What lies beneath...

By Donna Finney

As you read this you will quickly deduce that I am no literary scholar or poet laureate…but I hope you will see that I am simply a mum, sister, daughter, aunt, cousin, friend, work colleague.

You may wonder why I say this. It's not said in the hope of hearing your kind words or nods of agreement, but to ask you to stop and think, even for just a moment, about what lies beneath.

To think about what is really going on in your life away from the glare of the public, away from the office, away from the school gates, away from your coffee shop nattering!?

In the past I have often looked at people and sometimes admired them, maybe even criticised them...or worse, I judged them ...without knowing what was really going on in their lives.

There was a time in my life if the truth had got out in fact, my life was far from perfect! Whilst I had the appearance of someone who 'had it all', money in the bank, nice car, an executive job and a perfect home life...the reality was Donna was actually a lonely girl, insecure, suffering from depression and searching for a way out of an unhappy marriage. I had a one-sided relationship with God (on my terms only) so my life choices often revolved around me!!

Press the forward button on 10 years :  now a divorcee, mum to a beautiful daughter, successful career but still missing something. Still searching for that illusive two-way relationship with God...oh and a lovely husband!

I thought that was to be my story: the black sheep, the divorcee, single mum struggling to serve Jesus!

What I hadn't accounted for was meeting the love of my life in my late 30s, who would come into my workplace one day and almost literally sweep me off my feet! I hadn't accounted for the fact that he would love my daughter as his own and accept the 2 of us, baggage included.

So you might think the story ends there and we just live happily ever after...it would have been a cute story but I still hadn't accounted for the biggest change of all, God invading my life!

Having married the love of my life, my beautiful daughter at University, I was enjoying life. Then my hubby and I started to attend Causeway Coast Vineyard Church where I was re-introduced to Jesus! I had come into a safe physical environment but not only that, I realised I was in a safe holy place. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have some blinding flash of light or epiphany, just a journey into discovering who I was as a daughter of a King. Talk about discovering what lay beneath!

I have been on this journey of ‘self discovery’ – not like a self-help book type of discovery – but rather one where I found myself being able to be me and knowing who I am in the eyes of God.! No mask, no pretence, just me and my heavenly Father.

Am I happy I hear you ask? I am so, so happy. Don’t get me wrong it’s not because bad things don’t enter my life, but rather I am happy because I have the joy of knowing Jesus personally so when something bad does enter my life, I can choose if it stays there. For me, having that intimacy with my Father in Heaven changes who I am and how I live my life. How generous a God we have who loves to hear from us and he creates a place where someone like me who has a past, can have a future.

So as I said at the beginning, I will win no awards for the literary content of my writing, but maybe it will help us to take a step back and consider what lies beneath a person’s façade, dare I say your own façade. Just be you, how God designed you…