Grace of God

                I write this now, with my grown daughter laying in the next room, her childhood room.  It is the day after Christmas and she is home to visit.  She’s newly married herself and expecting her first child.  She is so beautiful and has grown into such a wonderful woman, thanks to the grace of God Who did the larger part in her rearing.  I am so grateful that I found the Lord and only wish I had sooner.  She was nearly seven before I cried out to Him one night asking Him to save us both from the destruction that was wreaking havoc on our lives. 

                I was so young when I had her.  Only seventeen and I had no idea how to be a mother.  I’d grown up in a home with a mentally ill and abusive mother and an absent father.  I didn’t want to be a child anymore because it was too painful, so on a quest to enter adulthood and begin my own life, I married the first guy I thought I was in love with.  We ran off to another state and shortly after we eloped I became pregnant.  Not only did I not know how to be a mother, I didn’t know how to be a wife and the marriage disintegrated before Sarah was born.  I was too far along to have an abortion.  I know that sounds horrible but it’s the plain truth.  That’s where I was in my life.  Scared, confused and totally without a savior.  I couldn’t go back home so I tried to do things by myself, get a job, make a life for my daughter, but it wasn’t long before the pressures wore me down.  I was lonely and still immature, still in a teen-age frame of mind.  I had never been healed and I had nothing to offer Sarah.  Though I loved her, I wasn’t healthy and I was still a child myself in many ways.  Before long, I met some friends at work that I began partying with, leaving Sarah with baby-sitters.  I hate even thinking about that time.  It makes me feel so ashamed.  Things got even worse and I began using drugs.  Of course, my baby suffered many of the consequences.   We were moving all the time, because we were always getting evicted.  Strange men were coming in and out of our house.  There aren’t even words to describe how badly I was failing.  I don’t know if I cooked one meal for my child in those seven years.  I don’t know how she survived.  So many things are a blur.

                I don’t know what would have happened if God hadn’t intervened.  I won’t go into the details about what brought the CPS worker to my door but it was the day that changed our lives.  This woman shared with me her faith because she saw that I was hungry.  I was starving.  Literally and spiritually.  I was at the end of myself and had been waiting for someone to introduce something to me that could save me from myself.  Looking back, I’ve realized that she probably was breaking rules by sharing her faith with me.

                 I sobbed as she explained to me that Jesus had died for my sins and that He wanted me to allow Him into my life.  At my dirty kitchen table, I said the sinner’s prayer.  God performed a miracle on me that night and I was able to begin the process of turning my life around.  It was a long road back to any semblance of a normal life but with God by my side we got there.

                Then I met John and we took our time getting to know each other.  He was a Christian as well and we made a commitment to keep God at the center of our relationship.  Seventeen years later we are still doing that.  He never looked at who I used to be.  He always saw the new me and this was an example of God’s love for me as well.  He has been a father to Sarah in every sense of the word and she would say she’s lucky to have him in her life.

                I’ve prayed and interceded for Sarah since that day I was born again.  She was born into confusion but the Lord had a plan for her.  I know beyond a doubt that He did.  He watched over her when her own mother would not and kept her safe during all those years of chaos.  I never have regretted having her.  Not once.  I would never take that back. 

                But I’m so glad it is different for Sarah.  She loves the Lord first which enables her to love her husband and the baby yet to be born.  She knows who she is in Christ as a woman, a daughter and a mother.  I get to watch my baby raise her own babies the right way.  And I’m now a mother who can help her in her own journey through motherhood.  We grew up together in a way and today we share the same loving Father.  His grace is all together amazing.