Jeremiah 3:15 (ESV)
¹⁵  …”And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will lead you with knowledge and understanding….” declares the Lord….

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The scripture had leaped off the page one day in the spring of 2006….you know those moments when He is whispering something so vital to you, and you strain to comprehend it, and your heart responds with such longing. I’d been searching guardedly for a church home forever it seemed — my heart trying to recover from the collapse of the church I’d grown up and labored in for all of my life. I cried out that day, YES! Please God, YES! Lead me to a church where there are shepherds chasing after YOUR Heart and YOUR Truth!  Lead me to that place where Your People gather together and worship You in Spirit and in Truth! With all my heart I’m longing for that fellowship!

The scripture about the shepherds would be forgotten for days, but then it would rise up unannounced, and my heart would ache again with such longing. That summer of 2006  was a time of profound healing and working through deep long-buried wounds with some amazing counselors. (I was once again under care of a pain management team, trying to get to the root of the deep unbearable pain just below the ribs on my right side, and the panic attacks that had come on suddenly.)

But that’s another story — today is about His shepherds….and His shepherd TaDa!

After the summer of intense work, my pain manageable again, I had signed up to go on HeartQuest in September of that year. (For anyone longing for a deeper “God-encounter?”  If you’d like to get away for a week and disconnect from the world, go on a Quest to recover your heart and chase after the One who is calling to the deepest part of you. Go check out the adventure at http://www.thequestlife.com.  I’m privileged now to serve on women’s events. And I’m amazed every time I go, to see the transformation of the girls who get on the bus and return 5 days later radically awakened! And the same thing happens with the men’s Quest!) 

And such was my HeartQuest experience in September of 2006. After 5 days of being in a fellowship of women who welcomed His Presence, preaching Truth and Identity, I returned back home. I was forever changed….radically awakened to my Identity, and the True Identity of the One Who was calling me into this great adventure!

I came home. And the battle got hotter… I found that the change in me seemed to set my husband even more against me and against God. But I was learning to love him deeply, and get out of God’s Way as He dealt with him. By November, he had finally agreed to go with me to a marriage counselor for help. I went to my Aetna website, and found only one response to my search for counseling. I called and scheduled our first meeting, and my Father was smiling because He had set me up once again…. 

On the day of the appointment, hubby came down with a migraine and couldn’t go…and I found myself in the office alone with a new counselor. As he walked in, he carried with him a presence of safety and kindness and compassion. I loved his deep voice and his graying hair. Within a few minutes, I was pouring out my heart to him. I remember saying something like, “I don’t know what you believe about God, but He’s become my everything, and I want my heart and my path in alignment with Him and His Word.” I poured out my story of abuse from youngest childhood up to the present day….and I remember saying I don’t want to go through another divorce. I was repeating all the “truths” about marriage that I remembered from my past religions, and how I wanted to fix it at all costs. Finally, this beautiful stranger turned in his chair, took his well-loved Bible off his desk and began to talk to me about God’s original plan for marriage. And about how God is love, and how it’s never His Will that one of us would be abused by another. And he said if you summed up all the Words and Truths in the Bible, if you could wring the Book in your hands and pour out the one drop of the ESSENCE of it into your hand, you would be holding “God is Love.”   

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Deep called unto deep. My heart was responding, but my mind was arguing all the “truths” that I had memorized….truths that I would learn had been distorted by the enemy….but the witness in my heart was shouting “this is TRUTH!”  As my hour was winding down, this kind and gentle man assured me that he could help me, and he’d love to see me again, and then he asked if he could pray for me. Tears trickled down my cheeks as he bowed his head and poured out a fragrance of words of comfort and reverent worship into the room. 

I’m looking at the top of his bowed head, my heart wanting so desperately to grasp that this Bible IS about God’s LOVE for me and not His punishments and His “thou shalt not’s”…… and I’m asking God from the depths of my heart, lead me, guide me, let me understand, is this counselor speaking Truth to me….I would desperately love to sit with him again, but….   

At that exact moment, the frame on the wall behind him seemed to shift to draw my attention…and I saw it was one of his college diplomas. For the very first time, the name of my new counselor broke through with clarity:  ROB SHEPPARD   ….and I heard deep in my heart that Voice that changes everything…..”I told you I would give you shepherds after My Own Heart who would lead you with knowledge and understanding”…. 

Undone… again…. becoming my favorite place to be …. Undone …    

That man would become one of my dearest mentors on this earth. He taught me about reclaiming, embracing and cherishing the lost child within. And about God’s Unending, Passionate Love for His Children, the Love that will go to the ends of the earth to find us and save us and bless our little socks off. Rob Sheppard truly IS a shepherd after God’s Own Heart, and I am blessed and healthier for having known him….and yes, I shared the story with him later…and he got a good chuckle out of that one….He seemed to know his place in the Father’s Heart….     

~~for anyone seeking an amazing Christian counselor in Fort Worth, you can find Dr Sheppard at:    http://www.uccsolutions.com/  ….tell him Toni sent you….I bet he smiles~~

…This next story belongs to my hubby and he gave me permission to share it….

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It had been a very rough year…2009… Phil’s son was still struggling with a drug addiction that had started after his mom died of cancer… It had finally landed him into a place where we could not rescue him…he was sentenced to six months in prison. He was being held in the county jail, waiting for a transfer. We had been reading the Bible together every morning that week, and Phil had come across that passage that starts in Matthew 6:25 — the Cure for Anxiety passage — that urges us to TRUST GOD, which had seemed to encourage him greatly. He had heard in his heart a Word from the Lord that “I’ve got this son in my hands.” And he was trying so hard to trust God for him. But then the transfer came and the son was suddenly moved on a Saturday morning without warning. The penal system is sometimes cruel to the families left to deal with the aftermath of crimes. We were told they could not give us any information about where he had been placed. We would have to wait to hear from him. And it was Father’s Day week-end…sigh. Phil was devastated, worried sick about his son. Imagine all the scenarios running through your mind when the son you love is in an unknown place where you cannot protect him and you’ve heard such terrifying stories of things that could happen….

We made our way to church that Sunday morning with heavy hearts. We were a few minutes late, and the Worship Team had already started. People were standing, singing worship to the Lord. I left Phil at the back while I made a quick trip to the ladies’ room, and when I returned, we made our way to a seat. He quickly sat down and put his head in his hands and wept so hard his shoulders were shaking. My heart broke for him and I wrapped my arms around him, praying for his heart. When he could finally talk, he said to me, “you aren’t going to believe what God said to me standing back there….He said so clearly, ‘I told you not to worry about Brian, I told you I am watching over him….and I have given you a scripture…don’t worry!'” The look of awe and relief on his face was priceless! And we knew the scripture that He was referring to…the Matthew 6 verses about how God cares for us, and how much we are worth to Him!

…or so we thought….

Worship team completed their songs, and the pastor introduced the guest speaker. I have no recollection of his name or anything that he taught that night. It was how he started his message that blew us away. He said something like, “before I start my sermon today, I just felt so strongly to share this scripture, if someone will put it up on the overhead for me?” Then suddenly Phil’s name was there at the top of the screen. The Bible book was Philippians, but it had been shortened to PHIL. And the verse that followed melted my dear husband’s heart and knees. We read, along with a great big whispered TaDa:

PHIL 4:4-7 (NIV) ⁴  Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!
⁵  Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

…the Peace of God that transcends understanding… Selah.

We got word the next week from Brian that he had been moved to a prison just about an hour’s drive from us. And God had gone before this son and prepared the way. When they processed him in and found out he had a plumber’s license, they assigned him to the small elite trustee’s ward, and he was assigned a plumber’s job for the prison. He was in the safest place in the prison — if any of the men in that unit broke rules or picked a fight, they were booted back into general population. His roommate was a recovering alcoholic who was also — oh by the way — a Believer, and who would lead Brian into a salvation experience while he was there….

“if I make my bed in hell, He is there…” Ps 139:8

And that passage became a life verse for Phil Wilson….sent straight from the God Who knows the pain of a father’s heart for his son….we re-visit those verses often….

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“In my anguish, I cried out to the Lord, and He answered by setting me free” …        Psalms 118:5

Probably this is the story that I should have written first. It was the beginning of my Journey into Freedom….but it was a lot harder to write. I was in a really dark place.

Why is it that some of us seem to have to come to the end of ourselves, run out of all other options, paint ourselves into a corner, before we cry out…or whisper… in anguish… ..help! We couldn’t see He was there all along, waiting for us to turn, to receive His Heart for us. We think we can do this life with our own strength…until we can’t. And when we finally cry out, we think we know what it is exactly that we are asking for….“this is hurting me — MAKE THIS STOP!!” Instead, He offers us His Best Gift: FREEDOM!! “It is for Freedom that Christ has set us Free!” (Galatians 5:1). And “if the Son sets you free, you will be FREE INDEED!” (Jesus said it! John 8:36).  It is truly the greatest gift, and it starts with “you shall know the TRUTH, and the TRUTH will make you free.”  (again it’s Jesus’ own words. John 8:32). And so this is that story….maybe the very first chink in the wall the enemy had built around my heart.

I had come to the end of my rope….the church I had loved and served all of my life was disintegrating, my marriage of 20 years was ending, the Pastor I had held on a pedestal as “God” had fallen, and I had exhausted all of my co-dependency coping skills. (And I didn’t yet know the word co-dependent.) The wise counselor that I had been seeing for a few months had concluded that I had reached the point of desperation and was possibly suicidal. Suddenly I found myself in Springwood Hospital…against my will. I remember sitting in my room, wrapped in a blanket, crying for the first three days. All the pain I had pushed down and locked in the box poured out through my tears. And I remember the kindness and compassion of the staff that cared for me there. The nurses who would sit for hours it seemed, hearing me out, creating a safe place for me to fall….and to empty out. How could my world have come to this? I was a Sunday School teacher, a worship leader, made every effort to be a perfect wife and mother and servant to the church.  How could God have let me down so horrifically? Everything I had believed in was crumbling at my feet and I had nothing left to stand on, nowhere to turn. A heap of ashes, a mountain of pain, a Valley of Achor…and a perfect place for my God to reach me.  “If I make my bed in hell, He is there.”  (Ps 139:8).

And He came into my room and met with me there….in the hands and feet of the kind amazing nurses that ministered to me in my room, and in my group classes. And in the words of a young chaplain as he prayed with me there. I remember the kindness in his voice as he encouraged me to stay and to dig in to the classes offered. He assured me I was right where God intended me to be…in a safe place to let go. And as he prayed that day, these words came out of his mouth: “Lord, please send Toni a Joyful Surprise.”  Those were the only words I remember from his prayer. They seemed to be shouted out to me, and seemed so out of place. The words took my thoughts captive, starting a vivid conversation in my head as the chaplain prayed the rest of his prayer. I was arguing, are you kidding me??? Joyful surprise??? I’m in a psych hospital for pete’s sake! For suicidal depression!! How’s that for joy?? and surprise??? But now as I look back, I can picture the smile on the Face of my Papa as He set the hook, and wrapped the surprise that was coming, and put a big red bow on it…..big smile….

After ten life-changing days, I was released to go home. But I had been given some darkness-kicking gifts to take with me. The staff had unlocked a box deep in my heart and removed some of the cruel lies, replacing them with truths about addictions and co-dependents. I had been told by someone I held as “God” that if I were a better wife, my husband wouldn’t have his problems. I had been told to keep the secrets and just pray harder. I had been held up as a public example of how NOT to be. Words had been spoken in front of my whole church, words that crushed my spirit and my heart….”this poor husband has had to live with Toni all these years”…. words that left me feeling everyone in the world could see I was broken, but with all my efforts, I had no idea how to grasp it and to fix it. But here in Springwood, darkness and lies had been exposed. Those lies had been replaced with truths that would begin to change my life. One of the first books the staff had given me to read was “Co-Dependent No More” by Melody Beatty. For the first time in my life, I was being told that there are things that someone else may do that ARE NOT MY FAULT. And I couldn’t fix them, no matter how hard I tried. The shame and the guilt that I had carried was not mine to own. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t a ton of stuff still in my own life that needed to be dealt with — it just freed me up from trying to fix someone else’s stuff. There was a glimmer of Hope rising from deep within. Hope that maybe I wasn’t such a lost cause, that maybe I had some worth, that maybe I could help someone else. I wanted to become a Nurse! Freedom pathways beckoned. I wanted to know more. The day after I left the hospital, I made my way to the city library to the list of resources the staff had recommended. I pulled four or five books from that section and took them to a table to scan through. There  were several I wanted to read, but there was one book that captured me immediately. Within a few pages, I found tears welling up. The author was writing my feelings out loud, words of a desperate girl striving to be worthy of love, to be seen, to be heard, to be good enough, to be perfect. I checked the books out and headed home with my treasures… little did I know what had been set in motion. The gift that was waiting…

….And that again, He was smiling….

Over the next few days, I would open that book to read, and then have to put it aside because the pain that welled up from the deepest parts of me felt like it would drown me. The author stirred the unspoken longings, longing to be cherished, to be held, to be accepted just as me. The exhausting search for worth… And then it happened. It was on the third day of reading. The tears fell onto the pages. I closed the book. And the title of the book leaped off the cover. Somehow I had not SEEN the title until that moment. It shouted out: “GOD’S JOYFUL SURPRISE: finding yourself loved by God.” Speechless. Undone. He had set me up. He got me. And He gave me His Gift. It was the beginning. Of Life. Of the Road to Freedom. Of unwrapping the Gift of unconditional Love. He had  TaDa’d me with the thing my heart had yearned for…the things that every human being on the planet yearns for… I was seen. I was cherished. I was good enough. I was loved.  By God. That was the Joyful Surprise. And my Journey could now begin….and I hit the road running…. But first to the store to buy my own copy of ….

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…and the Journey continues… One of my favorite scriptures that has been written on my heart since 2006, and one of the foundations of HeartQuest, is this one:

Hosea 2:14-15. “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make her Valley of Achor a door of hope.” 

Some translations say He will speak “kindly” and “gently” to her. Until my Journey into healing, I don’t remember knowing that God could speak “kindly” to us. How many of you grew up with the picture of God as a hard-to-please Father full of “thou shalt nots”, holding up a list of things and adding, “if you do, I’m going to punish you good.” I remember my siblings and I saying “if it’s fun, it’s probably sin”…. And we made up a little song to drive my mom crazy on our long drives back and forth to church: “read your Bible and pray, that’s all you can do every day.” Who knew that He’s not like that? If you raised your hand, I’m envious of you! When I had finally come to the end of my rope, and He came and rescued me, He began to dismantle all the lies that had been my “truths” and replace them with this one: GOD IS LOVE. Always has been, always is, and always will be. And everything that He does, is from that heart of love for His kids. As He drew me to the Journey that would lead me ultimately into the Heart of that Father, He used to show up in HUGE ways — those TaDa! moments— because that’s the only way I could hear Him. This story is one of those first times that I “heard” His Voice inside my heart, drawing me with such tenderness to come follow Him…

I’d been on my Healing Journey with Him for about a year. Along with a group of friends, we were deep into a Bible study by Beth Moore: “Breaking Free.” Almost every morning, I would awaken before the alarm clock went off, and realize that my soul was in the middle of a worship song. I would come up out of bed with a huge smile on my face and join in singing. This was one of those mornings. As I showered and dressed for work, my insides overflowed with worship and awe of this God who had come for me…for ME! I had backed the car into the garage the night before, and as the garage door opened, this huge full moon was lighting up the yard in majestic brilliance. The beautiful scene took my breath away and tears were flowing already. (I had learned to not put my makeup on until I got to work because these 30-minute early morning drives to work were frequently met with tears…good tears.) I turned my headlights off — there was no need.  The minute I left my driveway and headed down the road, I began to hear this beautiful quiet Voice speaking to me inside my heart with such kindness and tenderness, Words that were not coming from my head. I was captivated as He said: 

     “You know that the moon has no light of its own, right? What you are seeing is the light of the sun…the moon is just doing what I created it to do. It’s hanging where I placed it, being the moon, reflecting the sun.” And then a pause as I took that in…a Selah moment. He continued with such quiet love, “that’s what I want YOU to do, sweet baby, I want you to be a moon and reflect the S-O-N.” He spelled it just like that for me. And He called me “sweet baby.” I was undone. My heart was His. What could I say but YES, I’ll try so hard to do that…with all my might, I will try. Little did I know what I had just signed up to for my life….but He did.

I basked in that moment and those words all day. And the next night at Bible study, I shared it with my group, starting with “did anyone see that beautiful full moon 2 nights ago?” They were all touched by the story. After a few days went by, however, another voice with condemning thoughts rose up….who did I think I was? Would God really talk to ME? Everyone knows that the moon reflects the sun — maybe my mind just made up the conversation. That would make a lot more sense than trying to believe that there is a God who would actually take time out of His extremely busy schedule to visit with me in my car….really, who did I think I was?? The Glory slowly faded and I began to feel a little embarrassed that I had told my friends about it….

You can see that God had His Hands full when He took on the task of healing my heart, but He was up to the challenge! A few days later, I made a run to Mardel’s to pick up a CD that one of my friends had mentioned at Bible study. I wanted to have it ready to play for them the next meeting. I’m standing in the music section, and in my peripheral vision to my right, in the distance I saw a wall covered with t-shirts. It felt like I was placed on a moving walkway, like those at the airports, and was slowly transported to a spot standing in front of that wall. There were probably forty t-shirts on the wall, each one with a bin number pinned to them. The t-shirts were rolled into logs, rubber-banded, and placed in the assigned bins below the display. But my eyes could only take in the ONE t-shirt in the middle of the wall. It was black and had a huge full moon in the front with these words:  “Be the moon.” With trembling hands, I pulled one of the shirts from that bin, and my hands traced the moon on the shirt. Then I turned it over to see the back and my jaw dropped as I read:  “Reflect the SON”….  TaDa!!! I know, right??? He LOVES to do that!  Boom! In your face, kingdom of darkness! I fell to my knees right there in the store, in awe as I realized that it truly was His Voice that spoke to my heart and made His request for my life….be a moon and reflect the S-O-N. Yes, I bought the t-shirt and wore it until it was faded and worn out, and then bought another. And YES, I wore it to Bible study the next week, underneath a jacket, so I could re-tell the story, and then reveal the shirt with a big “TaDa!!” 

And my Faith grew stronger as I began to get a glimpse into the nature of this King who was my Father….I have a dear friend who calls Him “the real Dad.” What an amazing Journey He was calling me into! Years later I can tell you that every single time I have heard His Voice speaking to me like that morning, it’s been with the same tone of love, kindness, and patience. If I’m hearing words of condemnation, contempt and especially discouragement, it’s not Him. And I don’t have to listen to that. His is the Voice that changes everything. And He had called me with tenderness into a Great Adventure, and I was in for the ride of my life! Was I strong enough to survive it? Time would tell…..but for today, I think I’ll wear my t-shirt and remember…. who I really am….