What in the world is an eighty-four-year-old woman doing writing a book? A good question; I’m glad you asked! In some ways I’m as surprised as some of you…maybe even more so! Until the last year, the thought never crossed my mind. If anyone would have approached me with the idea, I would have told them they were crazy…well, actually, I would have politely told them I didn’t think I had anything to write about, but inwardly I would have told myself, “They’re crazy!”

Yes, to my chagrin, most of my life has been spent in trying to do things right, trying to be a good Christian, trying to have a good Christian home, good Christian marriage, trying to make it all look good and loving and appropriate. But all the while, through all the years of my “doing,” I never could figure out what was “wrong” with me, why I felt like I was such a failure at all my endeavors. Learning the art of “being” has come quite late in my life, it seems.

None of my life experiences had brought me into an experiential knowledge of God’s love. I knew in my mind that God was love, but that had no impact on my day-to-day life. I spent most of my time just trying to “do it right” so it would look like I was normal, so it would look like I was living the spiritual life that I so desperately desired but was so totally missing.

How I cried in the past for a Christian home, one filled with love where husband and wife together praised and worshipped and honored God while they faced the challenges of building a loving life together, the rearing of children, the complexities of career and finances and social life. My heart always yearned for that home environment where God was held in first place and everyone and everything stood beneath that banner of love.

The problem I had was that I had no idea how to create that “good Christian home.” I had not been raised in one. Rather, my siblings and I were brought up in a very dysfunctional one that cowed down to the ranting and abuses (sexual, emotional, physical, and mental) of a father who was quite unstable in his behaviors. Momma did her best to take care of us and to cushion us from the terrible blows of abuse that came our way, yet for unknown reasons, even she seemingly did nothing to stop the sexual abuses that were perpetrated upon us girls. All of this took place among church-going and prayers and the outward appearance of normalcy.

Each of us children found ways to leave home as early as we possibly could. That included me as well. Deeply wounded, with anger and rage boiling in the yet-unknown places of my heart, I set out to find love and escape from abuse in a marriage. From the wisdom of my years today I can tell you confidently that this is an impossible and even dangerous undertaking. My heart led me into two marriages…one brief, one lasting sixty-three years…that were anything but loving situations. The wounding of the tender heart through the loss of that first love is overwhelming, lasting a lifetime in my case.

Then there is the incredible joy of having my two children…and the black hole of loss at their untimely deaths in the prime of their lives. Why? Why did it have to happen to my children? Parents are supposed to outlive their children. I thought that was law or something! How can a mother live on after burying both her children? The anger and rage grew inside my heart, but I was unaware. I had given my heart to Jesus and asked Him to be my Savior and Lord, but I had no real concept of His love.

Unlike Abraham, I wasn’t encompassed about with the knowledge that God was always for me and that He would spare my child. Instead I was faced with that loneliest of places where, without any proof in the natural that God loves you, you get to choose your truth. You get to choose what you’re going to believe. You get to choose whether you will go on or whether you will shrivel and die in grief too deep to even touch.

Rather than bringing my focus onto love and peace, my whole life became absorbed in the fine art of criticizing and judging everyone in the Body of Christ for not doing “right” enough, for not being “Christian” enough. My “righteous indignation” gave my wounded heart the perfect excuse to lose itself in “doing.” But beneath that surface level of my life I was dying and I knew it. Quite literally, in fact.

I have survived cancer three different times…colon cancer twice, ovarian cancer once. I am presently a thirty-nine-year survivor of ovarian cancer, something that is quite rare indeed. God is so good! I have had surgery after surgery, one of them a hip replacement. I have sat before more than one doctor who told me to go home and put my life in order because I didn’t have long to live. Yet, here I am having just celebrated my eighty-fourth birthday!

So yes, the question is a fair one: Why write a book? My answer is simple: My heart wants to share with any and all who might glean some healing, some peace, some rest from meeting the precious Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of my story. If wringing out these experiences from my heart to yours helps even one person, then each experience and tear will have been worth it.

My life is a testimony to the tender mercies and loving kindness of a God who has been willing to walk beside me through thick and thin for eighty-four years and teach me His love in the midst of all my pain and anger and disbelief.