Encounters with Jesus aren’t always easy to spot right away, but in the aftermath – the part where you finally start to breathe again – His hands were clearly there … guiding, directing and holding me.

My childhood was filled with a variety of challenges and incidents that could have been emotionally and physically devastating.  I am so thankful that as I look back, I can clearly see that Christ held me and allowed me, at such a young age, to see things beyond my years.

As a young teen, I encountered Jesus many times, in awe of His blessings and grace for me and my human failures.  As I searched for my own personal relationship with Christ, I found Him waiting for me with open arms.

I can see his hands guiding my early college years. He perfectly orchestrated the groups I participated in, which allowed me to meet and become great friends with the man I have been blessed to call my husband for the last 15 years.

As many of us do, I have all too often caught myself becoming complacent in my walk with Christ.  Bringing the need to reinvest in my relationship with Him to the forefront, which always ends up filling me so completely and bringing so much peace to my life.

Where I think I encounter Him … and quite possibly notice I need Him … most is through motherhood.   The very act of becoming a mother was amazing and miraculous.  Not because we had to wait long to become parents – quite the contrary – but because He so clearly planned the blessing of our first child.

January 1995 the vision in my right eye began disappearing.  A trip to a specialist determined that I had a detached retina and needed surgery right away.  The statistics weren’t encouraging and the fact that I had never had surgery did nothing to ease my fear.  To save my sight though, we knew what we needed to do!

The experience wasn’t pleasant, it was scary and painful.  But as it turns out, the surgery itself was a drop in the bucket in comparison to the fear that was still to come.

A week after my surgery I discovered that I was pregnant with our first child.  One short week after all that nasty anesthesia and pain medication went into my system. One short week after they had done everything possible to repair my vision and the results yet unknown.  One short week ……..

I spent the next 8 months wondering, questioning and down on my knees in prayer as I dealt with the fear of the unknown.  As I look back on it now, I am awestruck that I wasn’t daily dealing with anxiety attacks, something that only a year earlier had been wonderfully removed from my life.

I had mentioned my concerns about the effects of surgery and anesthesia a few times at appointments throughout my pregnancy, but my fears weren’t even given a glimmer of relief until one month before the baby’s due date.  As I sat in the exam room I voiced my fears once again and for the first time she addressed it, telling me that if any anesthesia had gotten to the baby I would have miscarried, but she honestly didn’t know how it hadn’t.

The true miracle came 9 days after his due date in the form of a perfect 10 pound baby boy!  Jesus’ hand had been on that child and had purposed that he be born even under circumstances that should not have allowed him to live.  An encounter with Jesus in the form of a miracle baby.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” (Jeremiah 1:5 NIV).

Since then, I’ve had many encounters with Jesus.  Some of them through time spent in the word, others are sheer miracles that He grants me through my life and the lives of our 6 sons.  Encounters with Jesus are not always big, they are often a simple breath of fresh air when life feels overwhelming or an unexplained peace that keeps you going each day. But they’re there, you just need to look for them.

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This entry was written by Shera on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Christian Walk, Faith, Following God, Praise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.