In 1999-2000 I was 38 years old… my life was crumbling under my feet. I had been raised in the church and had “done everything I was told to do.” In spite of my best efforts, my lifetime of obedience and compliance had failed me… and I found myself in a broken marriage with hurting children. I was a desperate soul. It was such a dark, painful time.
In August of 2000, the Lord directed my steps to Bruce Hogarth, a discipleship counselor. As I look back on the time with Bruce, I remember lots of pain, lots of tears, and using up many boxes of Kleenex. But slowly, in time, the light came with truth and understanding and many changes needed on my part. Not changes in behavior, but changes in my belief system and in my thinking.
God knew I could not walk this path alone… and in His tender, watchful care over my life, He raised up a circle of women around me who understood grace, flesh, and new life, and how to live both in Christ and from Him as the only Source of fulfillment. Initially, the things that Bruce and these women said to me sounded like a foreign language. But I was desperate… and all the ways I knew to “do life” had brought such pain and despair that I was open to change, and to letting God transform me. The road to brokenness, forgiveness and a deeper surrender was long but worth it!
I look back on that two-year process and appreciate both the discipleship counseling and those precious women as “midwives” who held my hand and sat by me in my deepest pain.
── Roswell, GA
Galatians 2:19-22 from The Message sums up my journey :