My Life is a Miracle

My Life is a Miracle by Amber My life is a miracle. It is one big patchwork quilt full of miraculous seems and patterns. I'm remembering all over again all of the work Christ has put into my life-it's the work of a master painter, sculptor, and photographer. He has poured his greatest work into me and has set me apart-why? I do not know other than to bring him more glory. But the most amazing thing is that this master artist, this redeemer isn't some unreachable great being-he's my Abba-my daddy.

It is a significant thing for me to be able to say that about God-to say Abba instead of God the Father. Hopefully you'll come to understand why. I am the oldest daughter of my parents-I have one younger, biological sister. I am the product of a mom and dad who separated once when I was 10 and then, after an 8-month reunion, divorced when I was 12, making me, all of a sudden, a statistic. Child of divorced parents-one parent absent, one parent working.

I was also a latch key kid-for three years my sister and I spent our after school time alone at home. When my dad would return home he would be so tired, but he would clean up for his own sanity, not having the energy to make us do it, and then he would make one of three family-sized TV dinners-every day-for three years! But despite everything, it seemed we were happy. We had our own little family routines and traditions-those were honestly some of the happiest years for me-no more turmoil in the home, and we did things together, special things. But then my world completely shattered at age 14 when my dad remarried to a woman who had two sons and a daughter. We all loved each other and got along BEFORE the engagement and marriage.

As soon as they returned home from their honeymoon, any happiness I'd known completely disintegrated. And this was right before I started high school-talk about adjustment! My stepbrothers very soon began to pick on my little sister brutally, and my step mom began to pick on both of us, but mostly me. All of a sudden, my life was characterized by oceans of tears and hoarse voices due to the screaming and fighting. I know it's hard to believe, but it really was an overnight shift in everything. There were no warning signs, nothing to see it coming.

One day I was celebrating the big family I'd always wanted, and the next my life was in pieces. All of a sudden I dreaded the end of the school day because I had to go home. I walked in the door and the fighting started and it never stopped. After the first year, my older stepsister moved out to live with her dad�she rarely came around again until after I was in college. My stepbrothers started to get involved with the wrong crowds and to get in trouble with alcohol and drugs, running away, bad grades, juvenile court.

On top of that was the emotional and verbal abuse I suffered from my step-mom, which started almost immediately after the wedding. I felt like there was always something wrong with me. It didn't matter what I did or how hard I tried; I learned very quickly through actions and words the lie that I couldn't do anything right, I was useless, I was unwanted. My dad didn't do much about any of this, either. Of course, in the beginning I would go to him because I'd always been able to go to my daddy, and he would fix the problem or at least comfort me and help me through it.

But he never did anything anymore. Pretty soon, going to him meant I had to endure his eyes rolling and his exasperated sighing as though I was an annoyance to him. So, I stopped going to him at all-in less than a year the relationship I'd had with my dad-my knight on a white horse-was completely non-existent. Emotional abandonment robs the phrase "I Love You" of any meaning; I was never physically beaten, but I felt completely beaten up on the inside and left for dead. No one cared, and everyone left me in one way or another-my mom, my dad, the step-mom I had loved so much at first, even God.

Every night I cried myself to sleep, praying for God to just let me die. I asked 'WHY' a lot. Then, as if it wasn't bad enough, at the age of 16 one of my stepbrothers sexually assaulted me-twice. My parents made him apologize after a good tongue lashing, and I really did forgive him right then, but my parents didn't really do anything until months later when my dad finally pressed charges-not because his daughter had been violated, but because it was a last ditch effort to try and snap my stepbrother out of his rebelliousness. Shortly before his trial, my stepbrother "experienced God," and "snapped out of it.

" But what did that mean in my family? The other stepbrother was following his brother's footsteps. But he didn't snap out of it. He kept digging in deeper-alcohol drugs, juvenile charges, house arrest, and a week in juvie. He had a frightening temper-many times I sat in my room crying from fear that my dad and he would end up in a fist fight and someone would get hurt and dragged away on abuse or assault charges. Many times I was confronted directly by him and feared that he would lash out and hurt me.

He screamed profanities and called me foul names for no reason at all-simply because I was alive and in the room where he was. He dropped out of school at 17, got his GED, finished his certification for becoming an electrician, and took the last steps toward becoming a full-blown alcoholic. My little sister was a people-pleaser as a defense mechanism-if she made everyone happy, then they wouldn't pick on her and tease her treacherously anymore. She wouldn't get yelled at by our step-mom and she wouldn't lose the affection of our dad-or so she thought. She didn't fight back, she didn't take sides, she told me to just try and make our step-mom happy and things would get better.

I had always tried that, but it never worked. We were both dying our own unique deaths inside. You can imagine how angry and bitter I was when I graduated from high school and went to college. Looking back it is easy to say that I was not just feeling bitter and angry; I was a bitter person, an angry person. It oozed from every pore and dripped from every word.

I had seen a therapist my senior year of high school-but my step-mom refused to go with my dad and me because she said she didn't have a problem-she said I was the only one with a problem. My dad and I went together for a while and that helped a lot. But when I say it helped, I don't mean that things became good between my dad and I overnight. It was still pretty bad-to the point where I actually moved out of my house for a short time that senior year. The only thing that could truly get rid of bitterness was forgiveness, and I wasn't ready to hear that in high school.

During college I began to see that my hatred and bitterness was eating me up, completely consuming and destroying me. I knew there was more to being a Christian, which I'd been since the age of 5, than what I had and I tried my hardest to get to God the way my friends at college seemed to be able to do. But I couldn't get there. God stayed far away. I was still dying inside and couldn't make it stop.

By the end of the school year, I knew I couldn't go home for the summer and survive. I needed to go where God was, where only the people of God were and no other worldly influences. So, I went to work at a camp in upstate New York. A week before I left to return to school in August, God granted me the forgiveness I needed for my step-mom and from Him for my own black heart that had been filled with bitterness, rebellion, and defiance. But that was only the starting point-it's been years of healing and growing and falling down and getting back up to make me the person I am now-and I'm certainly not anywhere close to being "done" yet! There is no reason-other than God-why I shouldn't have ended up like so many of my friends and family members-either depressed and possibly suicidal, medicated so that I can have moments of happiness or sanity, or pregnant several times over due to a decision to find a tangible love instead of the love of God.

All of these are present in my family. So, how did I end up different? Simple-I was SAVED. I was plucked, by no power of my own, out of the quicksand that had become my life. From the age of 14 on, I learned that I was on my own in this life. No one was going to help me.

There are definitely days when I think I'm just going to give in from the weight on my shoulders, and it's a lie that I constantly have to battle. But recently, the Lord has been reminding me of who it was that plucked me out of that quicksand and breathed life back into me and made me useful and worthwhile and desirable and full of purpose and joy. That's a MIRACLE! We can't make those things true in our lives regardless of how great or how terrible our lives turn out. But that's not all-not only am I a miracle, but he is making miracles in my entire family! Here are a few snapshots of those miracles which span the last few years: Christmas, a brother home for a weekend from rehab to spend the holiday with his family. Presents under the tree with Christmas music playing and homemade coffee cake and coffee waiting to be enjoyed.

Laughter, smiling, hugs, excitement and anticipation. A sister-in-law and a nephew, boyfriends of other sisters. A happy FAMILY! College graduation. Almost everyone is there. Wanting everyone there.

Enjoying the celebration. More smiles, more joy. So much LOVE. A wedding. A mom remarrying.

Getting a new sister, one you never met until the wedding and hitting it off immediately. The three sisters might as well have grown up together they love each other that much. Watching the new sister grow to know the Lord and to make godly choices. Being in her wedding. Knowing JOY.

Sisters-one is there when the other has her sonogram during pregnancy and then when she has her baby. Doing Bible study together because one knows Jesus very intimately and the other wants to. Talking on the phone a couple times a week. Sisters�.and friends.

The Lord rewards PATIENCE! Sisters-one is suffering in her heart from hurts never healed. The other has been there done that. But then one day, the hurting sister finally opens up and lets the other in�and God�.finally�Sisters�friends. PEACE runs deep! A brother and his wife and young son have a new addition in the summer.

Sharing excitement, talking about baby names, enjoying having them back in town. Family is important-more important than anything else save the Lord. Joining a church family and wanting your God-given family to be there. Standing up and introducing them, so proud that they are sitting next to you right then. So proud to have them watching as you take such a big step.

Looking forward to going "home"-having a place to call "home". Having a family to love-being able to call them family. Sounds like a different life right? That's because it is! We're still working through stuff of course. We are all in different places in our journeys to the same end goal. It's like a rope gently and slowly drawing all of us in the right direction, and it is evidence of God working miracles in the lives of my family too.

One at a time. Step by step. So my life is a miracle. I don't say that in an arrogant way. In fact to realize that leaves me dumfounded and speechless-it' truly something to inspire reverence and honor and praise to the Lord.

It's truly a miracle that my life is what it is today, because the formula of my life should never have worked out to make me into this seemingly normal, well-adjusted, successful adult woman. As I said before there were so many paths that could have been mine, just as they were the paths for my siblings and many friends. And yet, here I am and those did not become my paths. I have a hope and a future, and to look at all that happened in my yester-years and trace the steps that brought me here--all I can see are God's footprints and it blows my mind! And here is the greatest part--there is no other explanation except for my Abba artist. Trust me, it's a big deal that I can call God Abba and mean it as my true Daddy.

Yes, my dad and I went to therapy and began the process of working things out. We have a good relationship now. But it's not like a child has with her daddy-the daddy who is her hero, her knight on a white horse. That has been lost, and I don't know if I will ever have that back with my earthly dad. As a result, up until recently, I didn't know how to relate to God that way either.

But then, God swooped down and touched my heart and burned into it the truth that I DO have a daddy, and HE IS MY FOREVER DADDY. And it will never end up like it did with my earthly dad. That is a hard relationship to restore. I lost four years with my dad, and the damage done though it has been left behind can never be completely undone. But, God has undone it between me and Him, and I have an Abba.

And He is always working. I love Psalm 68:6: "God sets the lonely in families; he leads forth the prisoners with singing." He is restoring family to me in more ways than one, and believe it or not we've only scratched the surface. Derek Webb has a song in which he says, "Don't paint my face, I need to see my scars." It's because of my scars that I can be amazed at the God of miracles, that I am able to see that the "gracious hand of my God was upon me" the whole time (Nehemiah 2:8).

Eugene Peterson said, "IF we get our information from the biblical material, there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life." That is the miracle!! Miracles never cease, and I'm living proof. He made this miracle, and He wants to make miracles in you too. In Matthew 19:26 Jesus tells us, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." God can free you from your past and turn those broken pieces into beautiful, miraculous works of art.

If you would like Him to be the Lord and Master of your life, then know that although "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23), yet "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). He made a way despite our sin. That way consists of believing in our hearts that Jesus is Lord and confessing with our mouths that God raised him from the dead, and we are saved (Rom.

10:9). If you believe that, then pray. Confess your sins to him and your faith in him and ask him to fill you with his Spirit and to be the Lord and Master of your life. He will do it. He has promised, and "he who promised is faithful" (Hebrews 10:23).