About the Book

My Story

We enjoyed life together. Church was a major part of our family life and we actively served the Lord. We made a major move after twenty years of life together back to where my husband grew up. He shifted from traditional family medicine to alternative medicine. We were both fascinated by natural cures and the powerful effects on our bodies from healthier eating. He began to travel and speak and work took him more and more from home. His quest for knowledge of different treatment modalities in this rapidly growing type of medicine also brought him in contact with those steeped in New Age philosophies. He began to say things that caused great concern to me because they did not line up with the Word of God. As His beliefs changed so did his behavior. It was during this time that he became involved in multiple affairs which were unknown to me.

In Aug. 2009 my husband shocked me by telling me, “I don’t love you, I never loved you, I lied to you when I married you.”?” Unable to believe my ears, I remember thinking, “Does that mean I just wasted the last 33 years of my life.” As quick as that thought, I felt the Holy Spirit ask me, “Did you love Him? To which I replied, “yes”. And the thought that followed was, “So you haven’t wasted your life, he might have, but anytime you choose to love another person is not a waste of time, whether they are able to receive it or not. I would spend the next eight years waiting and praying with my children for him to return to following God and to us. As I cried out to God, I was given a dream one night shortly after the painful encounter. In the dream I was driving my car through New Orleans with my two youngest kids in the back. We were there to get something their father had asked us to get. Four homosexual men (I could have just said four men, but for some reason in the dream they were identified as homosexuals) attacked our car, beating it with bats and trying to kill us. I sped up a steep ramp with walls on both sides. When I arrived at the top there was a statue blocking the road with a throne and a person sitting on it. I noticed people gathered at the top and not being able to go further I asked them for help. They were kind and sympathetic but said this was something I would have to do myself. I looked down the steep wide road I had driven up but knew if I went back that way I would have to face the dangerous men. I noticed a narrow doorway at the bottom on the left side, but then woke up from my dream.

The dream was so vivid, and my recall so specific, that I knew it must be from the Lord, so I asked Him for an interpretation. This is what I believe the Lord told me from the dream. For those of you who are skeptical, you will have to judge for yourselves, but I know me, and I am not smart enough to make this up.

In the dream, New Orleans represented the evil my husband was involved in and the four violent men represented the danger to our family. (It would be years later before I understood how deep his journey into seeking his own way had taken him down treacherous paths) The statue blocking us from moving forward was Him on the throne of his life. The people at the top represented my pastor, family and friends who would be there for me but could not tell me whether to stay with him or leave him. The wide road I had driven up represented the wide road spoken of in the Bible that leads to destruction. To go back down it, and back to him in his present state, would destroy our family. The narrow doorway on the left represented the narrow way in the Bible that leads to life. I asked the Lord at that point, “What is the narrow way? Am I to leave him? So many turn to divorce and I knew that the Bible says that few choose the narrow way. I knew the wonderful man I had known for 33 years was in that body somewhere. It seemed too costly to not only myself, but to my children to walk away. The narrow way is always to seek the Lord and follow Him. I could not move my husband from the throne of his life for our family to go forward, only he could do that by surrendering his life to the Lord. By God’s grace my decision was to serve the Lord while waiting and praying.

In the first four years of our separation there were times of grieving, but God was always with us. The kids and I prayed and fasted. I worked on the first edition of this book, continued to be actively serving in my Church, and enjoyed having an open home where young people would meet while our last two children finished highschool. After the kids began college, the next four years God opened up opportunities for me to teach Bible lessons in orphanages overseas. There were miracles I wish I had time to share that made this possible.

Throughout this time I would ask God, “What can I do to have a restored relationship with my husband and save my marriage?” One night I woke up around 2 or 3 am, picked up my cell phone, and walked into the next room. There was a picture on the wall of my husband and I looking at each other. I took a picture of the picture.

I think that is rather a strange thing to do. When I looked at the picture it almost took my breath away. The flash had blinded his eyes to where they were not visible, and I felt the Lord said to me, “There is nothing you can do but pray, he is blind.” I did not hear a voice it just seemed so clear to me. My husband continued to look for happiness and contentment, but would express that one relationship after another did not provide it. I thought of King Nebuchadnezzar in the Bible who lost the ability to rule the greatest nation in the world at the time and began eating grass like an animal, but years later was fully restored to his position. I assured my husband that nothing he had done could not be forgiven by God or by me.

In 2017 he served papers asking for a divorce. I thought things would have ended differently. There are many stories I could tell of how God pursued him, and I don’t understand the choices he made, nor do I know the full extent of the attacks waged against him by the forces of darkness. As I read Jobs words in Chapter 29 I hear a man who delighted in a life of fruitfulness and respect and then in Chaper 30 of his betrayal and shame, and in that I could identify.

In January 2019 he (my then ex-husband) was driving and began to have chest pain. He pulled over and called an ambulance. He did not think it was anything major so initially told his secretary not to call us. However, as things worsened we were summoned to the hospital and he died the next morning. The month prior he shared some words with our daughter that, coupled with some interactions in the hospital, led us to believe that he had repented and had made things right with the Lord. He told her, “I’ve thrown away every gift God has given me. I really do love your mother, and she really loved me.” We believe we will see him again in eternity. When difficult things happen in life and people have the freedom to do what they do, we have the assurance that what is meant for evil God will work for good. My life story is still being written and I am happily remarried.

My youngest daughter is getting her masters in trauma counseling and her words to me were, “Mom, if nothing bad ever happened to me what kind of counselor would I be?” I have watched my four sons be very intentional in their relationships with their wives and the Lord, which I believe is heightened by what our family went through. When I speak to orphans who have been abandoned by their parents we connect on a deeper level because I can relate to their feelings of abandonment and betrayal. I attribute our children and I being able to weather this storm to the fact that when they and I were young a foundation was laid in the Word of God. My husband helped me to lay that foundation for a season in our home, and I continued it after his absence. God’s word is living. I cannot stress enough the importance of drinking the living water that is available to us.

One of our daughters struggled with rebellion and not wanting to obey us or God during her childhood and teenage years. When she finally surrendered her life to the Lord at the age of 19 she said, “I don’t think I was ever a Christian because I always wanted my own way. Now that I want to obey God I’m so grateful I know the Word of God.” She said, “I have friends who have decided they want to follow God, but say they feel so overwhelmed because they never were taught what God says in the Bible about how they should live, and now their lives are so busy they don’t know where to start.”

I can remember times when two of my children would be fighting and I would recognize that one child would be the instigator. In an effort to break the cycle and teach a spiritual lesson I would sometimes call the other child aside and encourage them to “love their enemy” and see what effect it would have on their relationship with their brother or sister. A few minutes later that child would sometimes return to me saying, “I was nice to them and it didn’t work.” We must be careful to not expect immediate results from everything we are teaching our kids in these lessons. You are choosing to sow seeds of truth into your children’s lives. Some seeds produce quickly and others take years. Pray and trust the Lord of the harvest.

Familiarizing yourself with the lesson and praying prior to lesson time will enable you to invite the Holy Spirit to do what only He can do in your family. This time together is not meant to be on a time table. If you enter into a discussion with your kids that is meaningful, or they are enjoying a certain activity, be sensitive to the Spirit and disregard whatever place you had planned to get to in the lesson.

You will encounter warfare! There will be interruptions, chaos, and discouragement at times. The enemy of your home is as alive today as he was when the Bible was written. Through this time together our desire is to create an environment where our children see the beauty of knowing God, serving others, and being controlled by love, truth, and the Holy Spirit rather than their peers, their emotions, or principalities of darkness.

If you teach the material in these lessons and do not do the practical application you will reinforce the belief that our faith is intellectual and not important in how we live our lives. Is not part of the problem with the way our culture views the Church, the body of Christ, a direct reflection of hearing the Word but not doing it? These twenty-six attributes, when lived out in our individual lives, will impact our homes, Churches, communities, nation, and world.

In the hustle and bustle of raising children, there are many demands on our time. You have chosen a different path with your family, training the eyes of their hearts to be open as well as their seeing eyes. You might find yourself with a shattered physical inheritance, but nothing can separate you and your children from “A SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE”. We all have a certain number of days on this earth, what are we living for?