“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions,
in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:10)

In the early 90s, I lost my Dad to lung cancer, my best friend to complications from a stroke, a
brilliant mentor to old age, my sweet grandmother to suicide and my first husband who was the
father of my children to death by his own hand. I suffered a miscarriage, too. In the months that
followed, I lost the fight to keep my second marriage together; my lake home narrowly escaped
foreclosure. I began a battle with alcohol that would last seven long and torturous years. My deep
and profound grief, disguised as anger, alienated everyone around me. I ran most of my
remaining friends out of my life. In retrospect, it was easier to run them out than have them die
on me, too.

I was furious at God. I turned to tarot cards, sat through sessions with fortune-tellers and sought
spirit mediums to contact dead loved ones. An Apache shaman healed the fingers on my left
hand that were almost sliced off with a sharp knife. He assured me everything he did was
through the power of “the Great One.” My own sisters pointed their fingers at me and wagged
their tongues behind my back. My former husband’s family shunned me for divorcing their son,
blaming me for his death; that loss settled deeply into my thirty-some-year-old bones.

It was not until the enemy had utterly destroyed my life, with his seductively sneaky and gnarly
influences that I chose to partake of, that I literally begged God for help. Begged, sobbed,
surrendered. And, it was in God’s perfect timing that He pulled me out of the abyss of my own
despair, my tornado of anger, my hurricane of tears, the total and complete mess of my life. And,
it was in that glorious moment when I heard His Divine Voice say to me: “ You don’t have to do
that anymore,” that my life was miraculously changed in the blink of an eye.

God patiently waits for every one of us to come to Him. Hasten your heart-steps! Run to Him!
No one gets through this life unscathed; He was waiting for me to come to Him the whole time.
He’s waiting for you, too. In our weakness, maybe even because of it, we are saved from
ourselves through Him. It is in our weakness that we come to know His undeniable strength!

Thank you, merciful God Almighty, for your healing grace. Without you I know I truly can’t do
a thing decently. You loved me, even in my messes. I am so grateful to You. Amen