburg, Florida. She was getting people lined up to head committees for that year’s celebration and she was reminiscing over the year prior. I had moved to town only one year before and had known no one involved in the pregnancy center ministries there. I had found a church family and about that same time one of the pastors announced she was forming a team to look into the possibilities of our church helping to support that ministry and I stepped forward to assist that committee.

Within a few short weeks I had met the woman who ran the center and bonded with her immediately as if we had known each other for a lifetime. Actually I have learned over the years that that is exactly the feeling one has when God puts you in a place where you never thought to go on your own. With that in mind, I signed up to be on the decoration committee, feeling it would be an inobtrusive place to help wherever I could. We were zoom calling our meetings at that time and I attended each of those where they admitted they had yet to find a head for that committee. I knew no one but had met the Director one time, so I just listened to try and get up to speed on the needs of the center. The gala date was only three months away and they were feeling a bit desperate. I volunteered to take the lead and come up with some ideas and prices for the formal evening for 250-300 guests for dinner at the huge and not exactly cozy Coliseum. They had no theme and no color scheme. In retrospect, I have often found God has me step in when no leaders step forward and then He supplies both the ideas, skills and the people I will need to succeed. I call myself a place card holder because I never really take possession of a role, knowing the rightful person will be arriving sometime soon. I fill in the gap. It always happens that way and it is easy for me to also step to the side when it does. I am a sub, by gifting and by nature, it seems.

The plans and team came together and all was provided that was needed. I was even able to use some of my ‘decorator’ talents to save the center a lot of money on the presentation. It was a gorgeous and warm welcoming evening. My abilities to do elegance on a shoestring allowed for a significant gain to their bottom line that evening. They had usually hired a decorator or event planner. When the financial officer looked back on it she called me to ask “Where did you come from?” as she couldn’t remember how I swept in and then, just as quickly, swept out of their midst ( I moved to Jacksonville two months after the Gala on the spur of the moment, to be in place for the birth of my newest grandson). In trying to replace me, she had tried to think through the whole scenario of how my being there had come about. We enjoyed a great conversation, as we retraced how God had supplied the very need they had laid at His feet in prayer, by a means they could not have foreseen (i.e. no one they knew!) and in His own perfect timing. We decided to pray together that He would do that once again and to trust that He would, as we already had proof that He had.

It is always fun to be reminded of things that He has done and the way He has provided for those who put their trust completely in Him. I came as an outsider. These women, many of them the same who started the center, had put together this Gala for twenty eight years. The revelation to us both on that call was that even though I was an ‘outsider’ to the center, I was an insider to the faith that ran it. They knew me because we both knew the One who sent me, and we recognized, from our long but separate journeys with Him, that our hearts were indeed already family. They trusted me implicitly, because they trusted Him completely. How often I have witnessed that in my lifetime and it is so beautiful. No egos to put aside. Grace.

Recently my grandchild was rehearsing for a part in a play and was resistant to feedback from her parents during that time. After losing star billing to someone else, there was great consternation. Her main query was “why didn’t you tell me?” implying that if they knew what she could have improved, why didn’t they share it with her before it was too late? The response of course was, “We did try, but you didn’t want to hear it.”
I often wonder right now, as I am often on the opposite side of many hot political as well as recent medical options with close family and friends, if I will one day hear similar words from someone I love.
I often check my thoughts at the beginning of any conversation, because they may well be quickly rejected out of hand with ‘that’s not happening here’, or ‘not in our community’, ‘its perfectly safe’ and ‘your news and information sources are all wrong’. Are they though? Do we truly have all the critical facts we need to make important decisions for our children, and have we always been told the whole truth? And who do we trust as our sources for truth? Will any of these family members or friends some day say that same thing to me? Or me to them? Some of us will undoubtedly be proven wrong by history, but who? And what might the cost of that omission be? The cost of saying anything right now seems terribly high in many of my closest relationships. It is a dilemma that many families are experiencing across the globe. No good or easy answer, and none without risk, I am afraid. Yet silence may have a price of its own as well I fear.

I wonder if God is often feeling the same way with us. “Why didn’t you tell me?” we plead, after taking some wrong turn in our lives. “I did, but you didn’t want to hear me.” And isn’t that the real truth?

Reflecting on the children’s game of Simon Says, it seems as though the Holy Spirit was the one whispering the ‘not Simon‘ directives in my ear. I often seem to have taken the path that no one else heard, as it was likely not meant for them, nor were they nearly as apt to follow it if they had heard. I mean, who does that? Hears voices? And they would probably have been quite angry at themselves for not following the crowd (and thereby also having been put out of the game), by righteously heeding only Simon’s instructions. I guess I took the path less traveled, as it were; the one that was whispered into only my own listening ear. “Go to Ithaca” said The Voice, clearly (although when I repeated these instructions later on the phone to a dear friend he replied “does God lisp”? Funny.)

I was home with a very new baby and a six year old at that time. I had a mortgage on the home I had received as the result of my recent divorce. I was the sole proprietor of an ‘open seven days a week’ gift shop in a sweet suburban town in New Jersey. It was a store I had started from scratch with a friend only seven years prior, which now boasted a handful of terrific, loyal employees. I had great friends and tons of wonderful, supportive customers. I had a vibrant church community. Why would I sell everything and go to a place I had never been, where I knew virtually no one? Remember in those days, forty years ago, there were no “virtual” ways to know people; no Facebook, no next door apps etc. It was either a huge leap of faith, or just plain crazy on my part, come to think about it. Yet it remains one of the clearest commands I can remember hearing in my lifetime. So I sold my house and my store and moved me and my boys upstate to Ithaca, N.Y (actually to the adjacent town), never to look back. And my adventures with God had only just begun.

My pastor wrote in his blog several weeks ago about his encounter with angels 25 years ago and it reminded me of a similar situation that happened at about the same time to me and my sons, then living in Florida.

We had recently moved from upstate New York to Jacksonville, and were fascinated by the beaches all around us. One sunny day in early November we drove  our Ford Aerostar van down to the beaches of St. Augustine, where we had heard they allow cars to drive on the sand, to check it out. The beach was totally deserted that day, even though it was beautiful; Floridians typically do have a season where they frequent the beach, and that had already passed.

This was my first time driving on the beach, there was no one to instruct me, and the boys were very excited that we had a roadway between the dunes and the water of about 300 yards so we hit the sand running……until we realized we were no longer moving forward. Our wheels were still spinning but we weren’t going anywhere, except deeper into the soft sand into which I had driven (funny, I thought I would be safer farther away from the waters edge, but the sand was actually easier to drive on the closer one got to the water, not the other way around). Our laughter and excitement quickly turned to fear, as we realized we were on a desolate beach with no idea how to get our heavy car out of the sand. And while the sky was beautiful, the sun was beginning to go down. We also were in a pre-cell-phone era and houses, stores and people were nowhere to be seen.

My sons were then aged ten and four. My older one, a type A firstborn, hopped out of the vehicle and began digging furiously behind the back wheels with his bare hands, determined to dig us out by himself. My youngest, a more laid back dude with much more patience, decided to go up on the nearby hill and play in the sand dunes. As he did, I could hear him talking to God. While his hands were forming sand castles, he was saying “Lord, my Mom needs your help right now. Her car is really stuck in the sand.” That was it, and he continued playing.

Not two minutes later there was a woman at the side of my car, motioning for me to get out. A man…her husband, I assumed, was behind the car, getting ready to push it. She climbed into my seat and within a matter of minutes the car was on hard packed sand again, and I was back in the driver’s seat, calling my sons to get back in the car. I turned to point out the couple who had helped me and they were nowhere to be seen. There wasn’t another car or person on the beach and I had no idea how they could have disappeared from sight so rapidly.

I haven’t asked the boys about this in any recent time and they may well not remember. As for me, I will always believe God sent angels to help me out of that predicament and that they appeared and disappeared without so much as a word. Except for the words and faith of one very small boy, who totally believed God would help out his Mom.

Although both those encounters took place 25 years ago, I am believing there are angel sightings every day, though sometimes we may discount them because we cannot prove it, even to others who may also have been there at the time. Faith, belief, and the eyes to see; let them see. This story also reminds me that I am safer on the hard sand, closer to God’s living water, than I am walking on the softer sand nearby. The softer sand is a really good place to stop, lie down and rest awhile, but if I want to be the hands and feet of Jesus, I will get much more traction on that well-packed, wetter sand… closest to Him.

I came very close to having an abortion, in fact as close as fifteen hours away from one that was scheduled for the tiny life within me.

In the Christian communities I have been a part of over thirty some years, that information alone could be enough to change people’s opinion of me and, depending on their experience and position on the issue, that might be positively or negatively.

In some of their eyes I would be celebrated for having made ‘the right choice’. That seems nice enough, in that I get to tell my story openly most times, without the fear of the judgement that will definitely accompany someone sharing that she made a different choice. To others I committed a sin being pregnant outside of marriage, something they know they would never have done, so they may step back a few inches as though my sin might be catching. For most churches in that time, I was a single parent they didn’t quite know what to do with or for, as my children and I were outside the realm of most their ministries.

Sometimes people don’t really think about the fact that of the three choices available to a woman in that place, none of them seem ‘right’ to her, even by Webster’s definition: morally or socially correct or acceptable. Whichever one we choose will be accompanied by a shame that we will have to work through, perhaps for a lifetime. The church can be a loving place to heal, or it can be a continual judge and jury. Each one can only be seen on its own merits, but it is a tough risk when your silence offers you much more more reliable protection.

In truth, it is much more complicated than even the choice itself, and only someone who has been faced with that dilemma in their own life may ever experience the compassion I feel for the women who have had abortions, especially those who truly regret it. I feel for the woman who gave up the only child she might possibly ever bear for adoption,  who may also be told she did the right thing, but that can ring hollow in a childless life.  For the one who experienced an abortion and yet keeps it secret as most do, being handed a rose at their church on Mother’s Day can be so devastating they may purposely avoid church on that day.

My Dad was a veteran of WWII. He was barely 25 when he Captained  a battalion of men through horrible circumstances in the Battle of the Bulge and  then awful experiences in Belgium and Germany. Though he came home seemingly in one piece, with a British Medal of Honor, a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, he never mentioned the war once during my lifetime of knowing  him. I was born the year after he returned and he died when I was fifty-eight. It was something he just couldn’t talk about. He couldn’t sort out all his emotions, so he just put them in a box he never re-opened.

Though he went on to raise a family, be a successful businessman and a great father to four children, to this day I don’t know much about his war experiences or his wounds. I know he could be super critical and hard on his kids, but he wanted us to grow up strong, at least emotionally stronger than perhaps he had been. My emotions were often crushed as he seemingly did not want to acknowledge them. It was only when I thought about my own brush with abortion that I had even a clue as to why he was emotionally distant sometimes, angry and frustrated at other times, for seemingly no related reason. He had experienced a time as a very young man when he couldn’t  allow his emotions to cloud his mind while he did what he had to do, which was often not something he wanted to do, in order to follow orders and protect all the others in his care. I am sure it was this thinking that came to the surface for my Dad when I became pregnant out of wedlock ; I was already a single mom to a five yr old, four years after my husband divorced me to be with my best friend. I am sure my Dad worried my life would be terribly hard, though he and I never spoke about how difficult it would have been for me  had I made any other choice.

Although Dad came home after the war to start a new life and family, his wounds never totally healed. Many of them were buried, deep in his heart, alongside the friends he lost during the war. He had killed people, and seen friends be killed, his best friend hit by mortar  just feet from his side. There is no healing balm for that, save the Oil of Gilead, straight from the heart of God himself, and I pray that my Dad finally found that healing and peace when he came face to face with his maker. He deserved it, having silently carried those hurts for a lifetime, all the while providing for his family and walking out a good Christian life here on earth, always mindful of the ones who never made it home.

Perhaps that is why, when I first met the women of the crisis pregnancy center where I was to volunteer, I broke down in tears when I got back to my car. I knew that I was among women who had fought in the same war into which I had also been drafted, for no one knowingly signs up for this one. So many of us have had sex before marriage, but if we didn’t get pregnant, we could pretend that we hadn’t. Abortion took away much of the reason for shotgun marriages, but it left the decision heavily on the heart of the woman involved, who like my Dad in the war, had very little emotional preparation for such a life and death decision.

All the women at the center were touched in some way by the legacy of abortion; some spoke about it, many did not, but there was a silent camaraderie, no, that is not the correct word, it was more that we shared a sacred silent compassion in that room. I felt a sense of home, but also of purpose, that made me weep and thank God in gratefulness for all these women and for so many more.

There is hope for the victims of this war. Many people think only of the baby when they think of the victims, but they would be very wrong. There are parents and grandparents who may never be. There are uncles and aunts who may only be sisters and brothers. Mostly a mom and a dad, and possibly a brother or a sister, of one very special and particular child, who will never meet them this side of heaven.

There is accurate and factual information that can help a woman prepare for the decision only she can make. One of the deepest regrets of many is being told it was nothing but a blob of tissue, only to find out five or ten years later it was already a life with a heartbeat that could be seen on ultrasound only four weeks from conception. Resentment from not having been told the truth, prior to making this decision, is one of the worst things to get over and a hard thing to release. The woman is victimized all over again every time she relives that decision, as she will often over her childbearing years, perhaps her lifetime. God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness is both extremely necessary and also lavishly provided, when asked for personally by women in these tough situations.

At a crisis pregnancy center, there are other soldiers who can come alongside her, whatever her choice has been or will be, to help her with what is ahead. There are women who are themselves one or who have been close to one of these veterans, people who understand what she has been through and what she is feeling.

As for me, I am ever grateful God is allowing me to use all that He has shown and taught me to be aware of, so that I may encourage and uplift those very courageous souls who have sidelined their own lives, often against the will of those closest to them, to do the very difficult work of being mother, father, head of household and spiritual leader of the child they decided to have and to raise, with no guarantee of any help. To be there for the woman and families of the one who gave a child life, and yet surrendered it for adoption, in order to give it a better chance than the one she might be able to provide for it, to make sure she is encouraged and celebrated for her choice as well. And for the one who chose abortion, to surround her with the love of God and mercy of imperfect but loving others who welcome her to the ranks of other wounded warriors whom she may never before have met, and yet may sit next to her in church, and to share God’s amazing healing and His promises for her life and her future.

Different times and places, different ranks and titles, but as with all vets when they get together, a common bond that needs not even be spoken. You know what I know. You have seen the enemy face to face. And there, but for the grace of God, go all of us. Like my Dad, I live my life ever mindful of the ones who didn’t make it out as easily as I did, and the ones who didn’t make it out at all. If it were in my power, I would proudly present each woman who has been in this war with a Purple Heart, for we have all fought hard on the front lines of this battlefield, and we have all been wounded, in a place that may be impossible for most to see. I am so grateful that God’s own medal of honor, His son Jesus Christ, is always ready and waiting to heal all of our wounds, even and especially this one, once and forever when we ask Him to come into our broken heart.

Because unfortunately, this war is far from over.

I have struggled, over my lifetime, to find an answer to the recurring question of why I seemed so different; more emotional than others, more inclined to seek the truth, more concerned with people’s feelings than their bank accounts (or my own).
I have met so many people who seemed to find the right partner, the right job, to enjoy the pleasures of life so much more easily than I did.
For some odd reason, I often found my inner comfort zone to be right  where others saw discomfort. I was secure where they would feel lost. I was at ease where they were acutely distressed.
I am beginning to understand that while I appeared to have every basic body part and brain function in tact, I have apparently always been handicapped. In the same way that a blind person has extra perception when it comes to hearing than many of his sighted friends, I always seemed to pick up on heart waves that no one else noticed, or if they did, they could not describe them as easily as I seemed to be able to.
I know now that all those times that I had such a different experience than what appeared to be the normal response of those around me was precisely because I was indeed handicapped, with a sensitivity to the spirit God put in me at birth, made only more profound after I asked Jesus into my life at age 37.
As so many people with severe handicaps will testify, I appreciate things in life that others just don’t even seem to notice. I am aware of the kindness of people and the workings of God in ways that others can’t begin to comprehend, especially when they consider experiencing my circumstances. And in the end, those handicapped individuals almost always say they wouldn’t change a thing about their lives, because their experience of it has been so rich and so filled with awe and wonder. I have to say that from my vantage point, I would totally agree.

Just wanted to bring this blog and anyone who follows it up to date on the outcome of my excursion into the Christian dating scene. The past few months have been really exciting, but more because of the way God has brought me closer to Himself than for anyone I met while making myself approachable online.

What happened was that several men I met, spoke with or corresponded with all asked me the same question: You have an amazing testimony. What are you doing with it?

Hmmmm. That was a tough one, but it had an easy answer. Nothing.

I had stopped blogging, I was not volunteering in any capacity except hospitality at church, and although I regularly attended and shared at my bible study group, I wasn’t doing anything with the story of my adventures with the Lord.

Could it be that what I got out of the dating site was a direct road back to the love of my life? Actually that is exactly what happened.

I asked God to go with me and indeed He did, and facing my past head-on where men were concerned, helped me to find a few places that still needed forgiveness and God’s healing touch. Had I not gone there, I may never have known there was still some crusty residue in the heart of this vessel. As the months progressed, I felt as though I was finally willing to let go of all hurts where men from my past were concerned and come back into God’s loving arms with a clearer love and yearning to know Him than I had ever had the previous thirty years.

I was able to choose Him completely, knowing He had already chosen me, no matter which way my head had turned toward gentlemen at any given point in time. I have to say, this journey did start out with me wondering if I had yet found the love of my life and ended with me knowing for certain that yes, I had already found Him, and He was going to remain with me into the eternity He has promised. There is nothing safer and more certain, nothing more exciting than that! Nothing.

I  received a special gift this weekend, along with a book that Billy Graham has just written, The Reason For My Hope. It is probably the last one from this incredible man of God, and I am stuck by how each paragraph, each sentence contains so much truth , insight and yes, hope for all of mankind, in spite of everything we see going on in the world today. To me it would seem as though he would be discouraged at what he has seen over his lifetime, but because his hope is in our eternal salvation, in God not in man, he is every bit as passionate near the end of his life as he was in the beginning of his ministry. He is an amazing blessing to the decades of people whose lives he has touched and to the generations that will follow.

The part that struck me this morning even as I was being uplifted by his words, was that I hadn’t read thirty pages when I had noticed two mistakes. Not in his message, not in his work, but typos! Typos, can you believe it? He has a great publisher, probably hundreds of people who have read this before the publisher took it to print, and yet here are these common errors seemingly obvious to me, that no one caught.

At first I thought, should I call someone, write them that these were there so that future printings would be perfect? Then I realized God was just showing me, once again, how I struggle with the fact that regardless of being saved, in spite of spending thirty years safe in His protection and love, I still struggle with imperfection. And I always will. I am imperfect. We all are. Save one, Jesus Christ, who came so that we might have eternal life and be accepted, with all our imperfections, into His Kingdom when we leave this earthly body and return home.

I always thought it was a good thing to be a natural proofreader, but sometimes it isn’t,  unless it is your job. It makes me search words for the meaning that might be lost between the lines, a hanging participle that might cause someone to read something in a way other than what the author intended. Yet often this is just how God speaks to me in deeper ways, calling attention to the flaws I have asked Him to reveal in me that I might possibly improve on with some effort on my part and grace on His. I don’t want someone to read me wrong, so to speak. Or is it that I don’t want them to see my imperfections?

Today He has shown me that He doesn’t see my imperfections in the way I see them. He sees my heart. He sees the soul He gave me at birth and the life that I have lived trying to be true to Him and to myself. He does not proofread every moment of every day, every misstep that I have made, every wrong word that I have written or said. I sometimes can be so disheartened by getting something wrong that I miss His bigger picture for me. His love and compassion are always the meaning between the lines. His care for me goes far beyond my getting everything perfect. His joy in me is never undone by one wrong thought.

I thought I was not a perfectionist. I try to look for the good in people and in situations without judging the small mistakes, but I was wrong; being a proofreader is looking for perfection. I attributed this to a characteristic of God, but I was incorrect, as I so often am. We are made in His image, not He in ours. Nothing in His word says He is a proofreader, in fact much the opposite. We are flawed, imperfect, and we need Him to get through this life. He sent His perfect son to die on the cross for the mistakes we have made and will continue to make, just so that we can experience His love while we struggle through life on this earth and so we may one day join Him in eternity. End of story. I do not need to tell Billy Graham’s publisher there are flaws. If anyone knows that, it is Billy Graham. Perhaps God allowed those  just for me to see. He’s like that, you know.