Miracle Stories
“Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:3-4
The Letter
The day was September 11, 1998. And I ached with a wrenching hunger – a hunger impossible to satisfy. Seven weeks earlier my life had altered irreversibly. As Why’s pressed in about me, I clung yet again to the truth that it is only God who holds life’s answers, for He alone truly understands the questions.
I had turned my life over to God, or at least the first small child-faith steps in that direction, when I was five. I never remember a time when I did not have a hunger for God’s word. Yet today it was not His words I hungered for. I hungered for words from my youngest son. Words that could never come. Words that would have to wait until eternity to be shared.
I knew that. With very fiber of my being I knew that. Yet, unexplainably, the longing for those words grew stronger as I made my way home that evening. The previous day had been a difficult one, and though I had struggled for years with God being enough, by the Lord’s mercy and grace I had been feasting on His sufficiency these last weeks. That is why this longing now made no sense, especially as it was a longing impossible to fill. I best start at the beginning.
For the previous sixteen years I had been a single parent of four children, their ages spanning a difference of six years. God’s continued faithfulness to me and my children had been a constant. Justin, my youngest son, was a particularly special gift of God to me and my three other children. Daily, God showed Himself faithful to us; though in honesty my eyes did not always see it. We are called to walk by “faith not by sight.” Yet so often what we think we “see” becomes the focus of our attention. But God is good! Daily! Moment by moment! And in His love for us, He often allowed my children and me to be aware of His hand. How could we not when raising four children on a single income? His provisions were exceeding, abundant, above all we asked or thought. And we acknowledged and praised Him for it.
God’s blessings moved far beyond physical provision. He allowed me to watch each of my children come to place their trust in Him at an early age. Watching them fall in love with Jesus was a joy beyond measure. Struggles existed. Struggles with peace. Struggles in walking faithfully with Him. Struggles to match the reality of our lives to the longing of our heart. Always God was there with us, patiently walking beside us at our pace. But always moving us forward when we would start taking those steps backwards.
As my two older boys each went away to college, battlegrounds changed, but the Captain of the army didn’t. He stayed the same, yesterday, today, and forever. I began to watch my sons walking with Him on their own. Staggering at times, but the Lord always proved faithful to lift them up by His right hand. It wasn’t unusual to even see God carrying them. We learned that He never is ashamed or too big to stoop down and pick us up when we are weak.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, Justin turned fourteen and discovered the guitar. Immediately, it became a vessel with which to share his love of the Lord. Right from the start, he began writing songs. Simple songs, yet a message always filled with hope for the hopeless. Always speaking first to his heart and then to others.
For many years the children and I had longed to leave the city where we never felt at home, but as time went on, I gave it up as a dream, deciding to find my peace where I was at. After all, it was the field in which God had planted us. Yet discontent remained hidden in small crevices of my heart.
Despite God’s awareness of that battle not yet won in me, through a series of miraculous events, God gave us that desire of our heart. Unexpectedly, He gave me a job half a continent away where my two younger children, still in high school, would be able to glory in God surrounded by his creation. Justin looked forwarded to hours of fishing, hiking, and hunting.
Two weeks after being offered the job I was in the hospital fighting for my life, our dream and God’s answered prayer not yet reality. This was the toughest challenge my children had ever faced. Even tougher than the death of their father two years earlier. I wish I could say they all sailed through it victoriously, undaunted, but this is one of the seasons that our loving Shepherd did a lot of carrying. Ever patient. Ever nurturing our faith in Him by loving us when we questioned. Never accusing. Clearing the path before us when we could not see our way. My daughter, who turned seventeen during those dark days, told me later that she clung to something she told her self over and over. God would not hold out the promise of our dream only to snatch it away before we even tasted of it. Not only did it give her hope, she was right. After nearly five weeks in the hospital and another shaky three weeks receiving around-the-clock care, God turned our dreams to reality.
Arriving at our newest gift from God, we all felt home for the first time in our lives. What a homecoming it was! Justin thrived, glorying in all that God had brought us. In our new small town he discovered new dreams! Dreams of being an architect, designing house after house in minutest detail. Dreams of being an author, with scrapes of stories and novels scattered around the house. And always, his music! His love for the Lord growing stronger every day, his desire to walk faithfully with Him became a driving force in his life. His music grew by leaps and bounds, often finding its inspiration from the hurts life brought. Yet, taken to the Source of hope and joy, he found a purpose in each difficulty that caused him to be able to thank God, genuinely.
It is impossible to count how many, many times Justin told me how thankful he was that God had brought us here. That God was so good to us to love us this way. Forty-eight hours never passed without his sharing that thought at least once. He was verbalizing what his sister Laurel and I each felt. How truly he lived here.
As I write these words, they carry now a meaning I could never have imagined a year ago. And it nearly brings me back to where I began. Justin did get to ‘live’ here. That’s where the ‘walking by faith not by sight’ takes a turn. An eternal turn. At about one o’clock on July 20, 1998, Justin entered fully into that life he longed for - when he met the Jesus he loved face to face. His songs took on a new voice. The single car accident that some might say “took his life” and that of his friend actually set him free . . . to truly live.
But seven weeks later, here I was, longing for words that could never come. So overwhelming was this unanswerable need that as I drove home, I found myself pleading with the Lord to take that longing from me and to fill it with Himself. He is always faithful, and once again I experienced a measure of His peace as I pulled into my driveway. However, that peace did not carry me through the discovery in my mailbox of a letter addressed to Justin.
My first response was to throw it away as it looked to be ‘junk’ mail. As I looked closer, however, I realized it was from a secular leadership conference Justin and other high school students had attended at the state university shortly after moving here a year ago. Guessing they now needed something from him, I opened it with a measure of dread, fearing I would not know where to find what they needed.
Enclosed was a letter reminding Justin of their conference the previous September and asking if he had met the goals he had set. In case he had forgotten what they were, the letter said his goals were enclosed. That is as far in the letter as I read. Frantically I began searching through the papers for what they claimed was included. My hand shook when I saw an envelope addressed to Justin in his own handwriting. In the lower left hand corner, he had scribbled the words “12 months.”
Opening it, I was disappointed to simply see a form that he had filled out. Then I read his answers:
Personal goal: “become close with God”.
Why is it important: “because I need to.”
Steps to complete: “pray, read and study Bible, really try hard.”
The rest of the extensive form remained blank.
I sat there . . . . stunned. Here were the words from my son. Words my heart had hungered for, yet knowing it was impossible. Impossible, for he had been with his Lord for seven weeks. Words that the Lord had led Justin, a boy just turned fifteen, to pen a year before, in his own hand, sharing the deepest longing of his heart. Words that expressed Justin’s heart’s cry. And having heard them, God had lovingly and graciously answered.
And through those penned words God’s grace “satisfied” my own wrenching hunger. Who but a faithful, ever loving God, could put into operation a letter that would arrive a year later in answer to a grieving mother’s heart? An answer that would bring total assurance and the peace that with God there are no mistakes. His ways are always perfect.
Lovingly, our walk with Him is a walk of ‘faith not sight.’ A faith that itself is a gift of God. A gift from His loving hand to our waiting heart.
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This is truly beautiful - I was on the edge of seat all the way through - you wrote this from the heart, and it shows.
There was only one thing I could see - you wrote "scrapes of paper" not "scraps of paper".