God's amazing love reached down to me and lifted me from a life full of bad choices. He entered my life by prompting someone in 1972 to give me GOOD NEWS FOR MODERN MAN: THE BOOK OF JOHN. As I hid away reading that precious Bread from Heaven, I became hungrier and thirstier to know Him! And He offered me freely the Living Water.
When my marriage ended in 1973, I moved with my three children back to live with my parents, a difficult and humbling experience.
In 1977, I married a man with two sons and started a new life as a farmer's wife, a totally new and exciting adventure. That is the time I began to seriously keep a journal. Everything was so new. I wanted to remember every detail along this journey. I'd given my life to Christ and became a "new creation". And I entered a new way of life on our Iowa farm.
I'd like to say we lived "happily ever after", but struggles mingled with joys as I learned and changed, and our marriage grew and blossomed. Each Christian reaches different levels of spiritual maturity at different times. I often felt like a slow learner!
There were times I was sure I'd let God down beyond what His mercy could manage, only to discover His mercy has no limits and is "new every morning"! Just when I thought I'd reached the end of the proverbial rope, I found God there waiting to catch me. He'd brush off the dirt and bandage the sore places, loving me as He healed my wounds.
I deeply desire to be used of God in the gift He has placed within me--to write. He has led me to a special time of study and growth and I am confident I will emerge as the servant He created me to be. It's astonishing to watch Him as He works.
He truly is an amazing God-- sending showers of blessings when I least expect them. There have been times in my life, since meeting my Savior, that His love has reached into deep places inside me and worked miracles of love only He can do. There have been difficult people, unloving, even hateful, and God through Jesus has allowed me to see them, not as the world sees them, but as He does. Oh, I have not always been faithful to that love--I've allowed hurtful words and actions to cloud that vision; but when I let Jesus love through me, it's a freeing and awesome thing.
Understanding that each person has the potential to reach new heights, to discover great things, or to explore the deep things of the mind, I am again awed at the birth of each child into this world. Each one has within them the seed to grow into the person God created him or her to be. It's a precious calling on many people to be teachers, educators, instructors opening those minds to huge possibilities.
Looking at the ultrasound image my daughter gave me during her pregnancy, I cried with the joy of knowing that child could be a teacher, a doctor, a governor, or President of the United States. What a wonder to behold that dark image, knowing when he would be born into the light of day, he would begin growing aware of the world around him. What he does with that knowledge will only be seen in years to come. And to pray for him, and each of our wonderful grandchildren, is to lift them before the very throne of the Most High God and trust Him to move in their lives in ways only He knows and has planned for them.
As I write this, it is a crisp, cool day, with the sun brightly shining; it's hard to be anything but glad for this life I've been given. I want to sing in the off-key voice I've been blessed with, dance in the breeze that's blowing the curtains at the window, and go to my knees in adoration of my Lord. He holds my heart in His hands and directs the paths that are before me. To worry about tomorrow is to take my heart back from Him, as if He weren't aware of all that lies ahead. But to enjoy the day, each moment embraced as a gift from Him, each person as a special ambassador of His love and grace--that truly is letting His touch on my life linger long and last forever.
"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.” Lamentations 3:21-24.
