Love, GOD

In 2017, my husband and I began a blog about our experience with a book, Cancer and the Lord’s Prayer, and our experience with a health issue in 2016 that the doctors thought might be cancer. It took us almost a year to get our feet back on the ground before we began to blog again.

We began posting the blogs on Facebook. Larry’s post schedule was much slower than mine. After he had posted about 3-4 entries, we got a caustic comment from one of his former clients. In his “former life”, he had built and run a company called Money Management Services. He started it in the early 1980’s helping people get out of debt and manage their finances. It grew into a fee only financial management company.

I was very pleased with our blog about our experience and so hoped it would help someone else. So when the attack came, I was devastated! Larry had been very honest with me about the loss of his business and his responsibility for that. But, while he had experienced the rage of others, I had not. I wanted to fold up my tent and go into hiding. It hurt so badly to see my husband attacked so viciously.

Then came the reporter, who literally hounded us for weeks. She came to the house with cameras and microphone and one of my daughters, who happened to be staying with us, answered the door. At the time, my daughter was on a company conference call. She made certain the reporter knew that others were listening and not to record her voice or picture for TV.

The reporter, Alanna Autler, and channel 4 sent false emails pretending to be a potential client to entice my husband to talk. This false client turned out to be a company that takes aerial photographs and one of his clients was channel 4!

When the “expose” was aired, a friend happened to see the teaser and called us so we could record it.

I guess the news segment had its desired effect — we immediately went underground! I was devastated and Larry was tortured watching me deal with the viciousness of the attack. I have spent the last year and a half digging out of the pit I dug to protect myself and my husband.

The expose was aired in May of 2017. We had started attending church at Grace Center in early 2017. God must have known that we were going to need that church family. May 28, 2017, Jeff Dollar, the pastor, gave a prophecy at the end of the first service. “You have been in a dry, barren place. You feel like you are trying to get water out of a rock. Speak to the Rock. WATER IS COMING!” I grabbed onto this prophecy and took it to heart for our circumstance. I continue to say it out loud and claim it as a freshly spoken word from God.

About a week later on my birthday, I was walking and praying and God dropped a promise in my heart. “This attack is not from Me, but I will use it for your good and My glory! Love, God” I am holding onto these two promises and I know my God is faithful.

Larry had not had a salary for about a year at the time of the promises, and the attack made it impossible for him to make a living. We were in a “dry and barren” desert. But training for glory happens in the wilderness. David was trained for the throne in the wilderness. Moses spent 80 years in wilderness training before leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Jesus was tested in the wilderness. And Paul spent three years in Arabia (i.e.: wilderness; Galatians 1:17-18). The wilderness — dry, barren desert — is exactly where we learn to trust God! As Bill Johnson loves to point out, “Its easy to trust God when you win the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes!” Trusting God in barrenness is where we grow and mature.

It would be another year before my husband would find work. Interestingly, after two job prospects failed, he interviewed with a company that is headquartered in North Carolina. He sent the company his application and was scheduled for a phone interview on Monday. In the middle of the night he woke up and knew in his spirit that he needed to send a document he had written a short time after his business failure. It was titled, “Why I Accepted a Plea Agreement”. It was a bold, audacious move, but he knew that the company would surely research him. This was a way for him to get in front of the research and honestly present the details.

The day of the phone interview, his soon-to-be boss told him that he had read the document and had put it in his safe, never to be mentioned again. It took great courage for Larry to send that document, but we serve a courageous Savior.

Water is coming!

Soli Deo Gloria (To God alone glory)