“There’s nothing special about my life.” she told the man sitting next to her in church.
They had arrived about the same time and sat waiting for the service to begin.
He started the conversation. “I am so happy just to be here.”
“Tell me why.” she said…
And so he did…
A story of drugs…
Of heroin addiction…
Of finally realizing that only God could save him….
Then he turned to her and said, “Tell me your story”.
“Oh, she said, there’s nothing special about my story…nothing special about my life.”
“Tell me anyway.”
And so she did…
She told him how her father was transferred around the country when she was a girl…
About how he had finally been transferred to a small town in the middle of farm country when she was a freshman in high school…
About how she started dating a farm boy whose family hadn’t moved in a hundred years…
The man she married 37 years ago.
God, she said, put her in the right place at the right time.
He was Catholic.
She was Methodist.
After they married, they went to both churches every week.
“A double dose of insurance”, she said.
They wanted children, but children didn’t come along, and so they started seeing doctors.
Eventually she quit her job as a teacher to focus on the medical issues.
As soon as she quite, a friend called, telling her about a job at a Christian publisher…
A few months later she was pregnant…
She went to her boss at the Christian publisher.
She was worried… she wondered how would they raise their children in a two faith family?
Had she ever heard of the non-denominational church nearby?
She and her husband first walked through the doors of that church when she was 6 months pregnant.
She still remembers the sermon from that day thirty one years ago…
“It blew my mind… I had thought it was arrogant to be assured of your salvation. I learned that day it was arrogant to think you could do anything to earn it.”
A whisper from God, she said, led her to a job where she could find answers to her faith questions…
She finished her story.
“So”, she said, “there’s nothing special about my life.”
“You’re wrong. I had no choice. I was a mess. I had to change if I wanted to live.”
“You could have drifted along in a life that felt successful.”
“You didn’t have to listen to God, but you did. Your story is more heroic than mine.”
She thought for a moment…
Maybe he was right.
How would she answer him?
She could say, “Gee you’re right, I’ve lived a truly heroic, special life!”
But in an answer that said a lot about why her life was indeed special, she replied….
“Maybe you’re right.
“Maybe I haven’t been giving God the glory for everything he’s done in my life.”
In that answer, and in the way she lived her life, she brought glory and honor to God…
I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever. Psalm 86:12
and displayed once more how He and He alone had made her life truly special…
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:17
