The Journey

My life has felt a bit like a Chevy Chase/National Lampoon movie in the past couple of weeks…. Not so sure what the LORD is up to, but oh my! The drama has been pretty amazing and crazy.

Let’s start with 2 ½ weeks ago (drama #1)…..
The backstory…. Ben and I have been praying about what the LORD would have us do as far as buying property here in Montana. We saw a property a couple of months ago and had been dreaming about it and praying for the LORD’s direction about whether it was the property we were to buy and develop. The property backs up on a huge wilderness area, and consisted of a finished log house (albeit pretty rough), and an unfinished log house with great “bones” – with doors and a few windows installed, and sub-flooring, but no heat, no power, no plumbing, no water. We were dreaming about buying it and finishing the second home beautifully and renting out one of them on VRBO as an income stream (there is a lot of that here in Bigfork).

Spencer (our 21 year old son) had been visiting us for a bit. It had begun to get warmer and we had a couple of days of bright sunshine and up to 80 degrees. We decided to put the awning out on the RV Tuesday, May 30. It’s a bit challenging – it’s heavy and a bit cumbersome. We hadn’t really worked with it much, and were not particularly proficient in getting it out (or in), but we eventually got it set up. The following day, we went to look at another property local to where we are staying in the RV. As we returned, we saw the ugliest and most threatening cloud I have ever seen to the south of us (toward where the RV is parked). It looked like the ugliest bruise you can imagine… browns, yellows, blues, blacks and it stretched from the ground to as high as I could see. It was moving our direction really fast.

Remember, the RV awning (effectively, a sail) was out…. The storm hit when we were about 2 blocks away with 50+ mph gusts of wind. We arrived and jumped out of the car to wrestled with the awning – trying desperately to get it retracted. The wind was howling and a torrential rain began and lightning streaked overhead. Spencer climbed up onto the top of the RV (a metal box) and was wrestling with the awning (attached to metal bars) while Ben and I struggled on each support trying to get it put away. Lightning and a human lightning rod (on the roof of a metal box, no less), and Ben and I fighting to keep the awning from tearing off and sailing away while holding on to metal poles. Hmmmmm. In retrospect, pretty stupid. We got the awning tethered (not put away) but at least flat against the RV. Spencer came down unharmed and we got into shelter and watched the lightning play and listened to the thunder and watched the torrents of rain.

I know I can be pretty thick headed, so I spent the time that evening asking God just exactly what He wanted me to learn. Whatever it was, I really, really wanted to learn whatever it was (so we would not need another “lesson”!).

As I prayed, I thought about our prayer for His direction about what we should do about the property we had been dreaming about. We have lived in the RV twice – 3 months last summer, and a week (at that time) this summer. We have yet to really get up to speed with the relatively simple control systems of the RV.  We’re getting better at doing things like the sewer connection and stuff – but there are still aspects of how it works we have yet to spend time with figuring out. The property we have been dreaming about has a lot of pretty complex systems – septic, well controls, a heating system we’ve never dealt with before – and we were dreaming about adding a whole lot of other new systems with the unfinished structure. Hmmm. We don’t really know the systems of our relatively simple and small living place – are we really equipped to deal with 10 acres and the many systems required, and the other variables such as downed trees and lots of wild creatures such as grizzlies, mountain lions and wolves? As I pondered and prayed, it came to me that the LORD was showing us what we were not really willing to see… that we are not equipped to handle that kind of project.  And He helped me see that this RV debacle was an answer to our prayer for direction – and that His answer was a very loud and clear NO.

I’m so grateful that the LORD knows us… and He knows how stubborn and hard-headed I can be when I want to do something. Sometimes it takes a severe blow to my, oh so hard head, to get something through it. Praising God that none of us were struck by lightning! And for the clarity we have about this issue.

The saga continues….. (drama #2)
Ben left for Seattle June 4th and I followed on the 6th. (As an aside… our RV’s electrical/heat/hot water systems quit working entirely Tuesday morning prior to my flight to Seattle! )

Our daughter, Elise was graduating from the U.W. Friday, June 9th and we were excited to be there with her. While there, we planned to see friends, and then to head to Olympia to pack our stored furniture and household stuff into two 26 foot U-Haul trucks to drive it to Montana for storage closer to home. Our pack on Monday went fine (although it’s amazing just how much stuff we have!). We finished up and headed out planning to make it to Moses Lake that evening.

About 4 miles west of Ellensburg, Spencer (who was following Ben and me in the other truck) called my cell phone. The road noise was pretty bad and I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I told him I couldn’t hear him and that we could talk when we stopped for dinner. He shouted louder and wouldn’t let me hang up. Finally, I heard him say, “SMOKE!”, just as Ben and I saw smoke pouring out of our engine and all kinds of alarms and lights erupting from the dashboard. We pulled off and immediately a state patrol car pulled in behind us. He told us that he’d seen a big fluid spill a couple of miles back, and had driven looking for someone to be broken down at the side of the road. I’m so grateful that the engine did not catch fire!!!!!!

We called U-Haul and it took a really long time for them to figure out what they wanted to do. Eventually, they offered to put us up at the Red Lion in Ellensburg, and we settled in sometime after midnight. I was awake when the banging just outside of our ground floor windows began at 6:15 am. However, Spencer (in the room beside ours) was not, and I did not want him woken up. I dressed, looked outside and saw two roofing company vehicles outside our rooms. Management got them to stop work until 8 am – and I went to the restaurant to study for a while. Ben came after about an hour, but I was on the phone with a friend and he simply waved and smiled and went away. He returned after my call and asked me to come with him to the room…. He had something to show me.

We walked into the room and he walked over to the window which was covered by the curtains. He motioned me to come over and pulled back the curtain to show me the lower window which was shattered, but had two knife-like shards of glass sticking up from the lower frame. Ben explained that he had sat down in the office chair adjacent to the window, tipped the chair slightly and went over backwards. His head shattered the window as he fell headfirst to the asphalt outside (remember it was a ground-floor room, thank the LORD!!). He told me that the curtain had wrapped around his head and neck as he fell – and that curtain protected his neck (read carotid arteries) from the knife-like shards, and also cushioned his head as he hit the pavement. He had carefully drawn himself back into the room, and was not cut by the broken glass. Truly it is miraculous that he was not killed – by the knife-like shards of glass, or by cracking his head on the pavement outside. I have been praising God since that Ben survived… and that I did not return to Montana as a widow.

Honestly, I am not sure exactly why we have had such drama this past year. When we moved into the RV last June, Ben had a freak accident in which he accidentally accelerated into our parked RV – totaling his car and very nearly totaling the RV on the very first full day we were in it. That same afternoon, he fell from the top step of the RV onto the concrete pad below. He was pretty bruised, but thankfully, he did not break any bones, and he did not crack his head open on the cement.
This entire year has been full of “growth opportunities” (read challenges)…. I am praying that the LORD continues to protect us, and that He shows us His purpose in all that we have been through.

This year I have studied the Gospel of John. It has been so beautiful. What a Savior we serve! I am amazed at how good our God is!

When Mary Magdalene went to Jesus’s tomb on the Sunday following His crucifixion, she saw that the stone had been rolled away, and the tomb was empty. She ran to tell the other disciples and Peter and John raced to see. They looked into the tomb and….

John 20:6b-7 He [Peter] saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen.

As I was thinking about this Scripture, and was trying to picture in my head what John and Peter would have seen, I thought about the 75 pounds of spices wrapped with the linens around Jesus’s body. The linen was lying where Jesus’s body had lain, and I pictured it as if He had simply passed out of them when He resurrected from the dead.

I remembered something my teacher had said, “the physical often points to the spiritual” (and this has often come to mind this year when I have seen the beauty and majesty of God’s creation – how for example, His faithfulness is demonstrated each morning with the rising of the sun).

I thought about how the linens and spices around Jesus in the tomb would have been much like a cocoon, and how before a caterpillar enters its cocoon, it is a “worm”. (Psalm 22:6-8 “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: ‘He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue Him. Let Him deliver Him, since He delights in Him.”) The words of these verses in the Psalms sound uncannily like the way Jesus was treated as He was tried and hung on the cross. Jesus was, like a caterpillar, probably pretty grotesque looking after His brutal flogging, beatings and enduring the nails being pounded into His hands and feet. After He died, His body was “cocooned” in linens and spices – just as a caterpillar’s body is cocooned in its silk. During the caterpillar’s time in the cocoon, it is transformed into a glorious new creation which emerges to fly in its beauty into the sky. Jesus, too, emerged from His “cocoon” in His glorified and transformed body…. and He, too, “flew”/ascended into the sky/clouds in His return to heaven.

We serve such an amazing God!!! How gracious He is to us – that He points to Himself in creation in ways that make His reality and His glory undeniable!

Psalm 86:1,3-7 “Hear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Have mercy on me, O LORD, for I call to You all day long. Bring joy to Your servant, for to You, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

You are forgiving and good, O LORD; listen to my cry for mercy. In the day of my trouble I will call to You, for You will answer me.

(11-13) Teach me Your way, O LORD, and I will walk in Your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear Your Name. I will praise You, O LORD my God, with all my heart; I will glorify Your Name forever. For great is Your love toward me; You have delivered me from the depths of the grave.”

I love the Psalms. They speak to me and for me as I pray through them to the Lord. This Psalm in particular really met me recently. The last month has been pretty challenging (in fact this year has been!). Part of my history includes a long, long struggle with depression. That struggle ended in the fall of 2012 when I was, in a crazy, only God could do it way, healed overnight from the depression I had had since I was 12. I had been completely free of depression until recent months.

A friend pointed out last weekend that I had gotten to the point of not empathizing well with those wrestling with depression. Honestly, I had forgotten its pain, and the many, many years when I tried every drug known to try to get relief (as well as anything else I thought might help). Instead of “mourning with those who mourn”, I have been prideful and didn’t recognize just how difficult it really is to be depressed. While it is true that we are to bring everything to the Lord, He will allow us to stay in a painful place in order to grow us and refine us.He doesn’t always heal just when we ask,but only in His perfect timing and in His perfect will.

The Lord allowed me to sink into depression recently . I felt no joy, and so much discouragement, sinking into hopelessness and a sense that the circumstances of life are just too hard.

Yesterday afternoon I went out for a long walk and cried out to the Lord. I was wrestling with an issue that has remained unresolved for a long time, an issue that was taking me to an awful level of anger and grief and feelings of hopelessness – to a belief that things will never ever change. What the Lord showed me yesterday was that I was believing that I am entitled to something different than that which He has given me. He showed me that the only thing I am really entitled to (without Jesus) is having the flesh ripped from my body as it was from His when He was flogged. What I am entitled to is mocking and shame and excruciating agony on a cross just like what He experienced.

Anything of grace and goodness – ALL things are an amazing gift from my good and gracious Lord. He reminded me that my being healed of depression was all His doing, nothing of mine. He rebuked me for my pride and for my lack of love to others in their struggles. He reminded me of Revelation 3:17 where Jesus says to the church at Laodicea (and to us!), “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But, you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”

Without Jesus and His giving us His righteousness, we are all of those (I am!). Praising Jesus for Him showing me this! Praising Him for the depression I have had and the incredible lesson He has given me through it. Praising Him for His wonderful love and mercy – that He really is my good, good Father Who loves me enough to discipline and rebuke me. (Revelation 3:19)

Just as He says in David’s Psalm above, He has answered me in my day of trouble – just as He promised He would. I am praising Him that He is the promise-keeping Lord of the universe!!! He has given me back joy, and has brought me back to a place of gratitude for ALL that He has given me and has allowed. Romans 8:28 (another promise!) “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

Truly, He is our Good Shepherd – watching over us, loving us, leading us, providing for us, and disciplining us when we so desperately need it. I am so grateful for His rescue of me – that He loved me enough to redeem me and make me His.

From “The Making of a Leader” by J. Robert Clinton

“God is not in as big of a hurry as you and I are. He is more interested in shaping you and me first. Submission is an essential leadership lesson.

A quote from Andrew Murray (South African Christian writer) about submission in “The Making of a Leader”:

1. He brought me here. It’s by His will I am in this straight place. In that fact I will rest.
2. He will keep me here in His love and give me grace to behave as His child.
3. Then He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends for me to learn.
4. In His good time, He will bring me out again – how and when only He knows. So let me say: I am here by God’s appointment, in His keeping, under His training, and for His time.

J. Robert Clinton writes a bit later in a letter he includes in his book to a young leader…. You are in a hurry to get on with ministry. Wait on the LORD. He will lead in a plain path in His time. He also wrote:

God prepares by isolation….

You don’t know this part of my/our story, but God plucked us out of Seattle (where we had lived all of our adult lives) and put us too far away to “return to Egypt” (back home). Last summer, it was crazy. I couldn’t go “home” (although I tried a couple of times and He made insurmountable road blocks). My friends dropped off the map – not returning calls, emails or texts. Ben was busy and often away. I did a lot of long, long runs alone, and what happened was that Jesus became my running/life companion for that season. The LORD isolated me from home, friends and even family… crazy lonely at first, but Jesus truly did become my “all in all” during that time.

The LORD is so faithful, and He gives us just what we need when we need it. I needed to read the above…. what a good God He is.

Have you ever wondered about or been afraid of losing your “identity”? I’ve been thinking about what eternal life – that is life after I die to this life here on earth a lot lately. I’ve been wondering whether I will retain my “deborahness”, or whether I will be absorbed into a oneness with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit and will cease to be truly an individual.

In some religious traditions, it is thought that the ultimate ending of all of us is to be absorbed into the essence of all things – I think that is called Nirvana….? Others believe that there is no life after we die – that we simply cease to exist forever and our bodies return into the ecosystem. Others believe that we come back to life again and again – in a form that is a consequence of the way we lived our lives. Of course, there are others who have beliefs different even than these limited examples.
I have been feeling afraid that if I lose myself in Jesus – worshipping Him alone and putting Him first (instead of me!) – my person and identity as an individual will become nothingness and I will disappear into the vastness of God.

In His Word, God shows over and over how He treasures individual people. The Bible is some ways is what would be called a “scroll of remembrance”. Frequently, God mentions individual people – who they were and what they did – almost like He does not want us to ever forget them. In the Old Testament, there are lists and lists of His people – just their names – as if He is saying that each one of them is precious to Him. He talks about those who believe in and accept Jesus as their Savior as being “written in the Book of Life” – remembered for all time and living forever.

One of the truly challenging things about seeking to know Jesus – Who He says He is in His Word – and trying to trust Him and obey His commands, is to always worship and put Him first in my thoughts, words and actions. Unfortunately, more often than not, I put myself in first position – first position as far as getting what I want, doing what I want to do and in thinking that I know a lot more than I really do. I put “me” above loving Him and following Him and being obedient to His Word. You see, truthfully, I much prefer to “worship” me and put my thinking and desires before anything that could mean that I don’t get to do and think just as I want.

This past couple of months, I have been feeling like I’ve been in a hot oven….. nothing life-threatening, just a lot of really difficult circumstances that have been bringing me to tears and have caused me to feel so very oppressed. Another name for it would be “suffering” (although compared to what many, many face daily in our world, what I’ve been going through is really nothing!). I am beginning to look at times of suffering differently. My heart’s cry has been, “this is too much to bear!”, “please, please LORD fix this!!”, “please LORD Jesus, take this away!”. What has come out of this season has been some much-needed life lessons – ones that I would not have sought out on my own. Our LORD is so perfect – so full of love for us – He only gives us suffering that is intended to make us more like Him.

2 Corinthians 4:6-9 (NIVUK)
6 “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

This “jar of clay” has been being fired in the kiln of life recently. God’s purpose is to make His jars of clay into beautiful treasures. A porcelain artist glazes His work and then puts it into a kiln at precisely the correct temperature for precisely the right amount of time. The intense heat of the kiln changes the nature of the clay and perfects the glaze, so that when it is removed from the furnace, the clay pot has been transformed into a treasure – a beautiful work of art. With our treasures, we place them where we can admire them and marvel at their beauty. We handle them lovingly and protect them from being chipped or broken.

The LORD is so faithful. He will not give us more than we can bear! I’ve been thinking about the story in Daniel chapter 3 about a furnace:
16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to him, ‘King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.’
19 Then Nebuchadnezzar was furious with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and his attitude towards them changed. He ordered the furnace to be heated seven times hotter than usual 20 and commanded some of the strongest soldiers in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and throw them into the blazing furnace. 21 So these men, wearing their robes, trousers, turbans and other clothes, were bound and thrown into the blazing furnace. 22 The king’s command was so urgent and the furnace so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took up Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, 23 and these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace.
24 Then King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisors, ‘Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?’ They replied, ‘Certainly, your Majesty.’
25 He said, ‘Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.’

Jesus in talking to Peter in the New Testament, said that He would allow Peter (aka Simon) to be “sifted like wheat”.
Luke 22:31-32New International Version – UK (NIVUK)
31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

While the LORD allows us to be in the fiery furnace, He does not leave us there alone.   HE IS WITH US in the flames. AND when He brings us out of the trials we find ourselves in, He has done a mighty work in transforming us from a common jar of clay, to a beautiful vase to be treasured, admired, loved and displayed for His glory and for the good of His kingdom. He has transformed us into a treasure – one of immense value to the King of all creation. He alone is to be praised for His work of transformation!!! Indeed, we are “sifted like wheat”, but God is in control of the one He allows to sift us – and He is in control of the outcome.

I am comforted by all that He is showing me about His love and heart for me in becoming the woman He intends for me to be. This time of “suffering” in the fire of life has not been easy. However, I am coming to see that through this, I am becoming His treasure – one to be loved by Him, protected by Him, used by Him and known by Him. Oh LORD, it is a privilege to be Your’s…. please help me stand firm in the sure knowledge that I am safe in Your loving hands. You do not desire to erase me and cause me to cease to exist by absorbing me into Yourself. You treasure me as Your creation – a clay pot becoming a beautiful porcelain vase. I am comforted to think that I exist as Your daughter, and that I will exist forever as Your beloved.

Hello! Today is Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent – a church tradition celebrated for the 40 days prior to Easter.
This morning, I was listening to Brian Hardin on Daily Audio Bible. He did a brief teaching on the meaning and significance of Lent for us as Christians. In his teaching he explained some things that I did not really understand.

I have always been puzzled by the tradition of putting ashes on the forehead of people observing Lent. As a Protestant, that tradition was never done in the congregations I attended. Evidently, it is meant to signify the sackcloth and ashes frequently mentioned in the Old Testament (for example, in the Book of Job, Job sits in the ashes dressed in rags following the deaths of his children, and the loss of everything except his (nagging) wife). In today’s observance of Lent, people put the ashes on their foreheads in order to show their grief and remorse for their sins which sent Jesus to the cross. Lent is meant to be 40 days of contemplation of the great and unspeakable cost of our sins.

I know for myself, I often diminish the significance and weight and the incredible cost of my sin – seeing it as not such a big deal – and seeing my sin as just “little” sins without much eternal significance. This attitude in me fails to honor and recognize the tremendous and horrible price Jesus paid for my sin (and yours) on the cross. I’ve heard preachers say many times, that even one of those “little” sins would have sent Jesus to the cross — without the cross, a “little” (or big) sin makes me unholy and unable to enter the presence of the LORD – forever lost in darkness without God.

Our relationship with Jesus is deeply intimate and personal – even more loving and intimate than the relationship we have with any other person. The thought that we would treat our sin casually – seeing it as “little”, and not very significant – is a lie that dishonors our LORD and the great cost Jesus paid. He paid the price of His life to offer us restoration and reconciliation with the LORD.

During Lent, the tradition is that we fast from something that is a part of our daily life. Each time we abstain from that thing, we are reminded of the terrible cost of the cross – the darkness of sin, the weight of it in our lives, and of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross. When I abstain, the LORD may reveal what “of the world” I am putting first in my life ahead of my relationship with Jesus – He shows where my priorities are and areas where I am out of alignment with Him.

Lent is about preparing our hearts for the right celebration of Easter – helping us see clearly our sin which necessitated the cross – and helping us understand the cost of the cross and the beauty of what Jesus has done out of love for us.

What is God showing you that may need to be removed from your life – for a season, or for longer term? Are you (am I!) willing to allow the LORD to rearrange your life in order to put Him first – fully on the throne of your existence – to make you suitable for a holy relationship with Him.

My heart’s cry – all of my life – was to know “why”. I am sure I was that 4 or 5 year old child who pestered any adult around me with the whys of life…. Why is the sky blue? Why are you doing that? Etc. As a young person, I looked in many, many places trying to figure out why – why the things that happened to me had happened. Questioning endlessly the meaning and purpose behind the suffering of those I loved, and the suffering I endured.

My mom and dad were diagnosed with terminal illnesses when I was 2 years old. My dad died an excruciating death when I was 10. Immediately after his death, I was molested by an old man. I became a Christian at around 10 years old. I desperately wanted God to heal my mom from her battle with M.S.. I believed that if I were a good enough little girl, God would hear my prayers and Mom would be healed when we went to a faith healer in Seattle….. and she wasn’t. By age 12, I began wrestling with chronic depression.

I was an exchange student in Finland during my junior year of high school. While in Finland, the family I lived with (heavy drinkers) thought it would be fun to see me drunk and gave me (who knew nothing about alcohol) 7 seven-up like beverages full of alcohol at a party just before Christmas. I was terribly sick. Shortly afterwards, my employer offered me drinks of straight alcohol – and not knowing anything, I thought the amount looked pretty harmless. He raped me when I was too incapacitated to fight (although, unfortunately, I was completely conscious). My depression and shame deepened. So began a 35 year battle with alcoholism, and 25 years buried in the shame of my constant obsession with eating (and vomiting what I ate).

I was married and divorced in my early 20’s. I went from man to man looking for a savior. These “relationships” felt so meaningless and left me lonely, ashamed and so very empty. I was deeply enslaved to alcohol and food and could find no way out – although I tried many, many different things to be “healed”.

In 1986, I met Ben. I was an atheist and Ben had left his faith completely. We dated for several months, and one Sunday, God tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is the one.” While I was an atheist, I knew that the voice was God’s. We were married 10 months later.

My mom suffered horribly prior to her death in February, 1989. Her death rocked my world… I wanted to die – I felt so guilty – like such an incredibly bad daughter. I had so many regrets about how I had treated her. My depression deepened and I tried to kill myself right after her death.

God led me to an eating disorders treatment center in December, 1999 where I participated in group therapy for bulimia. I believed that if anyone ever knew me, or my story and my shame, they would run screaming from the room and abandon me forever. As a requisite for staying the group, I was required to tell my story to this group of 12 women. No one ran screaming from the room…. Instead they came around me and loved me despite my incredibly shame-filled life story. The lie – that anyone who truly knew me would despise me and abandon me – was revealed. I was completely and miraculously healed immediately after telling my story – free of any compulsion towards food. I had been set free!!!

When Ben’s mom died in 1993, he felt the Lord calling him back to Himself. Ben came home from her deathbed a changed man – a Christian (!), and I wanted nothing to do with it. Ben insisted that I go to church with him and the kids. He convinced me that our kids would be as confused as I was about God if we did not give them a consistent Christian upbringing by attending church.

For many years , I was dragged (kicking and screaming, as you will!) to church. I was that person who slumped in my chair during the service – earplugs in my ears, my eyes closed and my arms folded. It was abundantly clear to everyone that I hated being there.

The Holy Spirit began to work on me and I began to question my atheism and to seek a different answer to my questions about the “why” of life in the fall of 2009. In October, Ben gave me the book, “The Reason for God”, by Tim Keller. It started to answer many of my objections to Jesus and helped me see the suffering of those I loved and my own suffering with a different “lens”.  I began to seek to know Jesus, and He reached out and drew me into relationship with Him.  January 10, 2010, I surrendered to Jesus as my Savior and LORD, and was baptized that day. During the minutes before I stepped into the baptismal, God and I had a conversation. “Do you know that there will be no turning back if you go forward with this? That this is a deeper commitment than even your marriage to Ben?” I surrendered fully and with my whole heart. No turning back…..

God gave me a promise shortly after my baptism. For many years, I felt like God was “out to get me” in a very hostile way. The promise He gave me was the Scripture, Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you hope and a future.” He has been and always will be after my heart…. out to get me, if you will. BUT His plans and purposes for me and my life are for GOOD. I am so, so grateful!

In October, 2010, God spoke to me and said, “For you, Deborah, drinking is a sin.” I had made all kinds of deals with the devil over the years and had tried everything to stop drinking. God not only told me it was a sin, but He took away my urge to drink over the next months. He broke my chains and set me free of many, many years of being enslaved every day – and often every hour – to the bondage of bulimia and alcohol.

One evening in October 2012, God told me to stop taking all 5 major anti-depressants I was on for depression. He completely and miraculously healed me of my lifetime of depression. I woke up the following morning free…. no discontinuation syndrome (which rightfully should have killed me!)….. no black cloud of depression enveloping me – which had been with and over me since I was 12. God, my precious and fabulous Savior, had completely taken it away.

I idolized our family’s beautiful home in Seattle for 20 years – spending a fortune on it – and putting it ahead of many other (more significant) things in our lives. Thankfully, God removed that which I held to be more important than Him. On my final run from our home after many months of terrible grief, He gave me an experience where I felt covered with the warm oil of joy and felt His presence. All my grief and my attachment to the house were entirely removed that day, just before we moved out.

In November, 2013, I woke up in the wee hours to God telling me to get up and write something down. I found a sticky note and a pen and obeyed and wrote what He gave me. These are the words: “Time is short. Live with the end in mind. Where will it all end? Heaven.” Even now, I’m not sure how these words will play out in my life and in the lives of those I love. However, I do know them as complete truth from the One Who speaks only truth.

God told me to read beyond the promise He gave me in Jeremiah 29:11…. that He had something more for me in His Word. He pointed me to the following verses: Jeremiah 29:12 -14a where He promises that I CAN KNOW HIM! “Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and will bring you back from captivity.” He has kept His amazing promises!!! He brought me back from the awful captivity and slavery to food, alcohol and depression, and has left me free indeed.

In 2013, after wrestling with fear and grieving from what turned out to be just a scare about two possible cancer diagnoses , God spoke with me about the difference between this world and the one He has waiting for me after I leave this life. I was given an amazing vision of what heaven will look like, and was given such hope, joy and peace in the sure knowledge that this world is a dim echo of the beauty and awesomeness of what is next.

During 2014 and 2015, and after multiple (extremely painful!!!) biopsies (and much, much prayer!), it seemed like the best course of action to have a complete hysterectomy. The surgery was done on June 18, 2015 and I was completely at peace with all that would entail. Things did not go as expected. The night following the surgery, I was given a narcotic (after much protest on my part!) that I was allergic to. What a long and painful night! I chose to be discharged the next day at noon believing that I would be better off at home. At 3 pm, my belly began to “blow up” and I went from a relatively flat stomach to 6 months pregnant in an hour – crazy painful! At the ER, I was diagnosed with profound blood loss (1/3 of my blood volume was in my abdomen) and re-hospitalized. That night, an error was made in the dosing of morphine, and I stopped breathing more than 20 times – I am grateful for the enormous bell on top of the monitor! It would rouse me enough to see “No respiration detected.” on the screen and to take big breaths until the bell stopped. Amazingly, I saw no staff that night…. the first staff after my hookup to morphine at 10 pm was the phlebotomist who arrived at 5:45 am. I am so, so grateful to be alive!!! The following week was really tough. I was so weak and couldn’t sit up for much longer than a few minutes. I couldn’t lay down with a book… it was too heavy to hold up. I felt awful…horrible headache, super weak, so very sick. I went to my regular doctor on Monday, June 29 and she told me I would probably feel this way for 4-6 months as my body healed, my blood rebuilt, my iron stores res-established, etc. I was horrified! On my return home, I wrestled with God – “why has this happened! I asked for Your direction and You told me to go ahead. I have plans this summer….” He answered me with “My will or your will be done?” I finally surrendered to what He had for me. The next day was Elise’s 21st birthday… I felt strong enough that evening to have dinner with the family. Wednesday, July 1, I woke up feeling really good and did a bunch of errands – but was pretty exhausted by evening. Thursday, July 2nd, I woke up completely and entirely healed…. my belly was flat, I felt marvelous – energetic and joyful. I began running (5 miles) the following Monday… it felt great!!! I returned to the doctor for a blood test to see where things were. My iron status, my red and white blood counts were in her words – better than normal! Wow!!!

Ben and I have seen God at work in our lives since then in so many ways. He told us to leave Seattle (leave now, and do not dawdle!) and we have been called through some crazy circumstances to make our home in N.W. Montana. Both of us believe He has brought us here for His purposes, and that He has a plan and a purpose for us in this beautiful place. We both feel incredibly blessed… and He is most definitely active and at work in our lives here.

God has broken my chains (a lifetime of slavery to bulimia and alcoholism and a lifetime of severe chronic depression). He set me free – free to know Him, free to experience His joy, His peace and his hope now and forever.  He is answering my perpetual question and heart’s cry to know the eternal “Why” and the why behind His actions, His plans and His purposes for my life. I am so grateful.

The cross is the perfect, undeniable evidence of Jesus’s love for each of us!!!!

This is what I wrote in the wee hours of the night last Monday (November 28).  Jesus gave me such joy as I understood the cross from the perspective of it being the greatest act of love – the act that provided the perfect evidence to refute the lie of satan that we are not truly loved. I would love to hear your thoughts…

In thinking about children and those who parent them (in general, and about my own parents and my experience of them, in specific):

Because I was not loved by my parents — or those who filled that role in my life –in the way I needed to be loved, I have bought the lie as truth that I am not lovable. As a child, I would have thought that it was my fault that they did not love me, and that there is something very wrong with me – that I am completely unacceptable and unlovable. I would have thought that there is an inherent unlovableness about me, and if that were not true, they would have loved and accepted me as me. They did as they did acting in a way that didn’t love me well because of their own deep wounds.

Therefore, I made a contract with the devil – that I would do _______ (whatever particular type of coping/dysfunction I can come up with) in order to escape the pain of believing that I am unlovable. The devil uses this contract and the actions associated with it to damage me – and those around me…… I will do (and did) whatever it takes to hide my unlovability (unacceptability).

Jesus’s love – His willingness to demonstrate His love by allowing Himself to be tortured and murdered – reveals the lie satan is using – that I/you are unlovable. Jesus did everything possible to demonstrate that He loves me and He loves you. He knows you (and me, and all of us) to your (our) core – our most vulnerable and deepest parts. He knows your true identity and loves you deeply… even in light of the sins you have done.

Satan wants you to believe the lie – that you are unlovable – which keeps you bound up in the fear that if people come close enough to you, your “unlovability” would be exposed. So you will do whatever it takes to hide that (however satan’s lie has led you to think, believe, act) and keep people from getting close enough to love you (the love you so desperately need and crave).

As a child, I thought there must be something terribly wrong with me that caused those I loved desperately not to love me.

The pain of the belief that I was unlovable by them caused me to seek anything that could numb that thought out – or – it will cause me to do whatever it takes to never allow anyone close enough to ever confirm that (unlovability) again by really seeing me and then not loving what they see and know. My contract with the devil: “I will not let them do that to me again.”

Lie: “If I were ___________, I would be lovable.”

Truth: I don’t have to do or be anything, but who I am (and who the Lord made me to be). Jesus showed His love for me and shone His light into the lie (my unlovability) by dying to prove it wrong. The cross is the perfect evidence against satan’s lie. Jesus died out of perfect and complete love for me (and you)….. revealing that He lacked nothing in His complete, faithful and true love for us.

I have bought satan’s lie when I think that anything other than the Lord will fill my sucking wound – only His love heals and fills and answers the lie of my unlovability/unacceptability with the incredible Truth of His love.

The lie of the devil – that we are completely unlovable (and damned to live out flawed and loveless lives) – has been revealed as the lie that it is. Jesus’s work on the cross denies that lie, and shows perfect Truth – that He is love, and we are loved fully.

Instead of seeking love from the inexhaustible source (the Lord), we – you and I – seek it from people or stuff. Neither have any ability to love well – people, due to their own inexhaustible thirst/hunger for love – and stuff is dead, it simply cannot satisfy a person’s need for love. People cannot give me what they do not have… and what I truly, truly need. Only Jesus, His Holy Spirit can fill me… He is the Living Water, an inexhaustible wellspring of love pouring out to us His children. Truly, He is the only Worthy One — worthy of all of our love and all of our praise!!!!