The First Revelation

Yes, our lives changed that day. Oh no … I didn’t wake up the next morning and have a strikingly different life or anything remotely like that. I was still working 3 jobs and tired; still single and envious of those who weren’t; still angry about my childhood and struggling with perfectionism; and all the while fooling myself into a false state of happiness. Instead, what I notice (in retrospect) is that I developed an inherent desire to read the Bible (which I now fondly refer to as God’s Word), and for the first time ever, what I was reading made sense to me. I didn’t make much of this at the time … I just remember being at work and wanting to go home to read whenever possible instead of mixing mysef a toasted almond. My sister Elizabeth (http://2twinsisters.blogspot.com/) also experienced a similar change. She would bring her new large print Bible over to my house, and we would sit together on the sofa reading God’s Word aloud taking turns with the passages. One of the first revelations God gave me as a born-again Christian goes along with the following story.

My twin sister is mentally retarded since birth. As a little girl, I always recognized that Elizabeth was different from both me and other children I knew; even our cousins with whom we were very close as children. My daily prayer since the age of 5 was “God, please make my sister normal.” I stopped praying for this around the age of 16, at which time I sort of gave-up on God because I couldn’t see any changes. Instead, as the years past, her disability became more obvious.

I was in my early 30’s at the time of this story. One particular day as she and I were on the sofa and she was reading to me, I heard a distinct voice. “You see, she is normal and always has been.” I recall this moment in time as if it just happened a few minutes ago. My jaw dropped as my eyes glanced around the room. I heard it again, and there was no mistake in my mind as to the Source as tears of humility and gratitude poured down my cheeks. After all these years, my prayer was answered explicitly. It wasn’t Elizabeth who needed to be changed; it was me ... my perception. I didn’t have to worry about the rest of the world’s response or reaction to her any more. WOW!

And the change continued.