This picture was Daddy’s idea. 🙂

You just don’t get cuter than that! 🙂

Or that…

or that!?? This picture moves me.?? It looks almost like they are just basking in the light of Father’s love.

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When I first got the copy of He Loves Me in my hands, I was sitting in Mr. Goodcents (a AZ sub shop).?? I bonded instantly to the cover.???? You saw it in my post yesterday.?? The first chapter starts with the familiar game of picking leaves off a daisy…he loves me…he loves me not.?? I knew where the author was headed with the analogy.?? Been there done that.

I have shared this story before (I think), but it seems a good place to start and also establishes why I so quickly fell in love wit HLM.

About ten years ago, one of my girlfriends, Dawn, was braving through life storm after life storm.?? I hurt for Dawn because everything just kept crashing down at once.?? I don’t remember all the details of the repeated events but two still stand out to me.?? Dawn was pregnant with her third child and things weren’t going well.?? She was having medical issues and it didn’t look like the baby was going to get to bake as long as we would have liked her to.?? Ultimately she was born quite early.?? Not being a micro mommy at that time, the gestational age didn’t stand out to me.?? I would guess it was in the 31 or 32 week mark (which of course sounds not half bad to me now LOL).?? Her daughter, Z. was born in the 3 pound range and I was the first to hold her in the Thunderbird NICU (a NICU my son would later spend time in as well).?? I took video of her because I was afraid they were going to lose her – she looked to frail and tiny.?? (She developed and blossomed wonderfully by the way).??

Z. had to stay in the hospital and Dawn was recovering at home from a c-section.?? Some time later, Dawn fell and broke her arm.?? When Dawn called to tell me about the final straw – the arm break (there was a lot more to this story but ten years has dulled my memory) – I was LIVID.?? I just started crying and crying and – I admit – I was very angry with God over the entire thing.?? I stood in my parents kitchen and delivered blow after blow at God for how unloving He was being.?? I had no words of comfort to speak to Dawn because I was M A D.

Let’s just be honest.?? What was I really angry about??? I am anxious for the day that Jesus so fills me up that I have no self interest left in me but today is not that day and neither was that one.?? The issue that was raging in me was simple.?? If God was going to “abuse” Dawn this way – was going to let Z. be so tiny and frail in this NICU, was going to take away some of Dawn’s caregiving ability by breaking her arm – and the rest of my list – what in the world was He going to do to me??? At that time in my life, God and I were already at odds over the baby issue.?? A resentment was brewing in me because not only was He withholding from me the thing I wanted most, but I was also watching how He was moving in Dawn’s life and it looked to me like God was considering taking her gift from her (her daughter) and it started my mind down the futile path of magnified loss.?? What was worse??? To receive and have it taken or never to receive??? Or what if God gave me both??? What if he did give me a child and then he took that child back??? As you know…ultimately He did just that – with ten babies -??but I was (thankfully) in a different place then.

Fear had a bitter hold on me.?? Fear turned into anger and resentment and bitterness.?? My conclusion was that God didn’t love me and He didn’t love Dawn and He didn’t love Z.?? Now I didn’t say that.?? I never would have.?? If you would have asked me if I believed that – I would never have admitted and maybe didn’t consciously realize I was headed that way.?? Sometimes you can judge where you are at by your fruit and in this case, the bitterness spilling out of me could mean only one thing.?? I was mad at God for not loving us.

I can’t live in that place though.?? It is devastating for me.?? In the coming months (as I recall Z. was born in Feb), I was trying to reconcile my heart to God’s.?? I remember family members commenting on how much I loved Dawn because of the way that I cried with her and for her.?? I wish I could say that response was all about Dawn but – frankly it wasn’t.?? I think (hope) I am more free to mourn sincerely with people now because fear isn’t haunting me near so much these days.

When May came around, I was dreading the worst holiday of the year.?? Mother’s Day.?? How I wanted to run and hide in my closet on Mother’s Day.?? I was too spiritually vain to actually do it though.?? I was going to pull myself up by my faith bootstraps (what a ridiculous assertion) and I was going to sit in those pews and grin and bare it.

Have you ever had a friend put on the skin of Jesus in such a way that you knew in the depth of you that God came down to visit??? That the heart of the friend was so like Jesus that you knew what they said or did was in His power and not their own because it was just too personal and intimate to be anything but God??? What a gift I was given that Mother’s Day.

After the morning service, my friend Dawn found me and placed a package in my hands.?? The bag and every single item in that package all said the same thing “He Loves Me He Loves Me He Loves Me He Loves Me”.?? Everything was covered in daisies.??

That is ALL and I mean ALL I needed to know (but I didn’t fully grasp that yet).?? In that moment, celebration flooded my soul.?? The gentle touch of Jesus came down and brushed my skin.?? He used Dawn on that day to tell me the truth in a way I could hear that morning.?? I was not forgotten.?? He wasn’t mad at me for being mad at Him.?? He had not abandoned me.?? He was still working out His plan in my life.

All these years later and I am still so glad that Dawn followed the prompting of the Spirit that week and brought me what I know to be His gift.?? Part of what inspired her was that she had the “He Loves Me” coffee cup and she would sit clutching it outside the NICU doors and she knew how much she needed the reminder every day so I guess she figured I needed a whole bag of it.?? :)?? Not only that, but even in the face of her own struggles, she knew that Mother’s Day was going to push me over the edge and she couldn’t solve my problem.?? She couldn’t make me a mommy.?? Instead, she reminded me that I was a loved daughter.?? That was even better in the long run.

So before I could turn a page in my favorite book, I was flooded with memories of how HE LOVES ME and that allowed me to snuggle right in and let His love cover over me.?? And it SO did!!!

There are so many quotes I want to comment on over the coming months.?? In fact, I emailed the author post his comment on yesterdays??blog (how cool was that by the way!), and confessed that I was already worried about violating copy write with all that I wanted to quote.?? :)????

For today I will end with this.?? The truth that is resonating so loud in me right now through both my life learnings with Jesus and then emphasized through my studying lately is this…in order to abide in Christ you MUST know you are loved.?? Knowing you are loved is the key ingredient to having faith because it is what causes you to trust in the intent of your Daddy God.?? The author made a comment that I will later quote verbatim but the essence was this.?? Sin comes from our lack of belief in how much God loves us.?? I have really been evaluating that statement and I see it’s truth everywhere.?? Most of the frustration and anger and sadness and worry that I face stems from the simple fact that in the core of me – I am doubting His goodness and His intimate and unmeasurable love FOR ME PERSONALLY.?? If I really understood what He did on the cross, how He traded his life for DONI…it would??turn my life upside down.?? And I suspect some of you are thinking this “Doni you have known that your whole life.?? You have been singing Jesus Loves Me This I Know and living in that truth since you were a baby.”??

No I haven’t.???? What I believe in my mind and what I embrace with my entire being has been inconsistent.?? Have I believed it more and more every passing year??? Yes.?? Oh YES.?? Will I ever fully comprehend it??? No – not until I see Him face to face.?? I am understanding more and more what the impact of “living loved” really looks like and it is something entirely different than who and what I am today.?? I am on my way down the road though and I am never going back.??

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