Testimony of a Ragamuffin Girl

A few years ago I read a book called "The Ragamuffin Gospel" By Brennan Manning. Its pure and basic concepts of Grace and Healing for the broken people in the body of Christ appealed to my aching heart. After having suffered a long and devastating separation the emotional turbulance of infedelity and then the divorce that followed, I was standing alone. My world, my home, my finances, my health, my family, my friends, and my church began shaking and crumbling around me. Who I thought I was in Christ had become muddied and dimmed by the judgement and harsh attitudes I received by the church. Where once I was a valued member of the body, Sunday School teacher, Women's leader, and Music Minister, I now found myself, from that point on, silently forbidden any involvement in the church. Because of my circumstances I developed a saddened view of what the church was professing to be and how it was actually behaving towards me. I was a person silently deemed unworthy or less useable than someone else. I searched God in those long months of illness, and loneliness for answers, devastated and broken, I understood a Ragamuffin life, fully.

As time passed God spoke to my heart. He began restoring my thinking. I was not less than anything, not less called, not less worthy and not less forgiven. Long taught misconceptions and judgmental attitudes of the leaders in the church were not who I was at all. Though I was a little more broken and a lot more worn for wear, I was not left or abandoned by God. In fact he absolutely held me in that devastated place and reshaped my ragamuffin heart.

Friend, for those of you devastated in life by horrible circumstances, crushed by the peers you revered and loved, broken by the hand life has dealt you, I promise, beautiful one, you are loved by God!
I know broken. I have done it well. At 12 yrs old I was the victim of a cruel rape by the man I babysat for. My young trusting heart scarred by an absence of being able to fully trust. I know broken. I Had a 27 year marriage that looked good on the outside, but was shattered and volitile on the inside. A spouse who wished to be respected on how the marriage looked as a deacon of our church, rather than how it truly was. Lacking mutual respect, honor, attention, affection and communication and riddled with hidden addiction, abuse and neglect the final 10 years of a possesive, jealous, control orriented relationship dwindled into  becoming two strangers living separate lives and passing each other as silent ghosts down the hall. It was a life that had become an existence of broken image, broken hearted prayers and broken dreams. I KNOW Broken!

God spoke deeply to me in this place. My ragamuffin battered soul, so weary at times from facing overwhelming obstacles, had come to a pivotal place, it came back to Grace. Jesus began restoring the loss of self image, my sense of self worth and my heart as a Godly woman. He instilled fire and purpose into my calling. He breathed back into me new Life and in doing so, restored my purpose and my long lost sense of Calling. That calling is this. Restoration of the broken, lost and weary. The sheep who have left the body of Christ wounded, hurting and disillusioned. He has a word for you beautiful one, it is this: Come back to me beloved, I want to hold you. I know you have been hurt, crushed and broken. Let me love and restore you. You do not have to stay Broken!