Nothing, Absolutely Nothing Can Separate You from His Love (Day 11)

Continue reading Yosef's story which began yesterday. This is the eleventh post for our Write 31 Days series 31 Days of Miracles: Who is Our God

(Day 10, Hope in Darkness.)

I finally got into a Christian Rehab, a place of safety where I found my Saviour Jesus the Messiah. It was here that I learned about His love for me and how He died to set me free. I remember the day I asked Him to come live in my heart as if it was yesterday. My life was forever changed and I never looked back. Never again did I pick up a cigarette or ever return to drugs. I was changed but I still walked a long road to learn about His grace for me and about His father heart. Recovering from the wound of fatherlessness takes time and it has taken me years to go there with God and to allow Him to access that place and bring healing, I am still learning.

Yet in all this, my problems were not yet over. Due to my previous lifestyle choices, I had many criminal convictions and warrants of arrest still hanging over my head. I remember how I prayed and asked the Father to help me to know what to do and how to go about getting things resolved. I remember speaking to the pastor of the rehabilitation centre and how we should pray about it, yet he said we should wait before we did anything else.

One Friday afternoon the police finally arrived at the centre with a warrant for my arrest. I was scared, yet I had peace at the same time. I remember going in to the holding cells and knowing that it was okay, God was with me. I knew that I was saved, yet I had to face the magistrate knowing that I was guilty of the things I had done. I remember praying and asking Jesus to save me from the hell of prison, if it was His will. The grace of Jesus is something that we will never truly understand. I came to know the meaning of having faith that day like I have never before. Every single charge that was issued against me was dropped and my slate was clean, it was a miracle, everyone knew it and I was given a new life and a second chance. Two years later after completing my program and serving as a staff member helping other drug addicts, I felt God call me to bible school to become a pastor and teach people about His amazing grace. It was there in my first year as a seminary student, where I met my wife. A woman who loved God and radiated His beauty.

Today together with her, we serve the body of Messiah as ministers of reconciliation. I have come to see the power and love of the Father in ways that I cannot explain. He saved my life and set me free from the bad choices I had made. There is hope for you too, if you are willing to admit you have a problem and need help. Being an ex -addict and a criminal, as well as a gangster in prison, was not enough to separate me from the Love of Jesus, nothing can and I know that there is no freedom without Him. 


You might say that is your opinion but no friend, it’s the fact. I have seen it all and I know that once you go down the road of heroin abuse, there is no return. Jesus restores every part of your life if you will let him and I pray that whatever you are facing today, that you will know how much God loves you, how He died for you and how nothing can ever separate you from His deep love, nothing. 

Josef Beukman

His life once buried beneath a blanket of hurt and drug addiction, Yosef was powerfully set free by the God of the Universe, a God whose word He a has a passion to proclaim. He is an ordained minister and in full time ministry where He teaches, preaches and has found his passion for video production and editing. He makes his home in South Africa and teaches over at

www.treasuredinheritanceministry.com.

Hope in the Darkness (Day 10 of Miracles)

This is the tenth post for our Write 31 Days series 31 Days of Miracles: Who is Our God. Today, Yosef Beukman (see below for his bio) shares his story.

I grew up in a Christian family, which most would have called normal. From the outside we looked like a great family but inwardly we struggled with different issues. My Father was a Children’s church Pastor in a well-known mega church in South Africa and as such, most of his time was spent away from home at conferences or teaching other people’s children. Over time I developed a need in my life that most young children do, a need for a fathers love and tender care, a need for a father’s touch.

I knew my father loved me but I always felt like he was more interested in other people’s children than in me. The love I felt he had for me did not run deep enough, it did not reach my heart. It did not comfort me with safety, it did not help me find my identity as a man, in truth I was insecure and wounded. It was because of this insecurity in myself and the fact that my father was always busy with church things, that I found myself feeling neglected and frustrated inside.

I chose to hide it and bottle it up inside of me but as I got older the frustration turned into outright rebellion. I wasn’t naughty or rebellious, until I turned 18, I just didn’t want to be like my father was and I definitely didn’t want to serve God. I never realised it back then but I carried within me a deep wound of fatherlessness and this wound would lead me down a one-way road of pure destruction and addiction.

It didn’t take long until I did my utmost to get out the house and find a job in the real world, where I could be away from my family. I started working in retail and was introduced to the world in a way that I had never experienced before. People, friends and partying became the norm, everybody lived this life and it seemed carefree so I joined it. I would spend days away from home just so that I didn’t have to be there. My internal issues were causing me to look for happiness in other ways, in destructive relationships and habits. One thing I always struggled with was disappointments and after a particularly bad week, a friend from work invited me to a club. It was a night that changed my life forever. I remember just wanting to have a good time and forget all the negative emotions I held inside, along with all the things that were spinning out of control around me. I never knew that the friend I went to the club with, was a drug user. I always thought that something was up with him, but never I never knew that he was a user. I remember him coming up to me, speaking to me and saying how I should try taking an ecstasy tablet.

He promised that it would take my problems away, he told me it would make me happy. At the time I really didn’t think any further than the moment. Who does? When you down, depressed and frustrated, do you ever really think of the consequences of your actions? All I remember is taking that pill and thinking that I wanted it to last forever. All my worries were gone for the moment or so I thought.

That one pill turned my life upside down and caused me to lose everything. When I mean everything I mean everything. To the point that I became a heroin user. My addiction got so bad that I landed up in Jail for housebreaking. I thought I could control my addiction yet it began to control me. From the first pill till the last injection, I wasted years, many years. My emotions changed, my outward appearance changed. I lost everything, from self-respect to friendships and I almost lost my family.

In all those years I went from uppers to downers and everything in between until I finally got hooked on heroin. I started off smoking it, telling myself that I would never inject it in to my veins but that was a lie, it didn’t take long until I stuck a needle in to my arm. From being a successful sales man I became a homeless beggar on the streets, wondering around begging for money to get my next fix. I lost so much weight that I resembled a mere shadow of the man I once was. I had run away from up North and made my life on the streets, along with the other homeless drug addicts. I know what living on the street is all about, I know why people are there. I lived in a burnt down house for a year, with other users. As night we would lie down and sleep beneath the blankets people handed out to us. I ate from the soup kitchens and knew where to go to get a meal. Many people reached out to me but I did not change. I was arrested a few times for shoplifting and spent days in and out of prison. Prison in South Africa is a whole different world, it’s a nightmare, a hell, something that destroys the strongest of men.

In all this time the grace of God was what kept me from dying. The loving prayers of my family was what kept me alive. They never stopped praying for me while I was a shadow on the streets, even when they thought I was dead. My parents did not know if I was alive or not, I had run away and they were out of the country doing mission work. We had lost contact, my sister got married and I was not there, my family thought they had lost a son but God gave them hope in the darkness.

One day while living on the streets, I was waiting in line at a soup kitchen run by Rastafarians. A wealthy lady who helped at the soup kitchen, suddenly approached me, and told me about Jesus. 

I said “I know all there is to know about Him, there is nothing He can do for me now.” 

I will never forget the love that radiated from this person and how they told me that if I don’t get help I would die.

They told me about a place of hope where I could go and get help. It took a lot of courage to get myself there and to deal with my problems. Yet in all this God had a great plan of redemption. He had his hand ready to take me in and to love me, despite all the wrong choices I had made.

COME BACK tomorrow to hear more of Yosef’s story and of stunning miracles that have enabled him and his wife Aliyah to serve powerfully to the glory of the Kingdom of God.

Continue Yosef's story with Day 11, Nothing, Absolutely Nothing, Can Separate You from His Love.

Josef Beukman

His life once buried beneath a blanket of hurt and drug addiction, Yosef was powerfully set free by the God of the Universe, a God whose word He a has a passion to proclaim. He is an ordained minister and in full time ministry where He teaches, preaches and has found his passion for video production and editing. He makes his home in South Africa and teaches over at www.treasuredinheritanceministry.com.

He Simply Loves You: 31 Days of Miracles, Day 9

This is our ninth post for our Write 31 Days series 31 Days of Miracles: Who is our God. Today Jamie S. Harper shares her story. (See her bio below)

Usually when I think of miracle, I think of supernatural healing. To my knowledge, I’ve not experienced such a miracle. I have experienced the miracle of God’s manifest and hidden presence.
I grew up going to church with my parents. I asked Jesus into my heart several times, but I was not baptized until I was 18. Baptism for me opened up a new experience. God became alive and active in my life. When I went to college, I wanted to experience community and not go astray, so I joined a campus ministry. While there, God called me to missions so I went on two summer mission trips.

The first summer, I went to Youngstown, New York. God was so present and tangible to me those weeks and months that I was there. He spoke to me in a way that felt audible even if it was not. Often times, I was aware of His spirit moving in others, even one time knowing that one of the youth was accepting Christ as Savior during one of our special events. God was my very best friend. This closeness with God continued as I traveled to Oregon the following summer. He manifested His presence to me.

This sweet time of closeness started changing when I was getting ready to graduate college. I considered going to Los Angeles and applied for jobs all over the country, but no jobs opened up. I moved home, and was met with a quarter life crisis. This led to a dark night of the soul. My parents were considering divorce; a boy had broken my heart; I was having trouble finding direction; my best friend moved away; and I could not hear God. He was silent, and for a long time, I thought I’d been abandoned or that I’d done something wrong. It seemed everything had been taken from me, and I blamed God.

That was a vital time in my faith. There were whole chunks of time where I did not know if God was for me. The miracle in those times was hidden. God’s presence had been manifest and obvious, and then it was hidden. However, God was doing some of His best work in me in the times when it was not obvious.

Had I not experienced the silence of God, I would not have known the depth of God. During the silent times, He was breaking me free from the addiction of people pleasing, codependency, self-righteousness, and false beliefs about Him. I did not know that I didn’t really know that God was good. Of course, He was good. I’d experienced Him, but when He was silent, I realized that I thought my way was better than God’s. I read the bible, knew it pretty well, but the relationship and belief of it had yet to root deeply into my heart. I did not trust God to be good in the silence nor did I believe He was there with me in my pain. When I was little, my mom told me that God’s judgment could come down at any moment, and this fear had enslaved me.

Underlying it all, I thought I had to be good to get God’s attention. Surely, this is why I felt abandoned. The codependency in my life had set me up to manipulate the Creator, and the only way to break the chains of manipulation was for God to show me that He was God period. I think that’s why this process was so long and painful. Though a sensitive soul, I am also a tough nut to crack.

I was not my best in the silent times. I felt alone, angry, and I floundered and sinned. I thought God had stopped loving me. I did not know to replace my insecure thoughts with God’s thoughts. Truly, without the silence, I did not know that God was good. I prayed almost daily to be healed, because I felt lacking and incomplete, but He was making me whole. The whole time, for a period of 10 years, He was healing me.

Slowly, I moved out of the dark night of the soul. This was my foggy time. I stopped believing God wanted to use me for His purposes, but I knew I was nothing without God and I needed Him. During those 10 cloudy years, I married. I had three children. I kept going to church, and sometimes, I led bible studies. Looking back, I’m not sure I had any business doing so, but then again, I think God is so gracious. He can use people and things that have no idea they are serving Him, and those very studies helped set me free.

Then one glorious day, God woke me up to His manifest presence again. Similar to Paul, I had scales removed from my eyes, and I knew the grace of God in a new way. I’d moved from one layer of knowledge to a completely different layer of knowledge.

It was at this point that I knew that even though my head had longed believed that I was saved apart from good works, my heart finally did. All those years, I did not understand that I was enslaved to my own good works. At that point, my heart truly knew grace – that I was saved eternally apart from anything I would ever do or not do. There was absolutely nothing I could do to make him love me more or love me less. He simply loved me because He is God and He is good. Neither of which I was. Looking back, the silence of God taught me the depths of His goodness and love.


I knew that I was profoundly loved, that the silence was not just because of my sin, that chains I didn’t previously know held me down had been removed.

Physically, I looked the same, but a soul miracle occurred.

Now I am in another season of less obviousness of God, but I am eternally changed. That period of manifest grace will not let me be enslaved to good works any more. Nor am I afraid of not being enough for God (well I think He’s still working on me in this), but I have received the depths of His love. Instead, I am moved to good works not because I might be judged but because He is good. Each time He shows Himself and then hides and then shows Himself again, I know Him more. And all I want to do is give to everyone I meet the depths of His goodness and love that He’s lavished on me.

Jamie S. Harper spent much of her life as a good girl and people pleaser. She walked through a valley of darkness, wondering if God had deserted her. Instead she found Him near. Grace dug her out of her own people pleasing pit to be deeply rooted in His Love. She blogs at www.jamiesampieriharper.com. 

An Overflow of Joy and Delight: 31 Days of Miracles, Day 8

This is the eighth post for our Write 31 Days series 31 Days of Miracles: Who is Our God. Today, Lesley (see below for her bio) shares her story.

I had grown up hearing about God’s love. I knew how the song went: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” and I believed it, at least in theory.
I struggled to feel it though, and it didn’t seem to make any difference to my life, but I was taught that feelings were subjective and unreliable. They didn’t really matter- what was important was trusting what the Bible said- so I kept going: trying to do all the right things, trying to ignore the lack of feelings, trying to push down any sense of desire or expectation of anything more.

After being in full time youth ministry for two months, I attended a conference. It had been a hard two months. There had been many challenges and I felt weary and extremely inadequate in many ways, but the conference had been encouraging, until suddenly, during the last session, I was plunged into despair.

I can’t remember exactly what was said, but I remember the fear that overwhelmed me- fear that maybe I wasn’t really a Christian . . . maybe God had rejected me . . . maybe all this was for everyone else and not for me.  

As soon as the session ended I retreated to the toilets. I didn’t know what to do. I felt alone, abandoned, unwanted by God. I felt that my faith was collapsing around me, and I realised that, if that was the case, I didn’t belong there.

I had no idea how to move on from this and so I sat there, desperately praying that God would help me, that he would somehow show me what to do, or at least let me know that he was there and that he cared.

No answer came.

Eventually I gave up and decided to go back upstairs. Nothing had changed, but I realised I couldn’t stay in a toilet cubicle for the rest of my life.

Fortunately a friend found me. She said later that I was pale and shaking, and that I looked awful. I was far beyond the point of being able to pretend I was okay, so we talked for a bit and she asked if she could pray.

I hesitated- I was terrified that nothing would happen and my worst fears would be confirmed- but eventually I agreed.

She started to pray, asking the Holy Spirit to fill me, and straight away everything changed. It’s hard to put into words, but it felt like a warm, soothing liquid was filling me up, and with it came a sense of love, joy and peace that I had never felt before. As I thought about God’s love I could feel a sense of joy and delight passing through my whole body. It was as if what I knew of God had gone from my head to my heart, and I finally felt and experienced it and knew that it really was for me.

It was such a sudden and dramatic contrast from how I had been feeling only moments before. Heading to the train station that afternoon, I couldn’t focus at all on the conversation, only on the worship music playing on the car CD player. As I sat in the station I suddenly realised that I was singing out loud, praising God! Not very loud, but loud enough to be noticed. This was not normal behaviour for me at all, but even as I tried to stop myself it was hard to contain!

Over the next few days, several people noticed something different as soon as they saw me or spoke to me, and I experienced an unexpected breakthrough in a situation that had seemed hopeless.

Of course I couldn’t stay on this spiritual high forever, and the sense of giddiness gradually faded, but something had changed forever that day. The sense of God’s love remained and it made a real and lasting difference in my life.

Over the next few years there was some difficult processing of past events to be done, and this experience helped to sustain me during that stormy time and anchored me in the reality of God’s love.

Lesley lives in Scotland and works as a youth worker with a Christian charity. She enjoys music, reading and going to the theatre, and she has been blogging for just over a year at it Life In The Spacious Place. You can also connect with her on Facebook or Twitter.





Day 9, God Sim

See how much I love you? 31 Days of Miracles, Day 7

Day 7, By Debbie Barrow Michael

"Mom," the quivering agony in my daughter's voice on the phone threatened me with panic.

"What is it Kellie," I asked too fast, unable to not imagine the worst.

"I've lost my ring."

I closed my eyes and breathed, relieved that the problem wasn't worse. "Kellie, it's a ring. Don't worry," I tried to console her. But I was heart sick. It was Kellie's engagement ring. The wedding was three weeks away. The diamond ring was a antique, and the wedding band had been custom-made to match the vintage filigree and curve of the now lost ring.

It was March 31, 2006, and Kellie and her fiancée, Mike, were driving ten hours from Pittsburgh, PA, where they attended college, to Mike's home in Wisconsin, where his mother was hosting their bridal shower.

Kellie's spirits lifted as we talked. Then she sounded strangely calm, assuring me, "I'm sure if we all pray, we'll find it."

I winced at her childish idealism. A tiny ring lay somewhere along a several hundred mile stretch of highway. Kellie remembered admiring the ring shortly after they left Pittsburgh. She notice it was gone sometime in Indiana, two states away. They had been in and out of the car several times during that time.

Her final semester and wedding planning had caused weight loss, even in her fingers. She thought she might have lost it after washing and drying her hands in one of several rest stops along the Pennsylvania/Ohio/Indiana Turnpikes. I cringed as I imagined my anxious daughter unwadding paper towels from trash cans and searching dark sidewalks, looking for the proverbial "needled in a haystack." Their exhaustive search made them arrive in Wisconsin at 4:30 a.m. instead of midnight, as anticipated.

My heart dropped as I calculated the slim possibility of finding the ring she had so delighted in receiving nine months earlier. I went into "Mother" gear, trying to encourage, and give helpful advice, like submitting a report of loss to state Turnpike authorities. I emailed prayer requests to friends, including Mother who was the best of the best.

My prayer that night and throughout the weekend was, "Lord, Kellie has so much faith in You and the power of prayer.  We don't know where her ring is, but You do. It can be in the trash can, or in a parking lot, or in grass somewhere.  It doesn't matter where it is now.  We know that You are capable of doing anything.  Please get it to a place where she can find it.  And if someone finds it, let them feel convicted to find the owner." All the time I prayed, I also added, "And Lord, help my unbelief."

Although they had no good news on Saturday, Kellie and Mike were still optimistic, trusting their prayers weren't falling on a deaf God. But I had moved beyond prayer into "fixer" mode, contacting the jeweler with a ridiculous question about having another ring made to match the band they had just fashioned, and even searching the internet for a look-a-like.

On their return trip to Pittsburgh on Sunday, Kellie continued to sound calm and peaceful, the opposite of what I was expecting and personally experiencing.  She said a peace had come over them  about the ring. I was grateful for their peace, and reminded myself it was just a ring, no matter how special. 

Back at school Tuesday afternoon, Kellie called me, giddy with laughter. Returning from work, she noticed the ring was on her bed! Her squeals brought her rooommates running, and they joined in the delighted squeals. Kellie's voice was still shaky from the shocking discovery. 

I quickly called my mother. Her odd question surprised me, "What color is Kellie's bedspread?"  She said she kept getting an image of the ring on a blue square.

I quickly redialed Kellie, disappointed that her answer was green. I share her grandmother's 
vision of blue, but didn't mention the square. Kellie's answer shocked me again, "My quilt under my bedspread has blue squared on it." 

Kellie's ring on the actual quilt where it was found.

"Was your bed made when you found the ring?" I asked. (I don't know why I had visualiszed a sparkling ring prominently displayed in the middle of a perfectly made bed, as Angels sang.)

"No," she answered.

So there was a blue square, and a ring, returned from only-God-knows-where, because of a childlike faith in the power of prayer. And a vision from a beloved grandmother to add to the miracle. 

"See how much I love you?" was the unmistakable message we received, all because a young couple believed Jesus when He said in Matthew 21:22, "If you believe, you will receive what you ask in prayer."

Today, Kellie and Mike have been married ten years and have five children, all of whom love the Lord. 

Kellie and Mike at their wedding in 2006

Kellie, Mike, and their five children on a recent trip to Ireland

Thanks be to God, the Author of our miracles. 

Debbie Barrow Michael lives in Mount Airy, Maryland, in the United States. She is an artist and writer. Her book, But the Greatest of These is Love, chronicles her unexpected journey with God into adoption. Her blog, Consider it All Joy, at debbiebarrowmichael.blogspot.com is filled with God Stories, even during a tragic period in her life. Her greatest desire is to know God better, and make Him "visible" to others.

Amazon downloads of But the Greatest of These is Love are reduced to $2.99 for the month of October to celebrate our Miracles blog shares on Write 31 Days.

All book profits go to orphan care, including hosting expenses. 

A beckoning Love, 31 Days of Miracles, Day 6

Day six, by Marie Gregg

(Read Day five, A Soothing Voice here.)

For years I had been the “good girl,” the “smart girl” and the “ugly girl.” People who called themselves my friends cheated off me in school and purposefully left me out of things like sleepovers and parties. I felt lonely, isolated. Boys ignored me. The lies I believed about myself were confirmed. 

 “Nobody loves me” and “I’m worthless.” 

Eager to fit in, I stopped being myself to act in a way I thought others would accept me. When I became free with my body, my dating career began. I got the attention I had longed for. The cost was lying to my parents and to myself and I flirted with anorexia. 

Not surprisingly, my romantic relationships didn't last, and I went from one bad one to the next.  The anorexia and self doubt spiraled out of control. By college I had panic attacks. And although my heart was growing cold, there was this quiet voice of reason that wouldn't depart. 

I desperately needed to be liked. I was addicted to relationships. I would do anything to be accepted. 

My mother intervened by bringing home a new boyfriend for me. Chris and I got engaged and decided to go to church. It was time to "straighten up.” 

A pregnancy scare (I know now that it was impossible that I was pregnant) took us to Planned Parenthood without hesitation. I took the “morning after” pill. I didn’t actually end the life of any child, but it was the intention of my self-centered  heart.  

Our new church friends dictated what I sought next. They did church stuff, so I did church stuff. I got baptized, and became a youth leader. Something in my soul was reawakening to God, but I wasn’t quite there yet.

That would come a little over a year into our marriage, when Chris told me that he wanted to kill himself. We sat in the hospital lobby, and he couldn’t stop crying. I thought, “What the hell is this? I didn't sign up for this." I'm not proud that I considered divorce. I went to the bathroom and yelled, not caring who heard, “God, if you are real, then you had better show up!”


I don’t recommend that approach with God because, you know, He’s God. He did show up. Chris went to counseling and got on medication. I had no idea how we were going to pay the bills. God paid them. We got checks in the mail that didn’t make any sense. We never had to do without. Slowly, Chris started getting better, though he will always deal with clinical depression.

I was desperate to know – really know – this God who had cared for us in such a real way. I opened my Bible and devoured it. 

Jesus could have condemned me saying, “Fool. You knew better. You knew you shouldn’t sleep around. You knew that those guys were no good. You knew you shouldn’t love anyone more than Me.” He could have pushed me away from Him forever, and been totally justified. Instead, He saw my little, tiny, weak step of faith toward Him and came running toward me. He embraced me. He showed me a better way.

Things started to stabilize for Chris and me. We bought a house and found a church home. Three years into our marriage I went back to school to get a theology degree because I just couldn’t get enough. I discovered that my spiritual gift was teaching and the joy of using that gift.
Then I was diagnosed in 2010 with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Some people withdrew from me. For a time I tried to hold on and put on a brave face.

Then I decided to kill myself.

The relationship addiction and the anxiety and the illness came together in a massive assault. Satan was working overtime on me. I slipped back into old patterns. I pushed myself to be the life of the party, to be everywhere anyone wanted me to be, even though it was physically painful. On September 19, 2011, I decided again to end the struggle. 

I was just getting ready to leave when God sent Chris home early and stopped me. Nearly two years of therapy with a wonderful, Godly counselor helped me to start identifying and rejecting the lies, and instead accept and rest in God’s forgiveness. But the long, uphill road had just begun.

In 2014, a CT scan we thought would reveal a hernia, showed liver damage with spots of precancerous cells. I had a tumor pressing into my diaphragm and lungs. Every breath hurt. 
On December 12 of that year, the surgeon removed a tumor a little larger than a golf ball. There is no cure for my liver, barring Divine intervention. My health has altered my lifestyle. Cirrhosis, cancer, and transplant are all very real possibilities.

I don’t for a second believe that God is punishing me by making me sick. He has been with me, caring for me, speaking truth and comfort to me through every challenge. He is sweet and kind and loving. 

God has preserved me in poor decisions and sickness, but in the preservation He has stripped away every last piece of self-dependence. I once thought I was strong, now I know I am weak. I once thought I was wise, now I know just how little I know. I once thought I had no master, now I know independence is an illusion. 

I am convinced that God has kept me alive through all the messiness of life in order to make me into a servant. Note that I said “kept me alive,” not “healed me completely.” That, I think, will come only in Heaven, for He knows how stupid I am and exactly what it takes for me to stay smooshed against His side. I need the frailty of my body and the near, painful memory of my rebellious past to remind me that my life, however long it might be, is not my own. My goal is not to gain position or power or money, as it once was. The reason I am here is to love Him.

That’s your purpose, too. No matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done, God has orchestrated things to bring you to this place so you could hear the truth. So you could be confronted with your need for Him. 

No matter your challenges, God loves you. He places His hand on your face and beckons you to look up at Him. He will run to you at the most minor movement of faith. He will scoop you up in His arms and tells the angels to party, because His baby has come home to Him. 

Marie Gregg lives in the Inland Northwest of the United States with her husband and two fat, neurotic dogs. She loves studying Scripture, libraries and chocolate. She just released her first book, Distant Lights: Poems Along the Way, which chronicles her struggle with anxiety and depression. You can connect with her over at her blog, Along the Way, or on her Facebook page. 

A Soothing Voice, 31 Days of Miracles, Day 5

This is the fifth post for our Write 31 Days series 31 Days of Miracles: Who is Our God. Today, Trudy den Hoed shares her story.

(This is the fiftth post Read day four, Our Faithful God here)

So often when I look back, it’s the bad times that first come to my mind, but I’m trying to view them instead through the lens of God’s goodness and deliverance. And yet it’s when we really remember how dark those days were that we can see how much deeper God’s love and grace are.

In 2013, something broke inside of me and I slipped into a deep depression. I wrote that November:

Some months ago one judgmental remark from someone put me into a tailspin and brought me face to face with painful memories of past abuse. At first I disassociated from my feelings. I didn’t want to feel at all, because it hurt too much. I continued on in life like a robot. But I became more and more depressed until one day something inside me broke. I sobbed and cried, “I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so sick of being strong for everyone around me…”

It was like I was sinking deeper and deeper into a sea of turmoil, gulping up water. In my mind Jesus was standing above the surface looking down at me and shaking his head. “Hopeless case, that one…” I felt so forsaken of God. His promises seemed bogus, and I could not grasp a single one.

The weight of depression stomped me down, down, down…

Roaring In
Shame-slapping Scowls
Stormy Emotions
Stomping Down
Sinking Me

I couldn’t have made it that dark day without the grace of God. By the end of the day my heart was still heavy, but the care and compassion loved ones gave me lifted me up to see a pinpoint of hope. And the next day, God had a pleasant surprise for me.

“I will give thanks and praise the Lord, with all my heart;
I will tell aloud all Your wonders and marvelous deeds.”
Psalm 9:1

My husband suggested I take my writing pad and go to the Falls. He knew nature often relaxes and comforts me. It helps me to remember God still has all things in His control. I sat on a rock and watched the water rush over the red rock formations. I let the sound of it sooth my weary soul. I imagined the wind as the breath of God kissing my face and telling me I will make it through this.

When I walked along the paths and around the Art Barn, I stopped in awe. There in front of me written in chalk down the front of the steps was a message that still impacts me today. “I will love you every step of the way. ♥” I knew it was God speaking directly to my despairing heart.

Then I remembered a song – “Steady My Heart” by Kari Jobe.

“Wish it could be easy
Why is life so messy?
Why is pain a part of us?
There are days I feel like
Nothing ever goes right
Sometimes it just hurts so much

But You’re here
You’re real
I know I can trust You

Even when it hurts
Even when it’s hard
Even when it all just falls apart
I will run to You
‘Cause I know that You are
Lover of my soul
Healer of my scars
You steady my heart.”

Sometimes God sends the greatest comforts out of the deepest valleys, doesn’t He? My heart still felt wounded, but I knew I could run to Jesus and He would pull me up again out of the pit and set my feet upon the Rock.

“He reached down and drew me from the deep,
dark hole where I was stranded,
mired in the muck and clay.
With a gentle hand, He pulled me out
To set me down safely on a warm rock;
He held me until I was steady enough
to continue the journey again.”
Psalm 40:2 Voice

Remember! You are so special to God! You have been created uniquely for a special purpose only you can fill. Jesus loves you so much that He sacrificed His life for you. His arms are wide open with welcome, longing for you to run into them. Yes, life can be messy. Yes, it can hurt so much and be so hard. But He cares about broken hearts and delights to heal them.

Trudy den Hoed

I can’t live without Jesus, and my passion is to be more like Him. Other than Him, my priorities are towards my family and hurting souls.

Website - http://freedtofly.me

Twitter - @TrudyDenHoed