Forty years ago today my Father passed away. I was 19 years old, and I still remember how disoriented I felt the evening that he died. He was a very kind man who lived a broken life because of a broken childhood and the effects of war. It was a very pivotal moment in my life, and that night I experimented with drugs for the first time which was the beginning of several years of devastating self destruction. When I look back on all of that 40 years later I am filled with such gratefulness and love toward God. It is not that I’m grateful that my Father died, or that I abused myself with drugs, but I’m so grateful for a beyond genius and loving Heavenly Father who according to His kind intentions worked, all of that and more, after the council of His will. He used all of that to cause things to sum up to Christ in me. All of that painful stuff, and all of that self destruction was used by Him to crowd me to Jesus. He didn’t waste anything. He never does. In the natural I was being wounded by all kinds of fallen stuff around me. My fathers fallen choices that led to his death, my fallen choices to plunge into a life of drugs so I could cope with reality, but behind the scene I was being wounded by HIS LOVE who was drawing me to HIMSELF in whose presence I would finally find worth, purpose, and holy adventure. How does He do that? How does He, while honoring our free will, work everything after the council of His will, according to His kind intentions. I don’t know, but I love Him for it. By the way, that truth has set me free from ever looking back with bitterness and regret about my past. It’s not that I wouldn’t change things if I could, but the reality is I can’t. True Inner Healing doesn’t come from going back and changing the things that happened in your past, instead it’s coming to realize that in everything His KIND INTENTIONS win out, and that it all is used to sum up Christ in your life. Embrace that, and you’ll see He was, all along, wounding you with His love and making you HIS special treasure.
