Secrets Revealed

I never wanted to reveal the secret shame. But I had to let it out because it was so entwined with the story I was compelled to tell. The story of how my helpless, defenseless father was abused and neglected in nursing facilities. So I told the secret in Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father.

Next I wrote Secrets Revisited, a collection of thirty-six personal vignettes showing the dynamics in the alcoholic family. Reliving each experience as I wrote it, I came to realize that through and in it all was God—seeing, knowing, and understanding.

 

 

 

The Stolen Cherry

My mother-in-law-to-be had no idea what that fruit cocktail with one cherry meant to me.

In my deprived childhood, fruit cocktail—or anything sweet, for that matter—was a rare respite. Mama always divided the treat equally for my three brothers and me, making sure each serving included a cherry. (As I remember, there were only four in a can.) For me that red cherry punctuated the special occasion; so I always saved it for the last bite in those days and ever after.

Years later in my fiancé’s house, his father distracted my attention away from the cherry I was about to savor to something else in the kitchen.  When I turned my head back, the bowl was empty.

My confused eyes looked up and met my future father-in-law’s face, grinning at me like a Cheshire cat. There was no way he knew he had robbed me of a secret pleasure. And therein lies the decision.

Why play a practical joke? Why do something that, according to an Internet definition, “makes the victim look foolish or experience embarrassment, discomfort, or physical harm”?

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:32 ESV)

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father

Reminders in a Restroom

 

No toilet paper! What to do? If only I had checked first.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand (Isaiah 41:10 NIV).

Oh, I see some! There, peeping below the stall partition. Can I reach it?

Yes!

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19 NIV).

Thinking someone might be on the other side wondering why I was helping myself to what was hers, I explained the situation.

“Let me give you some more,” a soft voice replied. Before I could respond, I was holding more toilet paper than I needed.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20 NIV).

Then I heard, “I’m going to make sure I leave this hanging down low for the next person.”

Do to others as you would have them do to you (Luke 6:31 NIV).

Wherever I am, God is.

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father

A Sign with Support

Remember the laying out of the fleece? Gideon was testing God. First, he wanted God to make the fleece wet and the ground dry. Okay. Well, just to be sure . . . how about making the fleece dry and the ground wet?

That wasn’t the first time God appeased Gideon with a sign. There came an anxious night, however, when God got the jump on him.

Gideon was probably wearing a graveyard face when the Almighty said, “’If you are afraid to attack, go down to the camp with your servant Purah and listen to what they are saying. Afterward, you will be encouraged to attack the camp’” (Judges 7:10-11 NIV).

If he was afraid? Who wouldn’t have been afraid? Gideon’s 300-man army was outnumbered 450 to 1.

Obeying God’s order, Gideon and Purah spied on two soldiers. They listened as these enemies discussed a dream, predicting that Gideon would defeat their entire army.

But why did God send Gideon’s armor-bearer with him? Was it to give him confidence that a weapon, if needed, would be ready? Was it to give him confirmation if he doubted that he had heard correctly? Was Purah there for encouragement? However God used Purah, he was support for Gideon.

For He knows what we are made of, remembering that we are dust
(Psalm 103:14 HCSB).

 

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father

The Accuser

Her first urge was to accept the invitation. Then, fearing she would be accused of being haughty and proud, she did not move.

Who was she to speak? She would be drawing attention to herself in front of everyone, and that would be wrong. The Bible told her she should walk humbly with God. She shouldn’t seek to be noticed. That’s why she couldn’t go.

But the tug-of-war persisted. Go. Stay. Go. Stay. Go . . . she left her chair in the choir loft and meandered her way down to a microphone.

Others stood in line. When it was her turn, she gave thanks to God for his step-by-step healing during the past year. The congregation was blessed by her gratitude.

Why had she hesitated? Because Satan is an accuser. He puts doubt into our hearts and minds. Getting us to scrutinize our every motive, he destroys our spiritual peace. He will do whatever it takes to hinder our walk with God.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down (Revelation 12:10 NIV).

 

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father

Terror in the Darkness

Do you strive to please and are disappointed? Is your effort unnoticed and unappreciated, and you then submit to feeling frustrated, dejected, rejected?

Not so with Jesus. At Jesus’ baptism and again at His transfiguration, God’s voice was heard proclaiming: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17; 17:5 ESV).

Assured and confident, Jesus once told his enemies that God “has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to him” (John 8:29 ESV). But Jesus would have to take part of that back.

It happened when God covered His Son’s crucifixion with darkness from noon to three in the afternoon. No one could see the torment in the Suffering Servant’s face then. No eye penetrated that darkness.

Every ear, however, heard the terrorizing cry—the first and last of its kind—that like a knife pierced the pitch-black cover. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34 ESV).

Abandoned by His Father! How could it be?

Jesus had known that when He gave Himself as the sacrifice for sins, He would suffer. He had settled that with sweat drops of blood at dark Gethsemane. But the Son never imagined there would come a moment when His Father would desert Him.

Only hours before being nailed to the cross, Jesus had implored his disciples to “believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (John 14:11 ESV). Then He revealed to them: “Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me” (John 16:32 ESV).

Why did the Father forsake the Son in whom He dwelled? Why was their unblemished fellowship broken?

The apostle Paul gave the answer. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV).

Jesus was more than the sacrifice for sins. He was also the substitute for sinners. During that darkness, God treated His Son as if He were a sinner—as if He were guilty of all sins—past, present, future. That meant Jesus must undergo the terror of total separation from God.

Sacrificed. Substituted. Separated. Jesus paid it all.

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
(1 Peter 2:24 ESV)

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father

When God Leads

“Follow me. I won’t take you to the interstate,” assured my husband as I turned on the ignition. “I’ll get us home another way.”

He knew my days of making split-second decisions in multilane, fast-moving traffic were over. So, with my husband leading me, I was at peace as we drove in tandem. Although longer, the safer driving route for me was off the interstate.

The shortest route was not the safest one, either, for the Israelites to get to their home. That’s why God led them a way to the Promised Land that was three and a half times longer.

The short route, about 100 miles, would have taken them into a warring people’s territory. There, as God knew, His fledgling nation would be overwhelmed and retreat back to Egypt.

God knew the best way then, and He knows the best way now. Delays, detours, denials—all are part of God’s route to get us to our destination.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD,

plans for welfare and not for evil,

to give you a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11 ESV).

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father

The Old Princess

His back was toward me, but I saw his lips whispering in her ear. I hit him with my purse.

I didn’t mean to.

He swung around with a puzzled frown. But before I could apologize, his young, handsome face disarmed me. “You’re a princess too!”

Then, seeing what I had to do, he swiftly added, “Oh, let me help you with that.” In a few effortless seconds, it seemed, he had emptied my cart. As groceries sped down the conveyer belt, I told this stranger he was a prince charming.

I did not tell him that in my eighty years of living, he was the only person who had ever called me a princess.

Therefore we do not lose heart.

Though outwardly we are wasting away,

yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day

(2 Corinthians 4:16 NIV).

 

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father

The Second Beatitude in Action

The encounter was brief yet divinely directed. In only a few minutes, she had ripped open a deep wound that I was so sure I had stitched shut years before.

Miraculously, we were alone. Even the office help, as I discovered after our short time together, was not behind their plexiglass partition then—not at that distressing moment.

I knew she was getting ready to leave because of the door where she was standing. Soon a wheelchair would appear with her husband. Mine had just begun his oral surgery.

There was no way she could foresee the effect her comment would have on me. Nothing about it was out of place for waiting room chit-chat. To my dismay, immediately, it cut me to the quick. The kindness she mentioned that she had been shown was the same exact one I had been refused.

What happened next, I could not stop. Like unrestrained water from a burst pipe, my tears gushed out. Instantly, she was wrapping me in her arms, softly consoling.

Two strangers briefly met. One needed comfort. The other gave it.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4 NIV).

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father

For Your Consideration

 

Look inside on Amazon.

(Available in paperback and Kindle.)  

Intimidated

David intimidated? The David who killed Goliath? The David who was a fierce fighter? The David who wrote the twenty-third psalm? That David?

Yes, that David.

“And today, though I am the anointed king, I am weak, and these sons of Zeruiah are too strong for me” (2 Samuel 3:39 NIV).

Who were these sons of Zeruiah David was afraid of?  They were his sister’s boys, Joab and Abishai, who “murdered Abner because he had killed their brother Asahel in the battle at Gibeon” (2 Samuel 3:30 NIV).

Why did David not obey God’s law and execute the justice it required for murder?

Yes, Joab and Abishai had power and popularity with the army. But so had Goliath in his day, and that didn’t stop David from killing him.

Yes, they were successful on the battlefield. But David, too, was a winning warrior.

Yes, they had gained the respect of the people. So had David, for “all Israel and Judah loved David, because he led them in their campaigns” (1 Samuel 18:16 NIV).

Why, then, was he afraid of his nephews? Where was the David who had shouted to that giant Goliath, “I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty” (1 Samuel 17:45 NIV) and “The battle is the Lord ’s” (1 Samuel 17:47 NIV)? Why didn’t he turn over to God this battle with another giant—the giant of fear?

The answer is that David did not act upon his resolution of ten years earlier when he was in Gath, Goliath’s hometown. At that time, being “very much afraid of Achish king of Gath” (1 Samuel 21:12 NIV), he resolved before God, “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (Psalm 56:3 NIV).

What are you afraid of? Depression? Denial? Desertion? Discord? Drudgery?  Determine, come what may, to place your faith in God, clinging to “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.”

Finding yourself in the Old Testament

A story of love in action

Prequel to Before the Door Closes: A Daughter’s Journey with Her Alcoholic Father