Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Illustrate the meaning of "Don't Cut off Your Nose to Spite Your Face" (without using the actual phrase or litera (02/14/08)
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TITLE: Looking Through Crooked Eyes | Previous Challenge Entry
By Kim Tolbert
02/17/08 -
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For six long years I couldn’t “see” God because of being disobedient. I knew he was there, but I felt that he was ashamed of me, had turned his back on me and didn’t love me anymore. I often thought that my trials were like that of Job during the time that he was persecuted and lost everything. However, the difference was that Job was a righteous man and was being persecuted for God’s namesake. I, on the other hand, probably got everything I deserved.
From 1991-1997 darts and arrows stabbed me from all angles. The most agonizing trial was the loss of my mother; my best friend, who died without a warning from a stroke, congestive heart failure and an aneurysm. The next “test” was that my husband left me and my then 4-year-old son after 8 years because he decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. I lost a government job of eight years, which led to me losing my house and cars. If that was not enough, during the time I was estranged from my husband he refused to pay child support. When I had the support court ordered, he was so mad that he concocted a home made bomb, sent it to my son and I through the mail, in hopes that we would open the package and it would kill us. I still had God’s favor and protection and didn’t realize it.
During this time, I had left the religion of Jehovah’s Witnesses after being a part of it for 20 years. Though my husband had abandoned me, we were not divorced because I couldn’t pay for it. Even though I was not divorced, I began to date and fell in love. Soon after, I began to be intimate with him, which was against everything I had learned from the Bible. It didn’t matter that this was the only person I had ever been intimate with outside of being with my husband. God still frowned upon fornication. The church ostracized my son and I when we had nowhere to go. If you can’t go to church, where can you go? They even went so far as to oust my son from the Jehovah’s Witnesses run daycare. I felt so alone, empty and without hope.
Job 22:23 says: “If you return to the Almighty you will be built up. You will remove iniquity far from your tents”. But, even though I kept hearing God’s voice saying “Return to me”, I was so weak spiritually and felt as though I had sunk in debauchery and there was no saving me. For six long years God kept asking me to come back to him. He kept sending people to me and putting reminders in my path. Don’t ever think that you are so far into your sin that God can’t put you on the right path again.
When I made the decision in 2004 to accept Christ as my personal savior, shortly afterwards, I had a heart attack and was given up for dead. My new church family rallied around me, took care of my son, provided meals on a rotating basis, but most of all loved and prayed for me. Doctors call me the “miracle woman” and don’t know how I survived, but I do. I tell people every time I get the chance, I have even told strangers in the grocery store!
My walk with God and Christ is a lot closer today than it ever was. I continue to try to improve upon it, daily. God blessed me with a government job that surpasses any job I have ever had, I started my own greeting card business and am able to give a testimony on how HE has used me to write words that comfort and sustain people. My son is growing up to be a fine young man, and has defied the odds in school and life, despite a disability. What’s dearest to my heart is that he loves the Lord.
Even though I have not accomplished all I have to do in the work of the Lord or in my personal life, by turning back to God, HE is giving me back what I lost slowly but surely. But, the best thing HE gave me back…was my life!
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Isn't our God great? We don't always know why He lets us go through our trials, but we can know that somehow it was for good.
Thank you for sharing this.
Keep writing.
Though I am sorry to hear about all the pain you experienced, I was thrilled to hear about how God began to turn things around for you. I really appreciate you sharing this story! It has encouraged me.