I'm sharing this song here because it came to mind when meditating on Psalm 139 while doing the devotional exercise from "Love/a guide for prayer" by Bergan & Schwan (pages 15-18). I highly recommend all their books form the Take and Receive series.
After meditating on Psalm 139, reading the given commentary, and entering into prayer, the exercise calls for reflecting on twelve significant events throughout my life. I noted the following:
1. My conception! My parents had planned to have only four children. They were even using a form of contraception. But the Lord had other plans! They told me when I was quite young that I was the best surprise they were ever given. The fact that they had not planned for me didn't make me feel less loved; I felt all the more loved because they impressed upon me that God wanted me to exist and they gratefully received me! I remember fondly it was a story that I often asked my mother to tell me.
2. A happy childhood. Up until age ten I experienced a mostly idyllic childhood for which I am profoundly grateful. This is when I was given a secure grounding in faith (conceiving God as a Loving Father Who created everything out of Love, relating with Jesus as my Savior and Best-Friend, some inkling of the Spirit, and a rock solid trust in the Truth of God's Word -- the Old & New Testaments). I was also given a secure sense of belonging to loving parents. Those two great gifts of grace were sufficient to carry me through my darkest times.
3. A year in Puerto Rico. My experiences in Puerto Rico as a ten-year-old were life-changing. My world-view was dramatically broadened, and because I was yet a child, this translated into most fundamentally conveying a sense that the earth is a marvelous place for adventure and I belong here! Somehow, even though there was so much encounter with "other", because I received it all as glorious and enchanting discovery, I felt I had entered into an intimate experience with something big enough to stretch my imagination.
4. My baptism and reception as a member into the Mennonite Church. Besides all the sacramental benefits of baptism itself, my experience of it was a great gift: I had a rather mystical awareness of the Spirit being born in me. I felt the Fullness of the Holy Spirit. I've never been given the Gift of Tongues, but I have had an abiding, supernatural (Grace) sense of the Spirit's in-dwelling, the Love that will not let me go; praise be Jesus!
5. The gifts of music, piano, teaching; talent and opportunity to develop and share those talents.
6. Special times of God saving me physically, miraculously. (More* on that later!)
7. A particular prayer time of "Joy"! I was given a mystical awareness of Christ's Presence within my soul, nearer to me than myself!
8. Waking up at St. Paul's Catholic Church in Madison, Wisconsin, both literally and figuratively! (Again, more+ on that later!)
9. Becoming Catholic: my waking Vision of my inner Sacred-Circle, the relationships and process involved in BC, and the actual sacrament of Reception. Glory be to the Father!...
10. Marriage with John.
11. Receiving the gifts of forgiveness and mercy more fully.
12. Learning to let go.
