My Way
Growing up, I was an average kid in an average family in an average small town. Not one in a million; just one of a million… nothing special. Though I was raised in a church going family, by age seven I thought I was learning about a God who expected me to be perfect. By age twelve I had closed the door to God, and by the time I was a teenager I was rebellious and hardened to anything that had to do with Christianity.
A month before my fifteenth birthday, my mother died. A month after my sixteenth my dad remarried. By sixteen and a half, I had moved out of the house in a fury. I was angry at my dad and fed-up with my stepmom, and I vowed on the day I left home that I would make my own way and never, ever, depend on anyone for anything ever again. God wasn't even an option. I had completely removed him from my life. What I didn't know, however, was that my grandmother was praying for me every single day. And let me tell you something. If you have a little gray-haired lady on her knees with your name on her lips in prayer… give up!
The next few years saw me charge through high school and enough college to get me where I thought I should go. Then there were a dozen residences in as many cities, but I was never satisfied with anyone or anyplace or anything. Nothing was enough.
One day a friend and I decided to take a vacation together and we chose a week-long rafting trip in Colorado. Little did I know that my life was about to take a big turn. I fell in love with the river and the outdoors and a lifestyle that promised to be exciting, and within a year I had set up a small white-water rafting company in central Colorado. I was 22. Ten years later that rag-tag little outfit owned 50 boats, 4 buses, a restaurant, a gift shop, a photo service and a winter cross-country ski center. I was earning the money I had wanted, though at a huge price. I was 32 and exhausted. I'd had enough hard work and stress to last me a lifetime, and I was ready to settle down. I sold the business and for the first time in a decade I was footloose and fancy free. I thought I was happy but, still, it wasn't enough.
I traveled for a year and then started looking for the next adventure… an adventure which turned out to be Jack. Jack was a retired Air Force fighter pilot and at the time was teaching flying part time in Denver. We met by chance and he asked me out on a date, but someone had mistakenly informed me that he was married, and though I was truly attracted to him I brushed him off. This must have really made him angry; because by the time I figured out he wasn't married he wouldn't have anything to do with me. What to do now? I'm really attracted to this man, and he won't give me the time of day. So, I did what any normal, red-blooded female would do. I bought an airplane. And then I enrolled in flight school, insisting Jack be my instructor. As transparent as this plan was it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Three months later we were married in Hawaii and after the ceremony I, being a take-charge-kind-of-gal said, "I think you should know that I can't cook, I don't like to iron, and vacuuming is completely out of the question." Whereupon, Jack, being a take-charge-kind-of-guy said, "I think you should know that I have seven children." All this being proof that one should never marry a stranger.
Don't think for a minute that God doesn't have a sense of humor. The irony of it all was not wasted on me. I was now a stepmother! As a footnote: I did learn to cook, but Jack did all the vacuuming.
Not long after we were married, I got bored. There was that same old problem. Nothing was enough to satisfy me. I wanted to start working again, and I opened a tourism-related consulting agency. Soon my work-a-holic mode kicked in and before I realized it, I was all work and no fun. I was never home and it wasn't long before my marriage grew chilly. In retrospect, I knew even then that I had a great, gnawing need of some kind that I was trying to fill with work. I also knew that I was going to have to start making some changes. I was looking for something, maybe even God, but I certainly didn't want anything to do with church and all that Christian nonsense. There was, however, the not-so-small matter of the huge hole in my spirit in the shape of God.
Seeing the Way
It was about this time that my financial life bottomed out. In simply a matter of months the golden touch turned to brass and everything I tried failed. Finally, Jack suggested that we just liquidate everything and get a fresh start. He had been offered a good job flying for a resort in the Caribbean on the island of Saba. Two months later we were living on an island in the Caribbean. Jack had a great job, and I became a lady of leisure.
Since I didn't know anyone there, I was on the alert for friends and God stuck one right slap in my path. Poor Ruth! Because she was such a wonderful person and because she lived her life willing to do God's bidding, she got me as a project. We became fast friends. Ruth was born in Scotland, raised in Kenya by missionary parents, married to a Canadian doctor and at the time, living on the Island of Saba. She was tall and blond and elegant, with a wicked wit and a brilliant mind. I thought she was the best thing since peanut butter. The only thing I disliked was her constant reference to Jesus and her annoying enthusiasm for her faith.
First, Ruth convinced me to attend church with her and though my spirit had been in a coma for so many years, gradually the familiar truths of God's love and forgiveness began to filter through. Ruth could see the war that was raging inside me, and she prayed for my salvation every day. Then quietly and ever so softly she began to tell me about Jesus. How He loved me… how He died for me… how because of Him I could have eternal life by simply believing He was the only way.
After about six months on Saba, the company for whom Jack worked went bankrupt. Jack was out of a job. We quarreled every day. Finally, we became so unhappy with each other that we agreed to separate. Jack went back to the states. I chose to stay on Saba. My marriage was over and it felt as painful as a death, but the reality of my new situation was clear. If I was to stay on Saba, I needed income. "What" turned out to be a cute little tearoom in a one-hundred-year-old Saban cottage. Ruth, being a gifted weaver, set up her loom in one half of the cottage and I took the other half for the tearoom. We called our little place, The Weaver's Cottage Tearoom.
One day while we were sitting in the sun after our swim I asked her, "Say Ruth, you haven't tried to convert me for a while. Where's the usual Jesus chitchat?" She could have taken my head off with a single bite, but she didn't. Instead, she just gave me a knowing smile.
Then Ruth said something that would leave me changed. She said, "You want to know who Jesus is, Deanna? Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. He is the one who paid the price for all my sins with His faultless life. He gave his life as the supreme sacrifice for imperfect people like me. He lived and died and rose from the dead proving he is God. And guess what? You cannot have eternal life in any other way than through Jesus Christ, because my dear, He stands in the gap between your sinful imperfections and God's sinless perfection."
Ruth leaned close to me and whispered, "Just ask God for the truth, Deanna. Just ask for the truth and He will give it to you." Something clicked in my stubborn hardened heart; a sudden flash of understanding.
The next afternoon I worked late. Ruth had already gone. As I was closing the tearoom for the evening, a young Saban boy about age seven stepped up onto the veranda holding something close to his chest. It was a tiny calico kitten — a newborn — about a week old. The mother cat had been killed, and the young boy was seeking homes for all her orphaned kittens. I explained to the boy, as tactfully as possible, that I did not like cats, and I was far too busy to mother one. But he explained to me, as only a child can do, that I was the only hope for this kitten — if I didn't take her, she would die. Then he laid her in the palm of my hand and hurried off.
I have the most vivid memory of feeding the kitten canned milk through a Visine bottle — her searching mouth, her desperate clutching at my hand and the bottle, followed by satiated sleep, a tiny paw curled over my finger. I sat down on the front porch steps holding her as she slept. She seemed contented in my hand. I wondered, how could this tiny helpless kitten trust me, a total stranger, so completely and believe I would not abandon her? She was contented and I felt needed and that felt good. It had been so very long since I had felt goodness, and something in my hard shell cracked.
Tears ran from the corners of my eyes as I turned my face toward the night sky. "Okay, so I want to know the truth, God," I whispered. "I just want to know the truth." I waited. There was no audible voice, no clap of thunder, no mystical vision, but there was a quietness that settled in over the night. Cradling the kitten, I hurried inside and reached for the phone. That night a tearful Ruth led a tearful me to know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. There were neither bright fireworks, nor thousand-voice choir singing Hallelujah — just a quiet peace washing over my spirit, drenching me in what I know now was the unconditional love of God.
God's Way
There I was, alone on an island in the middle of a thousand miles of ocean; the place God had brought me to bring me to my knees. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for just one sinner, doesn't it? But God's like that and do you know why? Because he loves us all exactly the same — there are no average, common, plain vanilla people in His eyes. He sees us each as one-of-a-kind.
All I had to do was say "yes" to him and he took my life and turned it into something more wonderful than I could have ever imagined. The moment I said yes to Jesus, my whole purpose for coming to Saba seemed satisfied in God's eyes. Now he went to work cleaning up my life.
First, the tearoom license was, without justification, not renewed, nor was my visa. I could not stay on Saba without a visa, and I could not operate the tearoom without a license. I had to go. I explored several options, but the only one that gelled was a bed and breakfast in northwestern Montana. Do I even need to mention that Jack had recently moved there? God can be so infuriating. I thought I was finished with marriage, but that wasn't a part of God's plan for me. To make a very long story short, Jack and I are still married and have been together for more than thirty years. My merciful savior helped Jack and I renew our love for each other. He filled my marriage with respect and understanding and He filled my life with an incredible joy. He put, as my five-year-old grandson would say, "a song in my step, a smile in my heart, and a spring in my face."
God expected me to bloom where I was planted and I did. Huckleberry Hannah's Montana Bed and Breakfast was a big success and when Jack and I sold it we moved to Beaufort, South Carolina where I concentrated on writing and speaking full-time and Jack fished.
In August of 2004, cancer claimed my dear friend Ruth's life, but God claimed her spirit, and I know that someday I will be with her in heaven. After Ruth died, I felt a profound sense of loss and in coping with my grief I re-read my journals from the two years I'd spent on the island of Saba. It was all there: Ruth and the kitten and my life before and after Jesus. From these journals came a sweet devotional called, Faithfully Mine and Me. Ruth would have loved it.
My darling Jack passed away in August of 2020. He was the joy and love of my life, and I miss him more than I can say. It is my hope that somehow, he came to know Jesus as savior and that I will see him again in heaven.
Now in this part of my life, with the "use by" date in plain view, I want simply that… to be used. I want to fill up places and pages and people with the thoughts and words that God gives me. I plan to make a difference for Jesus, because as it turns out, Jesus is enough to satisfy all my longings. God has opened doors and given me opportunities in ways I would have never dared to try on my own. He filled up that great big, empty hole in my spirit with joy and hope and put a fire-in-my-belly to tell everybody I meet about how Jesus took my pitiful, plain vanilla life, and turned it into almond-mocha-hot fudge-ripple with whipped cream and a cherry on top!