A Marriage Miracle Story

It’s been a while since I shared one of my miracle stories. This one has been on my mind lately. It’s a long one, and pretty personal. It’s messy and I’m not proud of how I handled myself through most of it, but this isn’t about me. It’s about what God has done for me, despite who I am. Since I’ve seen God move many mountains in my life, again and again, I’ll keep sharing, because I know you have mountains too. These events took place in our family between 2003 and 2010, pre Stella and Nora (our girls are another miracle story for another time). What a mixed bag of years these were for us! We bought our first home, had our first child, bought a business, struggled through four consecutive second trimester miscarriages, followed by two more at 10 weeks, lost the business, filed personal and business bankruptcy, and left our home church of 15 years. The highs were high and the lows were low.

Buying our first home was one of the highs. Houses were flying off the market at record speed in 2003. We would go to an open house and there would be three or more offers, well over asking price, before we even stepped foot in the door. I didn’t think we’d ever find something in our budget. We branched out further and further from Middleboro, trying to find a price range we could afford in another town. This led us to look in Fairhaven MA, about 35 minutes away. One night, there was a new on-line listing that came up. As we clicked through the pictures, we immediately fell in love with this sweet home and property, with it’s charming interior and spacious yard, it just felt right. “It’s probably already sold and gone,” I said, not willing to get excited. We had been in this situation many times only to find out we had been outbid or our offer rejected. There was no time to waste. Ray went and looked at the house the very next day while I was at work. He told them he wanted to put down a deposit. They didn’t want to accept it because I wasn’t there to see the home with him. “Trust me, she want’s this house,” he assured them. They accepted our offer. The whole time, our prayer while we searched for the “right” home was that God would open the doors if it was a good decision, and close the doors if it wasn’t. He closed a lot of doors. We prayed that whatever home that was, that it would be a good investment for us, something that would help us build towards a solid future for our growing family. I even prayed that when it came time to sell our home later on down the road, that we would make a profit and invest it wisely into our next venture. The door to this house seemed to fling wide open and everything fell easily into place.

Ray and I both felt like this was the perfect house for us. We were right in town but had several acres of land to our property which gave our home a spacious, country feel. It felt like we had the best of both worlds. We hadn’t been in our home long when a conversation came up with our next door neighbors about the possibility of selling some of our land out back to the elderly housing community that abutted our property. It was owned by the town and when we approached the management to ask if they were interested in buying some of our land for the future expansion of elderly housing, they said they didn’t have any money in the budget for that and we should consider donating it. I remember that news being such a bummer because it seemed like an obvious win/win deal and I had expected them to jump on it. For the town, we offered them a fair price, and we were the only adjacent property with land to sell them for an increasing elderly population that needed housing. For us, the money would have helped pay off some newly acquired debt. When the town said no, we then worked with an engineering firm to develop a cul-de-sac on the land, hoping to sell off the lots and make some money that way. We dumped about 40k into the plans only to find out that the town wouldn’t let us connect into the sewer pipes. Another dead end, a lot of wasted money.

As I previously mentioned, shortly after we bought our home, we bought a business (the newly acquired debt mentioned above). I was about 26 years old and Ray was about 29 at this time. I think Ray felt on top of the world at this age; young and full of ambition, he was willing to take risks. He has always been one to assume things will work out for the best. I always kid him that I am going to put, “It will all work out” on his gravestone. I wouldn’t say I’m a pessimist, but I usually walk through everything that can go wrong first, then make a plan based on best possible outcome with lowest possible risk, and then I make a decision. I’m calculated. Our union resembles what it would look like if Lightning McQueen married Mrs. Beaver from Narnia. Suffice it to say I wasn’t on board with buying the business, but Ray was moving full speed ahead so I tried to keep up. We bought our home at the peak of the real estate market boom, when housing prices were already grossly overinflated. In order to buy the business, we borrowed another 75k against our home with a second mortgage (inflating our mortgage even more). From another business partner we borrowed 75k, and on top of all that, borrowed another large sum to pay for the rest. All the unsecured loans made me very nervous, and as I did the bookkeeping for the business, I was forever worrying about having enough money to pay our loans on time each month. Half of me was happy that Ray had followed his dreams but the other half wished we could have gotten there on a path that was more stable, even if it had meant taking more time. On paper, things were going well and the numbers were working out, but it all relied on things going perfectly every month. Money was coming in and we were paying our loans on time, but there were other problems rising to the surface, at home and in the housing market.

After a while, I started building up frustration about the lack of communication between Ray and I. He was independently making really big decisions that affected all of us. From buying the business in the first place, to the ways we financed it, how it would run, and what my new role would be at our company. I never seemed to have a say in any of it. I was told I was to be accounts payable and receivable, payroll, licensing, compliance, and the “catch all” for all other minutia. I had no experience in our company’s field of business, like none, at all. And now, the success of our company relied on me figuring it out and getting it right. Simultaneously, our son had just turned two, and he was a high energy, rambunctious little boy. I had to bring him to work with me three days a week. After lunch, I remember I would pull two office chairs together, put Barber’s Adagio for Strings on repeat, and pray that he would take his nap so I could get some work done. It was as much of a challenge as it sounds like it would be. My stress level was through the roof. One day, Ray drove in the driveway on a new motorcycle we hadn’t discussed him purchasing. He smirked and said it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. I got angry but I was really hurt. It seemed like I was just a silent partner in our marriage and our business. I told myself it wasn’t fair for him to be so impulsive while I was counting every penny, worrying about every loan.

As the days and months went on I wasn’t so silent anymore. He started coming home later and later, his food often waiting for him, cold on the table, Brady already in bed. I felt like a single parent and I resented him for it. Then, the housing market crashed and my worst fears came front and center. I’ll sum it up by saying that business in the mortgage industry drastically changed, as well as our ability to generate income from it. All I could think was, “I told you so! If you had just listened to me, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” We kept things going as long as we could, but the writing was on the wall. We filed for bankruptcy, both business and personal since everything was wrapped up together. One of our debtors forgave our debt which was such a blessing but we were still drowning in loans. I was so disheartened when the bank came and repossessed my car. I watched from the window and hoped our neighbors weren’t home to see. We had stopped paying our mortgage to try to continue paying our business loans, so it was only a matter of time before the bank foreclosed on our home. Everything was a mess, including my heart. One day Ray came home and I had had it. We put a movie on for Brady and went in the back yard to have it out. I screamed at him all the pain I had been holding in. I wanted him to hurt like I was hurting. “You lost the business, we’re loosing our home, I lost my car, you don’t take time for your family, we barely see you, and all of this could have been avoided if you had just listened! You have failed at EVERYTHING! This isn’t a marriage, it’s you doing what you want and me following behind picking up all the pieces!” I watched as my words hit their mark. He was definitely hurting, but if I was being honest, he already had been. This had been hard on him too, but his feelings were the last thing I cared about at that time. I left him sitting in the back yard. I didn’t feel better. We would probably lose our marriage too. Just more collateral damage from this stupid mess.

That’s the thing about bitterness and anger; we can convince ourselves how justified we are to feel it, release it, but in the end it builds nothing, fixes nothing. It only destroys what’s already hurting, making it harder to salvage what’s left. I’ve come to believe that for every negative, destructive emotion, there is a similar yet constructive emotion. You have to choose which to feed your brain. For instance, I can choose fear, or I can choose hope (both are based in anticipating the unknown). I can choose to assume the worst in someone, or I can choose to assume the best in someone (both are assumptions based on guessing the internal motives of another). I’m not always good at finding that alternative constructive emotion, especially when hard things haven’t been properly dealt with and I don’t feel heard or validated. It’s complicated, that I know. I also know that somewhere along the line I stopped controlling my thoughts, I stopped filtering my feelings. My perceived reality became my truth. My feelings, my thoughts, my assumptions, my fears, led me around like a dog on a leash. We knew some things needed to change. We talked. Even though Ray’s intentions hadn’t been malicious, he knew he hadn’t gone about things the right way. He acknowledged that he needed to work on including me in conversations and decisions, and get council and wisdom from others before taking a big leap. He would focus on spending more time at home. I needed to stop pointing fingers, release my fears to God and accept where we were while maintaining hope that we could keep moving forward, together. We were both praying for God’s help and direction. I’m not sure what I expected God to do since I felt like our own decisions had gotten us to where we were, and honestly, that we deserved whatever difficulty came our way. I guess I was hoping for mercy and grace. I know for sure I didn’t expect what happened next.

We hobbled along for the next few weeks, trying to make housing plans when we really couldn’t afford much of anything. I told Ray I could make anything a home, even if it wasn’t our own house. We told ourselves it would be a tough season but it wouldn’t last forever. Ray called me from the office and told me it was time to officially call the bank to let go of the house. He was going to call them the next day. We had lived in our sweet home for 7 years. We had fixed up each and every room, one at a time, making it our own. I loved our home. We hung up the phone and I cried. The next day the phone rang and it was Ray at the office. “I called the bank and they said we have to be out in a week so they can get the house on the market. You have to start packing right away but I won’t be able to help since I’m working every day. Oh, and we don’t have any money for rent so we will have to live in boxes in the alley beside my office until I can find a place for us to go. How are you at cooking food over a burning metal barrel?” This is what I was expecting him to say. Instead, I heard genuine astonishment in his voice. “You’re never going to believe this.” He said he had just received a call from the town. They had put in for a grant with the state of Massachusetts and it had been granted to them. They were willing to purchase our land if we were still willing to sell. It had been about six and a half years since we had presented our offer to the town, about 2,370 days. Their call came the very day (probably the very hour) we’d been planning to call the bank to begin foreclosure. Coincidence? I think not.

The next few months were a much welcome reprieve. The fog was lifting and we could finally see a light at the end of the tunnel and it wasn’t another train coming at us. That day on the phone with Ray, I had asked, “How much do they want to buy the land for? Holy Cow! That’s enough to pay off the second mortgage, and pay up on our missed mortgage payments. We might even have a little left over to get back on our feet.” Turns out it was exactly enough. Also turns out that money problems make you fight more and positive cash flow fosters pleasantness. It didn’t fix every problem but we rode the positivity train as far as it would take us. It took a few months to close with the town and in the meantime, we made some plans. Even though we loved our home, it was a long driving distance from everything else in our lives. Most everything we did took place in or near Middleboro. Once the land was sold and we were right on our mortgage, we were finally able to sell and move. It was a good move for us. Only 8 minutes from Ray’s office, we would see him much more often now. Closer to family, friends, church, Brady’s school, our schedules of life began to flow a bit easier. We had turned a page.

Of course, I have to share what I learned from this. Soren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards; But it must be lived forwards.” Here are a few things I came to understand when looking back.#1 God doesn’t just help those who help themselves. God helps those who CAN’T help themselves. He helps us in spite of ourselves. Because he loves us. It’s not based on performance. It’s just who he is.

#2 As I mentioned, many bad things happened to us during this time. Some were the consequences of our own choices and actions, but others, like our miscarriages, weren’t. Even though I didn’t understand it, and I fought it out with God, I surrendered to the place that I would choose to have faith that God was good, that he loves us, and that I could trust him, even through pain that didn’t make sense to me. God’s ways are not our ways, and his plans are not our plans, but I am his child and my life is in his hands. Bad things, good things, both happen to those who deserve it and to those who don’t. The Bible says, “It rains on the just and the unjust.” The difference is, with God, I have hope that he is still working things for the good while I put my trust in him. Not so he can give me my way, but so he can have his.

#3 When I first heard that the town was going to buy our land, I went to bed that night thinking how grateful I was that God had rescued me. That he had come through for me once again and that somehow it was because I was innocent of the guilt in our financial mess. I was stunned when he pushed the thought into my head that it wasn’t just for me. He was Ray’s father too. This miracle was just as much for Ray as it was for me. God never stopped rooting for Ray. He wanted to see him succeed. Things I wanted to fix in Ray, God was honing. Where I saw Ray’s actions and how they played out in our lives, God always saw his heart. He sees the greatness in each of us because he put it there. Each step of the way, even when we go off-roading, if we are willing to call out to God for help, he promises to come find us where we are, how we are, and walk with us. I have found this to be true. Every. Single. Time.

#4 God disciplines those he loves. As much as we benefited from God’s blessings, we also experienced his discipline. And it was a good thing because it brought about growth and positive changes in us both. We are both much more fiscally responsible people. We are cautious and conservative about any debt we take on. We traded in the motorcycle for a Quad that we all enjoyed. Most nights, we are all at the table for dinner, my favorite part of the day. Ray always seeks out wise council from experienced people before making any big decisions. He gives really good advice too; experience will do that for you, if you’re willing to learn from it. One thing I have always admired about my husband is his willing heart to be molded by God. If there is a better version of himself out there, he is open to becoming it. I found a councilor to help me stop blaming and pointing fingers about what had happened, and appreciate the second chance we were given. I had to come to terms that it wasn’t fair to put all the blame on Ray. He never could have known what was about to happen in the housing market. I worked on giving my fears to God before I let them crush me. I encouraged Ray to follow his dreams and supported him in a few different ventures he has explored on the side. I appreciate his business mind, hard work, and dedication to excellence.

#5 In the spirit of honesty, which I am committed to when I write these life stories, I will say that our marriage is not perfect. We have never had an easy go of it, we are very different people, but we simultaneously have a fierce love for each other. When love isn’t enough, our faith becomes our common ground and we lean in hard on Jesus to help us through. It takes a lot of surrendering our own will to God and he has consequently been the glue that holds our family together. We are coming up on 19 years married, 29 years together. This, in itself, is a miracle, and one I am so very grateful for.

Psalm 91:14-15 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.”

Philippians 4:13″I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

When Our Hearts Cry “Barabbas”

This Easter I spent some time reflecting on the Bible’s description of all that took place in Jerusalem; from the time of Palm Sunday when Jesus rode into the city on a donkey, until the time of the crucifixion on Good Friday, the end of the same week. I was mostly interested in the people of the crowd. I know what was happening to Jesus that week, but I wanted to know what was happening to them, or more specifically, in them. Because somewhere deep inside, I know I am like them.

I can only imagine that on that Palm Sunday, as Jesus rode into town on the back of a borrowed donkey, that every good Jew in the crowd was thinking about the verse from Zechariah 9:9 prophesying that their Jewish King, their messiah, would ride into town this exact way. They had heard of the miracles he was performing. I can completely imagine how the energy, excitement, and anticipation was thick in the air. They shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel!” Yes! They had been waiting for their Messiah for so very long, and he finally was here. He was going to save them, deliver them from their suffering, rescue them from the Roman Empire and establish His Kingdom. They were no longer going to be ruled and oppressed by others. They were about to enter into their destiny, and it was filled with victory, celebration and freedom! If only their ancestors could see them now. How utterly blessed they were to be the generation that would see this all happen. And then it didn’t.

By the time Friday rolled around, those very same people had turned into the crowd screaming, “Free Barabbas!”, who was a despicable criminal and convicted murderer, and “Crucify Jesus!”, the King they had just laid their cloaks and palms down for just days before. What made them turn? How could they go from praise and joy to such anger and hatred in just days? These questions made me turn within, because we can often see ourselves in the people of the Bible, and learn about ourselves from their experiences. I remembered a time in my life when I felt my heart turning on God, the God I had praised my whole life.

My husband and I had bought a mortgage business in our mid to late 20’s and six months later the housing market crashed. To make a loooong story short, we ended up having to file personal and business bankruptcy, and so before we were even 30 years old we had dug ourselves into a financial hole so deep I couldn’t see the way out. On top of all this, my health was failing with lung issues that just wouldn’t let up; our usually clean house suddenly had four different pest infestations of bats from the attic coming into the house, fleas all over the downstairs floors, saw tooth grain beetles in my pantry affecting all our boxed food, and a spider nest that hatched in my clothes closet with so many baby spiders hanging from webs everywhere that I literally shut the door and didn’t go in for a year!; my marriage was failing as my husband worked through some character issues; I had just had my fourth second-trimester miscarriage in a row; and our home church was splitting. It seemed like we were under attack and there was no area of our life off limits. I felt like the very foundation I stood on was giving way under my feet. I thought I had built my house on a rock, but right then, it all felt like sand.

And then I felt it. The deep despair you experience when you expect your savior to show up and rescue you and he doesn’t. I feet let down, left alone, and fully abandoned. I couldn’t see God, I couldn’t feel God, and I couldn’t hear God, and so I began to doubt God. I doubted his goodness, I questioned his love for me, and I challenged my trust in him. I always knew he existed, he had proven that to me beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I no longer knew what was true about him. If I prayed, I knew he could do it, but I didn’t know if he would do it, and that made me feel hopeless, so I stopped praying. I relinquished my spiritual armor and stood defenseless. For a while it seemed like God was ok with life destroying me, and that was the worst part, feeling like God just didn’t care and I had been duped. My heart was turning on him and I was beginning to shout Barabbas! which really just means we are willing to open ourselves up to whatever option there is, as long as it’s not him. But then Sunday always comes.

As that period of trial played out in my life, I began to see God differently. Just like he appeared to his followers after his resurrection to clarify to them who he was and what had just happened, he began to open my eyes. It was as if my old conception of God was dying away and a clearer, truer understanding was taking form. I realized he wasn’t my cosmic butler, my 911 rescuer, my get out of jail free card, or my personal assistant. And most importantly, he had never been the one to tell me he was any of that. The truth of him is not dependent on my perception of him. He does things on his terms because he is Lord. And he does rescue, and he is faithful, he does heal, restore, provide, and everything else the Bible says he is. But it’s when he is ready, because only he knows what we need, the purpose of why it’s happening, and when we are ready for each step of our journey. My faith grew roots, and at times it was painful, but there are worse things in life than growing pains. Things like living without hope, without purpose, and without my savior.

I have to say, that during that season of storms in our life, my worst fears were never realized. We lost some things, but we never went without a meal, a bed to sleep on, a roof over our heads, or clothes on our back. Everything we lost was restored, including hope. We moved on from our failed business, and through continued hard work, my husband became successful working for another mortgage company. The pests all went away and even left us with a few funny stories (ask me to tell my bat in the hair story if you ever see me). A good pulmonologist helped me treat the worst symptoms of my lung issues, finally bringing relief to my persistent cough. I suffered two more miscarriages before having two beautiful daughters, baffling the doctors and the specialists who had tried to help me. My husband surrendered his struggles to the Lord and allowed God to change his heart and mind which led to a healing and restoration in our marriage that could only be called a miracle. And the day (hear me, the same day!) we planned to call the bank to foreclose on our house, our town approached us about buying a piece of our property to expand the elderly housing that abutted our land, being just the amount we needed to get out of debt and start afresh. If that’s not restoration, faithfulness, provision, healing, goodness, blessing and love, then I don’t know what is.

If your heart has ever cried “Barabbas!” over “Jesus!” because of hurt, disappointment, despair, exhaustion, frustration, and crushed hopes, just remember what Jesus was doing from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. He was saving our eternal souls, not just our temporary circumstances. He was restoring us to himself for his eternal Kingdom; he was rescuing us from sin and death, out of the clutches of Satan; he was providing us a path that lead straight to him, because we were all lost; and he was healing our hearts, because sin had infected us all. If he can handle all that, certainly he has a plan to help you in your circumstances! Try not to limit God based on how he is performing in your current circumstance, because he is so much bigger than that, and he will show up. Your weak moments don’t mean that God is weak, it just means that your roots of faith need deepening so you will be like a tree planted by the water, and you too, by the grace of God, shall not be moved.

Isaiah 26:3 You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.

Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Oh, The Places You Will Go

It was the fall of 1997 and I was coming home from a summer missions trip to Africa, excited to leave for college. I had applied to only one college, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa Oklahoma. “Why only one?” you ask. Because filling out college applications is really hard. I didn’t know what I was doing and getting all the forms, fees, financial information, and required documents together for even one college felt like an impossible task to figure out, alone, at 17 years old. But I was also pretty confident this was the school for me. It was where I belonged. And I had a very good reason to believe this, a miracle in fact.

I was a great student all through school. I loved learning, especially Science and English, and with the exception of a class here and there, my report cards showed the effort I put into school. After all, a college education was going to be my ticket out of poverty. I was going places, and Tulsa Oklahoma was just going to be my first stop.

During my junior year of high school, my youth group at church had gone to an Acquire the Fire Conference in Massachusetts (led by Ron Luce, an ORU alumni) and ORU had a booth there handing out information cards. I filled mine out on the spot and turned it in. Not long after that I got my admissions packet in the mail and began the tedious process of gathering the required documents. Financial information was especially stressful because I had no idea how I was going to pay for college and the concept of financial aid was all new to me. I felt like I was reading another language, and Google and smart phones weren’t around to help me figure it out. I just kept praying that God would help me find a way. If he didn’t, I wasn’t going.

I had read in the ORU packet that in order to get a Freshman Academic Scholarship I would have to score a 1050 on my SAT. I absolutely needed this scholarship for all this to work. I had received a $500 scholarship from a local bank but that was it. I was going to have to sign up for loans for the rest of it so I knew a lot was riding on my SAT score, and now is probably a good a time as any to mention that I have never been a good timed test taker. I was as nervous as a turkey in November on the day of the test. After it was done, I had no idea how I had performed, no way to gauge weather it had been enough. Well, it wasn’t. I don’t remember the exact score, something like a 1040, but my heart sank when I realized I had missed it by such a close margin. I was so disappointed, especially when it occurred to me that all my friends would be leaving to go off and start their own journeys at college, and I was to remain behind. I had felt so confident that ORU was where God had led me. How had I gotten so much wrong? I felt like a fool for even daring to dream.

I can’t remember exactly how long after the test scores came back that I received the letter in the mail. I just remember opening the envelope and reading that for some reason, some glorious reason, the SAT people were awarding an extra 50 points on my overall SAT score. Maybe they had discovered an error on the test, maybe they were grading on a scale, I don’t know the exact reason, but I do know my test score changed and now I had the score I needed for the scholarship. I truly felt like God had reached right down and rescued me, putting me right back on the path I belonged, and I was so very grateful. When I couldn’t find a way, God found a way, because he does that. He helps those who help themselves, but he also helps those who can’t help themselves.

I loved my time away at ORU and I have never forgotten the Lord’s provision for my life at that time. I loved my classes, my new friends, being away from home and growing more into myself, and all the new experiences that can come from going away to a great college. But most of all I just reveled in the feeling that I was right where I was supposed to be.

Proverbs 16:9

In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.

When Luck Had Nothing To Do With It

Some lucky winner in South Carolina just won the single winning Powerball lottery ticket valued at 1.537 billion dollars. I almost never play the lottery because I believe, when played on a regular basis, it’s a waste of money seeing that statistically I have a better chance of being killed by a vending machine than winning one of the major payouts. But when the lottery gets “1.6 billion dollars big”, I can’t resist purchasing a $2 ticket for a chance to dream about what it would be like to win. I spend a few nights not knowing if my ticket is the winner, and in the meantime I have some fun imagining what I would do in the fat chance that it was. I dream about having a house on the ocean, limitless learning and educational options, travel, charity, the ability to relieve financial burdens of family and friends, and just the endless opportunities and possibilities that that kind of money would bring. But alas, I was not the big ticket winner this time. However, all of the recent hype about the lottery did have me thinking about a time in my life when I scratched and won, not everything I wanted, but just exactly what I needed at the time.

I was about 15 or 16 years old and a sophomore in high school. My family’s financial situation was pretty much the same as it had always been; not much money to go around for the things we needed, and definitely not enough to go towards anything extra, so I found myself praying as I walked home from school on this blustery early December day. I was frustrated and feeling burdened by the all too familiar circumstance of wanting to participate in activities, but not having the money to do so. I was tired of feeling like a charity case, tired of trying to scrounge up money for things, tired of being poor really. So I poured all of this out of my heart to God as I walked down the sidewalk that lead to our second story apartment situated halfway down the street.

The previous day at church I had read in the announcements that the deposit to attend snowcamp with the youthgroup would be $45 and was due the next week if we wanted to attend the camp in January. I was used to the church pitching in for me, but I hoped to at least have the deposit to contribute. Also due was the $15 per person ticket price to attend the church’s annual Christmas Banquet. It might as well have been $150 because I couldn’t come up with any of it. I was still trying to figure out what I could do about it all as I climbed the front steps of the house to grab the mail before I headed upstairs.

The family who lived downstairs was away visiting with relatives on the Cape and had asked me to collect their mail for them as well, so I grabbed the contents of both boxes and retreated from the cold to our apartment. I noticed we had gotten the blue ValPac envelope in our mail which contained coupons for community stores and businesses. This only mattered because sometimes there were free vouchers for a $1 lottery ticket inside. While standing over the heating vent to bring feeling back to my face and hands, I called my neighbor downstairs on her cell phone to say hi and tell her about the various pieces of mail they had received. She said I could throw away their ValPac and a few other pieces of mail. Before I ditched it, I opened it up and ruffled through the coupons, happy to discover that the lottery voucher had been included that month. Now I had two!

I was technically too young to play the lottery, but I had found that the convenience store down the street had let me get a ticket with the vouchers before, so I figured I would go to the same place and hope for the best. As I walked, I prayed and asked God to help, promising him that if I won anything, anything at all, I would use it towards the deposits I needed. After “purchasing” my two free tickets I quickly walked home, with a nervous excitement about the possibility that something big could happen with these tickets in my pocket. I sat at the dining room table feeling a little like Charlie Bucket with his Wonka Bars. Penny in hand, I scratched the first card and then the second. Brushing the gray dust from the surface or the cards, I sat staring in awe at the tickets on the table in front of me, first checking then double-checking all the numbers. It took a moment to sink in. I had consecutively won first $45, then $15 on the two tickets that lay before me. Chills ran up and down my arms as I sat there in astonishment. I still get the chills each time I tell this story. In that moment I had a lot more than just my deposits. I had an assurance that I was seen and heard, and that my life and worries mattered to the creator of the universe. And that felt so very good.

There are several moments in my life where I have felt complete Peace, Love, Joy, and Hope all at the same time, and this was one of them. The minutes following felt electric, because I was still absorbing the realization of the miracle that had just happened to me, for me. It wasn’t the first time or the last time I would experience a miraculous answer to prayer like this. And I look forward to sharing those stories, soon to come.

Philippians 4:19- “But my God shall supply all my needs according to His riches in Glory by Christ Jesus.”

Food, Glorious Food

There is a line in one of the opening scenes from The Glass Castle where Jeanette is wrapping up a dinner with important clients. The waiter asks if she wants her food to go and she says, ” Yes, and I’ll have hers wrapped up as well,” eyeing her clients half eaten plate. Her fiancé quickly says, “She’s just kidding!”, to which Jeanette replies, “No I’m not, I never joke about food.”

One of the strongest impressions from my childhood is the constant presence of hunger. The dynamic of poverty is complicated. It is a circumstance that is part systematic and part psychosomatic, and probably other parts I don’t know about too. Both of these need to change for that circumstance to truly improve, but when you are just a kid, you have control of neither. It’s not that we never had food in our house, it just wasn’t consistent, and my body wanted to consistently eat. When we were in elementary school, we could have those teeny tiny bowls of cereal at school in the morning with milk. That would only hold us over until about 9:30 am but it was better than nothing. I remember my cafeteria in Mineola had posters of athletes up on the wall and Mary Lou Retton would peer down at me reminding me to eat my Wheaties. I never much cared for that cereal and I never became an athlete either, but I ate whatever was put in front of me, if just to end the growling in my stomach.

We also had “free lunch” coupons available to us at school. When the new little yellow booklets came out, Ms. Hogan would help me sign my name to each one of those precious golden tickets that ensured my next meal. At home it was a sporadic rotating menu of Denty Moore beef stew, Hormel Chicken pot pies, hot dogs, and ramen noodle soup. In third grade our pediatrician had my mother leave the room. “Honey, does your mother feed you at home?” he asked, looking over at the nurse as they silently navigated this delicate territory together. “Yes, sometimes, when we have food she does,” I answered as honestly as I knew how. Later, I heard him telling my mother that my sister and I were grossly underweight. He, or somebody, enrolled us in a government program shortly thereafter where a huge block of cheese, a giant tub of peanut butter, and containers of powdered milk, would get delivered to our house. We were like little mice, the way we ate off chunk after chunk of that block of cheese, never quite able to finish the whole block before the mold got to it.

It was an absolute gift when somebody from our church or the Salvation Army would invite us over for a holiday meal, or bring us a bag of groceries. I would fill up on turkey and mashed potatoes and green olives, and just the sensation of having a full belly of nutritious food felt so good. I never want my kids to know the kind of hunger I experienced as a child and into my teen years, because it was more than just the pains of an empty stomach; it was like a knowing that the very ground I stood on was shaky and unstable and could fall away at any moment. And now, part of that poverty mentality stays with me, and the compulsion to make extra food, or bring every last leftover home from a restaurant, or buy double or triple of everything, just in case, even when having money for food hasn’t been a problem for years, is still so strong inside of me it drives my behavior like an auto pilot that kicks on when one of my poverty buttons are triggered.

So these two thoughts are where I will end. First, through whatever institution, whether church, government, or good old fashioned friendship, I’m thankful for the food we were given as children. I love love food to this day, and have had to try to appreciate quality and not quantity during my mealtimes, or this girl could have some pretty serious health issues. Food is never far from my mind, even this many years later, I don’t miss a meal, and I don’t waste food. But as a child, food was a basic necessity for a successful day of learning, a sense of wellbeing and nourishment for propper growth and development, and it was a link to the humanity of others who took responsibility for children who were not their own. So keep your eyes open for children or families in need, especially as we enter this holiday season, because it’s a kindness and a relief that is so needed and not quickly forgotten.

Lastly, weather it’s poverty, abuse, unhealthy expectations or any other system you were caught up in during your childhood, it’s always a good idea to ask yourself why you are still motivated to continue with certain patterns of behaviors or mindsets that maybe should have been improved or relinquished long ago. Do you over- spend on trivial things now because you didn’t have enough growing up; Do you run your relationships with stern command, always having the last word, because you didn’t have a valued voice when you were little; Maybe you make decisions out of fear because you weren’t protected; Or possibly you are a work-a-holic because you are determined to find the worth, validation, and opportunity you ached for as a kid and didn’t receive. Spending a little time in self reflection can do the body and mind so good, and when we understand the “why” of our behavior, it’s easier to change the “how” of our behavior.

I thank God for his provision in my childhood. I am thankful for all the people who gave or donated, cooked or baked, invited or delivered. I am thankful for the lessons hunger taught me and the awareness it awoke in me. And I am thankful for the continued growth in my spirit as I reflect on the stories of where I’ve been to where I’ve come.

Galatians 6:10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Kindness is a New Pair of Shoes

I attended Minneola elementary school from K-2nd grade before we moved away from Florida to Texas. The school sat on a few sprawling acres slightly to the south of the Citrus tower and north of Lost Lake. I loved how, at recess after lunch, I could climb the slight slope on the northwest corner of the playground and sit under a big tree and hear the church bells chiming their beautiful songs off in the distance. I also remember my teachers, Ms. Narscico, Ms. Polly, and Ms. Winter like it was yesterday. Ms. Narscico was my sweet kindergarten teacher with a fun, engaging classroom where I learned my nursery rhymes, counting to 100, the 5 little pumpkins song, and where we helped the Farmer in the Del take his wife, cheese and farm animals somewhere in the Dairy-O. In first grade, Ms. Polly had us doing crafts, learning to read, and doing science experiments where I brought in a last minute can of moldy cat food that elicited lots of “Ewwws”! In second grade, Ms. Winter focused on math and science. She was nice enough most of the time but if you crossed her she could be as mean as a hornet. I remember one time, when she mistook me for the talking little girl behind me, she came over and told me to shut my mouth. When I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t me talking she grabbed my hair by the top of my head and whipped my head around so hard I peed my pants on the spot. She called me up later to the front of the class and apologized to me, admonishing me not to tell my mother what had happened when I got home since she had so graciously apologized to me after I had been so naughty. Unfortunately, I never said a word.

I loved this school and recall most of my experiences here as very positive ones. Even the school principal, Mr. Cory, stands out in my mind as someone who showed exceptional kindness to his students. I remember a school fieldtrip to SeaWorld where each student had to give around $15 to go, but my family couldn’t come up with the money so my sister and I weren’t scheduled to go. He called me into his office and said that since I had a good report from my teacher, he was going to pay for me to go, but not to tell anyone. I didn’t realize it then but teachers do stuff like this all the time. Even though they are paid far to little, so many are willing to take from their own pockets to buy their students what they need. Thank God for teachers like this, I hope they all get a special blessing for the many unseen things they do.

I learned this first hand one day when I was 6 or 7 years old, and having a bit of trouble with my shoes. A boy in my class had pointed out the floppy holes in the tops of my shoes. I looked down and suddenly became overwhelmingly embarrassed. I decided right then and there that my shoes belonged in the trash. Isn’t it strange how something can seem fine and normal to us until someone else points it out as wrong, and then it’s like a blinking beacon of shame like Rudolph’s nose. Waiting until my class walked back to the classroom from recess, I found the nearest trash barrel and threw my shoes right in. Only now I had the dilemma of getting through the rest of the day barefoot, but I figured I could try to tuck my feet under my desk and maybe no one would notice. I remember walking away from that trash and praying in my heart that God would help me get another pair of shoes. I just didn’t know he’d work so fast.

I believe that God often uses the right people at the right time to answer prayers, and I believe that is what happened this day. As I passed the main office on the way back to class, I glanced inside because the door was wide open. This was odd because I was used to seeing this door shut, probably for air conditioning reasons. I made quick eye contact with the school secretary who promptly called out my name and said hello. I stopped long enough to wave back when she noticed my bare feet. “Joy, where are your shoes?” she asked. “I threw ’em away,” I answered, trying to sound as casual as I could about it. “Why on earth would you do that?” she countered, with a tone of confusion and disbelief. “Because they were old,” I said, a growing awareness that maybe I was in trouble. “Show me where you threw them away,” she said as she rose from her desk and came to meet me in the hall. “You can’t go barefoot in school and you can’t throw away your shoes just because they’re old,” she said in a kind but firm voice. I led her to the trash and she peered in. She paused. “You’re right, those do belong in the trash,” she stalled, taking a moment to consider her options. “Do you want me to call your mom to bring you another pair of shoes?” she asked. “I don’t have another pair and we don’t have the money to buy any,” I said, stating the facts as I knew them. “Well… (another pause) …I’m not supposed to do this but why don’t you come with me. I’ll bring you to KMART for some new shoes, but you can’t tell anybody they’re from me, ok?” It sounded like an excellent plan to me. I hadn’t expected my prayer to be answered so soon but I was tickled pink to be getting a new pair of shoes within the hour. I distinctly remember the excitement I felt standing in the shoe aisle as I chose a white pair of sneakers with rainbow sparkle shoelaces. They were the prettiest sneakers I had ever seen. On the way back to school I sat in the back of her car and tried to think of what I should say. “Thank you. Umm, my mom will pay you back when she can. And I really like my new shoes,” I said. “You’re welcome, and you don’t have to pay me back. Tell your mom not to worry about it honey,” she smiled.

I walked back to my class feeling 10 feet tall. I just knew my shoes looked great and I felt like a million bucks wearing them. A few friends noticed and asked me where I got my pretty shoes. “I can’t say, it’s a secret,” I whispered. This only stirred up more interest and intrigue than I had intended but I held my ground. Later when I got home, my mom stressed a little about my shoes. “Aw maaaan. Where am I going to get the money to pay her for those shoes,” she fussed. “She said you don’t have to pay her back,” I assured. “I know she said that, but I’m still going to have to give her something,” she answered.

They spoke the next morning and said whatever grown-ups say in those situations, thank-you’s and reassurances and quick hugs, and then life went on as normal. Well, almost normal. I had learned a few lesson that would stay with me my whole life. I learned that God was watching over me and making sure others were too, at just the right time. I learned that the unexpected, undeserved kindness of others is important for those in need, if only to be reminded that they matter and are seen, which was a gift more valuable than any pair of sneakers I could receive. And I learned that when you experience that kind of kindness, you in turn can do the same for others when you are able.

1 John 3:17 But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother/sister in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?

The Roots of Miracles

Welcome! I believe there are so many amazing moments that happen in a lifetime that it would be difficult to write them all down, but these stories are what I consider “the telling parts” of my life, because they are too good not to tell. I have told them to friends and even some strangers over the years and I’ve been told countless times that I need to write them down, so here I am, finally taking their advice. The truth is, I’ve wanted to write them down all along, I just didn’t know where to start. They are precious stories to me, not just because they are my personal experiences, but because they are a powerful testimony of God’s love and power, and I want others to be encouraged and strengthened by them. I’m almost 40 years into this journey and so much has happened, so deciding how to begin, how to lay a foundation for the context of my experiences, seemed daunting. That being said, I’ve decided that since this is a blog and not a chronicle, I will give a brief history of my early years and then get into some really great stories. So, this is the beginning, not so much of my life story but of my faith story, which is really where everything else that matters came from anyway.

What’s in a Name

I’ll begin when I was about 2 or 3 years old. Due to deteriorating circumstances in my parents marriage and finances, my family (consisting of my mom and dad, two older sisters and I) had just moved to a run down trailer in upstate New York from our modest, single family home in a sweet little neighborhood of central Florida. The trailer had no heat or hot water and was never meant to be a long term residence, but it put a roof over our head in the meantime. There, as my family unraveled over the spring and summer of 1982, my long term memory was taking note of the world around me. Some of my first memories are of living in this trailer, for the six or so months that it lasted, probably because it was such an extreme change from where we lived before. I was only a little girl, but I have vivid memories of a bear on the steps of this trailer as we pulled into our driveway late one night, and of me secretly eating watered down dirt, (caused by what I now know was Pica) that I imagined to be chocolate pudding, in the woods around the property. I would contract a parasite called Giardia from doing this and was admitted to the hospital for a week to treat it. I remember cold water tubs that my mom tried to make temperate with hot water from the stove. I can still see in my mind where I sat and played with a doll on the floor, trying to figure out the buttons, zippers, and laces on it’s clothes, as my father snuck to the screen door, bribing me with the package of M&M’s in his hand, to unlock it and let him back in after one of his random disappearances that could last for days at a time.

It is also here that I first remember my family sometimes calling me “naked J-bird”. I heard it so often, I thought it was one of my actual names, and so I answered to it regularly. I believe it was a phrase in a song at the time, but since it suited my streaking tendencies and fit with my first name initial, it stuck. Whatever the reason for the nickname back then, I’m using it now for my blog because it describes me in a way that is accurate for these stories. These are the naked stories of this J-bird, as transparent and honest as I can remember them; some from the early years of my life and some more recent, but all are my truth as I remember it.

The Seeds of Faith

I first remember hearing the stories of the Bible when I was a young girl in Sunday school in the town of Clermont Florida, where I was born and spent most of my early childhood, back when it was a small, sleepy suburb of Orlando. There were miles of orange groves, the Citrus Tower, and Lake Minneola where we cooled our tan little bodies during what seemed like a perpetual summer. I had the same 3 or 4 Sunday school teachers that rotated from week to week and our church family was so close that we called people aunt so-and-so and uncle-so-and-so even when we weren’t related. I remember the disappointment I felt when I learned, at eight years old, that none of these people were actually my relatives. I was so sad because I desperately wanted to be forever connected to them, and had preferred believing that I was. They were really good people, the best kind actually, the kind that practiced what they preached and paid attention to each others needs as best they could even when it put them out. My early church family taught me that nothing was beyond the reach and power of God through prayer and bible lessons and their faith and love put into practice. I believed with all my heart that God was real, that he knew me, and that this little blue eyed, blonde haired girl, living down a long dirt road in the middle of the orange groves mattered greatly to Him.

The Roots of Miracles

The roots of miracles began to grow when I was about 4 or 5 years old. I accepted Jesus into my life one late, sweltering June night at a Wednesday children’s church service at the red brick Christian Missionary Alliance Church my family attended. That night, when I took my first step towards God, I felt an immediate Joy come alive inside of me, like something that had been sleeping came suddenly awake, and I still see that as a genuine experience because as a child and I had no expectations of how that prayer would make me feel. After that, I really began to pay attention in Sunday school because I was curious about this new relationship with God. Some of my early thoughts about faith were humorously optimistic, like if I just prayed to God for the Devil long and hard enough, I could short circuit the whole broken, evil system that had begun ages ago and change things back to good. I was going to help save Satan’s soul through my fervent prayers. My Sunday school teacher encouraged me not to waste too much of my time focusing on this. But there were other truths and beliefs taking root deep in my heart and mind based on the real experiences I was having in my life through prayer; truths like God was good, God cared about me; and God was present.

By the time I was 4, I was being raised by a single mother with my two older sisters. We had left my father behind in New York and we were back in Florida living well below the poverty line. By “well below” I mean our $30 a month rented apartment down Cherry Lake Rd. was roach infested, with cement floors throughout. We had more bouts of head lice than bouts of non-head lice, such that when they checked our heads at school, I just wanted to skip the whole stomach churning process of being checked and weeded out in front of my classmates, and just assume the sitting position against the cold, cement wall with the other kid’s with chronic bugs and wait for our rides to come get us. When we couldn’t afford the lice medicine, my mother had us lay down on the truck bed and hang our heads over the tailgate while she soaked our hair with kerosene. It was old school, but effective. It killed the lice and a few brain cells I’m sure.

I remember times when I was between 5 to 7 years old, my stomach growling so long and loud, that the bowl of salty, crunchy dog food sitting on the kitchen floor became irresistible. I would share it with the dog and the roaches that had taken up permanent residence at the bottom of the dish. Another time I remember, during a cartoon commercial break, I opened the refrigerator for a quick snack, and found it starkly empty except for a container of mustard, so I ate spoonful’s of it until the growling stopped and I could get back to He-Man. I can still hear my mother’s voice as she said to us, “Girls, I can’t provide everything you need so you are just going to have to pray to God for it. The Bible says that God will be a father to the fatherless, and since I don’t have anyone helping me raise you, God will be your father.” And I believed her.

I know there is a verse in the Bible about having faith like a child, and that’s really how simple it was back then. There were so many big needs in our life that I didn’t pray for ponies or dolls, just mostly the essentials like food, safety, shoes, and help for the times when we were so deep down stuck in a jam, with no one else to ask for help, that prayer was our only hope. I remember some of my first prayers being for our truck and/or our lawn mower, both of which were always breaking down. I’d watch my mother walk the fine line of trying to restart the engines without flooding them entirely, and wiping the sweat from her brow as she tried to figure out what to clunk or fill to get the engine to start up long enough to at least get us home or cut a path on the lawn back to the garage. I would come out and stand next to her and we would both put our hands on the machines and pray to God to please just get them to start, and very often they did. But I was also beginning to form questions about the times they didn’t. Honestly, that’s still the greatest tension I struggle with in my faith today, gauging spiritual expectations of weather God will or won’t, knowing that he can but sometimes doesn’t, and how we are to respond to this seeming inconsistency.

So this is where my faith took root, down a long and dusty dirt road in central Florida, and if I only knew then where it would take me, not just in the world, but in my heart and mind, I would have had much more hope and determination for the future God had planned for me. I hope you enjoy the stories I will share of miracles, trials, joys, and lessons that sprang up for a little girl trying to make sense of her life in the dirt and clay on Cherry Lake Road in Florida; on through to the seven years we lived in the inner city of Fall River Massachusetts, where we navigated poverty, violence, gangs, and coming of age; the seven years in Middleboro, Mass, during my teen years when I was finding my way through high school and my first (and last) real relationship; the seven years in Fairhaven Mass, where my husband and I bought our first home and fought to own a business, start a family, save our marriage, and keep our faith; and finally back to Middleboro, where we expanded our family, focused on personal growth and the health of our marriage, and were finally able to hold our heads above water and take a breath. All of these stories are reflections of God’s grace and mercy, all are true, and they are finally being written down.