Return home and tell how much God has done for you.
To understand how much God has done for me, I suppose I should start with my own days of hanging out naked, homeless and with a bunch of dead people. There’s a story in Luke 8:27-29 in which Jesus is met by a demon-possessed man from a town near Galilee. In fact, it says in verse 27 that, “for a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but he lived in the tombs.”
While being demon-possessed and living naked in a cemetery isn’t part of most people’s story, including mine, there is a deeper aspect to his before and after story that is true for us all. The victories that take place in the physical time and space of our lives often gets more attention than the spiritual transformation it took to get there. Such is the case in my life and, I’m guessing, it is the case in yours as well.
My “naked years” began with a childhood full of physical, verbal and spiritual abuse from both parents. In an effort to find acceptance, I also experienced sexual abuse. I call these the naked years because, like the man sent to tell his story in Luke 8, at this time it felt as though I was clothed in loneliness and shame rather than the love others seemed to wear all around me. I was exposed and vulnerable and it appeared to me that no one seemed to care.
This internal loneliness and shame sadly followed me into marriage and the first several years of parenting
because until then, I had not truly encountered the transformation only Jesus could accomplish.
My “homeless years” would be all those years I spent trying to figure out who I was and where I belonged. What kind of daughter was I exactly to have been disowned more than once?
Who was Rhonda anyway? Was I now just Jeff’s wife? Andrea and Michael’s mom? Was I at home as a bible study leader? Speaker? Writer? Was I supposed to sign up for more volunteer positions or get a job? Was I even any good at any of it? I spent far too long flitting from one “home” to another before finally believing that I gained both home and family when I became a daughter of the King through the relationship I have with Jesus Christ. Who was Rhonda? All of the above. By God’s design.
As for my “hanging out with dead people years” I don’t spend time hanging out in the tombs, nor have I frolicked with vampires, zombies or other mystical forms of the walking dead. I have, however found myself over the years trying to please people who have no desire to please Jesus (the spiritually dead in Christ). Or indulging in pleasures that dull my senses to God’s voice and presence in my life, which results in my own “deadness”, or put another way, a numbing to God that results in choosing indifference to rather than being influenced by God’s goodness, His love, and His calling on my life.
What about you? Do you find yourself thinking as you read some of my story that maybe you find yourself in a similar story? As I mentioned earlier, there were spiritual transformations happening as I was introduced to the same Jesus the man in the tombs met, the same Jesus perhaps you have met, but have yet to BELIEVE. Join me in this Diary of an Answered Pray-er as I look back and share, from beginning to the ongoing journey of now, some of the radical answers God has given this desperate pray-er through the storms of life.
About Diary of an Answered Pray-er
Slut. Failure. Quitter. Angry. Depressed. Addict. Those are identities I put on like a thread-bare security blanket for years. Now they sometimes walk alongside me like a deviant service dog that doesn’t want me to cross the street. A street that leads me into the land of God’s Promises, which declare my – and your – true identity. Forgiven. Pure. Daughter. Conqueror. Loved. Light. Free.
Once I entered this new land of God’s Promises over 25 years ago, I couldn’t get enough. I collected them, displayed them, talked about them and was constantly on the lookout for more. I led Bible studies rooted in them. I gifted a Promise Book to every woman I led in those studies. Then God punched me in the gut.
“Rhonda. Do you BELIEVE them? For you?”
Well…maybe not.
Until I did.
Diary of an Answered Pray-er is a ongoing journey that courses through storms Rhonda has faced…abuse, death, mental health, addiction, broken relationships, career choices, crises of faith, and BELIEF. Here you’ll find heartfelt, raw prayers and God’s radical answers. Perhaps you find yourself in the middle of your own raging storms whimpering, like the desperate boy’s father in Mark 9:24, “I DO believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” Maybe in reading these prayers you’ll be encouraged to BELIEVE the promise found in Psalm 34:8 is also for YOU. “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him“.
Rhonda currently lives in Wenatchee, WA with her husband of 36 years, relishing the outrageous joys of marriage, being a Nana, skiing, gardening, taking spontaneous road trips and sampling plenty of dark chocolate.
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