Testimony.
For the longest time I felt like I didn’t have one and struggled to figure out just what that was. You see, I don’t have some horrific backstory. I come from a home of divorce. I grew up with a wonderful Mom who loved me and provided for my brother, sister, and I. Gave us a great home and we had everything we needed. Was it a perfect home? No. Is there even such a thing? BUT we did not want for anything. Growing up I was “the good child”…. I knew right and I knew wrong. My moral compass never wavered. I wasn’t a party girl, I didn’t do drugs, drink, and wasn’t promiscuous. I was what one might label “The Christian Girl.” And at the time it’s easy to think “Is there something wrong with me? Have I truly lived?” I see how silly that sounds, because it’s plain as day to me that it was clearly God’s protection over my life.
Thinking now, isn’t that kind of the best testimony to have?
Am I saying that God wasn’t protecting those people that made those choices or any other choice or took a path that would be one I wouldn’t have made, ABSOLUTELY NOT. It’s just that, their choice, their story…
And this is mine….
My testimony was there all along.
You’ll notice above I mention my Mom but nothing about my Dad. He is a father to the fatherless, this is what the bible says and what God has shown in my life time after time. My relationship with my earthly father is pretty much non-existent. I have dealt with a lot of rejection and pain in this area of my life. It caused so much insecurity and trying to find in other relationships what I could only find in God.
I then went on to experience the death of two beautiful father figures in my life as my Mom remarried. They loved me as their own, because they wanted to and not because they had to.
Sidenote: After a lot of loss my Mom has found love again to an amazing man who has been a father in every sense of the word, truly handpicked by God. Just a great great man and I am thankful for him each and every single day.
Going back.. with the relationship with my real dad, or lack thereof, and the father figures he has brought into my life, I realized something…. They filled the void but were not meant to fill the whole void. It was through these experiences of loss, and quite honestly even through grieving the loss of the relationship that will most likely never come to be with my real father… I had a beautiful thought, how much more can and will my father in heaven love me? It caused me to cling to him tighter and true healing could begin and to realize the true love of the ultimate father.
Since then I’ve been passionately pursuing him, pursuing his heart, his love for me, and reading his word and what it says about his children. ME… It’s like one big long love story written for us. He’s just there waiting for us to personalize it.
He’s a good, good father. And I’m loved by him, in a way that nobody else can.
Maybe there is someone on this World Race trip, in who knows what country, that I might come across who is in need of a father. It is my prayer that God will use this testimony, use my life, my story, what I have to offer and pour out, and give me the right words to point them and cause them to look up. Maybe perhaps help them find their voice, the beauty and significance of their story and the pages that have been written for them.
There’s a father that’s been waiting for them and passionately pursuing them all along.
