dearest Beth...thank you

I sit here finishing your memoirs with a bowl of popcorn in my lap. Friends told me that I needed to listen to your book because you do a great job of reading it, but you’ve spoken to me on paper with typed words for more years than I could count, so I wanted to read first.

I’ve already seen several posts of “thanks to you” from women, like myself, whom you have deeply impacted. I thought, “it’s silly to write”. But I figure that you don’t mind silly, and I don’t mind writing.

We met on the pages of Breaking Free. My small church had everyone in the congregation reading and doing your homework. We would also all do Believing God. My husband still cracks me up when he sees the title and shoots his hand into the air and says “I’m believing God”! These studies were formational as I worked through the shame of my own sexual sin, and the struggle to truly believe that God loved me.

I didn’t grow up in the church, never read the Bible until my late teens. In college, Campus Crusade found me. Probably the Father sent them. My discipler, fifteen years my senior, would explain walking with Jesus in short sentences. Followers of Jesus read their bible and learned about Him. Followers of Jesus loved each other. The list could go on. 

For a people pleasing, insecure, mouthy eighteen year old, it was a sacred space to belong, grow, and come to deeply believe.

I longed in the coming years for a mentor to walk alongside me. I imagined a physical person, but the Lord sent me you- in the form of type and questions.

I learned from you that I was loved, blessed, chosen, adopted, accepted, redeemed, and forgiven. And I’ve shared that with countless campers and staff at the Christian camp where I’ve served for years. 

You gave me a vision for truly living differently than the pattern I’d seen growing up.

The Daniel study pushed me to live out a costly faith in my culture that has compelled me to love our LGBTQ campers and staff. To never lose sight of good doctrine in the midst of a culture that scorns our Father.

I so loved the Tabernacle study, that to my husband and children’s amusement, I painted our bathroom with gold overlay walls and a deep blue ceiling :) 

When you taught me about the Old Testament feasts, my kids and husband listened along (truth be told-they were trapped in the car with me!). And my daughter, as an adult, continues doing your studies today.

And you were the first to explain to me that all change in our lives brings a sense of loss and needs to be grieved. These were totally new thoughts, but they gave me a context to process through my first born leaving for college.

I’ve had the delight, absolute delight, of doing many of your studies with the younger women in my life. Really with any women in my life.  

And during the darkest season, in the midst of incredible pain, the Lord began to speak to me about new wine. Taking my pain, crushing the grapes, desiring the best fruit. Your book Chasing Vines came out that week.

This summer, we will plant our first vines.

I will never be able to share how you’ve spurred me on to love the word. To read the word. To be a student of the word. 

I’m so thankful for your life and witness to me.

I’m grateful you’ve stood for the godly and right- even when it cost you dearly.

I love following you on Twitter because you are hilarious.

Your well spoken words without vengeance challenge me to respond well.

I know there are countless women like myself who are grateful to our Lord for raising you up in our generation. 

We love the Lord, and His word.

And we love and thank you.