The Point of Grace

My mother in law encouraged me to tell and write my story. She is a counselor and knows that I have had past hurts that have surfaced again and again under different circumstances. She told me it would be hard to write parts of it. It would be freeing, and it would also become heavy in some places. She advised me to intersperse the heavy with the light.


I interpret that to me mean, intersperse the pain with some joy. Instead of reliving the pain, recount it and find joy in the healing from that pain.

So because I sense that the experience that I have been relating is very heavy, probably more to me then others, I am going to share with you today where God has lead me.

Telling my experience has helped me to process what my thinking pattern has always been since childhood and how I allowed that negative thinking (self-talk some people call it) to drag me down in tough situations till there was nothing left of me.

I am happy to say, I don’t feel like that anymore.

God has been the main factor in my healing. Others may not believe this but I tell you, I know from experience that there IS a Great controversy out there between good and evil and it has raged within my own heart. I know the difference between crippling rage and sweet peaceful joy. I know the difference between hatred of self and “Acceptance with Joy”. And I know the source of both.

I read a title of an article wrong this morning, during my morning devotions. It read, “Dressed for Dignity”. I read, “Designed for Dignity”! I stopped right there. The way I read it spoke to me. God designed me for dignity! He designed you for that too. He even designed the Staff at school years ago for Dignity. Not dignity in self gratification with our noses held high, with a false wall of arrogance protecting our pride, but an inward, peaceful dignity. The ability to stand up and say, I count with God! He makes me beautiful, honorable, worthy, full of Grace (forgiveness). I can be set apart, distinct and noble in God. And when I know this, I treat others with the same dignity.

It pains me to have learned over the years that several of the people I have met and many of the people I have gone to school with have thrown out God because they have connected God with their rough experiences or connected His character with that of the characters of authority figures over them who themselves felt no dignity.

One thing that I do know and I recognized about three years after I left school is that there were people who were not well, who were in leadership or authority positions. I’m beginning to see that more and more clearly. Some of the staff were burned out from too much work and pressure – no time or place to come apart and rest a while, others had internal family issues with no spiritual guidance or anyone to encourage them. Other staff were as suppressed as the students and the whole place lacked of God.

The problem was not God, The problem was a LACK of God!

If God is the center of action anywhere, at school, or in my life and yours today, There would be peace of heart!

When we “know and believe the love that God has for us, when we know that God is love! And when we dwell in God and God dwells in us, our love is made perfect,… because as he is, so are we in this world!” 1 Jn. 4:16

I can no longer hold it against those people who claimed God but hated me. I can only pray that they have found God as he really is, and are striving as I am now to reflect his ideals for them.

It was not God’s intention to hurt, kill and destroy. We know who that is!  Jesus warns us about Satan.... "The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." (John 10:10-11)

It was all part of a Greater picture, there was and still is a Great Controversy over each heart, over every man, woman and child regardless of status, or creed, staff or student. Would that I had had the spiritual fortitude and insight myself back then to get down on my knees and pray for my enemies (or would it be better to say trench mates?), in their struggle.

God forgive me!