“LIVING WATER” A SEARCH FOR MEANING My personal testimony by Janet Huhn

BACKGROUND BIBLE STORY USED FOR MY TESTIMONY:
JESUS OFFERS LIVING WATER TO THE WOMAN AT THE WELL

John 4:7-30 “There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give Me a drink.’ For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Therefore, the Samaritan woman said to Him, ‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?’ For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, “Give Me a drink,” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.’ She said to Him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do You get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?’ Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.’ “The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw.’ He said to her, ‘Go, call your husband and come here.’ The woman answered and said, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You have correctly said, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly.’ The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to Him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am He.’ At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, ‘What do You seek?’ or, ‘Why do You speak with her?’ So the woman left her water pot, and went into the city and said to the men, ‘Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?’ They went out of the city and were coming to Him.”

DEDICATION
This personal testimony is dedicated to my dear brother and sister in the Lord, Ed and Lillian Miller who have been God’s inspiring example for me to follow on how to live a Christ-centered life. It’s one thing to learn principles in Bible study about living such a life, but how blessed it is to be able to experience it in flesh and blood through such dedicated saints.

2 Corinthians 3:2-3, “You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.”

Ed has been a faithful channel through which the Holy Spirit has continually widened our eyes in amazement in progressive revelation knowledge, seeing more and more and more of our Lord Jesus at our weekly Christ-centered Bible studies. His efforts to keep his messages plain and simple, centered on Jesus, sprinkled with quaint stories and testimonies, has provided an endless supply of living water for the life of this very hungry redeemed sinner.

PROLOGUE
This is a story about my life, the outer framework of what I did and what occurred along the way. It includes my feelings and viewpoints during what I call a “personal quest” towards discovering who I was and what my purpose was for being here.

I am over seventy-five years old and no longer able to ignore the finality of my years; watching my body change and feeling the aches and pains of older age have stopped me from proclaiming, “I still feel like a thirty-year-old.” Friends and family are quickly passing away. Decisions need to be made about when to retire and where and how to live in my remaining years. Major decisions appear to be staring me squarely in the face.

Growing older has come with a lot of reflection about the past. By writing my story, I feel that while I’m reminding myself of all that I’ve learned, it’s also encouraging for me to see how connected all the seemingly miscellaneous events really were and are; a part of God’s master plan. I’ll never figure out the whole plan, but I do delight in seeing His “golden flickers” of bits and pieces of the puzzle that occasionally drift my way.

When I first was inspired to write my life’s story, I wanted to share something that might be of significance to leave behind for others. What had my life really been about? What could be more significant than my discovery of an intimate life in Jesus who said He is THE Life, the One who is in union with me as my very life? In sharing my story, I can trace how that journey has brought me to the end of my struggling self-life to an acceptance of His Life as my only life, the Exchanged Life. My story, my history, is then His-story!

In the midst of all the drama of my earthly life, there was a yearning to find a place where I felt like I “belonged”. I’ve discovered how important family is, a family beyond an earthly mother, father and children; a family that is God’s family. There are no perfect people or perfect earthly families. My search for meaning, I believe, was a search to find that safe, all-loving perfect place I could finally come “home” to; a place of truly belonging.

People might ask, “Why does it have to be belief in Jesus?” For me, He IS that all-loving place I did finally find as my real home. This was where I met the God of all-love who had actually walked on the earth two thousand years ago and who wanted to reside inside of me and continue His walk in this world in me. I’ve seen no greater love than for God to come down to us in the form of His own Son, Jesus, who stepped aside from His divinity to be with us in human form, who suffered and died on the cross to cover for our sins with His shed blood. He took upon Himself all of our guilt and shame, bringing all true believers with Him into His resurrected life, into a “born again” life, where we are spiritually ascended and seated with Him in heavenly places as part of God’s original family, without spot or wrinkle.We can’t know God without knowing Him in an intimately personal and relational way. That’s why it had to be Jesus. I didn’t want to just know about a God who’s “out there somewhere” way up in heaven. I hungered for something more real, more tangible, more sure and something that once was actually flesh and blood. 2 Peter 1:19, “So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.”

There are those who think they believe in “no God”. But then what man is there that has walked on this earth who can ever attain to sinless love, that can ever completely satisfy our search for meaning, acceptance, peace and rest? I think this world’s deteriorating condition of unrest attests to man’s lack of ability to love and be at peace. I think those who keep striving towards making this world into some type of “heaven on earth”, are blinded to the reality of the depravity that surrounds us and the futility of it all.

Jesus often stated that His kingdom is not of this world. Our real home began with God and He wants it to end with God. We can, if we’re willing to answer His knock and open the door to let Him in, begin to enjoy a foretaste of heaven right here within ourselves; a bit of heaven to go to heaven in. Luke 17:20-21 “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, ‘Lo here!’ or ‘Lo there!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”

I’ve spent many years after Jesus first opened my eyes, just walking with Him through the opportunities of life, getting to know Him as Savior from my sins. And now He’s showing me how He can be in me “all in all” as I continue on in my journey in Him. In the beginning I was just enjoying His presence in my personal daily walk with Him and being awed by His grace. The scripture I did learn was through the many sermons I listened to over the years. What I heard just verified for me what I already believed, that the Bible was all about bringing us into a very personal moment to moment relationship with the living, loving God-man named Jesus.

He’s created an ever-growing hunger in me to see even more of Him revealed in the Bible. I’m being increasingly blessed as Jesus continues to reveal Himself through His written word. The Holy Spirit can make scriptures come alive with Jesus. My life story and experiences may not look like other people’s experiences, but perhaps there are others who may have a similar hunger for a place of rest to finally come home to. I pray the Spirit’s drawing power to open the eyes of unbelievers and believers alike. John 12:32, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”

CHAPTER ONE: GROWING UP
I feel fortunate to have had the parents, family and many good childhood experiences that I’ve had. My parents were industrious, productive people who taught me a lot about common sense. Mom got me hooked on her love for adventure and creativity. They absolutely loved us the best way they could. Since I’m writing from a spiritual perspective, I’ll be sharing some negative experiences that happened in my growing-up years, only because of the profound effect it has had as a catalyst in my ongoing quest for answers, direction and healing in my life – what I call “my” spiritual journey. It might at times sound like I’m saying I was a victim. Even though I spent years believing that, I now know all too well the depravity that dwells in my own self-centered, self-righteous soul. I understand that God had pre-planned all of my life circumstances for His purposes before I was born, and that His desire was always that I be restored back to Him and His original family.

I was born into a middle-class family in Asbury Park, New Jersey on November 21, 1943, 6 months before World War 2. My dad worked on a delivery truck for the Coca Cola Bottling Company. My brother, Walter, four years older than I, had been the first child, first grandchild, and the reigning prince who wasn’t thrilled with sharing his throne with me. That became an ongoing issue between us for many years. Because Mom labeled me as the “easy going” one, her way of dealing with Walt’s jealousy and hostility towards me was by telling me to just ignore him and he would stop. He never did and I never got the hang of how to ignore him. I adored Walt and wanted him to like me. It seemed to be a losing battle.

Many years later mom told me that because Walter had been a difficult baby and child, she was concerned that if she disciplined him, he would become more rebellious than he already was. Dad told me that he would have been stricter with Walter but that it was a point of contention between him, and mom and he didn’t want to “create more waves”. Mom and Dad argued a lot. He spent many hours working and was active in various civic and political groups. It seemed to me like this was his way of avoiding the problems at home. Speaking with Walt years later, he told me that the reason he treated me poorly was because it was a way he could vent the frustrations he had with mom and dad.

I was growing up as a very hurt and angry little girl, believing Mom and Dad didn’t care because they allowed Walt’s aggressive behavior to continue without consequences. I kept most of those feelings buried inside. I do remember one incident in kindergarten where I pulled the chair out from under the teacher because she forgot that it was my turn to hold the flag during the pledge of allegiance; another painful episode of not being acknowledged. I ended up in the principal’s office and the repercussions from it were enough to nip that kind of public display in the bud.

I was a quiet girl and not comfortable in large groups of people. Walter was extremely friendly and gregarious, loving to be the center of attention. Our parents were also outgoing, and they came from families who were, as well. So, early on I felt a sense of not quite belonging or that, perhaps, something was wrong with me. My experience of our getting together with extended family, was of people who drank excessively and told jokes.

My paternal grandmother was the only other quiet person in the family and the one I felt closest to. Thank God for Gram. She let me know that she loved me just the way I was and that I didn’t have to perform or look a certain way for her. She thought I was wonderful, no matter what, and she was my lifeline to the unconditional love I hungered for. I feel fortunate that she got to live with us for 6 years in the upstairs apartment of our home. She was an affectionate person who was free with her hugs and kisses. I can’t remember mom ever hugging us. Mom’s way of caring was by buying things for us, cooking great meals and taking care of the house. Dad could be more affectionate but was hardly ever home. When he was, he’d often be fighting with mom. Besides, any affection he might show towards me could trigger jealous episodes with my brother.

Dad was a sports enthusiast. My brother’s way of getting Dad’s attention was through playing sports. Later on in college, Walt became a Little All American basketball player. He wasn’t a naturally gifted athlete, but his determination to succeed was fueled by dad’s adulation. Walt was the first person on either side of our family to graduate college. Going to college was big on my parents’ “must do” list for us.

In 1957 I graduated eighth grade. Entering high school felt like being thrown into an ice-cold tub of water, shocking me into the reality of the “dog eat dog” world of peer pressure. Gone were the nine years with the same twenty familiar grammar school kids: my years of innocence. There were three hundred students in our freshman class. I found out in short order that what you wore, how you looked, and who you hung around with mattered a lot.

I was jolted into having to grow up fast. I began to primp myself with the latest outfits from the trendy local clothing stores and styled my hair in a popular bouffant hairdo; trying to morph into what an “in” person might look like. However, my insides weren’t morphing very well. I didn’t feel good about myself. On top of that, Walter was a senior again, as he had to take extra courses to prepare for college. His continuous mocking of me in school, as well as at home, took a huge toll and I began to develop an anxiety/performance disorder. Eventually, by my senior year, my way of coping with my unrest was to fortify myself with a few swigs of alcohol stolen from my parents’ liquor cabinet before leaving for school.

I couldn’t wait for graduation. My grades had deteriorated from high honor roll as a freshman to being so low that I barely graduated. It was amazing that I was accepted into college. I really didn’t want to go but felt that it was what I should do; so many others were, and my parents always expected us to do so. I was quickly sliding down a slippery slope of unreality and confusion and it felt like I might not make it in life. So, at my pleading, in order to continue getting what felt like “square box” me through the round holes of life, Dad sent me to see a psychiatrist he knew. The doctor gave me a prescription for the anti-anxiety drug Milltown and sent me on my way.

CHAPTER TWO: A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
My first spiritual experience was when I was about eight years old. I wouldn’t have been able to describe it in those words then, but now I can, because it vividly lives on in my memory as an awareness of something not of the material world around me.

I was sitting next to my parents in a pew of our crowded Presbyterian Church during a Sunday morning service. It was an early nineteenth century green granite building with huge stained-glass windows and a pipe organ reaching high to the cathedral ceiling. For little girl me, it seemed like an enchanted castle.

As the organ began playing a hymn, the powerful sounds from its pipes seemed to penetrate through to a place inside of me that lit up and “hurt good”. I began to cry but the tears weren’t my usual ones, like when my brother had teased me. These were tears that seemed to have sparkles and rainbows in them. Something seemed present that enveloped the room, was beyond the room, and yet was all inside me, too. As I looked around, it was obvious that no one else was crying. I just saw stoic faces. So, feeling rather awkward, I quickly brushed away the tears.

I didn’t share about that experience with anyone. However, there were to be other extraordinary spiritual experiences I’d have later on in life. These all have become important landmarks when I look back on my life’s journey, as I do believe that God had always been there, trying to get my attention, and in this case just to become aware that there was something beyond what I could see with my natural eyes.

CHAPTER THREE: FLUNKING OUT ON LIFE
Returning back to 1961, at 18 years of age, and hopefully fortified with my Milltown prescription, I took off for Beaver College, a girls’ school north of Philadelphia. I was terrified and soon began to use many more pills than prescribed. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to refill the prescription too often without raising suspicion, I began buying liquor (lying that I was twenty-one) that I hid in my dorm room which I drank in between using the pills. During really difficult times I would mix them together to the point that I would end up feeling like a “zombie”.

At the end of my freshman year, I received a letter informing me that I couldn’t return as a sophomore, due to my below par grade average. My parents convinced me to sign up for the local Monmouth College in the fall. I lasted only two weeks before dropping out. Embarrassment and humiliation were heaped onto my already heavy load of other emotional problems, and I spent the next nine months battling a dark depression that left me unable to function well, much less hold a job.

I began weekly counseling sessions with a nice, caring Jewish therapist. He was like a wise and loving parent. He got me to express the hurt and anger I had buried inside myself for so long, and I learned that telling my truth was a good thing.

By June 1962 I felt well enough to handle a job and began working at the Jersey Central Power and Light Company. However, my struggles to relate well within groups of people continued to haunt me there. There was an employee named Donnie who took a special interest in me. He was twenty-seven and married. He claimed it hadn’t been a real marriage for years. I was nineteen and attracted to him. It was nice to feel the excitement of romance and having some pleasure and happiness come into my life. We “fell in love”. Donnie got a quick Alabama divorce and two months later we were married. What I hadn’t realized at the time was that his mother disapproved of his divorce and remarriage, to the point that she was threatening to cut him out of their will. Two months later, Donnie left me to return to his first wife.

Now I had the humiliation and shame of flunking out of school, as well as flunking out on marriage. This time, though, armed with the ability to express the anger that I had learned in therapy, I felt emboldened, like a Don Quixote with a sword drawn, to venture out on a quest to conquer the world by having fun. That brought me in short order into another relationship with one of Donnie’s childhood friends. He introduced me to sailing, snow skiing, traveling and we shared a love for animals. However, he also had a love for other girls which turned into a nine-year roller-coaster ride of an “on-again off-again” relationship between us. For a while, that hardly mattered to me, since I was determined to live a carefree life, anyway.

It was around this time that my life was, quite literally, struck by a life-threatening event while at a ski club picnic at the beach. A club member’s sixteen-year-old daughter and I, age twenty-two, were in the ocean surfing. When huge, dark clouds began quickly blowing in from the west, we hustled ourselves out of the water with our surfboards overhead. As we scurried up the beach, a bright light blinded us, followed by an ear deafening clap of thunder. Joni was only about two feet away from me. I heard the crackle of electricity from the lightening traveling through my hands. My knees buckled and I fell to the sand. Ski club members rushed over to us. They helped me back to the beach house while Joni lay still on the sand. Ambulances were called. One took me and the other took Joni with her mother to the hospital.

I was told in the emergency room that I had only superficial burns on my hands and feet. They sent me out to be with Joni’s mother in the waiting room. When the doctor came out, he told her that Joni had been killed instantly. It was a traumatic situation for me and hard to believe that I had been standing right next to her only an hour before. Yet, I was still here and she had been killed. How could that be? I felt a lot of guilt being the one still alive and sitting there right next to her devastated mother.

I hadn’t been sure about God and still wasn’t. I called myself an agnostic. So, it was interesting that shortly after this tragedy, I began to sense that maybe I was still alive because God had a plan for me. The childhood church spiritual experience was still tucked away somewhere in my memory. However, I continued calling myself an agnostic because I wasn’t sure about “all of that religious stuff”. Besides, I was much more interested in continuing on with my life-conquering quest of having fun.

(God’s Providence: While writing this memoir, I received a phone call from Donnie. It has been fifty-five years since I last heard from him. He called to apologize for what had occurred in our marriage! Being eighty years old and in poor health, he said that he felt a need to resolve some “loose ends” in his life.)

CHAPTER FOUR: LIFE CONQUERING QUEST INTERNATIONAL
I met a girl in my ski club and her name was Jan, too. She had a dream to one day travel extensively through Europe. I was intrigued by the possibility of expanding my life conquering adventures to foreign lands. So, we joined forces, and picked a departure date, saving our money toward our goal of taking an extended trip abroad.

We booked passage on a Yugoslavian passenger/freighter leaving New York City in late October 1965 and arriving seven days later in Casablanca, Morocco. The trouble was that two weeks prior to our departure I found out that I was pregnant. It was a shock. I told no one but Jan, assuring her that I still planned to go on the trip and that I’d figure out what to do about it later.

On our voyage across the Atlantic we met two ship officers. We spent a lot of time with them, and I ended up sharing about my pregnancy with one. He told me that abortions were legal in Yugoslavia and that he would be willing to set me up with a doctor friend he knew in his hometown of Rijeka which was just over the border from Trieste, Italy. It sounded like a good solution to me, to take care of this little “problem” early on in our travels. I was already experiencing nausea which was getting much worse in the rough seas we were encountering while crossing the Atlantic. Arrangements were made to meet them one month later in Rijeka, when they would be at home on leave.

When we disembarked in Casablanca, Jan and I took a train to Tangiers and then took a ferry across to Gibraltar, where I bought a car. I won’t go into a lot of detail about all the adventures we had in Europe, as that alone could fill another book. We drove that vehicle up the coast of Spain, across the French Riviera, and on into Italy, stopping in Venice, before crossing the border into Yugoslavia.

We met our officer friends in Rijeka, as planned, and our first order of business was to see the doctor. I learned that he would be doing the procedure in his home, since I was not a Yugoslavian citizen, and he couldn’t do it in the hospital. I was rather naïve. I think I expected it to be like going in to have a tooth pulled.

When we arrived at his modest apartment, he and his wife ushered me into their kitchen where they helped me onto a table that they had prepared like an examination table with linens and a pillow. It began like an obstetric exam. They didn’t speak any English, so I had no idea what to expect, until I was jolted into reality by a searing pain in my abdomen. I almost passed out. The room began to swirl, and I was alternately sweating and shaking. They were obviously doing this without anesthesia, as his wife held me down.

After about 20 minutes, which seemed like forever, he sent me back to our hotel with some pain pills. I went to bed curled up in a fetal position, tossing from side to side in agony. It was my twenty second birthday and I was thousands of miles away from home in a strange country, scared about what I had just done, and wondering if I was even going to survive. The realization that I had actually just destroyed a living person began to set in, along with the suffocating darkness of guilt and shame.

I did finally fall into a delirious sleep and was grateful to wake up in the morning to a sliver of sunlight coming through the shutters. Jan said that our officer friends wanted to take us out to show us around their town. I jumped at the opportunity to get going and take my mind off the still gnawing physical discomfort and the awful thoughts of what I had just done. None of them ever spoke about it. They were great accomplices in my denial.

After visiting with our friends for a few days, we left Rijeka to return to Italy, where we were scheduled to spend the Christmas holidays with Jan’s uncle, a priest, who lived in Naples. While traveling out of Yugoslavia, Jan was driving, and as we descended down the mountain, she hit a patch of ice and slid across the road. A military truck loaded with soldiers was coming up the other way and we slammed head on into them. Twenty or so soldiers jumped out and surrounded our car to see how we were. We were taken to a hospital in Trieste, Italy with minor injuries. We made friends with a nurse and others while there and ended up staying in that city for several weeks. When we were ready to resume our travels, since the car had been totaled, we began to hitch hike south through Italy.

After visiting with her uncle, a priest in Naples, we stopped in Rome and Florence, and then headed to northern Italy, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. We stayed a month in Wengen, Switzerland, a ski resort, where we found jobs as waitresses.

We then traveled back to Italy, where Jan came down with appendicitis and had surgery at a hospital in Milan. While sending a message home to Jan’s family at the Western Union, I met an American Baptist minister who overheard my conversation. His family lived in Milan, as his ministry was there, and they needed a nanny for his kids. They also knew another American family that was looking for help with their kids. So, they took us under their wings, and we ended up staying another two months living with these two lovely families.

However, the excitement of traveling was beginning to wear thin, as well as my pocketbook, so I decided that it was my time to return home. Jan wanted to stay. So, I returned back to Trieste where I booked passage to return home on an Italian passenger liner, The Colombo. While waiting several days for the boat to arrive, I met with a young man I had made friends with on our previous visit after the car accident. After returning back to the states, I found out that I was pregnant again. I had gone to Europe pregnant and six months later I was returning pregnant.

Once at home, my mom became suspicious. While looking through my pocketbook, she found the doctor’s pregnancy test results. So, this time she and my father were aware of the situation. Since abortions were illegal in the states, I ended up having a friend recommend someone who came to my parents’ home to do an illegal abortion. He painlessly injected a saline solution into me that caused a miscarriage. It was nowhere near as traumatic as the first time. I guess I was getting better, too, at burying my feelings of guilt and shame.

I began looking for a job and didn’t want one where I’d just be punching a time clock. I answered an interesting ad in the newspaper for a travel agent. Being fresh back from Europe seemed to qualify me for the position and I was hired. It was minimum wage, but I didn’t care about the money. If I was going to spend eight hours a day working, I wanted it to be something that I enjoyed doing.

Three months later one of the partners wanted to sell their share of the business. My mom and dad decided that they would take the money they would have spent helping me complete college and put it towards buying into the partnership. They had helped with my brother’s education and felt it would only be fair to help me in this way.

I ended up running the travel agency for the next 15 years. It never made a profit and I paid myself a meager salary. However, I loved doing it and I enjoyed being my own boss. I also had the benefits afforded travel agents of being able to travel anywhere in the world for free or very inexpensively. My father was never very impressed with my endeavor. He couldn’t see beyond the financial bottom line.

While I continued to take my carefree adventures around the world, my sometimes boyfriend at home was still in the picture. It was during one of the “on-agains” with him that I became pregnant for the third time. This time I wanted to have the baby. I was twenty-seven years old and felt it was time for me to settle down and start a family. However, he wasn’t ready. He convinced me to have an abortion, promising me that we would get married and have a family in the near future. The abortion guy came again, and the nasty deed was done for the third time in three years.

CHAPTER FIVE: FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE?
About three years later, when I was twenty-nine years old, a well-dressed fellow came into my travel agency to purchase an airline ticket to bring his brother in from California to attend their dad’s funeral. His parents had been long time customers of mine. His name was Fred Huhn. He looked interesting and attractive to me. However, after purchasing the tickets, it would be another five months before we would meet again.

That following May, on a quiet Saturday afternoon in 1973, the door to my travel agency opened and when I looked up, there was Fred; this time dressed casually in jeans. He said that he had come to get some information about taking a trip in September with his girlfriend to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and renting a sailboat.

After giving him the information, he needed, we spent several hours sharing back and forth about ourselves. I already knew his cousin who was my high school classmate, and I knew that his parents had owned one of the first drive-in restaurants on the New Jersey shore back in the early 1940’s. He also shared how much he liked dogs and that he had an Afghan. I had a Chesapeake Bay retriever that I brought to the office with me. We found out that we both were planning to attend the same dog show on the following Saturday. We ended our time by agreeing to meet with each other there.

After the dog show the following week, he asked me out for dinner. We went to a local Italian restaurant. Sitting at the bar for an hour while waiting for a table, gave us time to share a bit more about our lives. Fred had been married for three years to a girl he met while he attended college in Cleveland, Ohio. He never finished school. He was only a semester shy of graduation when his marriage failed. They divorced and he moved back to New Jersey. He had been home for a year and was working for his cousin as a heavy-duty equipment operator.

He told me that his ex-wife had gotten involved with her boss at work and that she eventually ended up marrying him. He also shared that he and his wife tried to live together while working out their divorce, and that there was a physical confrontation in which he pushed her down and began to choke her. She then issued a restraining order against him. Because I wasn’t sure what “normal” was as far as male relationships were concerned, I dismissed it as just the sort of thing that happens between two people who are going through a divorce while trying to live together. He shared with me that he had been battling depression since coming home. He claimed he truly loved his wife and that she was a wonderful person. He couldn’t understand why she got involved with someone else. There was a sadness about Fred that made me feel sorry for him, as he seemed to be a nice guy.

He told me that he was a Christian. When he was 19, a friend had taken him to a Billy Graham movie at a local theatre and he had accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. He stood very firmly on his faith. It seemed very important to him, even though he didn’t read the Bible, attend church or pray; the usual things I thought religious people did. He was a curiosity to me in that regard. I told him that I was an agnostic. It didn’t seem to be an issue for him. And his Jesus didn’t matter much to me, either.

Since I had been going through one of my “off again” times with my “sometimes boyfriend”, I was ripe to find a new beau. We were both on the rebound. I was approaching thirty years of age, and anxiously looking to settle down and begin a family. Fred did not like being alone and was looking for a steady companion he could depend on being there for him. It was interesting that before Fred’s dad had passed away, he had told Fred about me and that he thought I might be someone he should get to know. I had liked his dad when he was one of my clients. It was like getting his stamp of approval posthumously.

We began dating intensely right away. On our first night together, his mom actually passed away. So, our relationship started with Fred losing his marriage, his dad and his mom, all within a one-year period. He felt that he had little direction in his life. And I felt confident that I could help him find happiness again: that all he needed was someone to love him back into getting onto his feet again. On July 4, what would have been his mom’s 60th birthday, Fred gave me her engagement ring. We planned our wedding for two months later. Fred’s plans to go on a trip in September to St. Thomas with a girlfriend turned into plans for a honeymoon with me to Bermuda.

Several weeks prior to our wedding, Fred had gotten upset about something that made no sense to me and was so trivial that I can’t even remember what it was about. He grabbed me in the car and got so nasty and verbally abusive that I gave him the ring back and declared that the marriage was off.

He followed me home and tearfully pleaded with me to forgive him, promising it would never happen again. He felt that we could still make this work and that all relationships have problems. I felt I could hang in there to help him build some confidence and find happiness.

So, on Sept. 8, 1973, a lovely Indian summer day, Fred and I were married at Sunset Island Park in Asbury Park, N. J. It was a casual affair, a small gathering of close friends and relatives. My travel agent employee’s husband was a county judge, and he performed a simple, secular ceremony. We had a reception at our favorite restaurant, and then left the following day for our Bermuda honeymoon.

We stayed at the Southampton Princess Hotel on their gourmet dining plan. I had been to Bermuda twice before and it was one of my favorite destinations. I believed a lovely place like this was going to be a wonderful beginning to our lives together and that we would surely share a happy seven days there.

On the first day, we took a harbor cruise on a touring boat. I was using Fred’s camera (funny that later on I became a professional photographer) and, for some reason, he didn’t like the way I was holding it. He got nasty and verbally abusive. I walked away from him and went to the upper deck, laying down on a towel to sunbathe. The next thing I knew, Fred was straddling me, with his hands around my neck. After pushing him off, I kept my distance from him for the rest of the boat tour.

Upon returning to the hotel, the repentance scenario with tears repeated itself. The remainder of our “dream” honeymoon was cast into what felt like a heavy fog, as the reality of my predicament began to set in. Fred acted like nothing had happened. He just had that familiar sad, lonely look in his eyes. I would come to call it the “puppy dog” look.

When we returned back to New Jersey, I told him that the only way I would stay with him was if we went to counseling. We made arrangements immediately, meeting with my former Jewish psychologist. In the meantime, I found out that I had actually gotten pregnant on our honeymoon. This was something I had wanted but my joy was complicated, to say the least. Fred was okay with it, as long as I was happy.

When I was about three months pregnant, Fred and I were on our way to go somewhere in the van. As he pulled away from the house, he began one of his tirades. At a stop sign a block from our house, I told him that I had heard enough and that I was going to walk back home. I opened the door to get out, and as I put one foot on the pavement, he put his foot on the car accelerator. I ended up in a stony gutter on bloodied knees. I hobbled back home, while he followed me in the van. His well-honed repentance scenario played out again. He denied intentionally trying to hurt me, saying it was an accident, but I knew differently.

I immediately made a private appointment to see our psychologist about the incident. He told me that he believed that Fred had a personality disorder and that no amount of therapy could change that. Therapy might help by putting “Band-Aids” on the situation. He recommended group therapy for Fred. Fred was willing to do anything to keep us together. Extroverted Fred ended up loving his group, making friends with them and continued going for at least five years. But nothing ever changed with him or with our relationship.

One week after the car incident, I had a miscarriage. I found it hard to believe that it was due to the fall. It wasn’t such a terrible fall. My doctor told me that the first trimester is when most miscarriages occur. I was disappointed, but the doctor encouraged us to try again. A year later, I became pregnant for the second time and at three months I miscarried again. The doctor again said not to be discouraged.

Another year passed, and I became pregnant for the third time. When I began to bleed at three months, I went to a pregnancy specialist who put me on weekly hormone shots. It stopped the bleeding, and I carried the baby for six months before waking up one morning with contractions. I gave birth to a tiny one-and-a-half-pound little girl who never took a breath. We named her Carrie, after my favorite grandmother.

I was completely devastated; returning home without my baby girl was unbearably painful. I also had a gnawing guilt that I may have actually caused my miscarriages by injuring my body with all the abortions I’d had. The only bit of comfort I received at the time was from my little cockapoo doggie, Elsie, who had given birth to a litter of adorable little fluffy puppies that I was able to hold and cuddle while working through my grief. Fred had shown no emotion whenever I became pregnant, nor any remorse when they ended. The year was 1976. We had weathered three difficult years together.

CHAPTER 6: NOT OF THIS WORLD
Fred was not interested in going through any more pregnancies with me. He depended on me to be the strong one, and I didn’t know whether I had the strength to face another devastating loss. With mixed feelings, I agreed to have my tubes tied. It was to be a simple, one day outpatient procedure.

On the day of my appointment, after being wheeled into the operating room, the anesthesiologist explained the procedure to me and then hooked me up to the sedation. The next thing I was aware of was that I seemed to be floating and looking down from somewhere, watching the doctors and nurses work on me in the operating room. I felt like I was in a place of total serenity, peace, love, acceptance and belonging like I had never, ever experienced before.

As I looked down into that room, the people seemed to be like nervous little squeaky mice, busily scurrying around, completely oblivious to the existence of this other wonderful place of serenity I was in. I loved wherever it was I was at and had no desire to return to that bustling, uncomfortable, unaware world down there.

Then I heard my name being called, and it felt like I was being tugged by someone to come back down to that scary world. I thought, “No, no way am I going back there.” It seemed that I had no choice in the matter. I remember angrily saying, “What are you doing to me?” I was kicking and trying to resist. As I opened my eyes and looked around the white sterile room and at the nurse’s concerned face, I realized that indeed I was back. I began shaking violently from the coldness of the place. She put a blanket around me, but it didn’t provide the profound sense of total spirit/mind/body comfort and warmth I had just experienced in that “other place”.

I had returned but I had returned with memories of an incredible experience. As the anesthesia wore off, I still felt the glow and deep connection to where I had been. It had been profound. I didn’t know if it had been an “out of body experience” (I hadn’t died) or whether it had been the result of too much or the wrong kind of anesthesia. It really didn’t matter. That experience had been very real to me.

This had been a big deal, but I still wasn’t sure about God and religion. I didn’t know who I could talk to about it. Everyone in my circle of friends and family that I attempted to share it with would just smile and say, “That’s nice.” I felt so inadequate to find words to describe the profoundness of it. The incredible afterglow continued for at least six months before beginning to slowly fade away. Finally, the memory of it was like something I had read about in a book. I eventually got reabsorbed back into my old routines of life and that incredible experience slowly slipped down into those dark recesses of my mind and soul.

CHAPTER 7: A CHILD IS BORN
Fred was willing to go along with my idea to adopt a baby. We attended a meeting at the local Family and Children Services where we joined about one hundred other couples interested in adoption. The social worker explained that prospective parents were chosen by a lottery system. We would pick a number from a box and that number would be our order in line for adoption. We pulled number ninety-six. After being told that only an average of six to ten babies were placed a year, it looked like our chances for adoption there were slim to none.

We began researching foreign adoption, the most promising at the time being South America. We filled out the necessary paperwork, were fingerprinted and had been waiting for about a year for the process to play out, when a phone call came that dramatically changed the course of everything. It was from Family and Children Services. We were told that our number in line had dropped from ninety-six to sixteen, as they had changed their requirements for eligibility. They had decided to only place babies with childless couples. That eliminated a huge number of people who had either had one child already or had successfully become pregnant or had adopted through other means. This decision pushed us up to the front of the waiting line. They had just ended a parenting class with eight couples waiting for their babies. They wanted to know whether we were still interested, as we could be included in their next class of eight couples. We most definitely were!

So, the door to adoption was opened and becoming a mom was finally in sight. 1978 turned out to be a banner year for adoptions and their placements were moving quickly. Four months after our class, the agency called Fred at work to inform him that he could possibly be a father to a new little baby boy. This baby came as a surprise to them, as the mother hadn’t contacted the agency prior to the birth. It would only be official after she was discharged from the hospital and came into the agency to sign the necessary release papers. However, days passed by, and the mother never showed up to sign the papers, not even returning their phone calls.

We were told that we had a choice to make. We could choose to take the next baby in line, which had already been born, a little girl, or we could take the baby boy home, with the chance that the mother could always change her mind and decide to return for him. However, if she did come back and sign the release papers, he would be ours. If they didn’t hear from her, though, we would have to wait three months and then go before a judge who would finalize the adoption in our favor.

We both agreed that this little boy was meant to be ours. We had already named him – Joseph Sherman Huhn. Joseph was Fred’s dad’s name and Sherman was my dad’s name. “Jo” in Joseph and “Sh” in Sherman spelled Josh. So, we called him Josh. We brought our little premature 4-pound 16-ounce miracle home, and this agnostic mom began telling everyone that he was a “gift from God”!

We remained in a three-month limbo, waiting to see if the birth mother would come in to sign the papers, or maybe even decide that she wanted him back. My mom declared that there would be no way she would allow her new grandson to be taken away; and that she would move to Canada with him so that it could never happen! But that wouldn’t be necessary. Three months later the judge declared that he was officially ours. What a day of great rejoicing! He couldn’t have been any more our son than if we had conceived him ourselves.

When we adopted Josh, we were told that the biological mother had given birth one year prior to another boy and placed that baby up for adoption, as well. So, Josh had an older brother. They said that the adoptive parents of that child were going through a divorce, and they didn’t think it would be wise to contact them. Miraculously, four years later, a customer of mine came into my travel agency and mentioned that she knew someone who had adopted a boy a year prior to our adoption of Josh, from the same agency and that the background information sounded the same as Josh’s. To make a long story short, as a result of that encounter, we were able bring the boys together and they have been very close ever since.

Another long story is how we contacted his biological mother when Josh was seventeen years old. It was something he had wanted to do. Even though she has not wanted any further contact with him, he was satisfied just to have been able to meet her.

CHAPTER 8: TILL DEATH WE DO PART
Our marriage seemed to worsen with the new baby on the scene. Fred was jealous of any attention I gave to Josh. He often acted more like a jealous brother than a father. I felt trapped in a triangle between Fred and our son.

Fred and I had a lot in common. We enjoyed nature, animals, travelling, and eating out. My mom and dad loved him like a son. I couldn’t understand why he was always so unhappy. I never knew, even in the middle of very special intimate moments together, what might set him off into a tirade. I felt like the proverbial mouse that gets shocked every time it tries to go for the cheese. It was definitely an up and down “yoyo” relationship.

Josh was two and a half years old when an argument escalated into a physical attack so scary that our neighbors called the police. That was the final straw for me. I was tired of trying to handle Fred with all his problems. I moved out of the house with Josh and filed for divorce. We agreed to use the same lawyer to try to work things out amicably.

Several months later while waiting for a court date, I got a phone call from my friend, Jan, in California, my old travel companion in Europe. She proceeded to tell me about a friend of hers who had a complete personality transformation occur in his life by attending EST – the Erhardt Training Seminar. It was a sixty-hour two weekend “self-actualization” training where many people were experiencing profound changes in their lives. She thought that perhaps Fred might be interested in attending one.

Fred was willing to do anything that might keep us together. I was just hoping it might help us remain civil as parents after the divorce. Fred signed on for a seminar that was being held an hour away in Edison, N. J. After the completion of the second weekend, participants were encouraged to invite guests to their last night of “graduation”. Fred invited me and I said I would attend. There was time set aside after the ceremony for an EST staff person to sit down with the guests to encourage them to sign up for their own seminar experience. Even though I saw no transformational changes in Fred, I was always opened to do anything that might help me with my own issues to live a more fulfilling life. So, I signed up.

The training had strict rules about when you could go to the bathroom, when you could talk and when you could eat. It lasted ten hours each day. They spent several hours discussing the rules and answering people’s questions. People who had special medical conditions could get exemptions added to their agreement. They explained that the purpose for the strict rules was to show how loosely most of us hold to our commitments and how crazy we can get about not keeping them. Many people got angry just listening to the explanations of the rules. They gave people the opportunity to leave and get their money back, if they didn’t want to stay. About twenty percent left at that point.

There was one session where we had to go up on the stage to be confronted with an EST staff yelling in our faces drill sergeant style. They explained beforehand, not to believe what was being said to us. It was just to show how much power we give other people in what they say to us. Even though I hated it (still suffering from performance anxiety), I made the commitment to stick it out for the sake of the seminar. Many people ended up running out during this exercise, as well as at other times during the seminar, which was part of the point about giving other people power over us and making commitments and not keeping them.

I understood about running away because I had done that a lot in my life. As a matter of fact, through marriage therapy I had learned that my running away from Fred and his anger, actually intensified his deep fear of rejection and abandonment, triggering him into physically trying to restrain me from leaving.

Fred had many early childhood issues surrounding abandonment. As a baby, his parents worked eighteen hours a day at their drive-in restaurant and they also went to Florida one month every year, leaving him at home with his elderly grandmother. His brother, who was six years older, pushed him down the stairs when Fred was a three-year-old, breaking his collar bone. He remembered the pain and loneliness of being on the phone with his mother who was vacationing in Florida and being told by his grandmother not to tell her what happened because she didn’t want his parents to worry.

His brother, John, who was a rebellious and unmanageable child, was sent away to a military boarding school at nine years of age. John had also instigated some inappropriate behavior towards Fred with a group of neighborhood girls. I remember friends of Fred’s family, who knew him as a small child, mentioning to me how they remembered him often banging his head against the floor in fits of tantrums.

At my final night of graduation, the EST trainer asked us to think of something in our lives that we might be running away from. He said that whatever that might be, it would probably continue to follow us throughout our life until we turned around and met it head on and walked through it. At that moment I knew the biggest issue in my life would be my marriage. I decided I would return to Fred with a different attitude, looking at our difficulties more like an opportunity for me to grow as a person. I came to believe that if I honored my marriage commitment, it would work out better in the long run. It felt like walking back into a raging inferno, but I knew it was the right thing for me to do. My marriage commitment became written in stone from that day forward.

CHAPTER NINE: HELLO LORD!
Fred had always declared himself to be a Christian. Nothing I could ever say could sway him from his conviction that Jesus was his Savior. While we were separated, some of our friends began taking Fred to their church. After we got back together, he asked if I would like to go with him one Sunday. During our separation, I had begun to meet with some Jehovah’s Witnesses who came to my door, thinking perhaps they might have some answers to my “other world experience”. They were nice people and very caring about my questions. So, with my heart softened a bit by meeting with them, I told Fred I would go to the church service with him.

It was an Assembly of God church. I was surprised by the joy amongst the people as they sang, while clapping their hands and even dancing around during the service. It was nothing like the stoic church of my youth. I liked what seemed to be a carefree style and I continued to attend with Fred for several months.

Then one Sunday the pastor made an altar call. The sermon had stirred something inside of me (similar but much more intense to the stirring I’d had as a child in church). I didn’t want to go forward, yet when everyone had left the sanctuary, I stood there frozen and unable to leave. Within a few minutes I went to the altar and fell to my knees.

The pastor returned and kneeled next to me. He asked if I would accept Jesus as Lord and Savior of my life. My answer was that I couldn’t do it. As he continued to ask me, I continued to say I was unable to do it. Somehow, I knew that “I” couldn’t do it. I knew that God was the only one who could ever do anything anymore in my life. Looking back now, I realize that I probably sensed that he had already come into my heart as Lord, even as I was going forward, and maybe even had begun to prior to that. The pastor finally reworded his question and asked if I was willing for Jesus to be in my life and to that I said yes.

Through my tears of joy, I saw such brightness filled with peace and love. I felt enveloped by Jesus. It had been Him waiting there all along; not just in those special spiritual experiences I’d had, but in all my life’s experiences. He had always had plans for me, and His purpose was to keep drawing me closer to Him.

It seemed to me that most of the people in that church were searching for answers in the Bible, in the Sunday worship, in their liturgy or in their missions. It appeared that those things were more important to them than a personal relationship with Him. The more I heard scripture, the more validated I was that the Bible was directing us to a total reliance on Him, living in us – the one who proclaimed Himself to be the Living Word. People-friendly Fred loved going to church. I believed that God wanted me to continue attending, not only for Fred, but also to learn more of what this “church” thing was all about.

After about seven years of us attending there, one of the women that I had befriended was going through a messy divorce. She had five children. Three were still at home; ages four, eight and fourteen. The pastor offered to help her through her distress by counseling with her. In the course of those sessions, she became attracted to him, imagining that he was feeling the same way about her. I was aware how that could happen in counseling and is natural when someone takes the time to listen and care.

When her behavior became more obvious to the rest of the church, it blew up into a huge scandal. The district superintendents were called in and an investigation was made. A public meeting was held before the entire congregation at which time an announcement was made that she and her family would be banned from the fellowship. Fred and I felt that it wasn’t handled properly, and we couldn’t support the church’s decision. After leaving there, we spent years going to various other churches.

In the meantime, our marriage still seemed to be a disaster. Fred continued to have abusive tirades and I was still a hurting person who felt like a victim. We went through several marriage counselors, who after about a year, would throw up their hands and say to me, “Why do you stay with him?” However, my commitment to stay with Fred had been re-solidified with an absolute trust and faith in my Lord who I believed had the perfect plan for us.

CHAPTER TEN: LORD HELP US!
One day Fred got so upset that he pinned me down and began to strangle me. This time after fighting him off I felt it had to stop. So, I went down to the police station and took out a restraining order against him. This was the first time that I declared publicly that he was physically attacking me. We lived in a small town, and everyone knew him. It was also the first time I let friends and family know about the abuse he had inflicted on me through all those fifteen years. People knew we were having problems but never knew the details. My father didn’t believe me. He liked Fred so much that he wouldn’t believe that Fred could be abusive.

Fred had to appear in court and the judge ordered him to attend a men’s anger management counseling group. After several months, I had the restraining order lifted and he returned home. He never laid a hand on me again, but the verbal abuse continued.

Another friend told Fred about a Christian primal therapy clinic in Salisbury Maryland that had been helpful for him. On that friend’s recommendation, Fred signed up to travel to Salisbury for a three-week intensive counseling session. They specialized in regressing people down to memories of their early childhood years, usually their first three or “primal” years, in hopes that by uncovering and re-experiencing early traumatic incidences, that they could then make different decisions from an adult’s perspective on how to operate in life more effectively.

Again, nothing changed with Fred. In the process of learning about primal therapy, I became quite interested in it. When I heard about a course they were offering to train people to become lay primal therapists, I signed on. Over the next a year I would go down to Salisbury for eight different weekends of training with seven other trainees which would include practicing primal therapy on each other. I felt it might help to uncover some of my own early childhood issues and be helpful in my continuing search towards emotional healing.

Fred and I also took part in Marriage Enrichment weekends that they had. During one such weekend, they talked to us about personality types and how it could affect how couples related to each other. We were given the Myer-Briggs test to determine what our personality types were. I was an INFP and Fred was an ESFJ. Basically, that meant that we were opposites in our personality types except for the “F” being the same.

This is how it broke down in our personalities:
Jan INFP I – Introverted N – Intuitive F – Feeling P –Perceiving
Fred ESFJ E – Extroverted S – Sensate F – Feeling J – Judging

Being an introvert, I preferred being with small numbers of people, preferably one on one, whereas Fred, being an extrovert liked being with lots of people, especially in large groups. Being an intuitive I loved thinking about possibilities and going by my hunches while Fred, being a sensate preferred thinking about what was actual and based on past experiences. We were both feelers which meant that we based our decisions mostly by what we felt was humane rather than on what was just. We were more subjective than objective in our decision making. Being a perceiver, I am more inclined to adapt as I go and have more open options in my life, whereas Fred, being a judger, was more apt to want to plan ahead and have closure and be decisive.

Learning about my personality type made a huge impact on me, especially learning that I was an introvert. I was so ecstatic to know that my dislike for being in groups wasn’t some sort of emotional handicap. Twenty-five percent of the population are introverts. That means that the seventy-five percent who are extroverts basically rule the world. So, all our schools, churches and public organizations are set up to appeal to extroverts. No wonder I thought something was wrong with me and that I felt like a misfit in public situations most of my life. Most extroverts do think there’s something wrong with introverts. They’ve never had to learn to adapt to an introverted world like introverts have had to do in their extroverted one.

We both liked the Salisbury area. It reminded us of a lot of what it was like growing up at the Jersey Shore before it started becoming a bedroom community for commuters to New York City. Josh was nine years old, and we weren’t pleased with what we saw happening in the neighborhoods and schools where we lived in New Jersey. Salisbury seemed like a nicer, gentler place to raise our son. So, we bought a beautiful lakefront property and made the move to Maryland, just in time to enroll him into fourth grade. I completed my training and was given the Counseling Center’s approval to do lay primal counseling. Fred eventually found a position as a salesman at a local roof truss and floor joist company.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: SISTER PAT
It wasn’t easy moving away from the Jersey Shore where we knew so many people. We knew no one in Salisbury except the counselors at the counseling center. One day while I was reading a little local Christian newspaper called “The Manna”, on the front page was a picture of some Catholic nuns with two dogs and an article about them and their ministry called Joseph House. I was drawn to the doggies and one young nun named Sister Pat. In the article she shared about having been an alcoholic and how she had gone to the Twelve Step Alcoholics Anonymous program to get sober. I was really impressed by her openness. I thought that perhaps this would be a good place for me to meet people.

I got in touch with the Mother Superior, Sister Elizabeth, and she decided to place me as a volunteer in their center helping the poor. Sister Pat was in charge of that ministry. I became an interviewer, one of the people who would meet with those coming in for assistance, which was usually for money. We would investigate what they were telling us, by calling their landlords, utility companies, etc. to make sure that their claims were true.

I met another interviewer named Alice and, come to find out, she was counseling Sister Pat. When I shared with her about my training in primal counseling, she asked if I would mind helping her. She had begun to feel like she was at the end of what she was able to do for her. I said yes and began counseling Pat in primal therapy. It was 1989.

Pat’s issues were a lot deeper than just the alcohol addiction. She had already been professionally evaluated with having multiple other diagnoses. She had lived her entire life trying to be good. Her need to please others caused her to overextend herself at the convent, to the point that she was suffering from burn-out. It was making it difficult for her to perform her duties. So, she finally decided to take a one-year sabbatical to come live with us in our newly built home. She was so depressed and confused that it was even difficult for her to walk out to the mailbox alone.

After being here a year, she attempted to slowly return to work at the convent while living with us, but after six months it became obvious that she was unable to function there. To the dismay of Sister Elizabeth, she handed in her resignation. She and Pat had begun the order together twenty years prior.

This was the beginning of what has become a thirty-plus-year journey and friendship between Pat and I. Miraculously, Fred was very accepting of her. She was the only friend I ever had that he didn’t get angry or jealous towards.

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE ENCHANTED FOREST
Our home was located on Schumaker Pond, a lake that narrows down into a stream with a lovely path that meanders through a park about a block from our house. It was a beautiful spring day as I took my daily stroll there. The trees and bushes were bright green, the birds were busy building their nests and the stream was crystal clear. Nature has always been the place I’ve especially sensed God.

I paused for a bit and sat down against a tree to soak in all the beauty. I began reminiscing about my past. I sensed a misty movement out of the corner of my eye. I was feeling a bit dreamy. It started with just a bush rustling, but then I “saw” or sensed a little girl standing there. From somewhere inside I knew it was Carrie, our infant daughter we had miscarried. It seemed like Jesus was standing behind her, as she began to somehow communicate with me, not in audible words, that she was fine and that she loved me. She assured me that it wasn’t my fault that she hadn’t lived and that any guilt that I felt about the three abortions causing my three previous miscarriages was unfounded. It had been part of the Father’s plan that their time here would be short.

I then seemed to “see” a misty movement alongside of her as Jesus led two little children forward with His arms around them. Carrie then let me know that all three of them were those I had miscarried, and that they loved me and looked forward to us being together again someday.

I returned to this spot for the next three days. Each day Jesus brought one of the little ones that I had aborted, and the message was the same, “We love you; Jesus has forgiven you and we’ll be together again one day.” I had experienced God’s love and forgiveness in a profound way, lifting years of guilt and shame from my shoulders and the painful feelings that I had buried deep inside. The place I named my “Enchanted Forest”.

(Note: God’s providence; I just found out several months ago, after having a genetic blood test for a mold allergy, that I actually have a mutated gene that makes me more susceptible to the toxins in mold, but which also keeps my body from processing folic acid, which is necessary for carrying a baby full term. So, indeed, in truth, my abortions had no direct connection to the miscarriages, not at least in the physical sense.)

CHAPTER THRITEEN: FRED’S ILLNESS
It was 1989 and I had a lot on my plate. I was juggling a difficult marriage, raising and eventually home schooling our son and counseling with Pat while having her living with us in our home.

In 1992 Fred, at aged 50, had a heart attack. As a result, we became interested in the vegetarian “Hallelujah Diet” started by Rev. George Malkmus. I began selling Barleygreen, a green juice powder made by a multi-level health company, and also started sharing with others about the diet. Fred never had another heart attack. As a matter of fact, his doctors were so impressed that they took him off all his heart and cholesterol lowering medications. We all became slimmer and healthier for a while.

Seven years later in 1999 Fred was diagnosed with throat cancer. Even though he had given up his heavy smoking when we were married twenty-six years earlier, we were told that the devastating effects could still show up years later. He didn’t want to go the route suggested by the doctors, which was to remove his voice box and undergo chemotherapy. Even with all of that, the prognosis was not good. We spent the next year exploring alternative solutions which led us to Mexico on three different occasions. When that didn’t bring any lasting results, he went for pinpoint radiation at the Staten Island University Hospital in New York. This did put the cancer into remission.

After returning from his last trip to Mexico, Fred was shocked to find out that the truss company he had been working at for the past nine years had fired him. However, tragedy turned to victory when several months later another truss company was willing to hire him. Since they were a large corporation, they offered more salary and much better benefits than his previous employment. At the time that he was hired, they even had an open enrollment offering life insurance, regardless of any previous existing conditions. So, we took out a policy equal to all the money we had spent going to Mexico for his alternative treatments.

Even though our marriage relationship remained troubled, over the years I had learned to sort of accept it as it was. It still was a marriage, our marriage, regardless of what it looked like. I had grown to concentrate more earnestly on my inner union with Jesus. I began trying to turn all my trying to fix Fred and his problems over to Him. To be fair, though, I still struggled with being able to be close to Fred. I began to realize that I had reached the end of what I could try to do and figure out in that regard.

Fred’s remission lasted two and half years. In 2001 he began having problems in his wrist. The doctor thought that perhaps it was carpal tunnel syndrome caused by the motorcycle he had recently purchased. However, within a month it began to travel up his arm. Tests revealed that Fred had a mass in his spinal cord that was in an area that couldn’t be biopsied or operated on. They told us that the only thing to do was to wait to see if it would remain the same, go away or continue to grow.

By April 2002 Fred was totally paralyzed in his arms and legs. Giving up the work he so dearly loved was one of the most painful things he ever had to do. But an amazing thing began to happen. I remember a beautiful spring day, a few months later, when I went to check on him while he was sitting in his wheelchair out on the porch, tears were streaming down his face. He said to me, “Jesus just sent the wind around the side of the porch and He kissed me on the cheek and told me He loves me, and I feel so totally loved!” From that point on everyone who came to visit Fred would hear all about how he had finally found peace in his life and that Peace was a Person named Jesus. It seemed like when so much had been taken away from him and I had absolutely nothing left that I could do to help, Jesus did His healing – the most important one – a spiritual one.

Much of what Fred shared after that didn’t make much sense to us who were around him. However, I could somewhat understand the difficulty he was having explaining his newfound spiritual experience because of my own similar inexplicable one after surgery years before. What we all did understand was the glow on his face and the tears of joy in his eyes.

I wish I could say that in this world our marriage was healed instantly from that point on, but it wasn’t. But an amazing thing did happen. We each became aware of being espoused to another – Jesus. Even though we were to never taste the joy of a healed earthly marriage, we began to taste of the fruit of our heavenly one which our earthly one was to have been a picture of. In His grace, God gave to us freely and without conditions from His well. We had His Peace through what many would expect to be the most horrendous days of our lives. People came to be uplifting and went away uplifted.

On September 11, 2002, I had made an evening visit with Fred at the nursing home he had been transferred to four days earlier. I spent time resting on his shoulder. Occasionally he would open his groggy eyes and glance at me. I thought perhaps he had been medicated. When the visiting hours were over, I slowly began to move towards leaving. Fred opened his eyes and looked at me and mumbled, “Help me”, and then closed his eyes. Those were the last words I would ever hear him say. Thinking back now, I remember how similar it was to how our relationship had begun when he walked into my travel agency with those sad “help me” puppy dog eyes.

One hour later, as I sat at home watching the news concerning the one-year anniversary of September 11 (three days after our twenty-ninth anniversary and nine days before Fred’s sixtieth birthday), the phone rang. It was the nurse. She told me that she had just been with Fred and his breathing had changed and perhaps I should return. By the time I arrived, Fred had already met our Savior. Oh, how I would have wanted to be there to “help” him as the Lover of his soul reached out to his paralyzed body, empowering him to rise up to walk together with Him into eternity. Why hadn’t I stayed just an hour longer? That “help me” he had uttered wanted to haunt me and rob me of my joy. But the Lover of my soul kept reminding me how Fred’s “help me” could only be answered by Him.

Song 2:10-13 “My beloved spake, and said unto me, ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away…’”

What Fred and I experienced with God those last several months of his life has transformed me. I no longer believe that God needs my help in fighting His battles. Our weapons for battle are spiritual – to me that is the Spiritual One, Jesus. In Eph.6:13 Paul says, “Therefore take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.” The full armor of God is Jesus Himself. We just need to rest in Him as our All-Sufficient One.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE LORD IS FAITHFUL
It was a joy to see Josh and Fred work out their differences during Fred’s illness. Josh shared his past hurts with Fred. Fred listened and asked for forgiveness, which Josh gave. I’m so glad that our son can now remember the good times he had with his dad and not have them clouded over by holding on to past resentments. Praise God!

There were other incredible ways that God carried me through that time. Jesus was there in every way possible to live me through it. There was one miracle that still astonishes me to this day.

During Fred’s illness my brother, Walt, had come to visit our parents who had moved into our downstairs apartment three years earlier. I was tending to some sanitary issues with Fred and Fred was taking out his frustrations on me. All of a sudden, Walter jumped out of his chair and pointed his finger at Fred saying, “Don’t you talk to my sister that way. She’s doing all she can to take care of you. She’s my sister. Blood is thicker than water and I won’t have you talk to her that way.” I was stunned. My brother, let alone anyone else in my family, had never stood up for me like that before. Something began to change between Walt and me. I had previously given up my expectations of ever having any kind of a brother-sister relationship. And now it seemed like, at the time that I was losing my husband, I was gaining a brother. Praise God!

In one of our conversations before Fred died, Fred asked me how I was going to be able to make it financially after he was gone. I said to him that Jesus would take care of us. Two weeks after Fred
passed away, his boss contacted me about a life insurance policy that the company had on Fred. He explained that their company held policies on each one of their employees equal to their pay including commissions for the last year of their work. Fred and I never knew that such a policy existed. So, between that and the one we had taken out during the company’s open life insurance enrollment, I had enough money to pay off our mortgage and have some left over as a cushion. Praise God!

A friend of ours, who was a professional photographer, had approached me when Fred first learned of his cancer, suggesting that I start my own photography business. He felt my pictures were good. He was willing to help me get started. I began by advertising $99 weddings. Little by little, as I learned by experience, the business began to grow. By the time Fred had passed away, I could see that this was a career that I could enjoy, and one that could possibly sustain us in our present home for a few more years. So far it has. Praise God!

I treasure the memories of the years thereafter when Pat and I met together on Sunday mornings with Lou and Dorothy Wright in their home. We had met them in the church we had been attending in Salisbury. In the past, Lou had been a pastor and Dorothy, a “reluctant, not “feeling led to be” pastor’s wife. It started out being a rather typical Bible study. In time, though, it evolved into more than that, as I began to struggle with some things I’d been taught theologically in the past that didn’t line up with what I was seeing spiritually in my heart.

I must have been quite a challenge to Lou, who knows his Bible well, as well as knowing his Jesus very well. I might not have had the scripture verses memorized like he did but I could paraphrase pretty well, even if I couldn’t pinpoint chapters and verses. Thank goodness for concordances and Google! It became clear to me that if Jesus loved me the way I was, then I wanted to allow that evolving person with her non-traditional truths to immerge. What better place to let it flow? Lou and Dorothy were so accepting of us through all of that. It led to us all sharing more deeply from our wells of Living Water.

Often our times together lasted three or four hours. Time had little meaning. Through that process of being real in our brokenness, I felt growth in Christ Jesus grow between us in leaps and bounds. A sense of trust, empathy and love began to flourish. I felt protected in their home, like in the Lord’s sanctuary. It filled a yearning for what I thought God’s church could be. Matthew 18:20 “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.”

A neat thing was that scripture sharing happened spontaneously in and through our personal sharing – woven through the fabric of who we were becoming. We were honest with each other. Dorothy ended each gathering with a lovingly prepared, healthy (knowing we were health nuts) brunch, a continuing time of communion together. It was so very special. What a wonderful pastor’s wife she had become! Dear Dorothy went home to be with Jesus in 2012.

As I’m writing this, it has been almost seventeen years since Fred passed away. My faith and belief in my God who has the perfect plan in every aspect of my life has become a fixed reality.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: LOOKING BACK
I began this story by saying my purpose was to perhaps leave something of significance to others. What I’ve discovered in the process is that this whole exercise seems to have been also for me. I’m discovering that my life is His living Bible, with an Old and New Testament; the history sections (looking back), the poetry sections (the present) and the prophetic sections (looking forward). He has been walking through the pages of my life, just like He walks through the written pages of His Bible.

The Bible is the inspired word of God. The word “inspire” means “God’s Spirit breathed in”. I love watching and rejoicing as He continually reveals more of His inspired Living-Word Spirit-Life walking in us as us, His children, His body. 1Cor. 6:19-20 “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, who you have from God, and that you are not your own?”

How exciting it is to see God’s hand preparing us and revealing to us His divine purpose of communion with Him in His heavenly family! Romans 8:16-17 “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.”

What joy there is to come together and fellowship among our “living bible selves”, as He walks in our midst! He’s in the midst of our humanity; our joys and trials, our flesh and blood, our feelings and emotions and in the realness and imperfections of our selves. This is the kind of Bible that so encourages my heart, when we can come together sharing the living Word, Jesus, in our hearts with the spontaneous intermingling of His written words. It’s like His living, active, ongoing “Bible study”. 2 Corinthians 3:2-3, “You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Isaiah 46:9 says, “Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God and there is no one like Me”. Yet Isaiah 43:18-19 says, “Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder the things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth… I will make a roadway in the wilderness”. There is a time we are to look back to remember our past; and a time that comes for us to forget the past as the Lord does a new thing in our lives.

When I look back on my life, I can see God’s handiwork behind the scenes. Corrie Ten Bloom once compared it to a tapestry that looks pretty tangled and knotted when looked at from the back side, but once flipped over, actually is a beautiful masterpiece. I’ve looked back on the tangled mess of my life and have seen how God was at work preparing me to be His masterpiece in Christ Jesus.

I also look back and see that at a very early age I was aware that there was a God; beginning, perhaps, with my church experience as an 8-year-old. Romans 2:19-23 “…because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse….”

I look back on my earthly family and I feel blessed that my parents brought me to a church, so that I heard about Jesus at an early age. My father loved Billy Graham. I have fond memories of sitting with him in front of our little TV set watching those crusades. I saw my dad being visibly moved by those broadcasts. Even though he went to church regularly, He never shared about his relationship with the Lord, even after my salvation, until I asked him one month before he died, at age eighty-nine, whether he was born again. He smiled, nodded his head and earnestly acknowledged “Oh, yes”, as he shared with me the story of his heart salvation as a teenager in knickers and how that church eventually drove him and his group of his friends away because of those knickers! I’ve looked back on the yearning I had as a child to be closer with my brother, and how He did, in His amazing way and perfect time.

I saw that for the first thirty-five years of my life, I had ignored my awareness of a sovereign, wonderful, all knowing God, and attempted instead to be powerful, wonderful and a wise “Wonder Woman” within myself. I’m amazed at the patience and mercy that He has shown me. I marvel that I’m even still alive, after the many foolish things I’ve done in my life. I have no trouble knowing that I am a sinner and am in need of my Savior. Now that I’ve begun to see how glorious our Lord is, I’m even more convinced of that. Yet, there’s no need for guilt. Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

I had spent many years of my life in therapy or various other attempts at self- improvement, trying to find direction for myself and Fred. In the end, God had a plan, a perfect plan, in spite of all my endeavors. However, I wouldn’t change any of that past. I needed to go through that process to realize that this earthly life is not meant to be heaven; its meant to drive us to the kingdom of God within which is in Christ Jesus.

I learned about my personality type, and I still love to discover what other people’s personality types are. However, I realize that our bodies and personalities are just a container. What’s in the container – the Living Water Spirit of Jesus – is what’s most important. He lives and walks through any kind of container, and miraculously delights in doing so in spite of our talents and limitations!

Everything that I had judged in my own weak wisdom as having been “bad” has worked out to be for His good. Romans 8:28 “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Fred was God’s perfect gift to me. The Lord probably knew I needed some hard knocks to keep me from being increasingly prideful in my own self efforts. In His mercy, He had me marry a Christian, even though at the time, I could have cared less.

Even though Fred lived an emotionally tormented life, never experiencing the peace of God until his last few months alive, he was steadfast in his conviction that Jesus was his Lord and Savior. Our marriage tribulations turned me more to my Savior. He showed me that His grace was sufficient. 2 Cor. 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Fred now knows peace and completeness in Christ. We are perfectly connected in His love together in union with Jesus in our eternal home. 1John 4:8 “…God is love.”

The Lord poured out His kindness on me even when I was living in rebellion against Him. He blessed me with the gift of life itself, with comforts that most of the world never experiences, and He blessed me with the opportunity to have a family of my own. The miracle gift of our son, Josh, is far too wonderful a miracle to ever forget. The Lord’s graciousness overflowed into my thirsty soul. Matthew 5:45, “…for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

Josh endured years of growing up with parents who were in constant conflict. However, in spite of my short comings and the family turmoil, Josh has grown into a productive young man in the world. He is now working out his own meaning of life. Jesus loves him far more than I ever could and is his perfect covering in that journey.

Pat had been one of my “projects” for many years. And she, too, came to the Healer and her spiritual healing only after we gave up trying to assist Him. Am I a believer in the narrow Way – Jesus? Yes indeed! Matthew 7:14, “For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it.”

The Lord has put Pat and I together as a team in an “Emmaus walk” of sharing the “Living Water” of our lives. She and I enjoy abiding in this house that Fred and I built twenty-nine years ago. I never thought we’d still be here, sixteen years after Fred’s homecoming, at which time I dedicated it as a sanctuary unto the Lord to be used for His purposes and glory.

My desire in these remaining years is to continue laboring to rest in Him; not laboring in “my” self-life over earthly circumstances. In so doing, I can be His body/vessel used for His purposes in Christ Jesus. 2 Cor. 4:7, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves…”.

I once was searching for answers and meaning in my own self- life. What I found was a life that was completely devoid of real life and could never be the source of any meaning. I’ve found that the answer and way is through an intimate relationship with a Person. John 14:6, “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me.” I’ve found rest in Him, peace in Him, comfort in Him, purpose in Him, strength in Him, true freedom in Him and have come home to His original intention. I’ve come home to my original family in Him; Christ Jesus. My search for meaning in life has led me to the Life in the Eternal One, Christ Jesus, as my very own life to live. I’ve exchanged “my” spiritual journey for His eternal journey; a river overflowing with Living Water.

EPILOGUE

The first family that ever existed was God’s family in heaven. The first scripture in the Bible is Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Hebrew word for God here is Elohim which is the Hebrew plural for God. The New Testament elaborates on this a bit more by stating that there are three persons in the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…” Webster’s Dictionary defines a family as a group of persons with a common ancestry. Heaven contained the first family; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our God is a personal, relational God.

1 John 4:8 states, “God is love.” It doesn’t say He has love. It says love is a Person and that Person is God. Webster’s describes love as “unselfish concern that freely accepts another in loyalty and seeks his good.” The Greek word for “love” in 1 John 4:8 is “agape” which is defined as a “love feast of charity.” Charity is an act of giving. The original family in heaven of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were constantly pouring themselves out in unselfish concern, a charitable love feast of love; one for another.

In the overflow of that love feast in heaven, the triune God predetermined to have an extended family in order to lavishly continue to pour out their love to others. Psalm 139:16, “Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.” In the Garden of Eden (Paradise) in Genesis 1:26 God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…” God originally created man to be in His image, as part of His family. What is the image of God? 2 Corinthians 4:4, “..in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Jesus is the image of God.

God’s angel Lucifer (Satan) had already fallen from heaven to earth because he wanted to be a separate god, an independent being, thinking he could exalt himself in self-love. He was the Holy God’s opposite – evil self-love. God warned Adam and Eve in the garden not to eat of the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, as they would “surely die”. They were free to eat of every other tree. However, they disobeyed. Through their willingness to accept independent self-knowledge of good and evil, they became separated from God, and under the control of Satan’s sin spirit. Man was sent out of the Garden where he had communed and been in relationship with God, into the world where, not only did he obtain physical mortality, but also obtained a spirit of death through his separation from God, because he thought he could be a free individual and be like God.

There had also been a “tree of Life” in the garden. If man had obeyed and eaten freely of every other tree, he would have eventually eaten of the tree of Life and entered into God’s eternal family. God intended for man to be guided by and to trust in His Divine Spirit. In this way, man would be wholly (holy) prepared to join the heavenly family for which he had been created. Instead, wanting to be an autonomous self, through disobedience man came under the power of sin and separated from God.

In His mercy, God immediately had a plan to redeem man’s soul back to Himself and back into His rightful family. That plan was always by faith in God by grace and not by man’s own works. Man had to learn that He would never be able to obey his way back to God by his own good works, as many thought they could. He sent His Son, Jesus, as our substitute to live that perfect life and to die on our behalf and pay for our sins, so we would never have to. He also raised Him from the dead, and in so doing, raised us up along with Him, replacing our old dead spirit with the new Spirit of Life in Him. Jesus became our substitute to pay the debt for our disobedience. For those of us who believe in Him, God now only sees the Life of Christ in us, not our sins. This part of our salvation is called justification. He justified us through faith. Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast”

The remainder of our time here on earth will be for the purpose of progressively seeing Jesus more and more, in ways that can never be known in heaven. We can experience God on earth as our strength and comfort through trials and suffering, since those opportunities will not be available in heaven. As we learn to abide in Him as a branch abides in a vine, our lives will begin to bear true fruit, which can fulfill His redemptive purpose of redeeming others from this dying world and to come to know Him intimately. This part of our salvation is called sanctification. He sanctifies us through faith. Colossians 2:6, “Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.” 

The part of salvation that has to do with our leaving this earthly world with its sorrows, leaving our earthly bodies for new spiritual ones, and entering into heaven to celebrate our marriage feast with Jesus, the Lamb, is called glorification. On that day we and our heavenly family will be complete, according to God’s original intention. He glorifies us through faith. Romans 8:30, “Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.”

But we can have a foretaste of the heavenly family right here on earth; a little bit of heaven to go to heaven in. Ephesians 2:4-7, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

Jesus is our forerunner into heaven where He is glorified and sitting at the right hand of the Father. Scripture tells us that we have an anchor, sure and steadfast, reaching up behind that veil in heaven, where we can begin to see ourselves complete, sitting and resting in union with Christ Jesus. Hebrews 6:17-20, “In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, in order that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement, we who have fled for refuge in laying hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Justification, sanctification and glorification; I have been saved in Christ Jesus, I am being saved in Christ Jesus and I will be saved in Christ Jesus. The Person of Jesus is my complete salvation and as He said on the cross, John 19:30, “It is finished”. He is my victory. I have no victory of my own. Everything I’ll ever need is available in union with Him. He IS the gospel. He IS the good news. My life has been exchanged for His as a river of eternal Living Water…

John 4:39, “From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, “He told me all the things that I have done.” Amen

Several days after Fred went home with Jesus, I took an early morning walk through my “Enchanted Forest”…..

JESUS LOVES ME THIS I KNOW
My friendly path led me today to a place where there was a bright opening in the woods. Feeling led to raise my arms, I swirled around in circles, praising our Lord for His freedom I know is yours now; no more sick body, worldly heaviness and excess baggage. He sets the captives free; Yes, free indeed!

In the still, quiet windless-ness of that place I’m startled by a crackle and snap. The tree I gaze up into suddenly releases a twig which is followed by a pine cone or two. Several drops of dew touch my face. “Okay,” I say, “I’m here Lord.”

Gently, oh so gently from the bright canopy of trees – gracefully, lightly descending, I watch a single tiny white feather down. I’m struck by its virtual weightlessness, somehow falling, yet, somehow being carried. Stepping off the path and going toward where I think it will land, in plenty of time to capture it, it suddenly just isn’t there.

I glance over again to the tree which reveals that it’s actually two trees growing from one trunk. One of them is slightly larger. I feel you. “The two shall become one,” resonates within me. A jogger doesn’t seem to care, and neither do I, that I’m embracing a tree. A Daddy Long Legs stares out at me as the joy from my eyes drops onto the leathery bark, and kisses my cheek. Jesus loves me this I know.

A glance to the left reveals another smaller tree but very much a part of this little “grouping” together. Yes, we are a family. “My heart is so thankful, Lord, for so many good years together and the many blessings. You’ve provided good, fertile soil for our family to grow in, deep roots entwined in You, weathering many strong winds and storms.

“Come now. Let’s walk further,” beckons my soul. I’m ready to be drawn deeper into my forest sanctuary. A turn, a bend and the path winds deeper inward. And then…. There you are right straight ahead, tall and strong on the middle of the path – not peeking out sheepishly behind a tree. A glance into your face amazes me. I’ve never seen you “smile” like that before; not forced, not nervous, not laughing. It’s just so pure and natural and so somehow really you.

“Everything is alright,” your unspoken words say to my soul. “Let’s hold hands and walk awhile.” Oh! What a glorious morning to be able to “BE” walking together with my love. It’s so light and effortless, like that little feather down dancing through the post-dawn air.

Another few glorious bends and turns and, “Oh, so soon?” we reach wood’s end. I sense it’s time to let go and let you continue your journey on ahead. I can’t capture the feather down, I know. Out of the forest and then into the open of His expanse, you briefly glance around again, sending benediction from your face, piercing my very being. And quickly you’re not in sight.

Turning back from where we had come, I marvel at how many passersby send friendly smiles and warm salutations. Reaching “our” tree again, I don’t recall off to the right having seen that broken tree trunk. The tree that once stood there is totally gone, nowhere in sight, swallowed up into somewhere else. For you, my love, I know that you’ve been swallowed up into the victory your soul has so yearned for, of His eternal Peace and Love.

As I leave my forest sanctuary with yet another Revelation healing me, I bring the feather down dancing in my heart. I rejoice at how our Lord has used you, yet again, to bring me closer to Him.
“Jesus loves me this I know.”

(Note: All the wonderful stanzas of “Jesus Loves Me” was gloriously sung a cappella by a dear sister in the Lord at Fred’s Memorial service…

“Jesus Loves Me Jesus loves me! This I know, For the Bible tells me so. Little ones to Him belong; They are weak, but He is strong. Jesus loves me! Loves me still, Tho I’m very weak and ill, That I might from sin be free, Bled and died upon the tree. Jesus loves me! He who died Heaven’s gate to open wide; He will wash away my sin, Let His little child come in. Jesus loves me! He will stay Close beside me all the way. Thou hast bled and died for me; I will henceforth live for Thee. Chorus Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.” –Anna B. Warner, 1820 -1915

Luke 18:17 “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

RESOURCES
For up-to-date miscellaneous information about Ed Miller’s teachings, and personal blog of my own ongoing revelations of Jesus growing in my life visit… www.photosbyjanet.com

For Ed’s previous audio messages from 1978 to the present, plus transcripts, poems, and all PDF books including this one, and recommended devotionals visit www.biblestudyministriesinc.com

Search for “Ed Miller, Bible Study Ministries” on YouTube…. www.youtube.com (captions available for hearing impaired)

Visit the “Jesus Anchored to Our Soul” Facebook page or “Ed Miller Bible Study” Facebook page for up-to-date information on Ed’s recent teachings