Here I Am Now

My life fell apart.

At the wedding reception for my first marriage… I will never forget giving the response to the “Toast To The Bride”

I told them how God had always given me theme scriptures throughout my life. I was all of 21!, “And,” I continued, “at this moment it is the book of 1 Peter….” I wondered outloud with them about how this beautiful bride, this wonderful lady I was marrying that day could possibly be about suffering. I didn’t have it written down a head of time… but God did. My life I mean. Oh, and the Speach, yeah, that came to me as I went along. But then again, so has my life.

Little did I know… but God knew.

His voice would come to me at just the right moments in time… to guide me, reassure me, and comfort me.

Like that day in Salmon Arm. In the Rain. In the park. Under the play structure, with all four of my children. I had them from 7 am to 7 pm each Saturday. She’d taken them 4 hour’s drive away from me, Life had I mean, my soon to be Ex-wife played her part, and God was playing his part… but nevertheless… somehow between visits they’d grown to hate me, especially the oldest two, so the beginning of each visit was cold and distant, were their hearts broken? Confused? Indoctrinated by their mother!?!? Now now.

And then that Saturday… we’d been out and about… I didn’t want to take them home. But it had started to rain, hard.

So we went under the bridges and ladders, and slides of the playground structure, and I took out my little micro recorder – the one my lawyer told me to buy – and we took turns telling a random story… cuz they were mine again. They knew they loved me, and that I loved them. All the pain and confusion of the days before fled in the path of the outpouring rain of God’s love, the cloud burst release of our love. And in that moment as we were giggling at our own silly story, God whispered to me… this is how it will be. At the end of a very long day, they will be yours again. Little did I know how long a day it would be! Little did I know how much I would need that promise, that assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hey, that’s Faith!

Not too long after that a sort of suicide’s desire came courting. The message was to just give up. But His Spirit whispered in the depths of me, “be all you can be, become all you can become, when they need you, be ready”

At some point in time I’ll have to tell the story of how the Greek word, ετοιμάζω (he-toy-mad-zoe ) would come to me… I’d taken one year of Koine Greek – one of the original languages that the bible was written in – but my college hopes had forever been interrupted by marriage, and children… but I digress a bit, but then again you gotta know why a word from an ancient language would pop into my mind!

Well, I thought it meant “I Marvel” because it would always come to mind in moments of awe. But some ten years later, as I shared this with repeated experience with my Bible Scholar Brother John, he said, “No, Laurence, that means, I Prepare.” Tears welled up inside of me… Yes, indeed God prepares! A flash back of all those years gushed out before me with each of those tears.

Yes, God takes the sinful, broken, naive young man Laurence… and leads him throughout his life, through valleys and heights, and on the other side… God’s promises shine as he wonders how he ever got through to here I am now.

You read that right. No edit required. I wonder how I ever got to Here I Am Now.

Fast forward a bit, I’m remarried by now, and this son from my second marriage is 14 years old, and we finally get the answer to the question everyone’d been asking, is included. Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Well, I’ll wait here while you react. What would you do? What if that’s me, my child?

I was excited! But a little confused. I’d worked years ago as a child psychiatric worker at Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg, where I grew up. And my speciality was Autism. Long story, I wasn’t anything more than “boots on the ground” front line intervention co-strategist… but still, it was the only THING I knew … I asked God, like, “you had me back then learning how to care for a child I’d have way up after then… and then he said, “yes, I prepared Ashton’s father ahead of time…”

It’s kind of like when a long fuse gets lit, and you see the sparks whipping along the ground… headed for the stockpile of explosives…

“You did it on purpose!” You created Ashton, Autistic, on purpose!”

And… I might add, he did my life on purpose as well.

Hidden in those verses was and is my life’s purpose, the life he did in purpose, both mine and yours…

“…for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”

1 Peter 1:6-9