“Instead of overcoming her personal problems, she was guided by them.”

I read this in the news about a reality TV star, a twice pregnant teenager, whose life is in shambles. How many of us are guided by our failures? Our fears? Our labels and losses?

Years ago, I was given a fierce and final gift. My Uncle Dan chose to spend his last hours on this earth with me. Then he went home and hung himself in his garage. He didn’t tell me he was going to do it. But in those sweet, summer hours we sat and talked as the flies clung to the window screen, he could not see past himself. I was twenty-three. He was forty something, a single man nearly all his life without children of his own. But he had several nephews, me, his niece, and he had his demons. Even holding my new baby daughter in his arms, he seemed absolutely entangled in himself. And I was too young and entangled in myself to know how to untangle him. To know how to quiet his demons.

His mother, my Grandma Helen, wanted Danny Boy sung at his funeral. It amazes me still nobody could come up with the words to that song. Something else was played at a small, hillside cemetery with shady oaks and sparse grass, something unmemorable, and my dad clung to me. One of my uncle’s friends congratulated Dad on his “sweet young thing” assuming Dad had replaced my mom with a girl in heels half her age. I never felt young again.

Back then I was motivated to help people. Yet nearly incapable of doing so. My uncle’s suicide proved this to me. But listening and caring went a long way, and I was good at both. Intuitiveness seeped out of me. Others’ need to be known, I had nailed. Secret places prove seductive and shame can be covered with a coat of acceptance. Most of us want to be loved for who we really are. You could hang your hat on me.

I followed horoscopes, and worked hard. Guided by goose bumps and sweat. Blood drove me too. If it hurt, I learned something. Newspaper reporting came naturally.

Babies were a different ballgame. It was the babies that guided me to God. Raising them was like racing cats. One proved fun. Two took me off track. Three broke me. After brokenness came born again. The same month I opened a Bible for the first time believing it was true, and I tossed out those horoscope guides. Eventually four more babies, all boys, kept me buried in the Good Book. While those little boys wore me out, I wore my Bible out.

And it is God’s Word that has saved me. Time and time again. Saved my soul and saved my sanity. Saved my heart and saved my health. Saved my marriage and saved my money. It has saved me. Absolutely. Unquestionably. Saved me.

 “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” John 1:1. 

I can no longer separate God and His Word. Truth forever tattooed on a Savior hanging on a cross. Words born in blood. The blood of the Lamb.

“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” John 1:14.

So I ask you again, what guides you? Do you want to live a life of grace and truth? Pick up your Bible, read it and weep with gratitude for the Bible says:

“Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory” Psalm 73:23-24.