The Father’s Heart

Have you ever stopped to think about just how much you are loved?

For me, I grew up knowing the love of a Mom and Dad and Grandparents and Aunties and Uncles and Sisters and Brother; well, I had better stop there because if I keep going and I sure could, there is a strong probability that I will leave someone out and I do not intend this to be an exclusive statement.

However, I know that there are so many who do not have this experience and I am not going to start to develop a list of examples - we all know of someone and the purpose of my writing today is not to bring more pain; goodness knows there is enough of that in the world.

Wow - I just had a flashback to the 80’s and a couple of Sandi Patty songs; Shepherd of My Heart and In Heaven’s Eyes.  Yeah, I was a huge fan and still am but let me remind you of some of the lyrics from Heaven’s Eyes.

In heaven's eyes, there are no losers, in heaven's eyes no hopeless cause

There's only people like you, with feelings like me; amazed by the grace we can find

In heaven's eyes.

Beautiful song and even more powerful message - the message of grace.  God’s grace.

You see life happens and sometimes even those who love us the most will withhold that love from us because they get angry at us or are unable to forgive us for something that may have happened a long time ago.  Perhaps we are the ones who struggle to give the love to someone close to us because of hurtful things that have been spoken to us or we have been wounded by actions towards us or even the action of exclusion.

Personally, this has been my experience on both sides of the fence and because we are people who have been given free-will, we try to do our best but do not always get our choices right the first time and this is when I am reminded of the power of grace.

That is the Father’s Heart for us, His Kids - His Grace, His Love.

The past couple of days my emotions have been very close to the surface for different reasons.  We all handle our feelings differently, but for me, I am a crier.  Sometimes I try to work out my feelings another way (even journalling), but inevitably, the tears come.  Yesterday they came while I was standing over our kitchen sink washing dishes and I just let them fall and I talked and prayed to God in the process.  My heart has felt a bit beaten up recently over different things and I talked to God about them.  No, I do not have all the answers, but I let God hold my aching heart.  Aching for my friend who lost her little boy too early, aching to talk to Mom just one more time, aching for broken relationships, aching for precious little Indy who just turned 3 and lost her Mom almost a year ago to Cancer, aching for injustice and a whole lot more and then it occurred to me.  God has gifted me with an incredible gift.  God has given me the capacity to love just a little like He does and what a privilege that is.  I am blessed with the opportunity of a tiny glimpse into how much our Abba Daddy hurts for us, His kids and loves us so much.  He wants to carry the weight of our burdens on His shoulders and He offers us Grace.

Whilst I can only begin to imagine on a very small scale the capacity of love that our Heavenly Father has for us, His Kids, I am so thankful to also experience His love and I hope you do, too.

Happy 7th Australian Wedding Anniversary - WOW!

Link to testimonial on ChristianCafe.

A lot of people reading my blog would be familiar with Peter and my story about how we met....but reflecting today about seven years ago, even I have enjoyed re-reading my story that I wrote as a testimonial for the ChristianCafe website where Peter and I met.

BRENDA AND PETER’S LOVE STORY

Here is a little history about how we met.  If you had told me that I would log-onto a Christian Singles Internet Website, I would have never believed you, but never say never.  On June 23, 2002, I signed up to the Christian Café as a trial member just to check it out; you know, a different way of meeting people, maybe make a few more friends.

The short story is that Peter and I started chatting within a day of each of our joining the café.  I remembered my trip to Australia in 1989 and thot, hey, I should say "hi" to this guy from ‘down under’.  Well, that was the beginning of the end so to speak.  We hit it off and chatted lots via the website (our record typed conversation is 5 hours) and then we started talking over the phone, but not before I put my Private Investigator Hat on and confirmed that Peter really did exist.  After many more chats & phone calls, we discussed next steps because we were definitely going somewhere with this relationship.  Both of us had told a few close friends to be in prayer with us and to be accountable to as well.  So, I traveled to Australia in September 2002 and had the most amazing 5 weeks of my life.  I stayed with friends of Peter’s from his church who also were amazing.  God is so Good!  I felt a peace from the moment I arrived at the airport & met him for real.  We became engaged on September 30, 2002 and below is our engagement pictures we had taken while I was there.  Check us out!

So, we were planning our wedding in Canada on April 26, 2003 & then I’d move to Australia.  Well, Peter came to Canada for Christmas 2002 and met my family & friends.  Peter’s itinerary was very full and it was not until January 1, 2003 that we had time to just “sit, chat and veg”.  As we reflected on 1) our two trips, 2) his returning to Australia on January 10, 2003, 3) the 15 hour time difference between continents and 4) our being apart again, Peter re-proposed to me and asked me to marry him and return to Australia with him as his wife.

So, we were married on January 7, 2003 at the Hess Village Wedding Chapel in Hamilton, Ontario.  The candelit service was attended by immediate family and friends and was followed by a Chinese dinner.  We accomplished a lot in a very few days—in fact, we both believe that if we could survive those few days of 1) packing up my apartment and office, 2) arranging the marriage license (which is a story in itself), 3) organize a wedding, honeymoon in Niagara Falls (honeymoon capital of the world) and 4) move to a new country, we can survive anything.

My parents and Sheeba (family pet poodle) saw us off at the airport on January 10, 2003 and we arrived in Australia on January 12, 2003 with our winter gear on to surprise Chasely (Peter’s daughter), and his family and friends.

As I am writing this, Peter & I recently celebrated our 1^st Anniversary and we are both very happy and know in our hearts that God brought us together.  Like some other testimonials I have read, my (Brenda) family found it hard to understand my meeting someone over the internet and discussing marriage so soon after meeting and I believe that unless you actually experience it for yourself and know God’s peace, it is not easy to comprehend.  To others reading this that may be experiencing similar challenges, let us encourage you to allow your families time to adjust to the idea and pray that God will confirm this in their hearts, too.

We look forward to holding a post-wedding in Australia in June 2004.  We stay connected with family and friends in Canada and Australia via the internet, e-mail, phone calls, webcam videos and by good old-fashioned snail mail, too.

Thanks to Christian Café for making our meeting possible.

Brenda (Canada) and Peter (Australia)

talkinghands252 & grimsey828

Since that was written in early 2003, we held our post-wedding renewal of vows celebration and it was a lovely day.  I reckon I will blog a bit more about that another day; but for now, I have included a photo of our wedding favour from the day and one of the happy couple.