Anyone who knows me knows how important God is to me in my life. I grew up in a religious home. My father never attended church except just long enough to win my mother’s heart when she was 16 and he was 18, but he did believe in God. My mother was the prayer warrior in our home. She grew up in a Pentecostal home. It was her faith in God that kept her through the good and bad times in life. The first place she took any of us children was to church. When I was 12 years old I gave my heart to God and became very faithful to our church and its teachings. I meet my husband through this church.

When I was in my late 20’s I had a very unusual experience that happened at home that totally changed my life. It was not a religious experience at all. I had been asking God for something very important to me. I had continued to knock on his door for about 18 months and kept asking him for an answer to something I desperately needed an answer for. Then one Saturday he came and answered my question and prayer. I was alone at home at the time. I did not know what was happening to me until it was over. I had never felt anything like that before. The spirit of God was so thick around me I had no clue what it was. I was left with a writing, which was nothing more than a letter between Jesus and myself. You can read this writing in my Psalms under the day I met God for the first time. It was really an amazing experience. It changed my entire life and it is still changing me. In this letter he answered my question and made me some promises. I have seen some of those promises come to pass. I have yet to see some of them happen, but I know they will. God’s timing is not our timing and I know that.

That experience was the first time I met God, been in his presence, and been to my Father’s House. It was incredible. I wish everyone could experience what I did and feel what I feel in my soul. I am so blessed. I am deeply honored he came to talk to me that day.

In this writing he promised he would fill my hands so they remain no more empty. I am humbled by this experience. I have discovered that every tool he has filled my hands with has come through great sorrow and pain. He continues to fill my hands too. Every tool is to help someone else and me. It seems the message God has given to me is about true repentance and forgiveness. I have been forgiven just as I have had to forgive. I have truly repented for my wrong doings and sins and I have had great mercy bestowed upon me. I have also encountered those who are not able to forgive because they do not know what forgiveness is.

After that God brought me out of my childhood church and I began to grow in him. I have learned faith along the way. My religious life vanished. My spiritual soul was awakened. I learned that faith is the absence of fear and fear is the absence of faith. I cannot have them both, for one will outweigh the other. I cannot please God if I am full of fear. I can please God only if I have faith and believe. I do believe. 

Very seldom do I bring anything to God. It has to be beyond my ability to resolve it for me to ask God to help me. However, there have been times that I have brought things to God when I could not do them for myself. I believe in fasting. I know it is not fasting that touches God’s heart, for it is just a work, but it is the belief and sacrifice that God sees.

When I got pregnant with Melissa she was a big surprise. I had taken care of children since I was young and I had no desire to be a mother. However, when I had her my entire priorities changed. I loved being a mother and I wanted to be home and raise my daughter myself. I didn’t want a child provider to do it for me. I also loved to write and I wanted to share my writings with others. It seemed like a hopeless and impossible dream. I was the main provider in our home with steady employment. Jerry was in the painter’s union and was off work a lot. I searched my heart first to make sure my motive was righteous and my request before God pure and acceptable. I than began to fast and pray that God would open the door for me to be home with my daughter and write. For 5-1/2 years I fasted everyday I worked from sunrise to sundown and kept knocking on his door. My husband told me to give it up, it would not happen, but I knew it would. I had Kevin during this time, which made me want to be home even more with my children. I continued to come before God with my need. I took the parable in the Bible about the unjust judge to heart. If God could do that for her, he could do this for me. I didn’t care how or when he opened that door, just so he did. I did not get discouraged during that time. My heart knew it would happen. I could feel it from deep within my soul. Then one day God just opened the door in a way I could have never imagined. It was perfect. It was stressful. It was right. Melissa was in first grade and Kevin was 3 when God opened that door for me. I am so thankful he did. I totally loved being home with Melissa and Kevin.

I opened a daycare to help us financially survive. I began writing for the Sanger Herald Newspaper after that. I appreciate God doing this for me from the depth of my soul.  When women say to me today how much they want to be home with their children instead of in the workforce I share with them my testimony of what God did for me. We have not because we ask not. All we have to do is ask and believe. 

The few times I have brought needs before God in prayer and fasting like that, he has answered everyone of them. I was grieving someone very deeply and I finally asked God to take the grief out of my heart. I know how painful grief can be and how quickly it can close a person down. That is what was happening to me. God came and comforted my heart, took that deep grief away, and helped me find peace again in my heart. I was in a crisis situation and again I came to God to help those involved. He answered that prayer also. When we cannot do anything about something, the best thing we can do is stand still, give it to God, fast and pray, and let God take over. He doesn’t give instant results like we may want, but he will answer at the right time, in the right way, and give us what he knows is best for us. We just have to believe that he is in control and let go of whatever the situation is and let him resolve it. 

I have been in many situations that I have not had to fast and pray like that, because I had already learned what to do from the previous time I was in a similar situation. After grieving that situation like I did I knew what Isiah meant when he prophesied about “Jesus being a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief.”  Sorrow is one thing, but grief is so painful I never want to go to the depth it took me to that one time. It took me through hell and back. I wish that sorrowful pain on nobody. When I lost Kevin I could feel myself starting down that same spiral and I knew that I had to pull myself out of that before I slipped too far down. The greatest lost I have ever experienced is losing Kevin. God helped me through that loss and is still helping me. I have grief. I have sorrow. I am coping with both. I also have faith that God will comfort my soul and keep a peace and joy in my heart so I will not feel the desperation of loss to the place it closes me down.

I also know that if I am faced with a mountain too large for me to handle he will help me through that situation because that is what he has done in the past. I have learned that if I am able to resolve the situation myself, then God expects me to do everything I can first before bringing it to him. I did not learn this overnight. It has taken me my lifetime to be what I am at. Even so, I know that fear is a powerful force and faith is a powerful source. God will answer our prayers if we only ask, believe, and have faith.

A relationship with God is like a love affair. No one in the entire world may know that you are in love, but the two people involved know. God knows if we love him. We know if he loves us. Its not maybe or might, it’s absolute and positive. We are in love or we’re not. Nothing between. We need to feel secure in the relationship we have with him. He knows our heart, motive, thoughts, sins, secrets, desires, and lusts. He knows if we are sincere or not. He knows everything about us. We can be honest with him and ourselves. I wish everyone could have an experience like I had that day at my house. It was such a life and soul changing moment for me. It is still changing me and making me to realize how priceless God’s love is in my life. I would die if you took him out of my heart, life, and soul. I could not survive without him and I know that.

Another thing I have learned along the way is that God doesn’t need anything from me except my love. My life already belongs to him. I have no control over that. My love is something I do control and can give or not give it to him or others. What he needs me to do is fall in love with him. If I do I will treat his creation right. I asked him to give me the wisdom to know how to go in and out among his people. What I learned was that we are all his people, his creation, his children, and I must treat everyone like I want him to treat me. Sometimes I do not do that and I pay a great price for falling short of what he requires of me. I need to listen to what his commandments say. Jesus said that the entire old testament could be summed up in the first two commandments, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength, and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Then he said, “A new commandment I give unto thee, Thou shalt love one another as I have loved thee.” Wow! Just fulfilling those three commandments is a lifelong work. Sometimes I have failed to do this and the grief my sin created in my soul was excruciating. I strive to fulfill these commandments and it is hard to do. I ask God to forgive me, and those I wrong to forgive me, when I lose sight of my calling and do not do them. It is so easy to let our guard down and allow sin into our hearts. Forgiving others is easy, but forgiving ourselves is so difficult. I am still working on those three commandments to please God.

I have been saturated with religion and I have been saturated in the presence of God. Religion and Spirituality are two very different things. God washed me of the religious narrow-minded teachings that I grew up with. He opened my soul to see him in everyone and everything that crosses my pathway along my journey toward him. When I fall he picks me up. When I succeed he keeps me grounded. My love affair with him is the greatest miracle that has ever happened in my life. My children were the next greatest miracles God gave me. I tell people to put their entire heart into whatever they believe. That is what I did. If it is right, he will bless them. His blessings does not mean everything will be perfect in life, but he will carry them through the good and bad times. If they are wrong, he will bring them out of what they are in and put them on a new path toward him. I know this because that is what happened to me. When I get side tracked he brings me back to the path he put me on that day he came to visit me in my home. God is my first love and the only Lover of my Soul. His immortal love cannot even compare with our mortal love. It is by far more superior and pure than our human mind can possibly comprehend. However, it is real and I wish every human being could feel and experience his love. One thing I am extremely thankful for is that he brought me out of the church I was in before I had my children. I would never want to raise my children in the church I grew up in.

To please God I need to serve his people. I cannot save the world, but I can be a blessing to anyone that God brings my way. When I hurt people I need to repent with a honest and sincere heart. Most importantly, I need to stop whatever I did to hurt them to begin with. A true repentance is when we are sorry enough to quit. I need to also forgive myself. That is the hardest thing to do. Others come and ask for my forgiveness and I embrace them with sincere unconditional love and forgiveness. I need to do the same for me. 

I hope that my writings will be a blessing to you. My Psalms are my writing throughout the years to God. I know that when David wrote his Psalms to God he did it from the depths of his soul. I understand that. That is where my writings come from also, the depth of my soul unto him. After all, he is the Lover of my Soul. My Psalms are my love letter to God. Most of my love poems and songs are written to God also. Not all of them, but the majority of them.

May God richly bless your soul as he has done for me. May you have your own love affair with our creator. May you also have an experience like I had for it will change your life forever.