Every once in a while I like to feature one of my favorite authors and give away some swag. Here is the wonderful Judy Squire talking about her book His Majesty in Brokenness. If after reading her excerpt below you want a copy of the book, just leave a comment below about a time God has worked through your brokeness. I will randomly pick a winner on Monday!
I asked Judy to introduce herself:
Judy has been Mrs. David Squier for 42 blessed years. She is Mama Mia to three adult daughters and Granny Goose to her granddaughter. Her family called the San Francisco Bay Area home for four decades before retiring to southern Oregon. She’s been an inspirational speaker since age thirteen and this year achieved her life-long goal: the publication of His Majesty in Brokenness.
Now here is more about her book:
Born without complete legs, I watched others have all the fun. The whole time I believed that those with legs were living the life I was missing. As I coveted their physical adeptness, their social calendars, and their seeming satisfaction in their own skin, I remained clueless that they indeed shared my condition – a missing “something” in their lives.
Come to find out each one of us could fill a page with a list of what’s missing in our lives: a loving childhood, the perfect figure, a mate, our dream career with sufficient income to pay the bills. Could it be that the very absence of these ingredients provides the stage for God to show up?
His Majesty in Brokenness contains stories of the past sixty-five years of my life lived in intimate relationship with God, thanks to some everyday missing pieces – not just legs, but self-esteem, and courage. Plus it’s not just about me – you, the reader, are invited to apply the life lessons in a section at the end of each chapter called What About You?
Gain strength for the journey as you find the living God, His Majesty, alive and well in your brokenness redeemed.
I slapped her across the face… my only sister who always shared a bedroom with me, who borrowed my favorite Capezio shoes without asking in high school, and always had cute boyfriends. It was my desperate attempt to break her glassy-eyed stare and bring her back to reality. It had worked in the Hollywood dramas.
But nothing changed. My hand tingled and my frantic mind felt a surge of guilt, fear, and pain. She mumbled a monotone question as her unblinking eyes bore holes into mine, “How do you know you’re not from Mars?”
Thus began my introduction at the age of 22 to the mental illness of my sister. There has been no healing, no magic drug cure for her disease. Many times as the sunami wave of schizophrenia threatened to drown our already fragile family, I begged God selfishly to relieve me of the pain of a crazy sister here on earth; just take her to Heaven, where her mind and body would be perfect before Him, relieving her of her struggle to live somewhere in between.
But He did not choose to do that. Instead, as I poured out my tormented heart to Him over the last thirty-five years, He directed me into the lives and loving arms of many dear women who have multiplied my ‘sister experience’ beyond what I could have ever imagined. Dear sisters I have met through women’s Bible study groups, roommates, therapy, small gatherings of mom’s praying for our kid’s school experience, dear neighbors, and even seven sister-in-laws! Who’d a thought!?
And the lesson? God never takes away anyone or anything from His child’s life without restoring the loss in His way, in His time. And His love never dissapoints. Never. And as my family recently celebrated my sister’s 55th birthday, I could love her where she was, having never really lost a sister.
I have been heart broken over and over again. My son was born with a rare condition. The doctors said he could only be cured with a bone marrow transplant, but my son’s symptoms were not severe, so we decided against the transplant. One month after our decision, he had a brain hemorrhage. We had to do the bone marrow transplant. The past 4 years have been so difficult on my son and our family. We have been broken, healed, broken again, and healed again. We take one step forward, then he gets an infection, and we take four steps back. We are pushed down but by God’s mercy, never crushed. God has performed so many miracles in his life that I keep asking myself if we are almost at our miracle limit. God has been so faithful and merciful!
In 2004 I had just ended an abusive relationship, I was in a deep form of depression, I had pretty much given up on God or thinking that he cared for me. One night, I just came to realization that I was so alone and I remember crying myself to sleep and praying (I don’t know that it was willingly or not) that I not spend the rest of my life alone; to find someone who would love me for me and care for me. Less than 1 week later, I met my future husband (who happened to live only 5 minutes from me!). I truly believe that the reason I moved to that side of town (which I had never lived in and was far from my work) was so that I could meet my husband and that God’s hand was guiding my broken life at the point.