Etched...Upon My Heart: What We Learn and Why We Never Forget - Hardcover

Kelly, Jill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1455514276 ISBN 13: 9781455514274

Verlag: FaithWords, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Our lives are made up of moments. Some we hope to remember forever and some we long to forget. But it's the tapestry of these moments that come together to write the story God is telling through each of our lives.

In ETCHED . . . UPON MY HEART, Jill Kelly shares some of the unforgettable moments in her life-some sorrowful, others filled with joy-as a "living epistle" to her daughters. Kelly's raw and honest reflections provide encouragement and inspiration for women and mothers who long to pass on hard-won knowledge of God's steadfast love and healing grace to their children.

As she writes, "God will break our hearts, but He will hold the pieces. He will cradle us and redeem every tear we cry." Although great personal pain informs these pages, Kelly's story is ultimately one of forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope. Through the moments in time that Jill Kelly recounts, you will recognize the daily reality and eternal value of God's plan for your own life.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jill Kelly is the wife of former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly. In September 1997, three months after their infant son, Hunter, was diagnosed with a fatal disease called Krabbe Leukodystrophy, Jim and Jill founded the Hunter's Hope Foundation. As chairman of the board of Hunter's Hope, Jill helps children suffering from Leukodystrophy and their families by raising awareness and research funds to fight this devastating disease. She and Jim live in Buffalo, NY, with their two daughters and three dogs. Hunter's Hope Foundation can be found online at http://www.huntershope.org. Jill is also the author of a full color gift book entitled, Prayers for Those Who Grieve.

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Etched...Upon My Heart

What We Learn and Why We Never ForgetBy Jill Kelly

FaithWords

Copyright © 2013 Jill Kelly
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781455514274

chapter one

Love

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

1 John 4:10–12

Who could have known it wouldn’t last? My young life made sense and my belief in love was relatively intact when Jane’s voice echoed through the hall that fateful day. “Jill, do you want to walk home together?”

You bet I did!

As I scrambled to gather my books, a bundle of papers erupted like a shower of confetti from the heaping pile in my arms. Grinning, Jane rushed over to help me pick them up as hordes of students mindlessly trampled through my school work.

Once we had control of the crisis, I grabbed my coat and turned to go. “Ugh, I can’t believe how much homework I have tonight.” I grunted as I shut my locker and then started toward the door. Jane was a year older than I was, so she understood the workload and pressure I shouldered. Pretty and popular, I looked up to her, and with the junior high school pecking order being what it is, I felt just a little bit cool by association. We talked about teenage nonsense for the first mile or so as we meandered homeward, and then our conversation changed abruptly. Why? To this day I don’t know.

“You know your mom was pregnant with you and that’s why she married your dad,” Jane blurted out unexpectedly.

Caught completely off guard, her words pierced my soul like a serrated dagger—and it hurt.

“What?” With a jolt I stopped and immediately let her have it, my words driven by frustration and pain. Popular or not, I wanted to punch her lights out!

Fear, doubt, and shame flooded my mind, overwhelming me…

What in the world is she talking about? My mom? No way!

“C’mon,” she fired, eyes blazing, “as if you didn’t know. Jill, please. Your parents had to get married because of you.”

Blood rushed from my head to my toes—I thought I’d faint and fall down right there on the cracked sidewalk. The rest of the walk to my front door seemed like an eternity, and I sure felt a little older when I got home. I don’t remember anything else Jane said that day, but I’ll never forget those words.

It was a beautiful September afternoon the day I began to question love.

It’s hard to say when we first understand what love is. Hopefully we experience it through our parents as children right from birth, but that’s not exactly the love I mean. I’m talking about the love relationship we’re hard-wired with a longing for. An ache to hear someone say “I love you” and mean it. An ache to say those words to someone who will treasure them and the risk we take when we share them. We hear the words, but do we know what they mean? What is love, really? What does it look like? Feel like? Why is it so central to the human experience that it has dominated art, music, literature, movies, and more for centuries?

As a child I was certain that my parents loved me. Not because they told me so—even though they did tell me. Not because they expressed love in a tangible manner—although they did, and I remember the hugs and tears wiped away. I suppose I knew they loved me because that’s what parents do—right? They love their children.

Love at an early age manifests itself in the form of security. Security in the way our parents are physically there, how they clothe us, provide shelter, and protect us. I came home to family meals, my parents attended all my activities and sporting events, they supported my very existence. I was secure, therefore, I felt loved.

Then Jane… Her words cast a gloomy cloud of doubt upon one of the most important things—if not the most important thing—I had believed to be true up to that point. During our walk home from school on that beautiful September afternoon, as my feet were planted on cracked sidewalk, that defining moment driven by recklessly spoken words from a teenage friend redefined me. And I began to doubt…

…the only love I knew.

I was young, naive, and hadn’t lived enough life to understand love in all its purity and authenticity. I didn’t know that love can’t be separated from reality—where it’s needed most. The Author of all that is had yet to open my heart and mind to understand and receive the truth. I would have to wait until the fullness of time, when Love Divine would reach down and rescue me. But that day, in that moment, my mind raced, pitched, and heaved—tossed on seas of insecurity. If my mother was pregnant and had to get married because of me, was I a mistake? If my parents didn’t plan for me, spend moments dreaming of what life might be like for me, if they didn’t long for their first child to be born…then maybe they didn’t really want me. Maybe they didn’t love me. And if they had to get married, well then, maybe they didn’t really love each other. With questions such as these raging like a storm through my heart, my sense of security and love was far from securely battened down.

Lies.

None of what I was thinking at that time was true. It was all lies churning around in my mind, pressing deep into my heart. From that day forward, like a splinter jammed beneath my skin, those lies infected my hope in my parents’ love and love in general. It grew worse with each passing day, as I carried those venomous lies around with me while their poison spread through my soul. They weighed me down, filling every emotional step I took toward relationships with fear and doubt. I didn’t talk to my mother about this. When I was a teenager, we didn’t talk about or even approach taboo subjects like sex with our parents. I knew I was going to have to live with this one, so I probed, pondered, and questioned love for a long time. I wondered about my parents, doubting their love for each other and for me, though they never gave me a reason to do so. Unfortunately, Jane’s words were somehow stronger than the attitudes, actions, and words of parents who really did love me. My warped understanding captivated me and sent my heart careening on a wild goose chase for love—or what my fallen heart and mind thought love was.

“Jill, my dad’s not home tonight, so we’ll have the house to ourselves,” he said, smiling.

“Oh good.” I laughed, hopping into the front seat of his car.

Gripping the steering wheel with one hand, he reached for me with the other. “I have something special planned for us,” he whispered softly. Captivated by his charm, I slid across the seat to be near him. He smelled great and he was all mine—dating him had been the highlight of my young-adult experience.

“So...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: FaithWords
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1455514276
• ISBN 13: 9781455514274
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland