I have been thinking of God’s love lately. The very fact that God loves me. God loves me! The very Creator of this universe. The One who holds the world in His hands. How can that be?

I’m a sinner. I’m not perfect. I’m often needy, looking for a Savior. I don’t do many things very well…and yet…God loves me.

Years ago, when I was a newlywed, I heard God’s voice. My husband and I had been married for about a year. We were both fresh out of college and working at jobs for a few short years. I had just started work at a school and didn’t count on not having work in the summer. We were low men on the totem poles at our jobs, so even though we had two jobs, we weren’t paid well. Well the summer came and my job ended at the school in June. It wasn’t a permanent end, it was just for the summer. My husband’s cousin got me a temporary job to work for her while she went back east for the summer. That was for the month of July. So that was good, I had a job for July. Well that ended and I needed employment for August and part of September. Where would I find a job for a month and a half? I started to panic. WE NEEDED MONEY! We can’t live on one income! I laugh at that now, because we have been living on one income for over 18 years now. But at the time, we were lowly grunts, not making a whole lot of money. We had rent to pay and a car payment. Ack.

Well I was in sheer panic. But not to be deterred, I drove down this main street that had all these hotels. I figured I could work as a desk clerk for any hotel. How hard could that be? I got nothing. Nobody would take me on. I decided to try restaurants. I’d worked 4 summers at a restaurant-I had some waitressing skills. I got nothing. Frustrated and feeling a bit down from all those rejections, I plopped on the couch and started crying. And I cried, and cried, and cried. Sobbing would be more like it. I thought of us living on the mean streets of California. They would take our car away because we couldn’t make the payments. We would starve to death. We would be two college educated kids homeless, with a huge debt to pay for student loans. How could we look our friends in the eye, when we would be flat broke? What would we do? Where could we go? My husband still had his job, where would he shower in the mornings to clean up for work? What could we do? I kept crying. I was all by myself at home, sobbing on my couch with the yellow pages open on my lap.

In the midst of my sobbing I heard a voice. I was by myself. It was a male voice. The voice said, “Wendy, I love you.” That immediately stopped my crying. I looked around me, nobody was there. The voice said it only once. The voice called me by my name. “Wendy, I love you.” I knew Who it was that said He loved me. I stopped crying. Like a little kid who is being consoled by a parent, I just sat on the couch in awe of the One who said He loved me. That’s all He said. He just reminded me that He loved me. And if He loved me, why would He leave me on the streets to die? He wouldn’t. He loved me. I had gone off the rails and He simply reminded me that He loved me.

He didn’t promise me a job. Money didn’t suddenly appear in the middle of the living room. The yellow pages didn’t start flipping over to the one job I should call. A giant finger didn’t start writing on the wall, telling me what would happen next. My God simply told me that He loved me. And He used my name when He did.

Well a few days later I got a job as a waitress at the Bob’s Big Boy down the street. They had no trouble hiring me for those short weeks. I think I made more money there, than I did at my main job for the school. It was fun bringing home all that cash from tips. But I was a changed person. I heard God’s voice tell me He loved me. I’ve never had a feeling of panic like that again. I’ve always trusted God would care for us. No exceptions.

My daughter did something naughty the other day. It was not terrible, but she did disobey us. She wasn’t supposed to go on any app or social media without asking for permission first. The internet is a dangerous place out there, and we don’t want either of our kids to get hurt, bullied, or see things they aren’t supposed to see. Well she went on a website in which you can role play. She did not ask for permission and kept it secret…until. Well until the inevitable was going to happen-people on the site bullied her. They ganged up on her, went in other chat rooms she wasn’t invited to, and called her names. The worst was when one of them called her, “a little piece of s**t.” I think that’s what got to her. It’s what got to me. I found her, when her sin had caught up to her, standing in front of her room with a horrible look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she hesitated to tell me. I pried, so she burst out into tears and told me the whole sordid story. She said she was sorry for disobeying us and she learned her lesson. I gave her a hug and reminded her why we didn’t want her going on anything on the internet without asking first. We don’t do it because we are mean parents that want her to suffer in the dark ages. It’s because we know what’s out there and we want to protect her.

When my daughter told me the story, I became so angry at those bullies who hide behind the internet. They don’t know her, they don’t love her. They could care less about her. She is nothing to them. But she is everything to me. My heart broke when I saw the pain in her eyes. When I watched the tears run down her face, I wanted to hurt those bullies so badly.

In the midst of this I can’t stop thinking of God as our parent. He says He loves us more than we can love our own children. How can that be? How could God have more anger towards people who would harm His children? As much as I had for the bullies who hurt my daughter? He says Yes. He loves us so much, He doesn’t want us to get hurt. All the rules God gives us are for our benefit. If we go outside those rules, we’ll get hurt.

Take adultery for instance. It’s a really bad idea. God doesn’t want us to commit adultery because it will always end badly. It will hurt everybody involved…deeply. It’s not because God doesn’t want us to have any fun. He says have all the fun you want, just stay in the confines of your own marriage. That way, nobody get’s hurt.

Or, God tells us not to get drunk with anything, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. I’ve talked about my experience with drunkenness, growing up in Alaska. Getting drunk is a really bad idea. First of all, you wake up feeling terrible. Secondly, as a relative of mine said, after a night of drinking you have to try and remember who you need to apologize to the next morning. It’s bad for your body and your brain. It’s really hard on your liver. And it especially likes to kill all the relationships you have in your life. I wonder how many children have started life because of a mother’s drunken state the night before?

In contrast, to be filled with the Holy Spirit is amazing because there are no side effects. There are no headaches. Being filled with the Holy Spirit does not marinate your liver. You don’t have to apologize to anyone. People like you because they see God in you-the Holy Spirit! Only good things come from being filled with the Holy Spirit.

As I walk this journey in life as a Christian and as a mother, I see so much and understand more and more of God’s love in our lives. His love for us is unfathomable. I see my love for my children as deep and endearing. Yet, God loves His children (me) deeper than my love for my children. How can that be? I know how I feel towards my kids. And God loves me more than that? Deeper than that? I can’t wrap my head around it.

When I talked to my daughter more about the internet scandal she told me something interesting. She said, “I thought I knew better than you. I didn’t think you knew what you were talking about. I didn’t think this app would be bad.” Whoa! Isn’t that what we say before we commit some sin before God.

“Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay.”

A pastor came to our town one year to replace our old pastor. This pastor had some very specific ideas about holiness in the Christian. One of them was that women SHOULD NOT WEAR PANTS! Yep, women should not wear pants. It wasn’t the Christian thing to do.

I wasn’t living in Alaska at the time, so I didn’t hear exactly how forceful he was about the whole thing. But apparently he really stressed it. Now I’ve heard of people down south telling women they shouldn’t wear pants, but coming to Alaska and preaching that nonsense. What are you crazy? This is Alaska for crying out loud. It’s the land of foot deep mud that sucks your boot in so you end up pulling out your foot from your boot while half your sock is hanging off your foot. You have no way to balance yourself, except to plunk your foot down in the mud that just sucked in your boot. Now your foot is stuck, next to your boot. You try and pull the other boot out of the mud, and your other foot comes flying out of that boot. Your sock didn’t even bother staying on. You have to balance yourself again, so now the other foot is stuck in the mud next to your other boot. The mud is freezing cold. You try and free one or both feet and you end up landing right on your bottom, in the mud with both feet and both boots stuck in the mud. Now trying doing all that in a dress! I dare you.

Or how about the mosquito problem in Alaska? In Alaska we say the mosquito IS our state bird. It certainly feels like it is. The mosquitoes are so thick during the summer, you need pants to cover yourself up. Pants are your mosquito shield.

Or how about gutting 300 salmon in one day. You spend the whole day, gutting and filleting salmon. There is blood, salmon guts and slime, everywhere. It get’s everywhere. The last thing I would want to do would be to wear a dress while dealing with all that blood, guts and slime. Yuck.

I suppose if you did none of those things and just stayed indoors all day, you could probably wear dresses all the time and get away with it. But that’s really not the point. I am a Christian woman who wears pants all the time! There, I said it, I feel better now.

The point really isn’t that telling women they have to wear dresses if they are Christians, but there should be exceptions for Alaskan Christian women. The point is that nobody should be telling anyone that what they wear makes a difference. (Well, okay, men wearing women’s clothing is an exception, but that’s a discussion for another time). I wear pants, always have. AND I’m a Christian. I know, when I die, I will go to Heaven and God will not care about me wearing pants. What He will care about is whether I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior. That’s it. I promise you, my wearing pants will not come up. I know this for sure.

Holiness is never external. It’s not about what’s on the outside. The Pharisees during Jesus’ day were all about the external. They dressed a certain way, acted a certain way, wore certain things and prayed a certain way and what did Jesus call them? He called them white washed tombs. On the outside they were clean, but on the inside they were dead men’s bones. Yikes. That’s pretty serious.

Holiness is Jesus living inside of you. That’s it. So simple. It’s not wearing dresses if you are a woman. Holiness isn’t wearing a cross or not wearing a cross. Holiness isn’t raising your hands in church or not raising your hands in church. It’s not how big your Bible is (whether you can knock someone out with it or not). It’s not what you eat. It’s not DOING anything. Isn’t that beautiful? I love that.

I’m a terrible rule follower. Maybe that’s why I love the gospel so much. It’s nothing I can do. I can’t follow a list of rules to become righteous. I love that God took it all away from us and simply says, “Accept my Son as your Savior.” Don’t DO anything. Just take the free gift of Jesus Christ!

I’m probably lazy by nature, that’s why I’ve responded so well to the gospel. But if you are a Christian and you feel compelled to Do something, look into that. Remember that holiness, again, is Jesus living inside of you. You can be all clean on the outside and not have Jesus living inside of you. That’s not a good place to be. Because you don’t want to be a Pharisee. Christian women can wear pants. It’s not an issue, really.

There is much discussion about limiting guns right now. It is due to the many shootings we have had as of late. I think this is an on-going discussion that I want to weigh in on. I’m an Alaskan girl who was a card carrying member of the NRA back when I was sixteen. I think the idea of taking guns from people is ludicrous. Here’s my humble opinion.

You have to know where I come from. I am from Alaska. Alaska is a very different place than here in Southern California. Alaska is like the wild west. People go up to hide in Alaska. They move up there to live off the land. They move up there to escape the cement jungle down here in the lower 48. (Have you figured out why we call it the lower 48?). I grew up around guns. I grew up in a small town where people had gun racks in the back window of their trucks, WITH guns in those gun racks. Everyone I knew went hunting. Whether it was for spruce chickens, moose, or caribou-everybody did it. Even my mom went spruce chicken hunting and she was a city girl from the lower 48. At camp, part of our activities were shooting guns, besides dodge ball and hiking, we shot pistols, .22s, and shot guns. (Between me and you, girls were always better shots at the first).

I told you I was a card carrying member of the NRA at 16. Here’s how it happened. For P.E., in the small town I’m from, we shot .22 rifles. Yes, you heard me right-.22 rifles during P.E. class. The most important rule we had for shooting .22 rifles was to make sure everyone was in place before you started shooting. You didn’t want to be shooting while other kids were walking in front of you. That was a kind of important rule. They broke us up into twos, we went up to the P.E. teacher’s office, got our .22 and a box of ammo. Then we walked over to the line where there were these big targets at the end of the old gym. The teacher taught us to shoot laying down, kneeling and standing. We learned to load and unload our guns. We learned to site the gun before shooting. We learned how to carry the rifle from the teacher’s office to the line-that you don’t wave the gun around. Imagine HS students given rifles and ammunition in school, during school hours, to shoot targets. Imagine that. And the weird part in all that was that there were NO SCHOOL SHOOTINGS during that time. NONE! And we didn’t live in some weird utopia. Most kids in the class DIDN’T get along. But it never dawned on us to go take a gun and shoot people with them. When we finished the class, our teacher gave us an application for the N.R.A. We were certified now. We were all card carrying members of the N.R.A.

Guns are very useful. Especially, living up in Alaska where there are big creatures that want to eat you. Bears are plentiful up there. And bears are very hungry and grumpy. The mama bears are especially irritated. I was taught at a very young age that a small bear cub IS the most dangerous bear. Why? Well because there is ALWAYS a big mean mama bear right around the corner who doesn’t like anyone messing with her babies. She can’t be reasoned with. She’ll bite off your head and ask questions later. No exceptions.

Now people may say that Alaska is ok for guns because there ARE creatures that want to eat us. But guns aren’t just for creatures that want to eat us. They are for our protection. Protection against tyranny! What did Hitler do before he declared a Holocaust against the Jews? He took everyone’s guns away. We live in a mad, mad, mad world now. I know I’m not saying anything new. The government doesn’t have a right to take guns away from us. We fought the Revolutionary war, with guns and ammo. We fought against tyranny! We weren’t going to take it anymore! And we didn’t! There are terrorists who have killed us. There are more terrorists out there right now, who are planning on killing more of us. They used guns. Why would you disarm people now, when they need guns to protect themselves now, more than ever? We can’t be that stupid.

I know I’ve said nothing new. But I’ve said my piece. Taking guns away from law abiding citizens is simply a recipe for disaster. Being able to own guns is our constitutional right. And I for one, will fight to keep the right. We can’t go down without a fight. There are simply too many bears and terrorists out there in the world.