I was watching something on t.v a few weeks ago, a young child had died and the parents were completely overcome with grief. It really upset me and I began to pray about it, I was praying for those poor parents, nobody should have to lose a child, the pain would be unbearable, I couldn’t even begin to imagine the devastation and the agony.

As I prayed I felt as though God was speaking to me, he was saying he knew the pain, he had felt the pain and he still feels it. He watched his son die on the cross, he watched his son suffer and he watched his son cry out in agony and he knew the pain and still he feels that pain every day. We are God’s children, each one of us is so precious to him, he is our heavenly father and he loves each and every one of us and every time one of us rejects him and turns away from him, he loses a child all over again. What loss he feels and how much he wants each and every one of his children to remain safe in his arms forever.

A few Sundays ago I got up for church, I was feeling lazy and sleepy but I decided I really wanted to go so I rushed my breakfast, ran around like a mad thing and managed to get ready in plenty time. It’s about a twenty minute drive to my church and I got about half way there when I came across a great big road block and a sign saying the road was closed due to flooding and I couldn’t get through. No problem, I thought, I’ll just take a wee diversion. So of I went along a wee side road, no idea where I was heading but I thought it would take me in roughly the right direction....only it didn’t!

I drove for ages and ended up in a village in the complete opposite direction to where I wanted to be. Right, I thought, I’ll find a church here. I had 5 minutes before most of the local services started and I drove around and around getting madder and madder and the only church I came across was a Roman Catholic church. By this point I was so frustrated and I was sitting in my car praying out loud in the most exasperated tone of voice, “Well, I can’t exactly go in there Lord, can I”?

So I admitted defeat and went home, I was so cheesed off and just didn’t get why God didn’t want me to go to church that morning.

When I got home I switched on the t.v and decided to watch a service on the God channel, John Hagee was on so I sat down, still really cheesed off, but thought I’d make the best of a bad situation. As I watched Hubby was sitting in the dining room on the internet, one eye on the computer and one eye on the t.v (like I couldn't’ see him). John Hagee was talking about how God was out healer and suddenly hubby pipes up “yeah he might be our healer but all these things he needs to heal us from he created in the first place”.

Great I thought, how do answer that one, this morning was going from bad to worse! I sat and pondered for a while, really fed up by this point, i felt like kicking something and then suddenly it hit me. Something amazing had just happened and I totally missed it. My husband, who had started of as a complete atheist and then became an agnostic had just acknowledged God as our creator!!!!! This was amazing stuff.

I know God is working in his life but to be honest it was pure faith that gave me that conviction but now here was indisputable truth.

This is why I wasn’t in church that morning, exactly for that moment! I was exactly where God wanted me to be, he wanted me to hear that and he wanted me to know that he was answering my prayers.

It was just perfect.

Sometimes these little inconveniences in our life are the biggest blessing of all and we don’t even know it.

Prayer is a funny thing, it’s not always answered when, where and how we want it but it is always answered.

You can’t always understand at the time why things are happening but often when we look back it’s a good job we didn’t get what we wanted! Garth Brooks sings this amazing song called Unanswered Prayers, it’s about how much he loves his wife and what a blessing she is in his life and when he bumps into his high school sweetheart and looks back at how much he prayed for things to work out between them he thanks God for not answering his prayers.

Hubby has been promoted and his 4 month trip away has been cancelled. We knew he was going to be promoted for ages and a promotion normally means a posting. I really wanted to get Scotland but I really, really didn’t want to get TCW. TCW is the Tactical Communication Wing, basically when any trouble kicks off they’re deployed and they’re the first people in there, it means a lot of time away and a lot of worry! So I spent a lot of time praying “please Lord not TCW, anywhere but TCW”. Really what I meant was I don’t want him to be away all the time getting shot at.

So when he came home and told me that his promotion had come through and he thought he’d got a post in I.T down here I was a bit gutted it wasn’t Scotland but I know we’ll get there eventually, I was just so relieved it wasn’t TCW so I kind of half heartedly gave thanks, “thanks God for it not being TCW” but I was really thinking, why not Scotland, in my head. Anyway, his 4 month detachment had been cancelled so I was delighted about that.

And then he came home and told me that he hadn’t got I.T. He’d got TCW! I was completely gutted! I was so upset I just couldn’t believe it. He was going to be going off to Iraq and Afghanistan and goodness knows where else and I would be sat at home worried out of my head waiting for the phone to ring. I actually asked God “Why did you do this, why?” I had actually prayed thank you to God earlier for not letting it happen and now this! I was so angry and disappointed and just devastated really but then I felt like God was saying to me “just trust me, have confidence in me” so I thought, ok, I will, God’s gonna help me through whatever comes my way, I might not like it but I’ll go with it.

It felt like I was being tested, I needed to have faith that everything was going to work out even though it was the last thing I felt like doing I knew I had to just trust. I think sometimes when you’re heart isn’t really in it your head had to take control and say, right, this is what you’re going to do, get on with it girl!!!

Well, turns out that even though he’s got TCW his post is non-deployable which means he won’t be spending weeks on end in various war zones dodging bullets and I won’t be a nervous wreck.
God did answer my prayers even though I didn’t realise it at the time. We didn’t get Scotland but that’s not what I asked for right now, God knows that’s where my heart lies and we’ll get there in his time. He has a plan for our lives and sometimes it doesn’t make sense but he puts us right where we need to be. He sees the bigger picture and he’s right beside us every step of the way loving and protecting us.

So thank God for guiding us, watching over us, answering our prayers when we don’t even realise it and for knowing that sometimes not answering them is the best thing he can do for us.

Some people think that if you’re a Christian you should be able to sail through life, no problems, no bother. Wouldn’t that be nice. Unfortunately it’s not true. We’re all human, we all have trials and problems, we all have up days and down days and we all need a bit of help sometimes.

There is only 6 weeks till Hubby goes away. It’s getting closer and closer and I don’t like it. A few weeks ago he came home from work with a booklet about what to expect prior to detachments and I thought “oh for goodness sake, I don’t need some stupid booklet to tell me I’m going to be a bit anxious because my husband is disappearing for 4 months” but the other day I had a flick through it. It tells you what stages you go through prior to the separation and it’s amazing, you really do, everything they’ve said is exactly what happens.
You go through the denial stage where it’s so far away it’s not worth thinking about, you go through the arguing about stupid stuff stage like if he leaves the toilet seat up one more time I’m going to rip it off and beat him over the head with it, you go through the clingy stage and you go through the weepy stage which is where we’re at, at the moment (well by “we” I mean “me”).

My ma gave me a copy of the Footprints poem which I have framed in the kitchen, I love it, it’s one of favourites but when something is there in front of you every day you hardly ever read it. When you do read it, it really reminds you that God is always with you, even when you don’t realise it.

I think there’s only one set of footprints in my life right now and they sure aint mine!

Since I became a Christian I have been struggling with explaining to my friends. Not my friends back home, my friends down here. The brilliant thing about Stornoway is that everybody, whether they are a church goer or not, understands what you mean when you say “I’ve become a Christian”.
The church is part of the culture up there, it’s a way of life.

Down here if you say to someone “I’ve become a Christian” they say, “well weren’t you one already” or “we’re all Christians in this country” and if you tell them you’ve been born again they look at you as if you’ve joined some weird cult!

How do you explain to someone that has no grasp whatsoever of the concept without them thinking you’ve completely lost their marbles.
Obviously you can do it but I’ve just been a coward. I’ve been making excuses why I can’t go out drinking with them and avoiding situations where I would have to come out and explain to them. A few weeks ago one of my really good friends called round and I was watching the God channel on TV and she laughed and called me a geek, that would have been the perfect opportunity to explain but I just shrugged it off and said nothing.

Tonight I was browsing You Tube. They had showed a video clip of Richard Wurmbrand in church this morning and my baby girl had been a bit grumpy so I had taken her out into the foyer and missed it. I thought I’d search for it and whilst doing so I came across some clips posted by Voice of the Martyrs. It was powerful stuff.
They were telling of the thousands of Christians being persecuted all over the world for their faith. Right now. As I’m typing this. A Christian is martyred every 3 minutes.
I saw a clip on there of a ten year old boy in the Sudan who had been thrown on top of a bonfire and left to die because he wouldn’t deny Christ and turn to Islam. I heard storied of people locked in prison cells underground for 15 years suffering unbearable torture all because they wouldn’t deny Christ.
Christians in China are being arrested and beaten for attending church, they could easily avoid these horrors by denying God and they won’t!

And I can’t even stand up for his name to my friends.

I will NEVER make excuses or shy away from telling anyone about my faith EVER again and whilst I’m doing it I will thank God that he’s put me in the position that I can do it without having to fear the horrific consequences that so many in the world are suffering today.
Jesus didn’t deny me when he hung upon that cross and I will never deny him.

But the amazing thing is that no matter how pathetic, shameful or cowardly I am, God still loves me, he still holds his arms out to me and offers me sweet salvation.
His capacity for forgiveness is amazing and his love is never ending.

People need to know how much God loves them, there are so many broken, empty people in the world today, if only they realised what amazing love and comfort is within their grasp so many hearts would be healed.

God is always with us

I have been getting a bit disheartened recently, there's 9 weeks till hubby goes away for 4 months and I'm just dreading it, 4 months is a long time to be away from your family and when you have a 10 year old who desperately misses his daddy and a baby who won't even remember him when he gets back, it's hard. Anyway, I suppose I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself and when he left on Sunday for 3 days I just couldn't stop crying because I knew next time we said goodbye it was going to be for such a long time.
So really, I've just been feeling sorry for myself!

But then the wee man came home from school yesterday and he had a little figure (a person with their hands raised in the air) made out of pipe cleaners. I didn't really pay much attention to it until he was going to bed last night and he out the figure on his shelf in his bedroom and he said to me "this is to remind me that when you praise God you get strength".

What a message!

I know God will get me through anything and I just am so grateful for this amazing little man who encourages me in so many ways, don't get me wrong, he's a perfectly normal little boy, an hour earlier he'd been sulking in his bedroom because I wouldn't give him ice cream but he can be so wise sometimes. he really amazes me with the things he says and the knowledge he has.

Yesterday afternoon I watched an interview on Revelation tv, a woman who had been into spiritualism was giving her testimony, she told of how spiritualism led to occultism and eventually withcraft, she told of how she had been converted and it was an amazing story, some of the things she had seen and been through were really scary.
When I went to bed last night I couldn't stop thinking about it and to be honest I was a bit freaked out. Hubby is away so I decided to leave the hall light on and i was laying in bed I looked at the blind on my window, right across the centre of the blind was the shadow of a cross.

I looked around the room and I couldn't find or figure out where this shadow was coming from. It was amazing really, I went to sleep last night looking at this cross in my window, knowing that God was with me and protecting me and I woke up this morning with this incredible sense of love and comfort.

God is always with us.

The WOW Factor

Church yesterday was fab.

The pastor was talking about how God has the "wow factor". In my daily readings I've reached Acts chapter 8 and when the pastor asked us to turn to the portion of scripture he was going to preach from I opened my bible and went WOW. He was about to preach from Acts chapter 9, the exact passage I had marked to study next.
How amazing.

Hubby is due to go away in July for 4 months, something none of us are looking forward to. When the wee man came out of Sunday school he said they had been reading a verse that he thought was for his dad so last night at after tea he read it to him. It was Joshua ch1 v9, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go".

It brought a tear to my eye but how amazing! God speaks to us in so many ways.

I Am Where I Need To Be

I am where I need to be right now.

I don't know what my future holds but I do know that whatever or wherever my future is God will be with me, guiding me and protecting me.

I feel comforted, cushioned and protected, I feel his love surround me, I'm wrapped in it and it's amazing.

For My Husband

You know the kind of family I was raised in, religion was always part of my life from an early age and I am grateful that I was raised this way although sometimes I think the way of life we had then was too restrictive but I always accepted it and am grateful for the things I was taught from an early age, it’s hard to describe and you probably think I believed in God because my parents taught me but that’s not right, I’ve always known with clear certainty that every word I was hearing was true. My parents also taught me about the tooth fairy and Santa Claus but I never once remember believing in them.

At the point in my life when I met you I knew I was a sinner and I also knew that if I died right then I would go to hell. Simple as. I also was at a point where I thought I’ll become a Christian one day, when I’m old (I’m not old now ok), but not yet, there’s too much fun to be had, there’s plenty time for all that. Even though I knew Heaven and Hell were real I de-realed them in my mind. I know that’s not a word but it’s the only one I can think of right now. I made them almost cartoon-like in my head, dulled them down a bit. Heaven was all fluffy clouds and hell was a nasty man poking you with a big stick.

That was fine for a bit. You know what I was like, I didn’t go to church for years and I didn’t even think about it at all to be honest, I still had the foundation that my parents gave me but I cast everything aside and I honestly thought I was ok.

When we would go home on holiday my ma would nag me about going to church and I know she wasn’t really nagging me, she was just doing it out of love but at the time I wished she would just shut up about it, I was fine so far right?
Anyway, one Sunday morning in Stornoway about 6 years ago, I think we had been out the night before and I had a hangover so I had made some excuse not to go to church and I was having a long lie, something made me get up and go down to the kitchen. I used to have this habit of picking up the bible and just opening it and reading the first verse I came across, I hadn’t done it for ages though. When I went down to the kitchen the dictionary was sitting on the table, it was the Collins Concise English dictionary, the great big thick version that I had got for Christmas when I was about 10 and I don’t know what made me do it bit I just let the dictionary fall open and read the first word I came across, now the dictionary has more than 70,000 words in it and I know because I just googled it ok, anyway, the first word my eyes fell on was “retribution” and the definition was “to pay the price for your sins”. I thought that’s weird. So I did it again, I let the dictionary fall open and the first word my eyes fell on was “atonement” and in the definition it said the re-uniting of man with God through the forgiveness of sin.
I knew that hadn’t happened by chance, I knew God was speaking to me, those exact 2 words out of 70,000, really, how could that not be a message. Don’t ever tell me that God doesn’t have a sense of humour because I wouldn’t read the bible but he got me with a dictionary! It’s mental!
Anyway, having just had this profound experience I turned around and went back to bed and went to sleep and promptly forgot all about it. What a fool!

So I just went on the way I had been but I started to get more conscious of my own mortality and to be honest with you deep down I was terrified. When we moved to down south these feelings seemed to get stronger, you know if I heard a noise in the sky in the middle of the night I used to wake up in a panic in case it was the second coming. I used to wake up praying as hard as I could, almost begging in fact “not yet, please not yet God, I'm not ready, I need more time” and then I realised it was just a plane taking of or something, bearing in mind we were living next to a runway this used to happen quite a lot. When I realised it was nothing and I was safe for the moment I would turn over and go back to sleep and in the morning it would be like nothing had even happened.

You see Hell had become so real to me, it’s a real place, as real as what your experiencing right now, how aware and conscious you are right now that’s how aware and conscious you will be in hell. It’s a physical place and it’s never-ending. It says in the bible that you will cry out to die because of the torment you are in but there is no death, it’s eternal. And the thing I find most scary is you will remember everything. Every time someone spoke to you about Jesus and you ignored it you will remember every conversation you ever had about the bible and you will know that if only you had taken that chance you would have been spared. That is just so horrific to me. Nobody that I love is going to end up there, you included and I know that for a fact.

Do you remember that film Event Horizon, that film really disturbed me, I watched it once and remember I couldn’t watch it again, well that’s because it depicts Hell and you hear people screaming and wailing, it terrified me and yet I know that the real thing is a trillion times worse than anything man could ever dream up.

And still I went on the same way until one night about 4 yers ago I had a dream, it was awful and I can’t really speak about it even now, that’s partly the reason I am writing this down for you because I don’t want to cry.
Our son was in my dream, he was being raised up into the air and I was reaching out to him, I knew he was being taken away to be with God and I was being left behind, I will never as long as I live forget his face in that dream, he was so beautiful his face was just shining and as I reached out trying to cling to him he looked at me like he loved me so much but he pitied me because he was leaving, he knew he had to go and he wanted to go and I couldn’t be his mother anymore. That dream broke my heart and I sobbed for days afterwards, I hid it from you of course and I don’t think I could have told you even if I tried, I wouldn’t have been able to get the words out. I know that these things that I had experienced was God talking to me and there have been many other instances of this which I will tell you about another time if you like.

I cannot pinpoint a time and say that’s when it happened, that’s when I became a Christian because it wasn’t like that with me, it was more like a slow gradual process, there was no flashing lights and no sudden lightning bolt from heaven, God was being patient with me because he knows what a slow coach I am.

I knew I had to change, I knew it with complete certainty but I also know that I couldn’t do it by myself so I began to pray “Lord, please change my desires”, I prayed this probably even a little half heatedly if I’m honest but boy, when God answers prayers he doesn’t do it by halves.
First I began listening to Gospel music and then I found that’s all I wanted to listen to. I remember standing doing my ironing one Sunday afternoon (slap on the hand) and getting mad with myself because I couldn’t watch MTV, I kept flipping over to see what was on the God channels. I couldn’t understand what was going on.

I used to feel envious of my sister because I could see what a deep passion she had for the Lord, she just wanted to speak about him all the time and she loved him so much, I used to think I wish I could be like that but I would get bored I could never keep it up and that’s true, I would have done but ever since I made the decision and said sorry for my sins and asked forgiveness the love has come to me, when I actually thought about what Jesus did for me, and shed tears for him and the pain he experienced because he loved me so much I am just overwhelmed by it. When he hung there on that cross with the weight of the world’s sin on his shoulders dying an excruciating death, he knew my name and if I had been the only person in the world he would have done it just the same because he loves me so much.
How could I not love someone who would do that for me and you know what it’s like when you’re in love, you want to be with that person all the time.

I remember when I met you I used to think there could never be a love bigger than this and then the babies came along and I thought no way could there ever be a bigger love than this and then I met God and I know that no matter how much we love his capacity to love is a million trillion time more than ours, it just can’t be measured and that’s such a good job because I can be hard to love.

Anyway, I’ve wanted to say all this to you for a while but I kept putting it off because the thing is I love you so much I don’t just want to spend the rest of life with you I want to spend eternity with you too and I know God has a plan for your life, he will do it in his own time but I pray for you constantly and I know that no matter how much I love you God loves you more and he didn’t bring us together against all the odds to separate us again.

The reason I am writing all this down today is because of a dream I had last night. I was at my mothers and our wee man came running in and said come outside and look at the sky it’s so beautiful so me, the wee man and my mother ran outside, it was dark but the sky was all lit up like fireworks or the Northern Lights and as we stood looking at it in amazement these letters appeared in front of me hanging in mid air and the spelt out “NEAR HEAVEN” and I knew I had to get to you, I wanted to run inside the house and tell you everything before it was too late but I couldn’t move my legs and I knew it was time and I hadn’t told you.
I believe God was speaking to me and so I’m telling you it all now and you might think I’m crazy but I still love you. So much.

Going to the dentist is a blessing

I am absolutely terrified of the dentist, not just scared but completely terrified, once when I thought I had to go for a check-up i started crying at the thought of it.

When I was in school we had a complete butcher for a dentist and that woman traumatised me for life, I remember once she pulled out one of my teeth and honestly, the struggle she had getting it out and she wasn't gentle, I'm surprised she didn't stick one foot on my jaw for some leverage whilst she was at it.

Anyway today I had to go for two fillings.

I have known for weeks that it was coming up and I tried not think about it but as it grew closer I began to panic a bit, I even asked hubby to come with me because I couldn't go by myself. That's what a big baby I am. So this morning I got up and even thought about cancelling the appointment but then I started praying about it and it suddenly dawned on me that I should be grateful that I CAN go to the dentist. I thought about all the people in the world who can't afford dental treatment, who can't even afford food for their children and here I am moaning and whining because I have the privilege of appropriate medical care when I need it. What a stupid selfish girl I am. So I started thanking God for the dentist (how crazy is that, I'm thanking God for the dentist, even I can't believe it) and the fear just totally went. I wasn't scared anymore and this is a big thing because what I actually mean by scared is crying-wailing-locking-myself-in-the-bathroom terrified. But I just wasn't scared anymore and all the way there in the car I was saying in my head "thank you Lord for the dentist, thank you Lord for the dentist" and you know what, it wasn't even that bad.

The injection was a bit sore but I started remembering books I'd read about prisoners in concentration camps where they pulled out their teeth and all sorts without anaesthetic and I started praying in my head "thank you Lord for the injection, thank you Lord for the injection" and it was over before I knew it and I had my two fillings and I didn't feel a thing.

Isn't prayer a wonderful thing!

No More Night Terrors

Before I was saved I was scared. I was scared of everything. Life, death and everything in between.

If I heard a noise in the sky at night I would wake up in a panic in case it was the second coming. Seriously. I would be praying and praying, almost begging in fact "not yet God, please not yet, I'm not ready, I need more time" and then I'd realise it was just a plane flying over the house or something and I'd calm down and go back to sleep.

Bearing in mind that I live beside a runway this used to happen quite a lot.

But you know the worst part, I used to get up the next day and just put it to the back of my mind, I'd laugh at myself for being silly and just get on with my life. What a fool. Praise God for being persistent because I would have given up on me a long time ago.

Now I know I'm saved because I'm not scared anymore.

How amazing it is to have that assurance.