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The relationships of our life can shape us in the most
profound ways. But, isn’t it mind-boggling how God can work, even in situations that are the
most devastating? He is so good!
My family and I recently had the privilege of going to Walt Disney World in Florida. While
we were there at the MGM Studios Theme Park, I noticed a plaque that was located in the middle of the
park under a statue. It read, “This is dedicated to the Hollywood of yesterday. A place
which never was, but will never cease to be.” Those words jumped out and grabbed me! I
thought, “That’s what some relationships are like!” It’s not real, just like Disney World is not
real, and I think there are some people in our world who have never learned how to truly be real,
inside and out. And not only real with other people, but real with God, and how He wants them
to live.
I grew up in a family without God. There was no Bible reading at night, no prayers, no
mention of Jesus in my home (unless His name was used as a curse word). But when I was four
years old, I peered through the fence into the neighbor’s big, shady yard where a Vacation Bible School
was being held. A lady noticed me and invited me over. I loved it! I made a paper
plate tambourine and learned about God and His son, Jesus. I was curious, and never forgot about
that time in my life.
When I was five, my mother died of leukemia after being sick for almost two years. This
time was hard; life-changing, confusing, agonizing. I and my two younger sisters, ages four and
two, were not allowed to go to our mother's funeral because it was believed then that a funeral would
be overwhelming for young children -- as if the information that your mother had died and was not
coming back was not already overwhelming.
We girls went to live with our father's parents. The grandparents were loving, but tough
and hard-working folks who owned a ranch in Colorado. In spite of the grief and confusion of
losing our mother, we felt safe with our grandparents -- while at the same time, being immersed in the
non-emotional, smoking, drinking and swearing that came with the cowboy way of life.
But even in this, God continued to reach out to this little girl. My grandmother took us
and dropped us off at Sunday School at the Methodist church some Sunday mornings. I and my
sisters learned to sing “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know.” I wanted to know more about this Jesus.
When I was seven, my father remarried. The new stepmother was young - only 23 when she
married our father, and she really didn’t know a lot about loving and nurturing three little motherless
girls. But she did begin taking us to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday
night. At age seven I attended a real church service for the very first time! I loved it!
I grew in knowledge and love of God and His son, Jesus. I went to church camp in the summer, and
it was there that I accepted the Lord in baptism a few years later, at age twelve.
This is a story of lost and found. I was a little, lost motherless child. I was fatherless,
in many ways, as well, because my earthly father lived away from us for several years, and even after
he remarried, remained very detached and disconnected from his children. But my Heavenly Father
was there all the time, waiting for me until I found Him. I know He had a plan for me even from
the beginning. Jeremiah 29:11 has
become one of my favorite verses, because I have looked at it as a very personal statement to me from
God, “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to
harm you. Plans to give you hope and a future.”
When I was a child the road ahead of me looked bleak and dark and scary. But now, after
traveling it for these 40 plus years, I realize how perfect that path has been for me, and it was only
in going that way, that I have found my Heavenly Father and been blessed by Him. I realize that
His plan has been perfect for me. Ephesians 1:11-12
says “In Him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out
everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in
Christ, might be for the praise of His glory.” Then that verse in Jeremiah that I mentioned
earlier goes on to say, “’Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you.
You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by
you,’ declares the Lord, “and will bring you back …. to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
The Lord let me find Him because I was a seeker, even when I was a little 4-year-old girl, looking
through the fence at the Vacation Bible School. He has blessed my life beyond anything I could ask or
imagine. My life has become a testimony to God’s victory in taking me from a “place which never
was, to a place which will never cease to be.” May God bless you on your own pathway.
-- Dawn McKenzie |
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