I’m so excited to introduce my mom and guest blogger Brenda Deese.
Today, she shares a glimpse into her journey when at sixteen years of age she found herself fleeing the place where love came at too high a price to pay. That place was home and she ran from it in search of refuge. What she discovered was much more than a safe place; she discovered love:
A safe kind of love,
A forever kind of love,
A Family Kind of Love!
A kind of love that would change her from the inside out and work within her the capacity to break the chains of destructive generational cycles forever!
Meet Brenda Deese
“As a little girl, I deeply yearned to feel unconditionally loved and protected but I felt neither. My parents were married young and Dad was in the Air Force. Four months into their marriage they were expecting my brother and a year later they were expecting me. My dad was shipped overseas and my mom returned home to her parents, to a less than perfect situation. She arrived with my three-month-old brother cradled in her arms and me growing inside her. Needless to say, times were difficult for our small family.
Many years later my father returned from the war and we resumed life as a family. Ours was a strict and rule-laden home and though I know my parents did the very best they knew to do, we often felt that their love was conditional upon our behavior. That message burned so intensely in my heart that I likewise thought of God’s love in the same manner, conditional upon my behavior.
For a lifetime I longed to know and feel a forever kind of love and mercy, the kind that despite my flaws would be a place of refuge and safety, a place where I could be accepted just as I am.
As I grew in my knowledge of Christ, I recognized that the message of God’s love being conditional on my behavior was completely false; in fact, it couldn’t be farther from the truth. God’s word says He chose us to be the object of His love even before the earth was formed; He adopted us into His family. This truly was incredible news to me because not only had I been selected and saved, I would be forever safe and protected in His care.
God’s love is fiercely protective and has worked in my heart to heal my deepest wounds and diminish my strongest fears. God has taken my childhood scars and transformed them into a thing of beauty. He has even worked the most difficult of times together for good by making me aware of His unconditional love, which impacted the choices I would make for how to love my own family.
“When I became a mother I knew I didn’t want to raise my children in the same way that I was raised. I felt so deeply blessed by God to have been entrusted with each child and I loved them with all of my heart. I also loved God’s word and within its pages, I found the wisdom, comfort, and guidance I sought for how to raise my family.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV)
Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not proud.
It does not dishonor others,
it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
always trusts,
always hopes,
always perseveres.
I believe 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is the perfect example for how to treat your children, especially since it is the way God chooses to treat His children, loving them unconditionally. Our Heavenly Father’s example of love is the strongest and healthiest kind of love on earth, A Family Kind of Love.”
That’s not the end of Brenda’s story. Growing up I remember watching her take what she had learned about God’s love (1 Corinthians 13) and use it as she journeyed down the path of forgiveness and transformation, hers and eventually her parents. Now that’s A Family Kind of Love!
COMMENT- How about you, do you have a transformation story via God’s love? Were you running away from something too? We’d love to hear your story here on TWENTY-TWENTY, Seeing God’s Grace through the Lenses of Hindsight.
You can visit Brenda at Brenda Deese.com Claim Every Promise