Spiritual Highlights of Life

Deuteronomy 18:9-12 NIV When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord.”

Isaiah 8:19 NIV When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?

Just a few more words on the ghost thing… The bolded sentences above are why I feel I better just put my little ghost quest thing on the side and move on to some things that are a little more sanctioned by God. I think it’s very clear that messing with that stuff is not wise, no ifs, ands, or buts.

So, anyway, I listened to a talk show this morning and they recommended that listeners take some time to recount at least a half dozen or more of the spiritual highlights of their lives. These would be the times when God stepped in and obviously, clearly showed Himself in some miraculous/special way or intervened in some. I started thinking about that and found it immensely enjoyable so thought I might do it more formally in my diary.

I’ve written on several occasions about how I was “saved” at age 17 at a youth retreat. That’s where I found my first real relationship with Jesus. I go back and relive that moment sometimes. It’s one of my favorite life moments and I savor it as one of my most wonderful memories. That was probably the most pivotal and important moment of my entire life, the moment upon which all of my eternity hinged if you think about it. And it was a moment that I came home, perfectly home.

Other moments where God manifested Himself jumped out at me this morning as odd as they might seem when I describe them here. When my son was first born I didn’t have the luxury of quitting my job and staying home with him. It broke my heart to have to go back to work, but I really had to. At that time I was the main wage earner in the household. A friend of mine told me that her mother watched babies and she did it for a very reasonable price so I had pretty much set my mind on using her mom. About a week or so before I was set to return to work (I was going to return 3 days a week for a few weeks before going back full time) I was leafing through the paper and saw an ad that had been placed by a day care worker who lived right in my area. I toyed with the idea of calling her, it seemed tempting, but tossed the paper thinking I had already settled on using this other woman’s mom. Shortly thereafter I went to visit this woman’s mom’s apartment to check it all out. Although they didn’t live far from me, it was in a pretty bad neighborhood and the apartment was small and just gave me a bad feeling. It was sort of ghetto really. I came home and cried at the thought I leaving my baby behind, but I trusted my friend and figured I was just being emotional and prejudiced in my reaction (they were African American). That night, however, another acquaintance called me and told me that the first woman’s mom drank and hit the kids sometimes. Now, I don’t know if that was the truth, there was a lot of drama going on between these two I found out later, but it gave me the impetus to get out of the commitment to use the first woman’s mom.

I went back to the garbage and pulled out the newspaper and called the woman in the ad and that is how I got Tahmina who was my first day care provider for my son and she was INCREDIBLE. And all the time I had her I knew that God had directed me to her because I knew that He somehow had His hand on my son but I only knew this in retrospect because this all happened before I came back to God in 1991.

Tahmina watched my son until summer vacation and then she and her husband moved to Georgia. I was terribly sorry to see her go but my girls were able to take over the responsibilities during summer vacation. As September approached, however, I began to worry about what I would do for daycare when the school year began. God intervened again, however, in another amazing way. As I stood in line at the grocery store the woman behind our cart began to play with my son who sat in the child seat. She looked so familiar to me. As she talked and played with my son she said, “You remind me of the little boy I watch.”

I said, “You watch children?” A conversation ensued and of course I got her number, but then I said, “Didn’t you used to work at the Child Care Center on Emerson and Asbury?” And, amazingly, this woman used to be a preschool teacher where my daughter had gone to preschool and had actually been one of my daughter’s beloved teachers! I knew I had recognized her!!! Again God had intervened!

Coincidences? I don’t think so.

It is such a joy to think back over these special moments with God. For me it is like those moments I read in the diaries of the teenage girls when they’re writing about special moments they had with their boyfriends. I feel warm and loved and smiley inside.

Then how about the time (Lace ‘n Jeans maybe was reading me back then) when my husband lost his job with a bogus sexual harassment charge because he sent an email invitation to his annual barbeque to everybody in his department. I was devastated (as was he) and we didn’t know what to make of it… until a few weeks later he found another one paying $14,000 more than the one he had lost!!! He’s a pretty steady employee and he would have never gone looking for it if he hadn’t have been bounced from that first one! That was surely God.

And then of course there was the fire. We had an apartment fire when we lived on the second floor of a suburban apartment building. It was a high second floor too as the basement apartments were really halfway above ground level. The windows of our apartment were high in the walls as well, ending by the ceiling so we were very high up. It’s too long a story to put here, but God wanted us out of that building (perhaps in response to my prayer that he get us out of there – drug dealers had moved in and the neighborhood was descending rapidly). The fire was an ingenious solution to the prayer but was not something I would have ever asked for or expected! Nevertheless, it solved a number of problems for us even though it was terrifying and we grieved over the loss of our cat. We all survived it and our survival of that frightening night was a definite testimony to God’s intervention.

A very big tribute to God is the fact that my Jewish husband accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. I never pushed it or made a big deal out of it. God sort of sealed my mouth. He made it clear it wasn’t my place to nag or beg. I’m not much of an evangelist. God did all the work and, after a time (after the fire), my husband gave his heart, soul, and life to Jesus.

Equally amazing was my brother’s transformation from wealthy entrepreneur to penniless, homeless crack addict to born-again recovered Christian whose life is, even now, being re-built so that he can, once again, be called wealthy entrepreneur only this time be a wealthy Christ-loving entrepreneur who is honest

and God-fearing and of the highest ethics.

This is only the beginning of the spiritual highlights in my life. There have been so many. God is the most delightful, the most wonderful, the most amazing, the most profoundly impactful (I know that’s not really a word), the most glorious part of my life. I thank Him. I appreciate Him. I marvel at Him and I am overwhelmed by His awesomeness.