The Christmas I Prayed For

The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to create. And His grace is never early or never late, but always in His perfect timing.

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The path of my family's Christian walk has meandered through many stages, each with a different theme. Sometimes we walked together, other times alone. Some phases were painful, others joyful. The theme of my early Christian journey was accepting Jesus back into my heart. It may sound strange to have a Christian journey without Christ, and it is. Thankfully, God was quite patient with me as I resisted His Son for most of my life. And despite my years of disobedience, He brought me to the perfect destination at the ideal time. Let me explain.

When I was young, my grandmother took me to Sunday school, where I learned how much Jesus loved me. In response to His love, He became my best friend. I spoke to my friend often and prayed to Him each night at bedtime. Sometimes I was allowed to go to the big church. Those days were special for me because I loved to sing, and the pastor's voice was comforting. My spiritual life was great until the Sunday Jesus ended our friendship.

I was about six years old that day and attending the big church. When the pastor gave an altar call, saying we would ask Jesus to come to live in our hearts, I was excited to participate. I was far too young to participate in an adult altar call, and I lacked the understanding to process the meaning of this experience effectively, but no one stopped me. All I understood was that I would talk to my friend Jesus. As I ran down the aisle, I was excited that Jesus would live in my heart.

I stood at the altar with five or six adults and repeated the pastor's prayer words. Words, I believed, would allow Jesus to live in my heart and give me a brand new life. After about 30 seconds, a lifetime for a six-year-old, when nothing happened, I opened one eye and peered around at the others at the altar. Suddenly I panicked because I knew what had happened, and I hoped the others didn't. I didn't want anyone to know that Jesus had refused, with His silence, my invitation to live in my heart. That was my first memory of feeling shame, the first time I wanted to hide.

On that day, paralyzed by my shame, I came to believe that God and religion are only lies. It was the only way my six-year-old broken heart could bear the humiliation of being rejected by Jesus. Thus began 50 lonely years without the joy of knowing my Savior. I managed my grudge against the Son of God by ignoring his existence and believing exclusively in God. At six, I didn't understand that they were the same person. From that day forward, I tuned out when I heard the name of Jesus. I still thought of myself as a Christian, fully accepting the paradox of being a Christian without Christ; until God would tolerate it no more.

I'm a single mother, and my daughter is an only child, so we have always been very close. When she became a Christian, I was afraid it would cause harm to our relationship as well as my relationship with my adored grandchildren. I am grateful that my fears were unfounded. The only apparent change was that, for the first time, there was something she and I could not discuss freely. Today, I'm grateful it didn't prevent her from coming to Jesus. However, at the time, I wished I could protect my grandchildren from the delusion that Jesus was their loving best friend. I knew better; He and I were still not on speaking terms. But I only gave my opinion about how she raised her children if she asked. So, I just avoided the Christian part of their lives. It was painful but not yet enough to melt my frozen heart.

When my grandson was ready to start High School, and his sister was only eight years old, my daughter and her family moved 400 miles away to a suburb of San Francisco. I was heartbroken. I had forged very close bonds with my grandchildren, and I feared being away from them would weaken that bond. It was a dark time for me, and it supported my belief that Christianity could offer me no comfort. Eventually, I would understand it as confirmation of Romans 8:28." And we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose."

God took advantage of that dark time, if He had not arranged it, to teach me that I was, indeed, called according to His purpose. He chased me down until I was trapped, and He isolated me until there was nothing to distract me from hearing His voice. The whole story of how God convinced me to open my heart to Jesus once more is too long to tell here. The important thing to know about the story is despite my years of disobedience, He delivered me to the perfect destination at the ideal time to be my grandson's touchstone when his journey went off track.

In the years after my family moved, I had a series of health problems. Ultimately, I retired on disability. With my income slashed by more than half, I had to give up my apartment to find affordable housing. I ended up in the mountains in a tiny one-bedroom cabin with a small kitchenette, a tiny bathroom, and a sliver of a living room; I think realtors call it cozy. I was lonely, but it helped that I had a car and could drive up and down the mountain at will. Then, as I was still adjusting to that lifestyle, I fell and broke my arm. When it didn't heal properly, three surgeons refused to repair it. They claimed it wouldn't be a successful surgery because my brittle bones would not hold the screws necessary for the repair. I could not use my right arm for an entire year; I'm right-handed. For all intents and purposes, I was a disabled shut-in. God was moving in my life. And from that point forward, He moved quickly and deeply.

With my family gone, my friends did their best to help. But driving up the mountain to see me was difficult. And, when the snow came in the winter, it became impossible. So I spent most winters alone in a silent cabin. With winter came Christmas, by far my loneliest time. The people I loved most were far away, and Christmas held little joy.

Keeping depression at bay when living with that much silence requires vigilance, discipline, a routine, and television. I had no Wi-Fi in the mountains, which meant inferior television reception. Only TBN, home of those who love Jesus, had a signal strong enough to be reliable. Still, I needed voices to break the silence and hold cabin fever at bay, so I often had it on as background noise. I found it tough to ignore Jesus while hearing His name constantly. By now, God was actively pulling the strings in my life.

As He had planned, it took no time for me to become engaged and curious about what I heard on the TBN network. Before I knew it, I wanted to believe what they said about Jesus. I needed that kind of love in my life as I had not at any other time. I wanted to give Jesus another chance, but my frozen heart was afraid to open up for Him again. That desire was the only opening God needed. Suddenly, day after day, I heard stories of others who had shut their hearts to Jesus and the joy they found when they reconciled with Him. As I watched, I could feel God working and the ice around my heart beginning to defrost. I wanted to trust again, but my fears convinced me that with so many doubts, I couldn't be a real Christian. I mistakenly thought that "real" Christians had no doubt.

Then one day, I was doing a crossword puzzle with TBN as my company. I felt my attention pulled to the television and realized that I had become more interested in Jesus than I wanted to be. At that moment, I realized God was nudging me back to His Son. A few more icicles fell. I fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke, someone was interviewing an author about his new book titled "I Believe, Help me with my Unbelief." It was about, you guessed it, the author's journey to Christ despite his fears and doubts. Could God be any more obvious?

Obvious or not, I read the book, and it led me to use the time I'd previously wasted being lonely to get to know Jesus. For the rest of the winter, I read and studied the Bible. I learned that Jesus was very gentle, accepting, and inclusive in His ministry. He consistently offered love and respect, without regard for nationality, origin, or status, to those the culture had labeled unworthy. His heart was open to everyone. I began to wonder how a man like that, a man of compassion, empathy, and love, could have rejected an innocent six-year-old child.

That question stayed with me as I read the Bible, prayed, and meditated. By the Spring, my idea of Jesus had changed considerably, and I was no longer angry at Him. There was joy in our reunion, just as I was told. I understood now that Jesus had never rejected me. Instead, the adults in my life had failed me. I should have never been allowed to participate in an adult activity that I could not understand. The defrosting of my heart was just in time. My family would need my renewed faith in a big way in the next few years.

Without warning, my daughter's husband of 10 years asked for a divorce. Believing her marriage was on solid ground, she was blindsided. She told me there had been the usual ups and downs, but she was unaware that anything was seriously wrong. I could hear the tears in her voice as she told me that she thought her marriage was stable. She had been committed to keeping it so. She believed in until death does us part. But her husband, it seemed, did not. She tried hard. She did things that I know required her to set aside all pride. In effect, she begged for her marriage but begging served only to make her feel more rejected.

I was devastated for her and my grandchildren. My grandson was graduating and was accepted at an outstanding school, one of his top picks. It should have been a joyous time for him, a great summer at the beach where he now lived, before heading off to college at a different beach where he would spend his college years. But he couldn't quite feel joy when he knew his family was falling apart. My granddaughter showed little reaction, but it doesn't take much knowledge about divorce or 12-year-old girls to figure out her feelings. My heart broke for all three of them. And because I recognized that no one divorces without sadness, as the Christian I was becoming, I asked God to comfort their father in his sorrow. Of course, that was between praying for God to remove the malice from my heart.

Even as my heart broke, I was happy they were coming home. I knew my daughter would not survive her divorce unbroken without God in her life. But she needed her mom too. It comforted her that I had come to faith, and having my support from a shared paradigm was a bonus. I thanked God for isolating me in a cabin in the mountains so He could begin my recreation in the image of His Son.

My grandson began to show signs of dangerous behavior over the summer between high school and college. It was by the skin of all of our teeth that we got him to the dorms in Santa Barbara, barely ready to start his classes. But that wasn't the end of his trouble; it was only the beginning. It isn't original, but I call the next two years of his life the desert years. He began questioning his faith, and at the same time, he began to attend raves and take drugs. He started believing that it was LSD that led to the genuine divine connection.

It was all very frightening. But, by God's grace, we never lost communication with him. God helped us stay calm and discuss his feelings and new ideas without anger or blame, which was not my first choice of how to discuss his dangerous behavior. Once more, I thanked God for the time he gave me in isolation. That gift grounded me in faith and gave me the tools to answer my grandson's questions and refute his ideas with Biblically sound answers based on scripture. In those two years, I prayed and surrendered to God more than I thought possible. But It taught me the humility necessary to hear God's voice. He led us through those two years; in retrospect, he had laid the groundwork years before the problem manifested.

The successive few Christmases were less joyful than we had hoped. Celebrating our Savior's birth was marred by the absence of my grandson and our concern for his safety. But I do not want to leave out the many miracles God granted us in those two years. Small gifts, like my daughter's ability to quickly find full-time work. And despite all of the grief, stress, and fear she was battling, God's grace allowed her to continue being the engaged parent her daughter deserved. There were more significant miracles too. I had been praying the same prayer repeatedly, at least three times each day. I asked God to please put a strong Christian in my grandson's path, someone he could connect with on a level that would bring him back into the church and God's safety. I knew that no matter how much he wanted help to return to God, his pride would not allow him to reach out.

One day, my grandson called me. When I saw his number on my phone, my heart rate increased as I answered and prayed this wasn't more trouble; joyfully, it was not. He was calling to tell me that God had answered my precise prayer. He told this story:

"I have two classes that meet in the same room back to back," he went on, "I usually wait in the classroom between the two. But for some reason, today I craved a Jamba Juice." "So, I went to the Jamba Juice stand on campus." He said, "While standing in line, I noticed a very tall man in an adjacent line wearing a tee shirt featuring my favorite rapper." "As I looked at his shirt, our eyes met, and he left the line and walked up to me." My grandson said he was confused as the man asked, "Do you believe in God?" My grandson said to me very seriously, "Well, you know, grandma, that I would never deny God, so I told him that I do believe in God." Then he told my grandson about a weekly Bible study he hosts. He invited my grandson to attend a study that

evening with some other students on campus. "Now, grandma," my grandson said, "If it had been an individual study, I would not have said yes." "And if I had plans that night, I probably wouldn't have gone either." "But it wasn't, and I didn't, so I went." God had answered my specific prayer specifically.

That was the beginning of the end of my grandson's time in the desert. The man he met, I'll call James, discipled him as he returned to the safety of God. He began to go to church regularly. And He started weekly Bible study with James. Soon, my grandson was teaching a Bible study of his own. On February 14, 2019, James baptized my grandson on a beautiful beach in Santa Barbara, California. And his baptism was the final act of the miracle for which I'd been praying.

The following Christmas, God, answered another of my specific prayers. I had prayed since my time in the mountains for God to bring my family together on Christmas. The prayer started out just that simple. But as my faith grew, I added something to my request. My family and I had never had an opportunity to pray together when we were together. So I amended my prayer to ask God to bring my family together on Christmas, so we could pray together and glorify Him on that holy day. The first Christmas, my grandson was safe, my family and I stood together in front of the Christmas tree. Before passing out presents, we joined hands, bowed our heads, and prayed to our Father in heaven. After thanking Him for every day He had given us breath, we glorified His name for answering all the prayers that brought us back together for Christmas. As we sang happy birthday to our Lord and Savior, I realized this was the Christmas I prayed for.

By Linda Troxell

From: United States

Website: https://www.humblyseekingthelordblog.wordpress.com

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