After all of the conversation, I needed to get out and have some quiet space with God. I sang and prayed in the car thanking God for all He had already done that morning. I ran some errands and, on my way back, I asked God to keep my heart focused on Love and connection and I would let Him unfold the story.

As I drove back in the driveway, my mom was in her usual spot. The spot where she goes when she is angry or needs quiet. The spot she goes to breath. I saw her there and it made me smile. She is learning what to do when she doesn’t know what to do. She is learning to go and be still. This is the spot where she is still.

I take a seat next to her and she says she is angry. She is angry that I was hurt by the situation and she doesn’t know what to do with the anger. She looked at me with eyes calling for help. I asked her if she thought she could release the anger. She said she didn’t know. She didn’t want to be angry and she knows it is not good for her stroke recovery to be angry. I asked her if she wanted to pray and we could ask God to take away the anger from her. She said yes. We prayed and I asked God if he would give my mom His strength to release her anger. I asked if He would flood her heart and spirit with His peace and an ability to see people how He sees them. We held hands and said Amen together.

Then she looked at me and asked about Jesus. About what it is like to trust God? She wondered how my brother, who gave his live to Christ and was baptized in 2014, learned about having a relationship about God? I could see it in her eyes and I felt a prompting in my own Spirit that caught me by surprise. After we talked about how my brother learned more about God and invited Him into his life she very simply said, “I would like that.”

In an instant it was as if the years came rushing in. All the times I had used my agenda to change her heart towards God and His Love. All the praying I had done on my own and with friends. All of the visions I have had since I was a little girl about the hearts of generational healing in my family. All of it was there as a surprise and as perfectly placed as only God can in our story. Not by my design, but by His Grace and Mercy and Perfect Love!

“Would you like to invite Jesus into your heart mama?” I asked her as if I could hardly wait to open the gift that was laid before me.

“Yes. I don’t really know what that means, but I know I can trust God and I know he is with us and taking care of us now,” she says confidently and innocently.

I explain to her the Gospel of Christ. That Jesus came to cleanse us from our sins. When we accept that we are a sinner and need a Savior, it is then that Jesus can forgive us of our sins and come to live in our hearts. That then our life is given over for His purposes and is no longer our own.

She looks at me and says, “I don’t get it. How is it not my life anymore?” I think to myself how brave she is to ask these questions and to desire to understand it with her whole heart before she says yes. She is so brave and vulnerable in this moment and I almost saw a light around her as if God was there and holding her already that very moment.

“He will show you mommy. You do not have to ‘do’ anything different other than listen for Him in your spirit. He will be there and you will know it is Him. He will guide you into a life of love so that you are able to release the anger you are holding. You will find strength to let it go because it will make more space for Him and He will replace your anger with His peace.” I said those things and many more. We talked through some other questions and then she looked at me with tears in her eyes.

“I want to do that.” She said quietly.

“You want to ask Jesus into your heart?” I said, “Like right now?” Almost showing my surprise at how seamless and caught off guard I was.

“Yes, I want to do that and then you can show me how. It feels really intimate. Like too close for me, I don’t know how to let Him close to me.” She said as she put her hand over her heart.

In that moment I knew it had already begun. The Holy Spirit was living in her and revealing to her what was to come. He was going to show her parts of her own heart that she had never been able to see before. He was going to release in her a freedom to love herself, Him, and others in a way she was not able to before. He was going to do these things and in that moment I saw, He has already begun! God was gently revealing in her and allowing her to safely see that He was coming for her heart and she was saying YES!!!

I could see it clearly and that was His gift to me. His way of saying to me, “Kaelyn, you have loved your mom and you have shown her My face. I have been working in her heart and I want you to see clearly that you can trust me with your mom. You can trust me with her heart. She is my daughter also. I know she is your mother and you want her to have Peace and Freedom. I want her to have those things also. I have been shaping her heart and getting it ready for this moment that the two of you would share. Breath it in and be still. You can believe the promises I have given to you. I will uphold every singly one.”

I looked at her and she was radiant. She is beautiful, but there was a new light about her that I am not sure she even recognized, but I saw it.  We decided to go in the house and pray with my dad.

She went and sat on my dad’s lap. She has done this a lot lately. This time I asked her to tell my dad want we were about to do. In her choppy stroke healing words she spoke. ” I want to trust God. I don’t understand it all, but I know I am a sinner and I know I want the peace of Jesus.” Tears flowed down my dad’s face and knew for him this was an answer to many prayers.

We all held hands and I lead my mom through a prayer to accept Christ into her heart. We hugged and celebrated with our spirits joined! July 3, 2015; two weeks to the day that I found out my dad has cancer and less than 2 weeks from my mom’s stroke… my mom accepted Christ into her heart!

As you pray for my family, know that the Lord has His own plans and we are so perfectly blessed by those. Even when there is pain…there is so much Joy and so much Love. I don’t know what tomorrow will hold, but I know that each day is the Lord’s and if I seek His face, He is sure to make the adventure thrilling and filled with Love.