After spending most of my life in California,at age 72, God said, “Move to Atlanta, GA.”
People keep asking, “How do you like Atlanta?” All I can say is that I love Atlanta BUT I miss the mountains, the palm trees (which I never liked before), and the ocean. I miss family and friends left behind.
I keep waking up and asking, “Am I really in Atlanta?”
This move is all a part of my story as a Sojourner walking with the Triune God.
Almighty God has walked me through days of failure, days of terror, days of rejection AND days of blessing. Because the focus of this blog is on how the Sovereign God has led me from one time of suffering after another, I want to make sure at the beginning that you know He has never left me alone; in the midst of all the pain, He has also given me amazing experiences and blessings.
BLESSINGS
I have worked with children and families for over 50 years in both secular and Christian settings. • Following college I joined VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) and served in a migrant labor camp in Texas. (Where I met and fell in love with my husband)• After VISTA, I married Joe Parker. Joe was a Boy’s Club Director and we served in several inner city and barrio areas in So. California. • I served as Children’s Director and Family Pastor in three Orange County, California Churches. During this time I was a co—founder of Children’s Christian Ministry Association • Right after the Los Angeles riots and while serving as Family Pastor at Mariners Church in Newport Beach, Campus Crusade (now Cru) approached me to develop a reproducible ministry to reach children in inner city areas of America, known today as S.A.Y. Yes! Centers of America. • In 1998, I was invited along with 25 others, representing every continent of the world, to be part of a symposium in England. This was the initial gathering for the creation of a curriculum to equip people working with children living in difficult circumstances. Celebrating Children is taught in Christian universities around the world. • In 2001 KidTrek was begun, a unique ministry to equip the Church to reach families in crisis. Married for 51 years, I have three married children and eight grandchildren who walk with the Lord, the greatest gift a mother could ever have.
An old but favorite picture – below is update of grandchildren.
A little game – can you find which of the present
day kids are in the old picture? Hint 3 are missing.
PASSIONS
At a very young age the Triune God gave me a passion for Himself – it was a gift, not something I earned or worked for, a gift of grace. It is my passion for the Triune God that pushes me forward through life.
I loved being a stay at home mom – it meant I had the freedom to go to Bible studies, meet with friends for coffee/lunch, and mainly do what I wanted to do. Joe kept pressing me to find a job because our finances were so tight. Being the submissive wife I was I kept saying “NO.” Then one day I came home and found a newspaper in my chair opened to the classified section, with a dark circle drawn around one particular ad. (Little did I know as I picked up that paper how this would be the beginning of a huge change in my life.)
Kindergarten Teacher wanted in Day Care Center:
perfect for a mom who wants to be home when children
arrive home from school. Call today.
I called and made an appointment for the next day, Friday. 
At the end of the interview, I asked, “When do you think you will be making a decision on whom to hire?”
Director: “Oh I’ve made my decision. Can you begin on Monday?”
Me: “No, I need to think about it,” I said out loud as I was screaming on the inside, “No God, No! You can’t be asking me to do this.”
That weekend there was a big JESUS FESTIVAL just across the Columbia River in Washington. Our family was excited to be a tiny part of the Jesus Festival movement.
It was truly a festival; there was a feeling of electricity in the air as we walked through the crowd to find a place to sit. Joe spread out the blanket on the grass and we all sat down.
The announcer, “Tonight we have a young lady performing for the first time before a large audience: Amy Grant. Give her a big welcome!.”
A young teenager, I believe she was 16 at the time, came out on the stage. The large crowd was drawn to one focus – praising the Triune God.
Then the speaker, (I have no idea who he was, I only remember one thing he said) “Is God asking you to do something and you keep telling Him NO!?”
On the ride home, I kept fighting with God inside my head.
The next day as we arrived at the Jesus Festival, our children were excited to go to the petting zoo. We watched them play with the animals from outside the fence.
A couple whom we had never met before, began talking to us. Suddenly the man turned to me and asked, “Do you work with children?” Surprised, I began to tell him with a “Well” and stopped to ask, “Why?”
He hemmed and hawed a little bit then said, “I believe the Lord has given me a word to give you. He wants you to know that He has a very large ministry to children for you one day; however He can’t give you that ministry unless you are willing to take the small ministry He has for you today.”
Joe and I looked at each other in shock; I began to cry. The poor man and his wife asked what was wrong, had he hurt me in some way? “No,” I said, “I interviewed for a teaching job Friday and have been fighting with God about taking it. He really must want me to take that job for some reason.”
God was about to lay a passion for children on my heart that would drive me for the next 40 plus years – and I’m sure beyond.
If you are interested in reading more about this passion, here are my first attempts at Blogging Sunday Plus: A Vision of Children’s Ministry and KidTrek – After School Blog
WHY WRITE REFINER’S FIRE?
For the past eight years my husband, Joe, has suffered through a lot of pain with one strange diagnosis after another. I would think, “okay this is it – when this is healed we can get back to living.” But then something else would happen.
Because the pain was so great, Joe wasn’t able to work and so was let go from his job. It was in the midst of the 2008 housing bubble burst so we also lost our retirement, which eventually would lead to losing our home. For a while Joe was able to do some consulting but then he got ill again so he could no longer even do that.
Due to the pain, he was on heavy narcotics that played with his mind and I had to become the decision maker. That feels really upside down when you’ve been married for almost 50 years to a man who was strong, a leader and able to take care of most things. To keep my own sanity, I know I put an emotional wall up around myself as I tried to hold things together.
There would be days when I felt like I couldn’t get through the next hour, I was stuck – so I began to sit down and pour out my heart and soul on Facebook. Prayer warriors would respond and minutes later I would feel a change – the presence of the Lord was so strong in our home. Along with prayers came amazing advice and encouragement that gave me the strength and wisdom I needed to fight for Joe at the hospital when doctors seemed to be frozen.
I remember one day standing at the nurse’s station and screaming at the doctor – I don’t think I’ve ever done something like that before. When he left, the nurses all came up to me and said, “You go, girl: he needed that.” I was mortified; however it did produce good results.
And yes, also practical help has been given to us.
I thank God for all those who have walked with us through these past years – I wouldn’t have made it this far without God’s children walking with me.
Friends began to write me offline, call or come for a visit and I would tell them more of my story which I hadn’t told on Facebook – e.g. more than Forty years of Terror when I continually cried out asking God to take me home. Because of those 20 years I truly believed that my senior years would be easy. After all I had done my suffering. NOT!
The friends who connected off-line shared their own struggles. I was overwhelmed with how many who walk with the Triune God are going through pain and there is nowhere to share it, nowhere to get support. There are some things that can be shared openly; however there is much that is kept hidden for fear of judgement or because it involves others – depression, anxiety, betrayal, children not walking with God, addictions (sexual, drugs, gambling). The list is long.
I began to study what the Bible has to say about suffering and discovered it is more of a gift than I ever understood before.
Then some friends began to encourage me to share my story – to write a book. I prayed and prayed. What I feel the Lord has led me to do is write a Blog.
It is my prayer that the Lord will touch the hearts of those who are hurting; that they will feel a freedom to write me if they need someone to dump on. I also pray that the Lord will touch the hearts of those who haven’t been called to walk through a long continuing pain and that you will have more compassion for those who do. That you will ask God what part He wants you to play in ministering to such individuals.
Being really vulnerable and honest, due to losing our retirement, Joe and I are in need of outside income. If the Blog ministers to your heart as a book you purchased please consider paying as you would for a book. Go to The Coffee Fund where you will find a PayPal link. If you want to send a check email me at refinersfire43@gmail.com
To go to the first post/page of the blog/book “No! This Can’t be Happening to Me! This is Crazy!
UPDATE: Joe went home to Glory July 16, 2020. Joe was diagnosed with Multiple Systems Atrophy (MSA) in 2017. October, 2019, he was put on Hospice. It was one of the more difficult walks. Never saw myself being able to be a Caretaker. Never knew all the complexities that come with caring for one walking a path of death. Almighty God has been with us through every moment of this walk. So amazed at how He has worked to care for us. Not necessarily what I want but definitely what I need. December, 2019 Joe went into a nursing home, from where the Triune God called him home. The last four months, due to Covid, we could only talk via phone.
