Good morning…
Donning my name and address, a padded, manila envelop arrived at my doorstep. Doesn’t everyone love an unexpected gift? I took time to carefully open the seal, and my heart smiled big as I pulled from the protective package my personal copy of The Hidden Life Awakened, a freshly reprinted, expanded version of one of my all time favorite books.
In this new addition, authors Kitty Crenshaw and Dr. Cathy Snapp widen the wisdom shared by Betty Walthour Skinner, a ninety year old, modern day mystic. They weave together cutting edge neuroscience knowledge with the faithful steps Betty intuitively, prayerfully took through decades of deep clinical depression to a life joyfully healed whole. I feel privileged to have spent time with each of these wide awake women; Betty, Kitty, and Cathy are palpably wide awake to the ways of our living LORD.
Opening this treasured text, my soul is warmed as I read in the preface, “On a recent visit to the nursing home where she (Betty) now lives to thank her for giving us her life, she chuckled and said, ‘Well, it’s a good thing to give your life away; then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.” (xii)
I also cherish wonderful memories of visiting Betty at her nursing home in Ponte Vedra, Florida last spring. I too have thanked Betty for giving all of us her life. Now I savor this new vision of her four-foot-something body chucking wholeheartedly, saying through timeless, twinkling lips, “Well, it’s a good thing to give your life away; then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Jesus elaborates on her statement in John 12:24-25 (MSG): “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”
When we give our life away, our worries shed while God’s love sprouts, reproducing itself reckless and real.
…Sue…
