Life is strange. Life is hard.
Life works in the oddest ways possible.
Life is good.
My life, my story, isn’t a normal one. I’m a pastor’s daughter. My parents are incredible, loving, wonderful people who run a ministry. My family is close knit, and serving God is a family affair for us.
This wasn’t always the case.
My dad might be a pastor but I didn’t grow up in church, not at the start. Oh sure, we went on the occasional Sunday. We did VBS and all that stuff here and there. But back then, my dad wasn’t a pastor. Back then, my parents weren’t Christians.
When I was about nine, my parents were having problems.
We moved to Ohio because my dad got a promotion, and then my siblings and I ended up going to Wyoming to spend the summer with my grandmother. At the end of the summer, we were surprised and delighted to be brought back home, not to Ohio, but to our old house in South Carolina.
Then we discovered the reason. Mom and Dad were getting divorced.
It was a painful thing, having Dad living in Ohio. Not getting to see him all of the time.
But that divorce saved my family.
My mom was invited to church by some friends of hers, and she was surrounded with love and prayer. She kept going and started bringing my siblings and I. Not long after, my mom, my sister, and I all came to know Christ.
Soon we were in church all of the time. When my dad came to see us on weekends, he ended up having to come to church to spend time with his kids.
He was surprised to find the church filled with people he knew, such as his financial guy, a few guys from his karate school.
And while he didn’t know it, there were people in that church praying for him that didn’t even know him.
After several other events in his life, my dad came to know Christ as well.
He moved back to South Carolina. He came to church with us.
My parents got remarried, this time with God at the center of their marriage.
And two years after he was saved, my dad became a youth pastor. (Another incredible story, but one for another time.)
The point is, if my parents hadn’t had marital trouble, if things hadn’t ended in divorce, my family would have been content with just being occasional church goers.
We never would have learned who God really is. My dad would never have been a pastor. My family wouldn’t have gotten to do ministry together.
It took breaking my family to make my family whole.
As the nine year old girl, sitting on the couch, crying, watching my parents cry, I never could have told you that it was the best thing that could happen to us.
Now looking back, I can’t see it any other way.
God doesn’t always work the way you expect, but He works in the way we need.
He makes life good.
