Here’s a story from my personal life. It took place 26 years ago. Although I couldn’t know it at the time, it would turn out to be a turning point for me and for my lifetime journey with God.

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Two years after the sudden departure of my husband from our holy marriage, I entertained to tea some women friends who belonged to a lay Roman Catholic religious Order. They brought with them a member of this Order whom I’d not met before —a gentle-voiced, middle-aged woman with an interesting and appealing face.

Her name was Connie.

Like all the members of this Order, Connie had consecrated her life to God.

At the time of Connie’s visit, I was still in deep personal pain for several reasons completely outside my control.  

Having listened to a much-shortened version of the story of my husband’s rejection, betrayal and unending wounding actions and words, Connie suddenly turned directly to me and said very softly:

‘Jan, it seems that the Lord has placed a great call to love on your life.’

Twenty-six years have passed since Connie made this remark; but I shall never forget those few simple words.

What was my reaction?

Her remark elicited a strangely uncomfortable, even sad, feeling within me.

You see, a call to love more than I had already loved was not my priority of the moment.

I was far more concerned with getting my husband healed and restored so that he could return to our marriage!

Connie, however, was able to see the much broader perspective.

She had been able to see past my immediate desires and see that God was calling me to love, for the rest of my life on the earth, the husband who had rejected me whether or not he came back to our marriage and whether or not he loved me again!

As I Heard These Words, I Felt My Stomach Knotting…

As I heard Connie’s words, I felt my stomach knotting.

I had, after all, forever loved my husband and my family. Now I needed to be loved myself. In fact, I felt entitled to be loved! A call to even greater love was definitely not my priority right now.

It was true that in my will and intellect I had already heard and obeyed the Lord’s very clear call to surrender my husband unconditionally to Him. In fact, just one year before, I had written a letter to my husband expressing precisely this —and I had meant it.

The source of my courageous action had been my faith, my intellect and my will rather than my heart and emotions. And it had been a decision I had taken completely consciously. It had taken me every ounce of faith and courage to do this. But the Lord had shown me very clearly that He wanted me to release my husband back to the same God who had given him to me in marriage nearly twenty-seven years before.

The Lord did not want my husband to remain with me.

Just six years later, the Lord would reveal to me His reasons for this in a dramatic, totally unexpected and crystal-clear way. I have written more about His revelations in my book. 

For now, however, I had to obey His request to release my husband back to Him on a basis of pure faith.

My Feelings Had a LONG Way to Go to Catch Up with My Faith…

I had always been very conscious indeed that my feelings had a long, long way to go to catch up with my faith, intellect and will!

And, in fact, at the time of Connie’s remark I was still hurting so deeply that I wasn’t sure they ever would. I was still experiencing an an emotional and spiritual tug-of-war. 

Yet, in my intellect and will, I had never doubted for a moment that the Lord was asking me to love my husband without ANY conditions. 

Deep down, I knew that Connie was right…

Deep down, therefore, I knew that Connie was right.

I knew that God had placed on me a great call to love —to love in the true sense, in the Lord’s way, namely, without ANY conditions.

I knew that this kind of unique brand of love was/is the ONLY love that had the power needed to truly liberate me from my grief and pain and anger and, yes, from my occasional surges of unforgiveness.

I knew that this totally unconditional, no-strings-attached love was/is the only way to full freedom and lasting healing!

Five Years Later

Five years later, when the Lord had fully healed my raw emotions, I could look back and see that my situation back at the time when Connie had made her remark paralleled exactly that of the rich young man in the time of Jesus (Mark 10:17-22).

This young man certainly wanted eternal life and had asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit it. But, the scriptures tell us, when Jesus had given him the answer, the young man had become sad.

He had decided that the cost was too high!

It had been exactly the same with me. Like the rich young man, I had no doubt whatever that my desire was to save my eternal soul and inherit God’s Kingdom.

But now that the Lord, through Connie, was once again asking me to love my husband unconditionally for the sake of my eternal soul, I had become sad.  

I Felt It Was a Brutally High Cost the Lord was Asking Me to Pay!

I had become sad because I thought it was a brutally high cost the Lord was asking me to pay.

Did the Lord not know that my husband and our children were, after Him, my most important treasures? Could the Lord not understand that I wanted to hang on to all of my treasures, and not release any of them back to Him?

Two years after Connie’s conversation, the Lord seemed to recognize that my emotions were taking a fair amount of time to catch up with my will.

He repeated His invitation to surrender my husband completely to Him.

This time He did so using the story of Abraham’s surrender of Isaac.

The Lord explained that just as He had given Isaac to Abraham and yet had commanded Abraham to give Isaac back to Him, so He had given me my husband and now wanted me to give him back to Him —without any reservations!

A few days later, thanks to an unexpected encounter with a godly and experienced friend, an elderly person of true integrity, the Lord provided confirmation that I had heard His command correctly.

The person in my encounter had known nothing whatever about the Lord’s command to me. But in the course of our conversation, he ‘happened’ to remark to me that he had always admired my faith which, he continued, was like the faith of Abraham!

The Lord used this person to confirm for me that He was calling me to do exactly what He had required of Abraham!

And I knew I had to obey the Lord.

I had to learn somehow to fly in the face of my still powerful emotions.

It helped me a lot to know that Abraham’s story had turned out extremely well.  But I was also well aware that this good outcome had depended on Abraham’s willingness to obey God’s harsh command!

Sometimes the Lord makes inexplicably tough demands on our humanity!

For this reason, I deeply admire Abraham.

But I can also truly sympathize with the rich young man!

My Journey to Full Healing Undergirded by the Lord’s LOVE 24/7

It would take five years to complete the journey to full healing and personal resurrection.

At every point, I knew the Lord was accompanying and undergirding me with His vast, powerful, unique, brand of love.

Thanks to the decision I had consciously made to start my journey keeping God’s love 24/7 at the forefront, these 5 years turned out to be years of deepening inner peace and joy.

I arrived at the point of healing mentally, emotionally, spiritually and psychically intact. I was now at a place where I could fully release my husband back to God and yet at the same time genuinely and unreservedly love him!

I could now finally accept God’s tough command and painful ‘surgery’ without whimpering.

BUT… I Could NEVER Have Managed Any of This

If I Had Not KNOWN FOR CERTAIN that the Lord Loved ME, TOO —Without ANY Conditions!

But here’s the important thing:

I could never have managed any of this had I not KNOWN, in the very deepest part of my being, that the Lord loved ME, too, without any conditions!

It was my ability to REPEATEDLY EXPERIENCE FIRSTHAND God’s unconditional love for ME —whenever I wanted or needed it —that enabled me to reach this beautiful place of healing, unconditional love.

 And, of course, unconditional love always brings with it an equally certain and an equally beautiful inner peace and joy.

2 Diary Entries

Here are two of my diary entries from this time 27 years ago. They attest to the key role that my regular, repeated EXPERIENCES of God’s love played in my healing journey.

Entry # 1

God’s love sustains me…

God’s LOVE sustains me and brings me each moment into being. (I) can add SPARKLE to that LOVE by exercising (my) CHOICE to be FREE, TRUTHFUL, JOYFUL, LOVING…Remember: there are many good seeds in me.

Entry #2

I am being grasped by the light…

Because of my (regular sessions of silent prayer of the heart in the Lord’s Presence) I am starting to experience the digging towards deep-rootedness that (my last guide) talked about, and it is in this rootedness, in Jesus’ LOVE and Light, that I see (the people and events that hurt me) —naming (them) for what (they are), but not condemning or annihilating (the persons responsible)…

 I am being grasped by the light…

ALWAYS Dig Deeper Than the Wickedness!

You see, by spending time regularly in God’s Presence and experiencing directly His love, I was also able to dig deeper than the wickedness that surrounded our family.

And by digging, I was able to find the Lord Himself hiding underneath the wickedness.

You see, it’s one thing to know ‘intellectually’ that the Lord is present right in the very midst of the pain and evil  in which you might find yourself; but it’s quite another to EXPERIENCE this fact up close and personal!

As I said, my journey to healing obviously took time. The Lord will not be rushed. He knows better than we do that Rome was not built in a day. Lasting healing takes time.

But with every period I spent in the Lord’s Presence I got closer to discovering —or uncovering —the Person with whose love I could not only successfully withstand but could defeat the persistent, well-organized wickedness that had been let loose on our family.

ALWAYS Choose LIFE!

I discovered that there are two chief spiritual treasures that it is Satan’s avowed intention to destroy.

The first is a person’s ability to experience God’s LOVE.

The second is a person’s ability to experience and enjoy to the full God’s pulsating LIFE —mental, emotional, spiritual and physical (John 10:10).

These two experiences/gifts are integral to each other. They are mutually dependent.

 You cannot enjoy the Lord’s gift of life unless you are also able to experience His love!

And you cannot experience God’s love unless you also experience the LIFE that comes embedded in that love!

The first antidote to evil, therefore, is to make a conscious decision to open up yourself more and more to God’s love (see my FREE GUIDE below).

The second antidote to evil is to make a conscious decision to open up yourself each and every day to God’s LIFE.

Each day, you must consciously and deliberately choose life.

You can best do this, as I did and still do today, by spending regular time in the Presence of the Source of all life (See my FREE GUIDE below).

Here’s a diary entry I made during one of my daily retreat times. This was just two months after my husband had abandoned our marriage. It reads:

I repeatedly experienced the pain today. Every time the pain hits, CHOOSE LIFE.

So I want you to know that no matter how you feel or what nasty things are happening around you or to you, absolutely critical that each and every day you consciously choose 2 things: 

GOD’S LOVE

GOD’S LIFE

 If you make this choice regularly, it will become automatic and part of who you are.

 Try it!

And should you find yourself facing a similar distressing experience to the one I’ve described, I pray that you’ll remember this story about Connie and that the Lord might even see fit to bring a ‘Connie’ into your life!

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Coming soon:

17 Tips for Using your Faith to Heal Your Inner Pain

    US $12.99

Have you listened to my webinar?

 Have you listened to Sonia’s interview with me? 

 

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