It’s been awhile since I have felt inspired to post a blog. Very little has happened in the way of humor, but that doesn’t mean things have not been going well in life.
It is Thanksgiving morning and boy, I don’t think I could feel more thankful if I tried this year.
Two weeks ago I was blessed enough to be able to sit down with the Elder’s of Waushara Community Church and share with them my testimony of becoming a true believer in God. It was a very humbling experience. We don’t take enough time to sit down and look through the paths of our lives to see where God has worked in our lives proving to us over and over again His promise from Jeremiah ….”I know the plans I have for you says the Lord, they are plans for good and not disaster….”. If I am being honest, I didn’t do much preparation for my testimony, in fact I tried not to think about it much before I had to go. (I spent my day in the knitting store making a scarf so I wouldn’t think about it). Speaking in front of people is not always my strong point, I get nervous and tongue tied and my voice starts to crack and do funny things. I took a public speaking course in college and it was nothing short of pure torture for me. My first speech I gave in class, I worked tirelessly on. I practiced in front of not only my professor but my neighbors as well. It was the right length of 3-5 minutes and I thought I was ready. Until about 25 minutes before I had to give that speech. I was physically sick with nerves and threw up. I threw up before every speech I had to give that semester. How could I be so nervous…I was going in front of a bunch of teenagers practically and I was much older than them, but nervous I was. My 3-5 minute speech ended up being about 38 seconds. I rattled through that so fast I wonder if they even heard my speech. And the “peer evaluator” of my speech said that he thought I started to cry up there. I did not start to cry, but my voice did weird things. I was embarrassed but oh well, they would forget, until I had to give my next speech, then they would remember and the cycle began for the 3 long months.
So I chose not to really “plan” any kind of speech and decided I would just go into that room and speak from the heart. There were three areas that I needed to cover 1, Where I came from, my history with my faith, 2, When I became a true Christian and 3, How I knew that I believed in God now.
As I spoke, God was showing me how many times throughout my life, especially those years between 18-30 something that He was trying to get my attention, and how many times I ignored him. I thought I was in control of my life and that I could make my own decisions without any guidance from Him or anyone else for that matter, which turned out to be me, taking the long way home at every curve in the road.
I can say now that I am home, and every one of those attention getting lessons God placed on my journey were leading me right here. When I say I traveled down a broken road to today, that is no exaggeration, but that broken road has taught me much about life and has shown me that while I always knew I believed IN God, I don’t think I ever BELIEVED God.
Every choice I have made in life has come with its own set of consequences and I not only hurt myself along the way but I hurt plenty of family members and friends. All who have forgiven me and still love me and most importantly with a God standing beside me saying, I’ll walk with you, but you need to also walk with ME! Looking through my history, it was so humbling to see that God never left me, He kept sending me His whispers and at times hit me over the head with a two by four trying to get my attention. He knew, that I would one day turn and look up to Him and say, “Lord, my life belongs to you, not to me, my children belong to You, not to me, my marriage is for glorifying You, not to make my husband or me happy, that is just a byproduct of living to praise You”. I never once did anything in my life to deserve for God to continue to love me, to continue to bless me and give me hard lessons in order that I may one day see His greatness. I gave Him every reason to wash His hands of me, to say, “Rebecca, You are not worth it”. But He continued to love me. He loves ME. It’s that undeserved love that has saved me over and over again in life from destruction, death, and a hardened heart never to return to the Word of God.
God has placed friends in my life who have stood by me through the test of times. They have never turned their backs on me and most importantly when I wanted to throw in the towel, give up on me, my family, my kids and God, they stood me up and pointed me in the direction I needed to go and kept handing me at the right times, the words of God’s promises.
A year and a half ago, I was ready to be done. Many of you know the hardships I have endured over the past year and that it was only through a Sovereign God’s undeserved love that I went from waking up in the morning wishing I hadn’t, feeling too weak to face the turmoil of the day to now, when I wake up every morning with hope, joy in my heart and a thankfulness for just one more day to get it right, one more day for my son to come home to visit and one more day to tell my children, “Out of all the boys in the world, I don’t know how I got the best two, but I thank God for making me your mom!”.
My son’s both have played such a major role in my life and both at very different times. They truly are a gift from God.
David came to me at a time in life when I was going nowhere fast. When I became pregnant with David, I had some hard choices to make and just to be clear, abortion was NEVER ONE OF THEM. My choices were, do I stay in this life I have been living the past 8 or so years or do I take the hard steps to be able to give HIM a life. I was not going to be the single mom who was sitting on welfare and popping out more and more kids. That’s when I took the first step to changing my life around, moving to Ripon, entering college and working tremendously hard to give my first born son a promising future. I do not deserve a pat on the back for that, while I am proud of my accomplishments, it was only through Christ that I was able to do any of this, and yet, I still wasn’t giving Him what He wanted. I wasn’t giving Him all of me. Thank you Lord for sending me David, who without knowing, gave me the strength and the courage to change my life and to teach me what true love, unconditional love really is. David was not born into this world with a job, David was born into this world to give me a job, a meaningful and the most rewarding job I could ever have.
The plan in life was for David to be my only child. I didn’t believe I ever wanted another child, but I believe God, seeing into my future, and knowing what I would go through the past year and a half would need another child and so five years ago, God changed my heart and I looked forward to bringing my little Lane into the world. It was because of Lane I was able to get out of bed a year and a half ago with a smile, a fake smile, but a smile nonetheless. He made me laugh, he made me feel like I was doing something right and not a total failure. Lane was not born into this world with a job, Lane was born into this world so I remembered what my job was.
Only a loving and forgiving God could have planned these two perfectly timed boys to come into my life. And they are two boys that I didn’t deserve, but God loved me enough to bless me with that gift of motherhood.
I deserve nothing from God, nothing good, yet He loves me. I wish I had a story that said, I don’t know when I didn’t believe God. There is no defining moment in my life where I knew that I was God’s child and He was here with me today and always, but that’s not my story. My story is riddled with sin, my story is riddled with destructive behavior, my story is riddled with terrible choices, addiction and pain brought upon me only by myself. But with those things my story also has a wonderfully happy turn in it. It’s not a happy ending, my life is not over and my life is not easy now by any means. But when I walk with God, the tasks at hand are much easier to bear. The disease that has my world spinning 100 miles an hour on random days and new symptoms that are rearing their ugly head daily are much easier to bear when God is wrapping his arms around me. When you see me, you may not know that I have an illness, because it’s when I am hidden away in my home for only those closest to me to see me in that vulnerable state. They see me cry and get angry but they see me also with a knowledge that while this is horrible, God is sitting here next to me and He is not going to leave me now or ever when times get tough. And on the days that I feel good, I hope that all see me as a beacon of God’s wonderful miracles and promises.
I watch in wonder how God uses us in our life to change other lives. My son, David, recently changed a man’s heart and life without even knowing it. This man was ready to give up on God, he had been praying for answers and finding none. He was asked to pray for David, whom I had not seen him in a very long time, and I had asked that people pray for him to come back to me, where he belonged. Months later, David called and asked if he could come home, out of the blue, just when I thought I was giving up on him every coming home. One of the proudest moments of my life was walking into church that Sunday morning with him beside me. This man saw my son walk in and while his intentions, unknown to the rest of us that day, were to never come back to the church, to give up on his faith, seeing David changed his heart and showed him that God is still listening and answering our prayers. We need to be patient and remember that it is not always on our timeline. We just need to trust, love and believe Him. He will never fail any one of us if we chose to allow Him to work in our lives.
I pray that God will use me one day to change a life like that. He uses the broken, the cracked pots, and I don’t think there is any more cracked than I am. I hope and pray that one day I will have changed a life like my hero, David did that Sunday morning. I shared that story with David last night and he said, “I want to meet this man”. I hope that he has the opportunity to meet him one day. He may just have saved his life, just as he had saved mine so many years ago.
So on this Thanksgiving Day, I will be thanking God for all He has done in my life and blessed me with. That sitting around the dinner table today my husband, and BOTH MY CHILDREN will be with me and I will look around and be able to smile and say Amen Lord, Amen.
Happy Thanksgiving to you all!
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