Romans 8:34, 1 John 4:4, Jude 1:24-25, Isaiah 55:9 [email protected]

Trigger Warning! Some listeners may find the content disturbing because of trauma in their lives

Today I just want to share some really good praise reports about some things that have happened recently in my own personal life.   To try to encourage so many people who have very similar stories to mine, and may have lost some hope on some things that maybe they've had to lose in the process. I know that for me, you get to a point in your life where it's even painful to pray to the Lord and ask him for things like reconciliation and healing in relationships that get broken because you know when you pray about it, you think about it, and for most of us, we don't want to think about it.   So, it's this journey that the Lord has had me on and has been pretty intense in emotions and so I'm just going to tell you today, if I get emotional, just bear with me. This journey for me, of course, I've 40 years into having been sexually abused by my father, but it was 12 years ago, we just passed the 12-year mark at the end of last month,  that I finally told my dad that I needed to have some time apart from him.  I needed to be able to just really focus on my relationship with the Lord, and of course, that was the best decision that I ever made.  At the time, I did not have any idea that it would be 12 years later, and we still would not be reconciled. That was never anything that the Lord revealed to me, and obviously, I know why because I probably would not have been as willing to let him go at that point.  The first several months were horrible and excruciating and I thought about him all the time.  Then the more that I saw that I was really drawn more to find that father relationship with the Lord, the more fulfilled that I became in my relationship with him, the less that it bothered me that I didn't have that relationship with my earthly father.  Not to say that I don't miss him and don't love him because I do.  It's very, very painful in many different situations and circumstances, but it's not like it was at the beginning.  I prayed for a long time that the Lord would bring us back together.  I lost several siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles, pretty much everyone on his side of the family.  It just got to a point where the more I prayed about it, the more painful it was just to even think about it.  I had a pastor at one point that said, because I felt like I was supposed to pray about it, that's when the body comes together and lifts that up for you.  It's not that nobody's praying about it or if I don't pray about it, nothing happens.  It's that the body of Christ bearing one another's burdens.  I know that I've had people praying about things this whole time.  I just want to report that in the last several months, two of my long-lost siblings have reached out, and we have started talking.   They are now grown up and they have their own families.  I've been able to meet the family that I didn't know I had and nieces and nephews that I didn't know I had. It is truly amazing when I think about the times that were so hard or so painful for me, especially concerning the safety of my siblings and not knowing if they were okay. If they had experienced anything like I had gone through? It was so hard not to know and not to talk to them about it, but that's really where I learned to trust the Lord, and know that he loves them more than I do. He has a plan for them as well. So, thankfully, recently, I have discovered nothing like that happened and those siblings are absolutely wonderful. We are now back in relationship.  I'm so thankful because there's nothing I could do, or even pray about because of how much emotion and pain it brought to me. But what I love about Jesus is He sits at the right hand of God and he prays for us.