For those of you who may not know, my beautiful mother has struggled with an almost life-long addiction. From a young age, God has always heavily put her on my heart. I remember praying for her as a three year old, as an adolescent, and of course as an adult.
While I was on my own World Race (August 2016-June 2017), God continually brought my mom to the forefront of my mind. He constantly reminded me to pray for her, and He surrounded me with a community of brothers and sisters who cried out on her behalf. (J Squad, I am forever grateful for each one of you!) He gave me dreams and visions regarding her, and He told me while I was in Nicaragua that He was going to set her free. I clung to this promise, because if I know anything – I know God is faithful.
Through a lot of prayer, I chose not to share any of this with Mom until I returned to the States. I knew God’s desire was for me to sit with her, face to face.
From the moment I hugged my mom’s neck for the first time after touching down in America, I wanted to sit and share all that God had told me. God had other plans. He did not let me share these things with her until several weeks later.
Let me Lead, Madie.
Finally, the night before I was to return to the international mission field, God provided the space to open up with Mom.
I let Him lead the entire conversation. I could feel the Holy Spirit speaking the entire time, and at the end I felt Him say:
I want you to pray blessings over the curses she has clung to for so long. Replace death with life. Take the lies and give her My Truth.
I obeyed.
Several weeks later, I asked Mom to write a blog for me, and these are her beautiful words…
Out of the corner – Into the light!
My daughter, My hero, My leader
I have to be the proudest mom in the world. Not only have lives around the world been changed, but also my life personally has been changed because of Madie’s faith and the World Race. I used to always look at her and wonder where I missed “it” and how she got “it”. What was that thing I kept missing? Why did I keep making the same mistakes over and over, time and again? Why couldn’t I be like her and have her relationship with God?
My focus was always on what was wrong with me, and truly what we focus on only gets bigger. I was in a full-blown shame spiral. It was a life-long spiral that almost took my life several times.
I realize today that I can accept who I am (sin and all) because Jesus already took care of it all. The focus cannot be on who we are, but rather who He is. It is only by grace we are saved through faith. The problem had always been that my faith was in my ability to make it or do it. I would tell myself, “Just be good enough,” which resulted in me feeling like a failure time after time.
When Madie returned from her race this summer, I was at the bottom of the bottom. I felt hopeless, as if I would never be free.
After one conversation with her in late July, everything changed for me. My daughter’s faith has truly saved me. I now realize what it means to be saved, and I feel like the new creation I always read about in Scripture.
Madie finished her World Race in June and came home for five weeks before leaving again in July to Squad Lead. On the last night she was home, she sat me down and told me that God had given her a vision of me while she was in Costa Rica. She saw me as a child in the corner, slumped over with my head hung on my knees. I was kind of shocked when she told me this. It shocked me because I remember being in the corner doing this exact same thing as a child.
It made me realize that I still felt this way. I was trapped.
On this same night, she also told me that she had been having dreams while she was oversees. She told me of a reoccurring dream she had over the course of her race of me being trapped in addiction. She said she would wake up from these dreams and she would intercede for me. She told me how she brought her World Race team into her prayer life for me and how she often cried out on my behalf. In February she was praying for me and God told her that He was going to set me FREE.
I then proceeded to open up with her, and through confession and prayer with Madie that night… I was indeed set free from that corner!!!
I felt immediate release from the chains of addiction that I had battled for years. I felt self-acceptance that I had never understood, and I was set free from shame. I finally knew what I had missed all those years.
They say that hindsight is 20/20, and I believe they are right. God used everything that He brought me through to bring me to where I am today. All the ‘Whys’ I asked Him over the years now make sense.
He gives us good gifts by His grace – not based on our abilities or our struggles – but because He loves us and He is a good father! If I can tell you anything, it’s this… Never give up. Things may not happen when you want them to, but God’s timing is perfect.
Romans 8:28 has never been more true for me…
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
If anyone believes that the World Race is only geared towards reaching other nations, I will be the first to tell you that God used this program to reach me here in America through my daughter.
