GOD KNOWS YOU ARE HERE
I’m here to tell you my truth today
It’s all I know
It is my gift to you
It is my story
Like your life is your story
Eventually I would love to hear your truth
Your story……BECAUSE IT MATTERS
Reality is that in the end
That’s all any of us have and we’re ALL in this together.
God is in our midst waiting, waiting for us to acknowledge
His presence
This talk is dedicated to those who have unanswered prayers……………
Those who are bound and gagged and don’t believe they are being heard
or seen. Toni Morrison once said the worse thing you can do to someone is to cause
them to feel invisible. I know for a fact God hears and sees everyone of us.
You are not forgotten! God’s word gives us that promise and we need to claim
it everyday of our lives.
I was born in Columbus, Ohio to a navy veteran and his 17 year old sweetheart. He
promised her if she would marry him, he would take her to California to live. They
got as far as Columbus (started out from Hurricane, West Virginia) and the car broke
down. He got a job and my mom never did see California except on T.V. She gave
birth to me and then to my brother eleven months later. I was born with a dislocated hip
and cried all the time which put quite a strain on my parent’s relationship. I wasn’t diagnosed
until age four when my mom took me to an immunization clinic and the doctor saw I was
walking on my tiptoes. I always wondered if mom and dad thought about the way I walked.
Anyway, they didn’t have the luxury of wondering because they had a baby boy who was born
with just one hand, a baby girl who cried day and night and no money. It was such a shock for
them and no family to lean on. It must have taken its toll because my earliest memory at around age two is riding
in the backseat of my parent’s car with my brother and Mom trying to jump out of
the car and Dad grabbing her long black hair and yanking her back inside. She was crying for
help from someone on the street but no one came. But God saw it. The problem was they were not seeking Him. They were leaning on their own understanding.
I had surgery at age four and had to be in a body cast for nine months. I had my meals on the floor because I couldn’t sit at the table. I guess Mom and Dad wanted me close by when we ate. After I was out of the cast, we moved to Homer, Ohio and rented several houses over the years. When I was nine years old, our house burned to the ground. I ran into my Mom’s arms crying when I got off the
school bus and she looked at me and said, “What are you crying about? We never had anything anyway!” My Dad started drinking every night but he never missed a day of work. He took any
job he could find and it even included shoveling a foot of chicken poop out of our landlord’s chicken
house to pay the rent when he couldn’t find employment. He loved us and life was hard. He didn’t
have a high school diploma but he was one of the smartest men I’ve ever known. Did he seek the wisdom of the Lord while he was in that hen house? I know God was waiting on him.
Mom didn’t have any child rearing training growing up and could really whip hard if we ticked her off. But
she loved us……..I know she did…….in her own way. I remember one morning I woke up and told
her I had a headache. We didn’t have running water and so we didn’t get our heads washed every
day like the other kids at school. I started rubbing where it hurt and found a big fat dog tick in my
head and mom grabbed it and threw it on the coal stove she was cooking on and it cooked up just like
the eggs we would soon be eating. Nothing much fazed Mom. But she was always leaning to her own
understanding as far as I knew.
When I was ten, we came home from school one freezing January day (there were four kids now) and Dad told us we would have to go to bed right after supper because we had run out of coal and it would be a pretty cold night and that would be the only way we would be able to stay warm.
I was furious! What did I do wrong to be punished this way? It was so unfair in my child mind.
It got dark and I was laying in my bed crying and I said, “God, if you’re really real, show me. Do
You even care about a little girl down here who’s cold and lonely?” Now I can’t explain what happened next except that I felt a warm bear hug envelope me. I didn’t see or hear anything but God
gave me the gift of faith that night.
Now many years later I still have that faith. I have never asked, “ God, where have you been?” I’ve always asked……..“Why have I departed you?” HE has never left me because He promises in His word that He will not forsake us. His word tells me He will be present with us in the mist of our suffering and pain. He said, “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name,
you are mine.
When your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness in everyday life, something magical happens: ordinary life becomes extraordinary and the very process of life begins to nourish
your soul. Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote this and I believe it.
I have been shown mercy every single day of my life and I am claiming through my own experiences
the blessings that follow brokeness. I wish this for you but even more importantly,
know that God wants this for you if you will accept to follow Him.
He knows you are here…..turn to Him and know Him. He’s waiting.
This is a summary of the testimonial given at the May, 2014 Baskets of Life Meeting by Shirley Curtis
