Do we need to look back on the sad parts of our Journey?

 

Why was it that every time I flipped through my pictures, I purposefully skipped all the breathtaking shots of our temporary home on the reserve where so much good had happened? Why didn't I want to browse through my memories of the children I had loved or the place where I had nurtured them?

It even hurts to write about that time in my life now. I made up my mind, several days ago, to look back on that time, and to write an honest blog, but but then I set it aside. It may be just too hard. Is it even worth the effort if I can't give you an upbeat ending? If I knew for sure that at least one of the children that I led to the Lord and mentored, was still walking in victory, it would seem worth it. But the problem is, I do not know.

It was pure joy at the time as we led them, one by one, into a walk with God. The classroom atmosphere in the Christian school started changing, and working with these children was just one blessing after another. I will admit that there were setbacks along the way, but the thrill of seeing our students growing in the Lord day by day made it all worth while.

I have memories of sitting at the lunch table with them, discussing their new found joy, and praying together for others who needed Christ. There were memories of finishing reading “Susie's Story” to them and then having two different students come to me privately and confess having told me a lie. Their new found consciences had been awakened, and I was thrilled to know that they had been listening and had responded.

There was the memory of a pair of sixteen year olds who already had a baby but were not allowed by their parents to marry. They had come to us for council, Bruce with the boy, and I with the girl. On the second or third session, I led the girl to the Lord, and at the same time, Bruce in another part of the house was leading the boy in the same direction. They were both thrilled that they had made the decisions independent of each other. I was walking on air as I watched all this happening.

I had a ladies Bible study, and I began to see results there as well. Their husbands were seeing a change in their wives and their marriages were mending. One man started coming back to church. It was all like a beautiful dream.

I should be dwelling a whole lot more on those precious times, but I can't, because with the happy memories, comes the sad ones. We needed to leave the reserve for a short while, and when we came back we discovered that Satan had been working overtime. He had gained a foothold in the school. We were devastated. Some of our most ardent new converts had been turned against us while we were gone, and once again, had become problems in the class. We were stunned.

A parent, the one that was largely responsible for the mess, demanded our resignation. The school board didn't want us to leave, but we only had a day or two before the ice roads closed. After that there would be no way to get any of our stuff out. We felt defeated, but at the same time, we felt the Lord was telling us it was time to go and he would send others to continue the work.

The school hired a brave young man to drive our car back over the melting ice roads, and we took the plane to Red Lake where we retrieved our car and headed, in defeat, back to Owen Sound. The Lord did provide us with one amazing miracle on the way home, (I write about it in my book, “The Path He Chose for Me”) and that helped us to ease the feeling of failure somewhat, but it was still hard.

What happened to the students? I don't know about most of them. I have heard from three. One sounded hungry for the Lord, but was not ready to commit himself. One was struggling after a murder happened in his family. He is still floundering after the Church family handled the situation badly; but the hardest to think about was a message I received on Facebook one day. It was filled with foul language and unbelievable hate. It was from the son of the mom who had demanded our resignation, a boy who had turned his life around while we were there. Now he seemed even worse than before.

I wrote back that I loved him, and I prayed for him and the others. That's all I could do. But then gradually I began to block it all from my mind. It just hurt too much.

I guess the problem with how I handled my hurt is that for the last few years I haven't been praying for those kids much at all, even though I thought I loved them so passionately. Lord forgive me for that! Is my love fickle? Is it right for me to retreat into my comfort zone, to escape the hurting memories?

Lord, help me pray through for those kids.

The Hugh Neelands Story (coming out in a few days) has had the same effect on Hugh. There are some segments of the story that he had a hard time telling, and he didn't enjoy hearing those parts of his life over and over as we went through the first, second and third drafts. It would have been much easier for both of us to entirely ignore the mistakes in his journey, and yet, in the end, he felt that the whole writing process had been a tremendous blessing to him.

I would love for you, the reader, to help me by weighing in on this question: Is it a good or a bad thing to block out scenes in your life that involve sad situations? I really don't know. Please tell me what you think?

Past Failure

 As I sat staring at the unfinished canvas in front of me, my shoulders slumped, and the $90.00 brush dropped from my limp hand. I was a failure! It was time I took off my blinders and faced that fact. If you have ever gotten to that place in your life where you just want to crawl into a dark hole and shut out the world, you will possibly understand how I was feeling.

I had barged my way into the world of art rather suddenly just a couple of years before this. I had always believed I was an artist, even though I had never had any formal training. I knew I was creative. There were so many things that my dyslexia made difficult for me, but drawing and painting was something I excelled at, and I loved to prove that to myself.

I wanted to prove it to the world, too, so when I was handed a check for $1000.00 for one of my first oil paintings, I was soaring. Everything else, including my writing, was either completely set aside, or specifically used to propel my new career in art forward.

My husband was as eager as I was to see me succeed, and so we opened our new business, Grey Bruce Art World. We showcased other artists, gave lessons, sold art supplies and of course, prominently displayed my work. I did everything I could to promote myself. I wrote a monthly opinion column in an Art Magazine, I featured an artist from our gallery regularly in a weekly regional magazine, and I had a monthly segment in a local TV show. On top of that, we spent thousands on advertising.

But there was something important in all of this promoting that I had failed to take into account; or more accurately, some-One important. God had a different plan for our lives, and we had been ignoring it. God had called my husband to the ministry many years before, but we had been postponing it. Now the Lord was saying it was time, but I was too wrapped up in my plans to be able to hear, and my husband, even though he had heard the call, wanted to please me, and therefore said nothing to discourage me.

Moving forward without God's blessing was a huge mistake. Before the year was up, I had to acknowledge my inability to make it on my own. We had lost everything. The hard part was knowing that all my promotional efforts had been useless. I couldn't bring in the customers no matter how hard I tried.

The final spike to the coffin of my pride came when the group I had formed to organize an art tour made a decision about my gallery. I was expected to continue to be the biggest promoter of the tour, but my gallery was not to be included in the tour. I knew that I would never be part of the elite artists of the community. I just did not fit the mold, and I was mortified. It was a slap in the face, and I reeled under the sting of the blow.

But God was there, and I was ready to listen. Have you ever noticed that it's when you are at the end of yourself, the still small Voice becomes clearer? It happened that way for me. It was a pivotal point for both of us. We started following the leading of the Holy Spirit and our lives became blessed. We gave up the business and my husband followed the call on his life.

The struggles of our art business seemed a thing of the past. I still painted occasionally but had stopped trying to promote myself. God was always there and provided for us financially in miraculous ways, so when the thought came that I should go back to writing my mom's story, I pushed it aside as a temptation to try to make a name for myself again.

When I had started writing “Susie's Story”, my dreams of writer fame had been high. My night school teacher was highly impressed and tremendously encouraging. I had been buoyed up by the prospect of being a published author. But after the first four chapters and a few rejections, I was ready to switch to the new art field where I had already made my first $1000.

But now, when I thought of going back to writing, the memory of my failure, with its allure of fame, made me cautious. My niece, a published author, was telling me that the publishing company that she was writing for was creating a new series. They were looking for exactly the type of book I was writing. Was this another temptation to put myself forward? I couldn't let that happen.

I talked to my husband. “Think of it this way,” he said. “Your paintings never actually led anyone to Christ that I know of. Your story could.”

I asked the Lord what I should do. He answered me with a passage of scripture. It said to tell your children and your children's children what the Lord has done, and to do it in parables (stories). Susie's Story was about my mother's eventful life growing up in Russia during the revolution and I knew the Lord was saying he wanted me to write it. But because of my experience at Art World, I knew that everything I did would have to be directed by Him and that He would get all the glory. My dreams of self-importance were gone.

When I finished the book I queried the publisher. The reply was not what I had expected. It said they liked my book, but they had discontinued that series and couldn't use it. What had happened?

Had I made a mistake? Had I wasted my time? But no. I could be a failure, but God was not. This was His book. I had listened to Him, and He had confirmed to me that it was part of His plan for me.

I decided to self publish, and amazingly, doing publicity God's way, with a whole new mental approach, it sold. But of far more importance, it did lead people to Christ. It made a lasting impression on lives, something of far more importance than fame or any best seller list in the whole wide world!

Years later, we did start another, different kind of business which the Lord directed us to, but that's a whole other exiting story for another time.

For the previous post see: Goodbyes.