Author - God

By Linda Gottschalk

"There I was, on my knees. You might be thinking I was a church girl praying. I, for sure, wasn't a church girl and was for sure not praying. I wish I could tell you something exciting, but I was just cleaning my dirty refrigerator, an ordinary, dreaded duty. And what happened while there will never be put into words or fully grasped for it went into the deep--too deep for words.

"The sun was beginning to set, and soon it would be dark like you couldn't imagine. This is the third world. No electricity means blackness, not darkness. Until you experience it, you can't imagine it. We got off the bus and moved toward the entrance. There was a pickup truck blocking our way. I saw lots of people in the bed of the truck. I told Dr. Polo to stop and that we needed to help them. Because it was getting dark quickly, we couldn't see very well. Dr. Polo put his hand on my shoulder and told me they were all dead.

I thought to myself, How could this be?"

"Where I was, you want to make sure you have a passport on your body. We had a game of tug-of-war. He looked at me as a woman of no value and took his rifle, lifted it, and pointed it at my head... I knew this was not going to be a good day."

"After a couple of rounds of this, I thought to myself, Oh no! I lifted her sheet, and sure enough, she had a big enough bump to know there was a baby in there. She was bleeding a lot. It was now clear what was happening... We made it to the bathroom. She sat down, and her contractions were steady and very strong at this point. My fear became her reality. She wanted to return to bed. We walked back--no contractions. She lay down, turned toward the wall, and refused any interaction."

"She turned her head to look at me. I had been looking down. Her hand reached up and took hold of mine. My eyes moved up her body. Our eyes met. She looked at me, but half of her face was missing. At this point I removed myself from the reality I was in. The mind is only capable of so much."

"The baby wasn't responding to the bottle. I saw a piece of cloth lying in the dirt. I took the baby from my daughter and swaddled him tight. I took the baby to his mother. She didn't want to take him. I sat next to her and placed him close to her, encouraging him to nurse. Mom didn't flinch. Our eyes met. I took her arms and wrapped them around her son so she could hold him close. I then put my arm around her and held her close. Time stood still, and eventually, I stood up, looked deep into her eyes, and kissed her forehead. It was now time to hold my sweet, brave daughter as we walked back home down that dirt road."

A life with Christ is to humbly say, "Yes, Lord, send me" and mean it. It is to accept inconvenient invitations and go on assignments wherever He sends us. It means to go frightened with confidence and believe.

Time waits for no one. God bids us to join Him as he writes His story in and through each of us.

What is your story?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9798891300491

Book preview

cover.jpg

Author - God

Linda Gottschalk

ISBN 979-8-89130-048-4 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89130-049-1 (digital)

Copyright © 2024 by Linda Gottschalk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

God's Story Working With Us

Chapter 1

God had a plan

Chapter 2

Maria

Chapter 3

Years passed

Chapter 4

The year was 2010

Chapter 5

I told you I was a hairdresser

Chapter 6

It would be morning soon

Chapter 7

In 2022 I took a trip

Chapter 8

Have you ever witnessed a fish flopping around?

Chapter 9

There was to be one last trip

Chapter 10

Angel is a servant of God who lived in Caleta

Chapter 11

The Well of Jacob Flows

Chapter 12

There is a unique little place

Chapter 13

It was now 2021

Chapter 14

To Live This Life

30 Days of Divine Devotion

Day 1

Bless them

Day 2

Cracks and perfect offerings

Day 3

Ready, set, reset

Day 4

Having a bad day?

Day 5

Hiking the hard way

Day 6

It is none of our business

Day 7

Live generously

Day 8

Living in the fullness

Day 9

Morning manna!

Day 10

Living life 101

Day 11

Nothing else

Day 12

Our string of pearls

Day 13

Programs

Day 14

Rest a while with me

Day 15

Run to win

Day 16

Shipwrecked

Day 17

Stay with God

Day 18

God taught

Priorities

Day 19

The dangling carrot

Day 20

A soft landing

Day 21

The world is watching

Day 22

What do you have?

Day 23

Grace

Day 24

Live, love, and abide

Day 25

Oh, Great Defender

Day 26

Just love them

Day 27

It depends on us

Day 28

Buckle up for safety

Day 29

It's a test

Day 30

Where are you?

From Me to You

About the Author

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

Day Six

Day Seven

Day Eight

Day Nine

Day Ten

Day Eleven

Day Twelve

Day Thirteen

Day Fourteen

Day Fifteen

Day Sixteen

Day Seventeen

Day Eighteen

Day Nineteen

Day Twenty

Day Twenty-one

Day Twenty- two

Day Twenty-three

Day Twenty-four

Day Twenty-five

Day Twenty-six

Day Twenty-seven

Day Twenty-eight

Day Twenty-nine

Day Thirty

Acknowledgments

To my people:

Jesus, my first love, driven by the Holy Spirit in me, I thank You for guiding and directing my every word to fit Your purpose. I am gratefully humbled that You chose me to share with the readers who You are. Thank You, Jesus, for allowing me to hear Your voice and walk in an act of desired obedience when You spoke to me.

I thank You, Jesus, for my husband and best friend, Brian, and also for our beautiful daughters, Lindsey and Shannon. You took our brokenness and made us whole together as a family. You raised us up together to love and serve You well. The deep love I have for You can't be shared with words. You are my all and all. You are my purpose. You are my happy place, where love lives in the real.

To my beautiful girls, Lindsey and Shannon, I love you more than you know. There is something about a mom and her girls. You will always be my sweet girls. The memories that rise up keep my heart soft, and I long for more moments with you. Today, you are all grown up, and you both are amazing women of God. I am so blessed and so proud to be your mom. Doing life with you is a gift. You are so much more than I ever was, and I thank Jesus for this. Love you both so much.

I thank You, Jesus, for our first assignment in the Dominican Republic, into the hands of Jim and Dorine Smith, Your faithful servants. They were the examples that launched us into the next steps to faithfully serve You.

I thank You for Wilson Pediot, the son we never had but whom You placed in our home and into our hearts.

Wilson, your loving kindness and gentle spirit have been a strong tower in hard times for me. The Lord has given you supernatural knowledge of how to be tender and show up at just the right time during those times when life was slippery and very uncertain. You are a bright light and steadfast encouragement on dark days, my dear and faithful friend. I love you.

Thank You, Jesus, for Isidro Mejia and his lovely wife, Lucy. Lord, You placed them at just the right time. What felt like an ending was just the beginning of Your next best thing. You built a strong team, using all of us for Your kingdom's work. Isidro and Lucy, God has used the two of you to show us what faith looks like. My faith of just a mustard seed has grown much stronger because of your examples of steadfast, strong, and enduring faith and love that will not be shaken. God has used the two of you to grow my love for my Savior and to never give up, for this is the day the Lord has made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it. Let's go!

I thank You, Jesus, for Moriah Garza. Girl, I love and thank you for your amazing insight and your patience with me when I asked you to read this or see what I could not see. We have a thing that is real in its own very special, deep way. Thank you for your honesty and your support. I thank you for your friendship.

May God bless and keep you all. May God smile on you and shower you with gifts. May He look you full in the face and give you peace, in Jesus's name.

Introduction

Time waits for no one. Ask a person who has been given three months to live. Time is of the essence for this person. If you are a parent, return to the day you welcomed your child into this big, crazy world. Remember that day you sent this bundle off to kindergarten? Time goes by too quickly. You've worked hard all your life, and you've retired. You now realize you are on the downside of the hill. Time is precious in all of these moments. How we live matters, and far too often, we don't live with time on our minds. We get caught up in the busyness of the beautiful opportunities life gives us, or we get bogged down and overwhelmed with the trials and discouragement that seep in to overwhelm us.

The beautiful thing about this thing called time is that we get to choose what we do, what we have done, or what has been done to us. It is recorded in our minds, stored to reflect upon, and ready to share if we dare to do so. We don't get to choose the end of our time, so what we do with it matters. What is your story? Who is writing it?

What if we could save time? Would your story look different? Would mine?

There is an old song by Jim Croce. The lyrics go like this:

If I could save time in a bottle, the first thing that I'd like to do. (What would you like to do?)

If I could make days last forever if words could make wishes come true… (Finish this sentence.)

If I had a box for wishes and dreams that had never come true. The box would be empty except for the memory of… (Finish this.)

I stopped here and quietly pondered this idea of time in a bottle. Maybe you will too? What we are living for matters because whatever fills our bottle, our days, and our years defines our purpose in this life.

I believe we were created uniquely and carefully with purpose, created to cultivate a character to build a life for the seasons of time we have. Each holds a purpose for us. When we discover it, we begin to live this life out loud. Adventure waits for those who embrace it.

From our first gasp, whimper, or loud cry, life continues outside the womb. This would be the miracle of life. We all enter the same way: cold, shivering, and messy. The noise around us is too loud. We wait impatiently to get cleaned up, to be wrapped up tightly, and then to be held close to that familiar voice we have listened to for the past nine months—our sweet mama. All of our stories begin here.

The season of childbirth is truly a miracle, but the season of childhood is next and is the best! It's a life all on its own. We exist without the burden of responsibility. This childhood season is about learning, laughing, leaning, and loving. In this season, we are innocent and free to live in our own little worlds. It's a precious season with the purpose of launching us into the next.

The single middle season—this one is filled with excitement and independence. We begin to get a glimpse of the journey ahead. It's our time to lay the foundation for accountability and responsibility. We lose our innocence here. I failed this season of my life. I bombed it! Maybe you did too. I was reckless with everything I was given to use for good. I played the childhood blame game too. I blamed my choices on my parents' poor ones, and that worked for me until it didn't. Our choices begin to define us in this season. Maybe you can relate? In this single middle season, we are to own our stuff. I think they call this healthy independence. This can be a rough transition to chiseling the rough edges that hurt others and ourselves. It's a season of humble pie. If we don't figure this season out, we will enter the next one unequipped to handle the expectations it brings.

The all grown-up, maybe getting married season comes next. If and when we marry, our purpose switches from me to us and from us to them. Our purpose here is to leave some necessary things behind while bringing valuable things with us. This all-grown-up place is a pressure-filled, dynamic one. We laugh, learn, lean, and, hopefully, love ourselves and others well during this typically long season of our lives. It's exhausting because we bear the heavy weight of responsibility. This season bids us to grow into our unique selves.

If you've had children in this season, moving into the next can feel like hitting a wall. This would be the empty-nester season. We hit this proverbial wall differently based on how we lived the seasons that had gone by. It's a quieter place, either by yourself or with your dearly beloved other half. It's a season of renewing and refreshing our minds. It can feel fresh and exhilarating all over again. Learning, laughing, leaning, and loving are tender and delicate now. Time continues to move very quickly amid this less active and quieter season.

The final season can feel disheartening or divine because reality is obvious. We are much older now and feel the reality of it. We have less time to cultivate in this season. We are looking back more than forward. Medically speaking, our minds live in reverse instead of pressing forward. It's a season for serious reflection. Our prior seasons are reviewed and reminisced about often as we sit in the stillness of these days. This can be depressing for some, but for others, it will be a balancing of what was with the anticipation of the best that is yet to come. It's a season of sadness if we lose our focus or have not lived the life we desire. It can be a season of extraordinary rest and reflection, with purpose.

So much to think about, right? At our first whimper or cry, we were given an expiration date that was an unescapable appointment. None of us will get out of this world alive. We will leave. What will we leave behind, and where will we go? These daunting questions hold an answer for each of us.

Our seasons come with us, and our destiny is a choice. On life's journey, we all have something uniquely in common. It's our story. I hope we are living them out loud. Don't tuck yours away. Share it your way.

As I sit here and write this, I wish you were sitting here with me in my cozy living room. The fireplace is keeping me warm, with cute dogs at my feet. All that is missing is your story. We will have so much to talk about. We will reminisce about our seasons gone by and perhaps glean from one another about what is to come. We will laugh a lot, we will lean into one another, and, hopefully, leave our time together loving a little better and deeper. Each of our seasons presents opportunities to share with others. Our lives are a story to be told. Can I encourage you to begin sharing yours?

God begins writing His story even when we are unaware.

I grew up a messy girl. My childhood from the outside appeared to others as all tidy and nice. In my house, we were a proper bunch. I was pretty, funny, and dressed up nicely. Looks can be deceiving. It was messy behind those fancy clothes and pretty smiles. That is a whole other chapter to my story. My single season was reckless and wicked, and it wrecked me. My married season was the defining season for me. Based on my decisions and those of others, I got pretty banged up by what this world can bring. I was a woman, a wife, a mother, and a business owner. Sounds good, all tidied up, right? My prior seasons taught me how to look good and to fake it until I made it. Bringing all my baggage with me kept me messy. I was on one unfulfilling adventure after another. I was chasing happiness and contentment, yet they were nowhere to be found. I was grasping at anything that might give me peace for my wandering and wondering soul. I was lost. I was tired of running into unforgiving, hard walls. But God was there when I was unaware. He was writing my story even then. God uses all of my hard stuff for good today. I am grateful for the scars because they have shown me how to love others in their hard and messy places. Let your past define you for the good you can give others. It will become a huge part of your story. Find peace in the process and give it a chance.

There I was, on my knees. You might be thinking I was a church girl praying. I, for sure, wasn't a church girl and was for sure not praying. I wish I could tell you something exciting, but I was just cleaning my dirty refrigerator, an ordinary, dreaded duty. And what happened while there will never be put into words or fully grasped, for it went into the deep—too deep for words. However, I will do my best. Something came over me that told me—not audibly but spoken into me—that I was okay. And at that moment, I will tell you… I was okay for the very first time in my thirty years of life on this earth. There was a peace that invaded my body and my mind that surpassed anything I will ever be able to truly understand. Peace, my friend, is a gift.

When Jesus captured my heart, I was still broken and numb, but now a very beautifully broken numb. I was transformed that day, along with my stinky refrigerator. Life's troubles still remained, but my worry and anxiety were gone. A thousand pounds of ugly were lifted from my body, never to return. It was surreal. Today, I will tell you that it was supernatural. I will never be able to explain it. I know without a shadow of a doubt that it is as real as the sun coming up in the morning. I felt a joy I had never known before. Even with my seasonal baggage and hard times, I saw those circumstances with hope for a better and brighter tomorrow. I now had a new foundation to navigate what I needed against the world's agenda. I felt whole, worthy, and wonderful for the first time in my life. I was given a new life to live out loud.

You may be reading this and have concluded, Yup, one of those religious fanatics' miraculous church stories. I get it! I understand where you are coming from, and I do not blame you. I felt the same way. I ran from this foolish talk. I wasn't looking for Jesus. He was looking for me. As for the whole religion thing, man wrecked it for us. Man has taken what was supposed to be the highest form of living and corrupted it. Religion was never meant to be man-made. But man took it upon himself to create this system that would call everyone to it and label this system God's way. That was not God's design for His people. God's intent was to build for transformation. A transformed life would be intensely intimate and uniquely individual. God said, I command relationship versus religion with my creation. Religion calls upon people to march to a set of rules. If Jesus has called you to Himself, He has called you to join Him in a very delicate, desirable, and dutiful dance. We were never created to be in a relationship where we have to march to rigid, confining rules with Him. The Roman soldiers marched Jesus up to that cross so we didn't have to. If we truly understood this, we would stop marching. Jesus wants us to dance with Him through this life because of the price He paid for us. It's not fluffy and sprinkled with fairy dust. It's the living power of the Holy Spirit in us when we surrender to living a new life in Christ. This is a sweet surrender where freedom is found.

You might be ready to dismiss the book here. Can I encourage you not to? Hang with me for a minute, even if it's just to humor me by reading the stories that have been written in and through me. The stories written here are not about me at all. I am just someone very ordinary whom God chose to show the world who He is. It's not fluffy; it's quite dynamic, actually. I long for whoever continues to read on to see the power of God's hand in my life. God desires to use really messy people to show the world who He is. This includes you too, so read on and be encouraged.

Part 1

God's Story Working With Us

Chapter 1

God had a plan

God had a plan for me and my family thirty years ago. When I became a believer