Grasp The Love

I grew up attending church sporadically. I understood who God was but it wasn’t a real big part of my life. Eventually I came to be very involved in church activities and was very religious but didn’t understand what it meant to have a personal relationship with Christ.

I went to college and my sophomore year met some friends who went to a weekly bible study and they invited me along. I heard some amazing things: about a personal relationship with Jesus, that Jesus loves me and wanted me to give my whole life to Him, that the bible was reliable and relevant to my life. After attending bible study and a bible teaching church for about a year, I gave my life to Christ.

A few years later I married a Christian man and we attended a great church. We were very active in our church, eventually being a part of a church plant. Our whole life revolved around “working” at the church and it started to become more of a chore than something that God called us to do. I slowly started to forget about God’s grace and forgiveness. In addition we had been struggling with infertility for over two years and I didn’t know how to share the immense pain I was feeling about not being a mom.

I was promoted at my job and the desire to be successful and influential in my job grew. I worked a lot of hours and starting spending time with people that weren’t believers and weren’t a good influence for me. I became friends with a male co-worker and this caused my husband and I to grow farther and farther apart and eventually I decided I didn’t love him and want to live a different life. After a few months of fighting and counseling and going back and forth I moved out and we were eventually divorced.

During this time I’d also turned my heart away from God. On the inside I was angry about my infertility, but didn’t know how to deal with that. My heart had turned cold and I was also ashamed of the choices I had made in leaving my husband so the easy thing to do was walk farther away.

Within about 6 months I was remarried and this of course didn’t make things better. My new husband was not a believer and he also had a 12-year-old daughter. Our lifestyle of partying and not communicating was very lonely and draining. About 6 months after we married I attended a local Christian music festival (Life Light). Prior to this the Lord had been melting my heart in little ways; Christian friends I talked to, a horrible burden of guilt and shame that I didn’t know what to do with. At Life Light that year I understood for the first time in a year and ½ the choices I had made against God and asked for forgiveness. I recommitted my life to Christ and felt again like I was reborn. It was a difficult year after that but the Lord allowed me to find healing and also allowed me to reconcile with past friends and offer my apologies to my ex-husband and his family for the pain I’d caused.

What Satan intended for harm, God used to bring good. About a year after I recommitted my life to Christ my stepdaughter and husband came to Christ. Although it hasn’t always been easy the past 4 years have been a wonderful journey of growing closer to each other and to Christ. Every day I thank the Lord for His wonderful faithfulness and mercy. I’m also amazed that the Lord would see fit to call me into fulltime ministry. In addition to working fulltime with my church, my mom and I started a ministry outreach for women – a day retreat that includes prayer, worship, testimonies and fellowship. I’m able to share with so many who are hurting that Jesus can bring healing to any situation. My journey has also helped me to be less judgmental of others and to understand that you can never show enough compassion and mercy.

My husband and I had our own share of infertility struggles but thankfully we took them to the Lord and this time I was real with my pain. There has been alot of ups and downs and heartache. But through it all God has been faithful. He has blessed us abundantly through this journey and recently blessed us through adoption with a daughter.

My desire is pass the legacy of faith on to our children. Through prayer, God’s word, compassion and caring I daily try to share that we serve a great God who loves them so much. I’ve experienced the pit of despair that David talks about in the Psalms (Psalm 30:1-3) and through that experience I’m able to better share that hope that is found in Christ. God is big enough to handle the littlest issues and the biggest issues. We want our children to understand “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that they may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”