Yes, I have no fear! I absolutely fear nothing!

Yes, I have no fear!  I absolutely fear nothing!  In the Bible, it is stated to “Fear not” or “Do Not Fear” 365 times….one for every day of the year!  So, if God wants me to have no fear, that is exactly what I have…no fear…of anything, of anyone, at any time… I do not fear!  In my story, He relentlessly pursued me, blessed me with a horrible illness, took me to the edge of death, and rescued me from it when I surrendered to Him.  So today, I do not fear.  What follows is my story.

I became sick with Lyme disease in 1997 and was not properly diagnosed for a year.  In that time, as I became more and more ill, I just kept trying to push through it.  At it’s worse, I remember thinking that “If I don’t get out of bed today and go to work, I’ll die today”.  At the time, I was working full time, pursuing graduate work full time, and was a full time wife and mother.  However, due to the illness, I was not doing any of it well.  Fiercely independent, I just kept trying to push through on my own.

In the Fall of 1999, my daughter, Becca, left for Montana to attend college. There she quickly became involved in Campus Crusade for Christ and Athletes in Action.  She had a ‘born again’ experience and was publically baptized again.  I was upset and hurt when she shared this with me.  After all, I had been a good mom and had her baptized at 3 months of age.  I began to question what the whole “born again” thing was but mostly from a perspective of complete unbelief and ignorance.

And I continued to be very sick.  Even with topnotch doctors and medical care, I was not improving.  One day, after months on drug therapy and still no improvement, my doctor said to me, “I don’t know what you need to do, but you need to do something drastic… the drugs can’t work under this stress”.  I drove home thinking that meant that I should leave my job, not realizing that the stress was the stress of not knowing the Lord.

Becca would call me daily to see how I was doing and give me words of encouragement to make it through another day.  One day she said “Mom, we’re praying for you here”.  She had shared my struggled with 500 MSU students at Campus Crusade and unbeknownst to me, these young believers were lifting me up daily for healing.  Then she said “Mom, are you praying?”  This stopped me in my tracks….no!  I wasn’t praying, didn’t know how to pray, didn’t even know how to begin.  So, Becca discipled me through the phone from 2500 miles away.  She told me that I needed to give this to God for healing but that first, I needed to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  She walked me through the process of surrendering, confessing, asking for forgiveness, and supplication.  I had no idea!  She begged me to do this… she feared that if not, I would die.  She told me that once I had accepted Christ, I needed to pray specifically.  She asked me what I needed the most and I responded “I need to sleep” (I had very bad insomnia which complicated any possible healing).  She told me to ask God specifically to grant me sleep when I was finished.

So that evening, I lay in bed and tried to talk to God.  And I had no words.  I could not think of how to even start.  The only prayers I knew were the Lord’s Prayer, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, and God is Great, God is Good.  These rote prayers were all I had ever given to God and I had absolutely no words of my own.  My exhaustion and sickness were overwhelming at the time and I felt even more unworthy of God’s grace since I couldn’t even find a way to approach Him.  The next day I was even worse than the day before.  Needless to say, I had not slept again.  And I felt so worthless.

Becca called to ask me how it went and how I was doing.  I wept on the phone as I explained the depths of my sadness and frustration of not even being able to know where or how to begin.  And again, across the phone lines, she helped me to see that I was worthy of God’s love.  I only had to speak from my heart to God’s ears.  And she said that Campus Crusade was praying for my salvation that night!  How overwhelming!  So, that night in bed, I again approached God from my heart to His ears and this time, the words and tears just poured out of me… so much hurt and pain and sorrow for so much sin.  I don’t know how long I lay there in prayer but when I finally was completely spent in my confession, I asked God’s forgiveness, and asked Him to come into my heart.  And then I asked Him to please grant me sleep.  The next thing I knew, I woke up 8 hours later!  And I was changed in that moment.  From that night to this, when I end the day in prayer, my final request of the Lord is to grant me rest…and He does.

So that is my story…. God relentlessly pursued me.  And I was healed.  I got better and the blessings in my life multiplied. The greatest blessing He has ever given me was a horrible illness that forced me to surrender completely at the foot of the cross.  I knew following that moment, that God was with me always.  And the life that I live now and the blessings which I have received since that fateful day are beyond anything that I could have imagined or accomplished on my own.  In His wisdom, God led Bill and me to leave all that we had ever known and come to Montana.  While family and friends did not understand this, we knew absolutely that this was His will for our lives.  Finding a church home, joining in Bible Study Fellowship, and belonging to such a strong family of believers has helped to strengthen my resolve daily to lead a Godly life.  The work that I do now is completely informed by the relationship that I have with God.  All that I know now and share now with others is only because God relentlessly pursued me.  He never gave up on me even when I often gave up on myself.  My prayer daily is that God would give me the strength, the words, and the wisdom to make a difference in someone’s life so that He may be glorified.

Today, when faced with any obstacle or struggle, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God blessed me with it.  He continues to grow me to become the person He purposed me to be.  I turn to God daily in prayer and cannot imagine what it used to be like not to have that great security in all times.  Even when my Lyme disease returns occasionally, I know that God is again pursuing me and that there is something he wants me to learn.

Several years later, I again faced difficulty and had to go on intravenous antibiotics.  This required about 4 hours a day of sitting still and letting the drugs drip into my body.  Two weeks into the treatment, I was struggling mightily with this ordeal and my loss of freedom due to being tethered to the IV.  I dreaded the hours of sitting in bed.  I was cranky, impatient, and miserable.  One morning, I woke with a Bible verse embedded in my head from some dream:  Psalm 46:10.  I saw this verse written on a brilliantly white card in bold black letters.  It was so bright that when I looked away I could still see it fading… just like when you look at the sun and look away and can still see an image. I did not know this verse and was also struck with the fact that my street address growing up was 4610.  Maybe I was having some weird dream about my childhood home and church.

I sat confused for several minutes and then reached for a Bible by my bedside.  I opened it up to this verse and read “Be Still and Know that I am GOD.”  An enormous feeling of joy filled me as I realized that again, God was right with me.  He had come to me in my sleep to assure me of His message.  He wanted me to be still and know Him.  He had again relentless pursued me and was giving me this 4 hour opportunity each day to stop and just “be” with Him.  From that moment on, when I sat daily hooked up to IV’s, I saw it as a blessing from God rather than an inconvenience.  It changed my whole demeanor.  I spent that time doing Bible study, engaged in prayer, or calling friends and family who I would be too busy to talk to otherwise.  I knew that there was something more that God wanted me to know from Him and that, to truly know it, I had to be still.

Several weeks after that, I again had a very vivid dream.  In that dream, God gave me something He wanted me to do.  He wanted me to create a unique class at the university where I was teaching.  This was to be a class where students would learn about care.  They would learn about what it means to be caring, how to become caring, how to create relationships with others where they feel cared for, and how to care for themselves so they can care for others.  Although care had been the primary focus of my graduate work and research, I had never considered making it a class for students.  God wanted me to teach them about this and to make it a service learning class where they would live what they were learning.  So I did.  I wrote the class syllabus in a day and began the often lengthy process of getting it approved by the university.  But, again, God seemed to move through this process and this class was approved within months instead of years.  And it went on to become one of the most popular courses on campus with students testifying to the transformation that they experienced throughout each semester.

Every few years, the Lord takes me through a serious dip in my health via my Lyme Disease.  And every time that occurs, I know that He is doing so to reveal to me something that I do not know yet.  The last time, it was to write a book… which I did.  This time, it is to step out of a 40 year career into the unknown in order to spread that which He has given me to the world.  So, now, I find solace in this disease knowing that He is moving, He is growing me into the person that He purposed me to be, and that I have nothing to fear.

And while I could go on and on, I want to end as I began.  Yes, I have no fear!  I absolutely fear nothing!  In the Bible, it is stated to “Fear not” or “Do Not Fear” 365 times… one for every day of the year!  So, if God wants me to have no fear, that is exactly what I have…no fear…of anything, of anyone, at any time… I do not fear!  In my story, He relentlessly pursued me, blessed me with a horrible illness, took me to the edge of death, and rescued me from it when I surrendered to Him.  So today, I do not fear.