Today begins early morning in Joseph, OR.  The morning air is so cool it almost has a chill to it.  A nice break from the desert heat of home.  On our drive here yesterday I got a call from a close friend to pray for his son.  This son with his parents had earlier in the week gone to a recovery center for drug detox.  His call was to let me know that his son had walked away from the center the next morning and no one knew where he was.  Of course I prayed.  This young man is very close to me.  Within 15 minutes the father called again to say his son had just called.  He was at the home of a widow friend.  He wants to stay there and try to detox on his own.  I won’t step into this choice, but I will say that God is so good having the son call his dad.  That in and of itself is a wonderful answer to prayer.  God is so patient and good at taking each of us one step at a time.

The events of late for me have opened my eyes to a clearer reality I’d like to explain regarding my journey of present.  Not so long ago I would have been feeling fully exposed having had 8 conversations one on one with people about their abuse and my own.  I would be feeling raw and extremely vulnerable.  This isn’t true now.  Instead, these feelings have been replaced with the desire to pray diligently for these ones caught where I’ve been.  On July 31 I’m speaking to a group of youth at a detention center in Nampa, ID.  The chaplain for the center had read my book and asked for me to speak as many of these kids know my story first hand.  The anxiety I so recently knew is turning into a deep concern to do God’s Kingdom work.  No longer do I feel the paralysis of spirit to tell the raw truth of my past.  This is all God’s story of His redeeming power.  If others can benefit from this–to God be the Glory!

Not so long ago I wanted freedom from my past–I wanted this freedom to be the absence of my story and the raw, powerless feelings I had from its control of me.  God is replacing this with His definition of His freedom.  This freedom is to keep the story real and remove the raw, powerlessness.  He is replacing it with the strength to let this story be a torch of His Light and His Love.  Only God does such work as this.  My selfishness wanted the story removed.  God, instead, wanted my story to be our story which made Him the main character.   I’m so grateful for the purifying power of His presence and for never answering my prayer.  I would never want to restrict God’s purposes for me.  I just want to say–thank you Lord.