I don’t believe in coincidence. I believe everything in my life is and was mapped out by the Lord Jesus Christ. Not to say He doesn’t allow for free will and choice. He just knows ahead what choices we finite humans will make, since He lives in all time and space. God is everywhere at once, and is the greatest chess player in the universe!
I won’t waste your time with fancy words. I’ll tell you the facts of life. Well, of my life.
Why? The only reason for me to open my book, called “life,” for you to read, is to give you hope. The same hope that I have. Not just fleeting, momentary, feel good, positive vibes. Eternal hope.
We all go through mud at some point in this life. I have a blessed life. God has planted so many beautiful flowers in the mud of my garden that I no longer see the mud, except through the lens of how it has helped an amazing array of flowers bloom.
I was 2 years old when my dad beat me so bad I had to be put in a hospital. Now, your mind can go in all sorts of directions. The main one, I suppose, being, “What a monster of a dad.” I’m not in denial, believe me, but my dad was no monster. He was a young father who lost control in a horrible fit of rage, in one moment. He never lost control, physically, again with me. Ever. When I was 35 years old, my dad called me up and told me just that. “Katherine, I need you to know when you were a toddler I put you in the hospital because I beat you so bad. I never touched you again after that. Ever kid.” He carried that huge, torturous, bad father moment, knowledge for all those years. It was a great relief to both of us when he spoke it out.
Unbeknownst to dad, my mom had told me what happened when I was 18. I never said a word to my tough, larger than life, John Wayne, construction working father. Nope. That was not going to happen.
He was too closed-minded, in my view, for me to bring up such a sensitive, wound-opening subject.
Do I remember any of it? I remember getting into mom’s makeup. I remember dad asking me if I got into mom’s makeup. I don’t remember telling him no. I also have no recollection of him beating me. Completely blocked it from my mind. Too painful.
I had a psychiatrist do some role play with me over my dad when I was 21. Yes, I had to see a psych doctor for evaluation after trying to kill myself. That was my life. I don’t know that I really wanted to die. I just didn’t want to hurt. So much pain was bottled up inside that I had no clue how to release it, how to deal with it. For the first time, a light came on. I began to understand the affects that pivotal moment had on young, naive Kathy. By getting into my mom’s makeup, I was getting in touch with my femininity. I was trying to be a woman, like mom was, and “pretty myself up.” When I was beaten for that, it spun my young, unmolded mind into a whirlwind of doubt and shame over who I am. Am I ugly? Is that why I was beaten? Am I shameful? Pitiful? Bad? Since a 2-year old doesn’t have the capacity of mind to understand, it all gets bottled up to deal with later on in life, when our brains can function well enough to take it in and analyze it rationally.
The first time I walked into the church, I felt the spirit of Jesus immediately. He captured my heart in a moment! I knew! This was it! This was what I was searching all those empty years for. My best friend had called me earlier that day and excitedly yelled through the phone, “Kath! You’re not gonna believe what happened to me!!” My mind autoed on what guy she would tell me all about next. Instead she land-blasted my thinking with, “I went to church and was filled with the Holy Ghost, Kath! You have to come check it out with me tonight!!” I was intrigued. I was also put off. ‘Shrug. Another “Christian” story. Boring.’ But there was that something in her voice. What was it? It peaked my curiosity. “I have to tell you, I’ve been to every church in the area, and I’m turned off by churches.” I dryly replied. She was persistent. I went.
My husband, Dean, was sitting at the coffee table, cutting a line of ‘coke’, with his good buddy, Bob, who had served in the military with him just months before. Dean looked up at me in surprise as I came downstairs all dressed up. “Where you goin’?” he asked me. “I’m going to the church down the road. Ruth invited me and I told her I’d check it out.” I quickly replied, to end the conversation. He shot back, “Don’t come home preaching to me!” His buddy asked me what church I was going to, and I dismissively replied, “I think it’s some Pentecostal church,” (with no clue what the word even meant). He said something so profound in that moment, something we wouldn’t comprehend fully until later. “If she goes to that church, it will change your lives forever.” Then they went back to their lines as if he never said it. I found out later Bob was a Pentecostal pastor’s son. God grows us all through many expressions of church but thinking about it makes me laugh, because there are no coincidences in life.
There is another Bob I have to give credence to. He’s another of Dean’s buds from the military. Bob came over one day, long before the day I stepped in that church, and while waiting for Dean to get home, he and I casually sat across from each other, snorting cocaine, smoking and drinking and chatting about nothingness. Then Bob brought up the big taboo. Religion. He asked me what I believed, and I easily told him, while doing a line, “I’m Christian.” Bob laughed, and somberly injected some truth into my stubborn mind that I would never forget. It would haunt me for a long time. I kicked Bob out of my house immediately over what he spoke, and told him never to come back. I told my husband not to let his sorry friend back in, ever. Bob simply and with ease said, “I would never sit here doing what we’re doing and call myself a Christian.” ‘HOW DARE HE!! Who the {expletive deleted} did he think he was? (side note: my husband was a sailor, and I cussed worse than he did) Coming in my house and thrashing my belief like that. I checked the Christian box on any and all documents, (back then you had questionnaires on pretty much any form you filled out, that asked your religious belief), and I was just that, Christian!’
Like I said, Bob’s words stuck with me. ‘I’m a Christian, right? Of course, I have to be a Christian. I’ve received the Lord in my heart at just about every church around here. So I have to be!’ It was Bob that helped me begin to break down the walls of pride and ask serious questions of myself for the first time. If you’re out there, Bob, thank you.
Another serious incident happened to me when I was a 2 year old. Those “terrible two’s,” man! The rubella measles went inside and swelled my brain, which put me into a coma. On the seventh day, the doctors told my parents I wasn’t going to make it, and to come say last rites over me. My Grams flew in from Illinois. I was sprinkled by a Lutheran minister (Grams faith), and left there to die. I still have the bald spot from that time to prove it. Mom said they didn’t move me due to the sensitivity of the illness. I also have dystonia from that brief, nine day, period of life. Dystonia sucks. But dystonia does not have me. It makes my head jerk “no” when I don’t want to say NO. The positive is, I’m not saying “yes” to everyone.
When my dad called to tell me about the beating, he also told me this, “Kid, when the doctors told me you were going to die, I went and prayed all night long with the Pastor across the street from us on Nyeland Acres.” Mom had already told me that cool happening also, but I didn’t share with dad how I already knew. I gave him the honor of the moment, and thanked him for loving me so much to do that. I always knew that was the reason I came out of the coma. My dad, who died of liver failure from alcoholism, my larger than life father, who tossed profanity around like it was candy, prayed for his baby girl, and God heard. There are no coincidences.
I don’t know where you are reading this today, or what you believe about life and Jesus, but I do know that He loves you just as much as He loves me. You are not reading this post by coincidence. He wants you to know that He chose to go through the unthinkable by dying on the cross so that He could welcome you into an amazing relationship and life with Him. If you want to be in a relationship with Him and know what this is all about, all you have to do is ask.
Prayer:
God, I realize now that you love me and I believe in You. I want to have a real relationship and life with you. Please help me know what it means to be a Christian and to actually follow you. Show me how you’ve been working in my life even up to this point and help me to become the person you created me to be. Amen.
Kathy Hageman, by God’s grace, is a mom of four amazing sons, two daughter in loves, and grandma to two precious granddaughters. She and Dean have been married for 33 wonderful years She’s passionate about teaching and helping women to realize their full potential in Christ. She has been involved in women’s ministries for many years and leads the “Breakfast & Bibles” City Group with Pastor Becky. This post is an excerpt from the memoir she’s writing, titled, “I Don’t Believe In Coincidence”.
Amy Mukes is the wife of Eric Mukes and together they have four amazing children whom she teaches at home. She is passionate about education and literacy and also desires to equip parents with practical tools to raise their children with the gracious love of Jesus. Amy is currently developing a City Group that will be filled with experiential, interactive learning where parenting skills and family life will increase and flourish under the Gospel of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit. To find out more about City Groups, 
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