Testimonies usually relate the moment a sinner realizes she has been graced with salvation life. Like answering the question, “How did you and your husband meet?”, there is a sweetness to the story of first encounters. But how do you describe the wonders of 40 years of marriage or 50 years of deepening friendship with Jesus? This is the challenge set before me, a wife and mother of 40 years and a follower of Christ for 50 years.

My part of the covenant was sealed October 13, 1975, when I repented of living my life my way, but an event that happened the summer after my conversion better illustrates the decades since. I was a counselor at a Christian camp for girls in beautiful New Hampshire. I got up early, before the camp bell, to pray and read God’s word. Even though I was raised in the church, He was speaking to me as a friend now, and I had a lot to learn.

I had a favorite spot in the fragrant woods where I sat to pray. Soft pine needles cushioned the ground, and this particular tree was free of sap so I could lean against it without getting sticky. One morning after listening to Jesus through the Bible, I stood up and, brushing myself off, I saw the other side of the tree and I gasped. There were huge, bulbous gashes where a rusted barbed wire fence had once cut into the soft wood. The old tree had embraced the sharp wire and grown right over it with bulges like a horse’s muzzle around the bit. I saw in this once suffering, but living tree, a picture of my Lord, letting all death and sin enter Him, absorbing all evil, and yet graciously giving me a seat at His feet. As He wrote:

“All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me …” (Matthew
11:27-28)

In my 50 years with Jesus, I have given Him fresh wounds, but He has received them all in love, and He had also taught me the fellowship of His suffering. He loved me and gave Himself for me, as He also did for you.

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Once upon a time Marcia N. Lynch was a children’s film editor, crafting live-action fairy tales for PBS. She and her husband of 40 years live in Arlington, Virginia, where one of her poems was chosen by the ArlingtonArts Moving Words competition to ride around on the local buses. She has just published her first book of poetry for children, available on Amazon, Dear Miss Tickle: Poetry and Art for the Young at Heart.

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