I Saw the Light

I remember Judy.

Her eyes especially. They lit up a room. Contagious joy.

I didn't know her when her eyes were dark. When she wandered in darkness.

Social cliff climber. Addicted. Swinger. Adulteress. Occult dabbler.

Traveling the reprobate road.

She sent her children to neighbors, friends, and daycares so she could do her own thing.

Enslaved to sin.

Empty.

Until she panicked and realized she was no longer in control.

Until she picked up a long-shelved and unopened Bible that fell open to Matthew.

And she fell in love.

She rose before sunrise and read and cried and prayed all day.

One night she woke up feeling as if a power source had entered her body. She looked at her fingertips and saw light radiating from them.  Her husband also woke with a start. "It's only 65 degrees in here, and you're so hot I can't touch you!"

She found her way to our church. And she stayed in the Word.

Her husband was ready to divorce her.

"I could handle your alcoholism. I could even handle the affairs. But I can't handle this affair you're having with this Man, Jesus!"

He tried everything to knock her off her path. While she tried everything to push him onto her path.

Until she sensed that her job was simply to be a light. She maintained a meek and quiet spirit and simply loved and served her husband as she never had before.

One Saturday night they went to a neighborhood party. She retreated with a Coke and watched her husband drink up and toke up and flirt with all the other women. She desperately wanted to go home, but God seemed to tell her to sit still and keep her mouth shut. Later she helped him home. He threw up all night, and she nursed him.

Then she took the children and went to church.

And after the service, she looked up to see her husband "lit up like a candle."

A changed man.

Because she saw the Light.

And she became a light.

The whole family eventually went to the mission field as lights.

And then back home as lights to extended family.

I remember Judy.

And I miss her.

I saw the Light in her.

Who has been a light in your life?

"The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple." Psalm 119:130 (NIV)

"You are the light of the world." Matthew 5:14 (NIV)  

Copyright © 2010 by Sandra Heska King