While the memoir focuses more on hope, redemption and faith rather than detailed descriptions of the abuse that I endured, it sometimes left me raw. I thought I had processed all the baggage from my childhood but writing my life as a story around a specific theme has peeled away more layers. I discovered that showing my readers what happened differed greatly from telling the story.
As I held my beautiful newborn daughter for the first time an unfamiliar feeling flowed over me. As tears rolled down my cheeks as I thought, “How can I ever give her the love she needs? I don’t know what it feels like to be loved as I love her.”
My relationship with God began at age four when I first heard the song “Jesus loves me” and grew stronger as I embraced His unconditional love. He gave me hope in my dark world of abuse and pain. Each morning I ran to Him and He made me feel safe. Sometimes the feeling only lasted a few moments until reality hit me in the face, but those moments sustained me. I somehow understood the truth of the passage listed above.
David’s words are a great reminder to us that God is not a God of immediate gratification. The Lord expects us to wait on His timing. He expects us to trust Him and “wait all the day long” for His guidance while trusting Him to meet us at our point of need. We cannot rush God, but we can rush ahead of Him. When we do, the result is often disastrous.
This blog was originally posted three years ago. Today I reflected on the Sonnet and the circumstances that led me to write it. Putting the emotions surrounding my experience in the cellar was a catalyst for writing my memoir, What Kind of Love is This? Three years later, my story is published and I am sharing it with new audiences across the world. Revisiting the Sonnet seemed appropriate in advance of my Virtual Book Launch scheduled for August 7, 2021 at 2PM CDT. The sonnet expresses the theme of my story-finding God in the darkness.
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