2012 started off in January. Can you believe that? Our year started off with a bang as we were asked to step down from youth leadership. As best as I can surmise, Chris had shared with some people much of the abuse she suffered as a child (with no counseling), and I shared with someone high in the church how I felt I was growing spiritually at a faster rate than Chris (which was causing difficulty in our marriage), the end result of which is they felt we might self destruct at some point and hurt those we were in ministry for. Then they told us we should attend Heartchange and go from there. We did attend HC another 6mos later and the church was gracious enough to provide for our hotel for 3 nights. The message I received from the church was you are broken and we don't want to invest in you but just go to this seminar and you'll get fixed. Right, wrong, or other, this is the message I heard. We tried to get into a couple of different HC workshops but with work and school for Chris and 3 kids to get sitting for a total of four days for, it took til mid July before we were able to attend.
In the time leading up to HC my spiritual life took a nosedive. I felt more and more hurt and had little support spiritually. I began to question everything about myself. Why was I not good enough to serve? What was so wrong with me? By the time July came around, I had come to a point where I was not spending time with God anymore. I had no desire to attend HC but knew if I didn't that some 20 years later might come to the place God wanted me and discover that I could have arrived all those years ago if I'd just attended HC. By the way, Heartchange is a four day workshop. I like to call it a four day spiritual boot camp, where you learn to heal hurts and so much more. It's totally free, yet priceless. At the end of day 3, I stood up in front of everyone and said "I'm not ready for change, and I'm not going to change, but God is in control and He knows what He's doing. Ironically, this was the catalyst for God changing me. Then the very last thing that happened on day 4 was someone whispering in my ear "the intimacy you are searching for with God, you already have." This totally transformed my life. These 38 people who finished with me are my family now. I would share anything with them.
Moving forward into August, we kept in contact with as many participants as possible. One of the people we didn't get to know very well was Taniesha. She was a 20yr old girl who was 6mos or so pregnant. As the days and weeks went by, she started calling Chris and talking about her life so a few weeks after HC we went up and spent several hours with her. During this time, Chris blurted out, we'll give you a place to live, then looked at me, and I was like, yeah, we could do that. Taniesha was born into an abusive family and at 4-5 yrs old was removed and put into foster care where she was bounced from home to home til the age of 8. Some of these homes were good and some were abusive. At 8 she was adopted by a Christian family, and though I hate to speak of things I only know from second hand info, I can say that they have been very hard on her, very critical, and abusive in some of the ways they treat her in the time we've known her. In the middle of August she came to live with us. From the day she came to us, she has not been a visitor but family. She is our daughter. Now, we can't legally adopt her being 21, but God has brought us together as family and who am I to argue.
When HC started, Taniesha referred to her baby as it, then God met with her and she bonded with the baby and by weekends end, was looking forward to adopting her out but being involved in the baby's life still. After moving in with us, the adoption work continued until one day she announced that God wanted her to keep baby, and would we help her? The answer was yes of course. I felt so blessed to be in that hospital room, to go through the process of labor with her, to be a part of this new life.
I knew going into this that I had no idea what I was getting into, that there was going to be a lot that I didn't know, but I had no idea. Figured I could see some of the rock above the water and that there would be more below the surface, but what I found out by the end of the year showed me that the rock below the surface extended exponentially. There is so much that I am not going to share here, but over Christmas break she had a guy friend come down to visit. Chris picked him up Christmas evening and he stayed four days, leaving each night to stay with a friend. When he arrived they weren't even dating, and by the third night, he asked my permission to marry her. I will say that this was the easiest to deal with thing that happened thru New Years day and the rest was more difficult than I could possibly have ever imagined.
So this year started off with difficulty, ended with difficulty, and in the middle was filled with so many God moments. I would not trade this last year for anything. So, skipping forward a few weeks into 2013, my precious daughter Taniesha has just rededicated her life to God and is feverishly working to deal with her past, and put her current into the past, and begin a new life with God.
I know I left so much out and I'm getting sick and my mind is a little spacy right now so I really hope I don't read this later and regret bunches left out or some put in but I'm pretty sure that this does not really adequately express all I want to convey.
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