This is a free read of the 19th Chapter of
my book titled

Battlefied: The Enemy Thanks You For Your Silence

Written by Minister Clyde Derrick

Chapter 19 - God restored my love for the bad woman

Up to now, the story has been about struggling to deal with the attack of the enemy at the hands of one of his agents. This chapter deals with love the way God views love and forgiveness in the way God commands of us. I believe this is the most important chapter of this entire book. I feel like this chapter is a story inside of a story. If you finish the book and don’t learn anything else, I pray you learn what I learned about love and forgiveness.

Steve continues.

I’m going to say something that will sound very strange, very strange. How do you bring yourself to the point where you love that agent of the enemy? First thing you will wonder is, why do you need to love them, they are working for the enemy? For the human race, this concept of loving our enemies does not sit at the top of our list of things we believe are the most important in life. Honestly, I get a little worried when I’m around somebody and they claim to just love everybody. I’m not saying it can’t be that way, but it’s those who proclaim this too loudly and claim they have no problem loving everybody, that kind of scares me. Maybe it’s because my mind is a bit messed up, I don’t know, but they do worry me.

I’m a pretty decent guy, but as you will read in this part of my story, if you rub me the wrong way long enough, loving you is not something I will really have a desire to do. I’m going to tell you some things, show you some feelings that I’m sure, a lot of people will say, I should not have shared; but I believe, for you to fully understand where God lifting me to, you have to see where He lifted me from. Hopefully, my shame is your gain.

That being said, I remind you, in response to the question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life,” Jesus responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and, Love your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:15-17. Of course if you read the rest of that conversation Jesus makes it clear that everyone in the world is your neighbor, you don’t get to pick and choose. In Matthew 5:43, Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy, But I tell you; Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in Heaven. He causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get; are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Romans12: 17-21. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord. On the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

I just want to point out a couple of things in those scriptures. Jesus said, “As far as it depends on you, live in peace.” The basic rule of the Kingdom is, Christians don’t make people their enemy, but clearly people can make themselves your enemy. Living in peace with them should be something you work towards, if they won’t let you, pray for peace; you are only responsible for your part.

Jesus said, “Do not take revenge, but leave room for God’s wrath.” This is very important and a scenario for this will come up before my story is completed.

Now I have to ask, what if heaping burning coals of goodness on a person’s head doesn’t do anything, because there are some people in this world, that no matter what you do, they will always act evil? I’ve given the higher ground sometimes just to regret it and feel stupid I thought doing so would make a difference. Truth is, there are some people you just can’t go that extra mile with; with some people you have to do just enough to live in peace and call it a day; “As far as it depends on you” remember. Jesus is telling you to be good, not be stupid. The line, once on you, twice on me comes to mind. Jesus telling you to love someone is not the same thing as telling you to constantly put yourself in harms way. You can love someone from a distance if that is the only way to keep peace, but if you hear about them being hungry, you still must feed them, thirsty, give them something to drink. In other words, if they have no desire to live in peace with you, put space between them and you, but always make sure they know that you are a child of God, and that despite their attitude towards you, when push comes to shove, you will act like a son or daughter of the Father. You do this by heaping coals of burning goodness on them from time to time.

If after you come to their aid, they return to the evil person they were before; reset and repeat, forgiveness, space and heaping coals. That’s a basic modern day understanding of the answer Jesus gave in Matthew 18:21. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven? Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (Note, some verses are taking from English translated version, not King James)

In my dealings with the bad woman, I learned a lot about love and the power of the Holy Spirit. I can tell you for a fact, the statement, “God’s love conquers all” is putting it mildly. If you think I hated the bad woman for all the years of hell she brought to my family; all the behind your back statements, the manipulations to bring about her agenda; the in your face attitude; the years of work she put in turning my father against me; for the destruction of my home church; for so carelessly bringing pain to my mother’s life; for assaulting my God’s area of influence; you’re one hundred percent right. By the time we got to the last seven years of my father’s marriage, I hated every inch of this nasty, evil woman he called his wife.

Let me take you to where I really was concerning this woman. I hated this woman so much that I had thoughts, and most people wouldn’t share this because they play that, I’m so holy game, but if I don’t, I am a lie, and my story means nothing; when it was clear, that cancer was going to win the battle, I was happy. I wasn’t just happy, I was thankful. I felt this woman not only deserved to die, she deserved to go to hell, and I wanted her to go to hell. I’m not talking figuratively, I’m telling you I literally wanted to see her go to hell and burn like the devil that she was. Oh yeah, I’m still anointed and was anointed while I had this thought. If you can’t understand how I could be anointed and still think this way it’s because you have no idea what God’s grace is about.

I felt so strongly about her going to hell, I wrote a short comedy sketch where I expressed how upset I would be if I got to Heaven and she was there. I’ll share it with you.

There I am in Heaven when I looked around and who did I see, the bad woman, walking around Heaven smiling and happy. I said to myself, “How could she be here in Heaven, her entire life was filled with evil and the delivery of hell into other’s lives?” So I started partying and acting a fool in Heaven out of my anger regarding this injustice. One day, the angels could take no more and they came to see me.

The angels knocked on my door, I opened it and one of the angels asked me, “Steve, why are you drinking so much, you know we really don’t allow drinking in Heaven.”

I responded, “Look here, I didn’t drink while I was on earth, because I was trying to live a Godly life, but you guys let that bad woman in Heaven; so now I’m going to make up for all the drinking I didn’t do.” Then I slammed the door in their face.

The next time the angels came knocking on my door, one of the angels asked me, “Steve, why are you acting the way you’re acting?”

I responded, “If I had known you were going to let that bad woman in Heaven after she lived such a nasty life, I would have definitely returned evil for evil. I would have been mean and rude whenever I wanted. I would have barrowed money and never gave it back, and I definitely would not have put in any effort to love my enemies. Since she made it into Heaven, I figured I’d make up for all that, take the high road stupidity I did while I was alive.” Then I slammed the door in their face.

The next time the angels came knocking on my door, one of the angels asked me, “Steve, why are you doing the things we hear you are doing?”

I responded, “If I had know, you could be a bad person your entire life and got it right at the very end like that bad woman, I definitely would have had more sex with different woman, so I’m making up for it now. And yeah, I’m high, so what.” Then I slammed the door in their face and advised them to stop knocking on my door. End sketch.

That is how strongly I felt about this woman making it into Heaven. I felt she should go straight to hell, go directly to hell; do not pass go, do not collect your two hundred dollars, just go to hell.

One day I was talking to this lady at work and I was telling her about the bad woman. This co-worker, who had a crazy sense of humor offered this comment about the bad woman, she said, “The B…. just won’t die.” Oh come on, lighten up; the way the lady said it was funny. You know how sometimes you hear something funny and you just can’t get it out of your head; well, from that day forward, the image of that co-worker saying that line popped in my head every time the bad woman brought drama into my life. “The B…. just won’t die.” I don’t think I’m going to hell for having a sense of humor. The hatred, that’s another thing.

Oh, you think I’m a bad person for that thought don’t you? Please, that ain’t even close to how low I got. I had thoughts of the bad woman, lying in her bed, waiting for death to come and nobody else is in the room but she and I, and I would slap the evil off this woman’s face. I’m not talking about one slap, I’m talking about telling her everything I wanted to say over the twenty-five years my father denied our family any retaliation or rebuttal against her attacks. She reigned hell into my family’s lives so she deserved one slap between each allegation and re-telling of crimes against us. Since it was a long list, that equaled a lot of slaps.

I know you are probably seeing me as a bad guy right now; not remembering this woman figuratively broke into my house, and then attempted to kill every member of my family. I ask you, please remember that. I also ask that you be merciful because these feelings were brought on over a long period of time. This hatred showed itself and I didn’t even see it coming. Without me realizing it, my character, when it came to the bad woman, was completely changed. By the way, I just told you what happens when you have a bitter root as compared to the emotion of bitterness.

I figured something out about this woman a long time ago, and you won’t believe it, because like I said earlier, you need a movie version of evil to believe someone singing and praying right next to you in church, can be truly evil. I figured out that if we were living in the time of the sword and bow and arrows, this woman would have had me killed. If she was the wife of the tribal leader, my father being the tribal leader in this scenario, one day I would have gone out hunting and never returned. The men she hired to kill me would have brought back my clothes with blood on them and said a bear or lion ate me. I know you can’t see that because of course, no woman would ever ask for the head of a man, not in the twenty-first century. In case you didn’t catch that, I was reminding you, Philip’s wife Herodias prompted her daughter to ask for the head of John the Baptist because he didn’t agree with her living with Herod, one of the rulers of Palistine. Matthew 14:3-6.

If Herodias lived during our time, wouldn’t she be living the life of the bad woman; taking a man that wasn’t her husband, destroying anyone that got in the way of her desired life style? Wouldn’t she be a woman in the twenty-first century asking for the head of a man because she felt he was in the way of her agenda?

I hated this woman so much, there was a time, maybe starting four years before her death, that every time the phone rang late at night, I woke up to listen, hoping it was news that the bad woman was dead, and when it wasn’t the news I wanted to hear, I went back to sleep angry. That kind of makes the whole slapping her thing sound like cake and ice cream doesn’t it? I’m partly ashamed to say it but it is what it is. That’s about as much hate as anyone can ever have without having the desire to kill the person yourself, a desire I did not have. I’ll say it again, I did not have that.

I want to share one last thing about this woman, something she did that I don’t ever want to forget. I don’t want to forget it because I would never want to do it myself. The bad woman had cancer a long time ago but it went away for a while. At the time it went away, one Sunday, the bad woman got up in church to testify about the goodness of God, but to me, her testimony fell far short of praising God. She told the church that her cancer was gone because of her great faith. Now it’s true you should have faith, but God can heal whomever he pleases regardless of their level of faith. The problem with her testimony is it focused more on her contribution to the healing and less on God’s contribution.

She said, “Some of you aren’t getting healed today because you don’t have enough faith to be healed.” When she said that, it hurt me down deep because that very same Sunday, a woman that was a long time member of the church was sitting in the audience and she was dying of cancer. I knew this woman to be a very kind lady and I was friend’s with one of her daughters that was my age. I couldn’t believe the bad woman would say that knowing this woman was losing her battle to cancer. Even more so I couldn’t believe my father stood in the pulpit listening to her say this and afterwards instead of correcting her statement to show empathy towards this dying woman, a long time member of his flock, he backed the bad woman’s statement. To this day that angers me. Don’t tell me my father was the same as he was when he started his journey. When you can’t empathize and show sympathy towards members of your flock who are sick and even dying, something has gone very wrong.

Remember I talked about spiritual transference. When you marry someone that only cares about herself, how long will it be before that unequal yoking converts you to the point where you lose empathy and or sympathy for others?

I’ve got to throw this in so you understand; snakes talk to snakes. Have you ever saw a woman arguing with a man that didn’t have an argumentative spirit? It’s a one-way argument right? The woman shouts at the man while the man looks like he’s thinking about what basketball game is coming on later that day. So too it is with spirits. It’s very hard to turn good fruit into bad fruit unless the person with good fruit already had a rotten spot on their fruit. I’ll say it differently. If you link with a bad woman who is self centered, it’s so much easier for her to turn you if you are already, yourself, are slightly self-centered. Let me say it again in a different way. A woman can’t make a man turn his back on his children unless he already had a spirit that was capable of turning his back on his own children. This is a very important thing to understand because for me, understanding this caused me to stop laying everything my father did, at the bad woman’s feet. That being said, remember, everyone struggles to be good because evil is always present.

Connecting my statement and that biblical statement together you get this; everybody has some character flaw they are working on or hiding. If you connect with the wrong person, they can either help you cover it, get rid of it, or bring it out front. I’ll say that again. They can either help you cover it, get rid of it, or bring it out front

So you are probably wondering, did I actually do it; did I slap the bad woman while she lay in her bed waiting for death to over take her? I did have opportunity; I did sit with her alone in the room as she waited for her spirit to leave this earth. First I’m going to say this, come on, I’m nowhere near so bad of a person that I would assault a woman period; and definitely not that bad of a person that I would assault a helpless and defenseless person, man or woman, so don’t punish me with judgment for exposing my feelings, in hopes of helping you. Everybody has thoughts they wouldn’t want anyone on this earth to know and that thought falls into that category, but as I said, in order for you to see how far God lifted me, you had to see how low He lifted me from. Maybe that’s why I’ve been rejected by traditional church; traditional members will hide their dirt to seem more holy. I’m not that holy, I’m just a man trying to do right but evil is always present.

I know you want to hear what happened at the end, while I sat next to the bad woman as she waited for death to come. Before I tell you that, I have to tell you about my time in prison.

Somewhere in this story I talked about pastors blocking me, hopefully you remember. So, I knew this pastor for many years, and he knew that I was a minister and he knew of my father and all that went down at my home church. One Sunday, I was in his church and he asked if anyone wanted to do some work, or had skills they wanted to put to use in the church. Now I knew this man was very insecure inside, but when you are desperate to be accepted by other Christians, you do stupid things. I met with the pastor and offered my help. This man proceeded to attack the very thought that I was really called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, spending the last part of the meeting talking up his own accomplishments in the church. I left there so mad, so angry, so hurt, I didn’t know what to do; I was at the point of giving up. Over and over again I offered my help to pastors just to be pushed back and rejected. Then a thought came to me, “Go to the prison.” I called a friend that worked in the youth camps and asked her if there was anyway she could get me in to preach, and she directed me to the Protestant group that did Sunday service. I connected with them and joined their group.

Now a funny thing happened. Just when you thought everything was going to work out fine, I ran into more blockers. The Chaplin at the youth camp treating me like all the other pastors had treated me over the years. They were holding services in two gyms at the time and I asked to break into the rotation and do a Sunday service; I was not allowed to. After a few months I got frustrated and left. Six months later, still desiring to preach in the camps I called my friend and asked what was going on at her job, and she told me she thought there was a new Chaplin. Excited there may be a new leader I called the Chaplin line, just to find the same lady was still in charge. Things had changed however; she lost some volunteers and was now only using one gym, holding one service. Being low on volunteers she had a different attitude and told me if I came back she would let me break into the Sunday rotation. I went back to the camp that next Sunday just to find out she lied to me, she had no plan on letting me teach on Sunday. I was still able to do some ministry, since I didn’t get to do the service, I would go into individual camps and talk to whomever would listen.

What’s the saying we have, “Things can change in an instant?” One Sunday I went to the camp and there was a note stating that the Chaplin was no longer allowed on the property. The probation department had changed to another system of security screening and it turned out the Chaplin had something in her past that prevented her from gaining clearance. With the Chaplin gone, the other lady, that was also agreeing with the Chaplin not letting me teach Sunday service decided to step up and play the Chaplin role. At the same time, one of the remaining volunteers became ill and could not come, while the only other volunteer available, decided he was too burned out to do Sunday service and would only do counseling. This left only myself to teach Sunday service. I went from being blocked and locked out to being the only available volunteer. The lady that stepped into the Chaplin role was suppose to still teach, but Sunday after Sunday she would call me, asking if I could teach for her because she couldn’t make it. God moved everyone out of the way so I could learn, I mean so I could teach the young men about God. The learn/teach mistake was made on purpose.

I told you the back-story because you needed to see what God did to get me Sunday mornings, and now you will find out why. God let a pastor attack my spiritual position in the Kingdom, then he moved two people that wanted to stop my ministry, and two more that would have cut down on my time.

Since I was the only person showing up on Sundays, I could teach whatever I wanted. Of all the things I could have taught on, I started teaching about forgiveness. Since I had complete control and was, as far as the camp staff was concerned, the de facto Chaplin, I preached on forgiveness for maybe two probably three months. If you never heard the spirit of God talking to you while you are teaching someone else, let me tell you, His voice can get pretty loud. I would literally have to say to the Spirit, inside my head, not out loud, “Okay, I hear you I hear you.” I had to acknowledge what the Spirit was saying to me just to get through the lesson and it was telling me loud and clear, how can you teach on forgiveness when you hate this woman so much. God had to show me I hated her because I hadn’t put a definition on it yet. Remember, you are not aware a bitter-root even exist.

Do you know why I taught on forgiveness so long; because the Spirit of God would not let me stop teaching about it until I was able to do it myself. I taught on forgiveness every Sunday, which means I was also studying forgiveness every week. Sunday after Sunday the Spirit pounding my brain while I taught, every week getting closer and closer to where God wanted me.

I tried convincing myself to forgive her using methods I heard from ministers on television and I’ve got to say, some of the things I heard would work on a small amount of hate, but I heard nothing that would help with the amount of hate I had for the bad woman. But we are talking about the Holy Spirit here; God’s Spirit held the answer; I just needed to accept it.

After weeks and weeks of dealing with this battle in my brain, finally the Spirit got me to see the one and only thing I needed to see in order to forgive her. It wasn’t complicated, it wasn’t hard to learn. It didn’t require meditation or chanting. I didn’t have to rededicate my life to Christ and be baptized again; all I had to do was forgive.

All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God. I had to forgive her because I need God to forgive me. I need God’s Grace to get into Heaven just like this struggling woman. If I was to deny her the right to God’s Grace, why should I be allowed access to God’s Grace? Of course it’s a deception in my mind that I even believe I have the power to deny another human being access to God’s Grace. What made me more deserving than she? Who was I to say who could make it into Heaven and who should go to hell? Just like this struggling woman, I had, and will, spend much time in front of the tree, deciding whether or not to please God or please myself. Just like this struggling woman, sometimes I have, and will make the wrong choice.

When all was said and done, I didn’t need any special speeches or prayers. I didn’t need any hail marys? I didn’t need to sow any seed offerings. I didn’t need to fast and pray over the issue; all I needed to do was recognize my position. I was saved because Yehoshua died on the cross so I could use Him as a Blood Sacrifice to wash away my sins every time I exercised my free will against the Will of God. Who was I to say, that I could take advantage of Jesus’ sacrificial blood but she could not? I didn’t die for this struggling woman, Yehoshua did. I don’t possess the qualifications needed to be a blood sacrifice for my own salvation, who am I to give Yehoshua a list of people that can or cannot take advantage of His death on the cross?

This struggling woman was no different than me. Everyday she stood in front of the tree and made decisions, and everyday there was the possibility that she may make the wrong decision. Every time she made the wrong decision she had the ability to take advantage of the Blood of Jesus Christ, to wash away the sin she committed.

Since we both stand at the same tree. Since we both struggled with the same decision, to sacrifice or not to sacrifice. Since we both had and will make wrong decisions throughout our lives. Since we both will get an endless supply of second chances because of the Blood of Jesus Christ, which by the way is why Jesus said forgive seven times seven, because there is no limit to how many times we can be washed in His Blood; because of all that, I had no right to judge this poor struggling woman.

If we both took advantage of the Blood of Jesus Christ, we are clean again, spared from the death that would have resulted from our wrong decision, spared from another exile from the presence of the Most High God. With this being true, I had no choice but to forgive her.

Remember that comedy sketch I told you about? What I didn’t tell you is I wrote that after the Spirit saved me from my hate. At the end of that sketch, while in the midst of my rebellion in Heaven, I heard the bad woman singing a song unto the Lord God. It turns out she had changed before her spirit left her body, and had washed her sins away with the Blood of Jesus, which of course was why she made it to Heaven. I accepted her change and that she was no longer a bad woman, and was now, just another citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, so I stopped rebelling in Heaven. I tricked you a little bit. I know you thought the sketch was all about her being a bad person and me not wanting her in Heaven. Sorry, it’s the writer in me; I couldn’t help myself.

Once I forgave her, everything changed. As for the funny line given to me by the lady on my job, I stopped thinking it. When the phone rang late at night, of course I still woke up because normally only bad news comes late in the night, but instead of hoping it was news about the struggling woman’s death, I listened hoping it was not bad news about anyone. The thought I had in my head about slapping this struggling woman as she lay on her deathbed; it went away. I went from wanting her to go to hell, to wanting her to make it into Heaven. I know really, it was a huge jump from where I once was. Now if you think I wasn’t anointed while I had this un-forgiveness, think again. It was a process I had to go through to make me what I needed to be. While I was going through this change, the Holy Spirit was working in a powerful way in the youth camp, so evidence of the anointing was there while the Spirit was fixing me. You can be anointed and be in a wrong place, you just have to get out of that place when the Spirit makes it clear to you, you are out of line with your King.

So now what do I do; I wanted to make sure the struggling woman got to Heaven just like we should want everyone to make it into the Kingdom. That is my job, your job, as disciples? I thought, I should try to have a bible class with her, so I called and asked my father about it and I got what I expected; “Why would we need a bible class, I know the Bible.” She was the same way; they knew more about the Bible than anyone so there was no way the bible class was going to happen.

I prayed over the situation and waited until an opportunity presented itself. I knew the only time I would get a chance to minister to this struggling woman was when she was not able to run her mouth. The time finally came, cancer had completed its victory lap and the struggling woman lay in her bed waiting for death to take her away.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t walk into the room and break down in tears; God had restored my Love for the struggling woman but, I still did not like the person that she was; and it had been a long time since we laughed together in a friendly way; so no, I did not cry. To be honest, I really didn’t have any emotions about it other than I wanted to take advantage of that chance to talk about forgiveness. Remember, we knew this was coming; we knew it was just a matter of time. God had healed me of my hate maybe a year before her death, so I had included her in my prayers with concern over her salvation. I did not pray for God to heal her, I prayed for God to do as he saw fit; but I can say for sure, I no longer desired her death as I once did.

The first chance I got, the day her eyes closed and she was no longer able to speak but still able to hear, I went to my father’s house with my Bible, walked into the room alone, and I talked to her and I read from the Bible. I reminded telling her she only had to repent of her sins to be saved. I know she heard me because when my daughter came into the room and spoke, you could see her face move as if she was struggling to talk. Even though when my oldest daughter was a child the struggling woman took my baby daughter to church as part of her propaganda machine; she did love my daughter very much.

I’ve been in church my whole life, and I’m a pretty good person for the most part, so I never really could say I knew what people meant when they would say, “If it hadn’t been for the Lord I couldn’t have did this or that.” I heard it all my life, but I couldn’t relate, not until this happened, not until the Spirit changed me completely and showed me how to Love someone that inspired so much hate in my life.

Thank God for the power of His Love, first scolding me; then fixing me. If it had not been for the Spirit of God correcting me, I would have hated that woman until she took her last breath and stood over her lifeless body saying, finally. But because of God’s Spiritual correction, I sat beside her talking nicely, reading my Bible, pleading and praying, that she would ask forgiveness for her sins so she could walk with God after her spirit left this world.

I can only hope that as she lay there in the bed, she talked to God and asked for forgiveness for the things she had done. You may wonder, did she reach out and ask for forgiveness before she became unable to speak. Well, my mother visited while the struggling woman’s eyes were still open and she didn’t see the need to apologize to my mother for taking her husband. She did however, hug my mother around the waist, looked up to my mother’s face, cried and asked my mother to come back and see her again. My mother has said, she felt that was the struggling woman’s way of saying I’m sorry. I guess for my mother; that was good enough.

I don’t know if she called the other woman and apologized for sleeping with that woman’s husband for several years, or if she apologized to her ex-husband. The struggling woman treated me like enemy number one for all those years, and I was there in the days leading up to her death while she was still walking around talking. She didn’t feel the need to make things right between us. She didn’t say I’m sorry for trying to get your father to disown you.

But as you know, Jesus said to the thief that was on a cross next to Him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” Jesus didn’t say, jump off the cross, run around and apologize to everyone you wronged and come back, He told him he would be in paradise without the benefit of apologizing to everyone face to face or by phone. Jesus didn’t ask the thief to give a confession of all his sins, he just judged the current status of the man’s heart and faith, and judged him worthy of entry into Heaven.

After the woman’s death, I wasn’t happy or sad; death came for her as it will all of us, and that was that. That might sound cold, but it really isn’t. People close to her may have been worried about the woman leaving us, but God got me to where I was worried about her Spirit going to the wrong place, and that’s what really mattered.

A short time after her death, I got this feeling like a weight had been lifted off me. When I make this last statement about my relationship with the struggling woman, I want you to understand, it does not refer to her life or death, but to the drama that was constant and ever present for over twenty-five years. When I felt that weight removed from my shoulders, the only thought that came to mind was, “I’m just so glad it’s over, I just wanted it to be over.” Again, not talking about her life or death, but the battles, the confrontations, the control, the divisiveness. I just wanted peace and a chance to have a relationship with my father without someone working against it. For the first time in my adult life, it seemed like I could finally find that peace.

If she was right with God before she left this earth, she did not need to verbally apologize to anyone and she and I were finally truly family for the first time; not earthly family but spiritual family. I pray that the remainder of my family stay in the Lord and are found worthy of entry into Heaven as I continue to work at staying in the Lord until I am called away. Praise Yahuwah for a second chance to be a better man.

All praises to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. All praises to Yah.

The End

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