Brenda Hunter - My God, Do You Love Me?: A Womans Conversations with God

M Y G OD , D O Y OU L OVE M E?
P UBLISHED BY W ATER B ROOK P RESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, CO 80921 Scriptures in this book, unless otherwise noted, are from the Holy Bible, New International Version copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society, Zondervan Bible Publishers. Used by permission; all rights reserved. The scriptures that appear in italics represent the authors emphasis. eISBN: 978-0-307-79927-2 Copyright 1998 by Brenda Hunter, Ph.D. Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York. W ATER B ROOK and its deer colophon are registered trademarks of Random House Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. v3.1 Lord, to whom could I dedicate this book but you?
Thank you that you have heard the cries of my heart
and have shown me in countless ways that you love me.

H ow does any writer choose her subject? I suspect that most of us who write for a living write about whats closest to home: our current struggles, our emotional pain, often our past. Most of the books I have written have evolved from my life, both inner and outer. Like the one you hold in your hands, those books were written in an attempt to make sense out of my personal life and spiritual journeya journey that has been, by turns, exhilarating, maddening, confusing, joyful.

I started writing My God, Do You Love Me? years ago at a time when I felt particularly vulnerable. I was skidding into my forties and a period I later came to call the hormonal crazies; as my estrogen levels rose and fell, my marital problems also seemed to crest and abate. My two wonderful daughters, who had been my boon companions during their early childhood, suddenly became obstreperous teenagersdaily, hourly, asserting their independence. Some days they were quite rejecting. In the middle of all this, our family moved from New Jersey to Washington, D.C., and I found myself suddenly friendless and lonely. God alone became my daily companion, my most reliable and comforting friend, as Don headed for the office and the girls left each morning for school.

As I read my Bible in the quiet of those mornings, I decided to write down my feelings and look for Gods answers in Scripture. I needed to know that he understood my emotional pain and that he cared deeply about all that concerned me. Thus began daily written conversations with God that helped me cope with my lifes stresses. In time I put my notebook aside though I continued to meet with God most mornings. In the intervening years, I received a doctorate in psychology, worked on my marriage, and helped launch my daughters into adulthood. I also began a career as a therapist, working with women who struggled with depression, anxiety, childhood pain, difficulties in their intimate relationships, and low self-esteem.

As I listened to my clients, I realized that I had been where many of them were, struggling with a core life question: My God, do you love me? They, like me, went on to ask, If you love me, why do you afflict me? and If you hear me, why are you so often silent? I worked to help my clients understand that God did indeed love them and that he alone could heal their deepest wounds and help them rework their painful pasts. As their therapist, I empathized with their hurts, validated their feelings, and tried to help them achieve greater wholeness. I felt confident of Gods love for my patients and myself and fairly secure in my faith until last AprilGood Friday, to be exactwhen I rolled over in bed and discovered a lump in my right breast. Suddenly my world upended. Facing surgery and an array of invasive treatment options, I was terrified, confused, and overwhelmed. Once again I felt exquisitely vulnerable and alone.

Only this time the stakes were higher than ever before. My life was, and is, on the line. Breast cancer is a fearsome foe, and only the Lord truly understands my middle-of-the-night terror and my desperate need to know that he daily holds me in the palm of his hand. Although my family has been wonderfully empathic and supportive, only God can get inside my mind and understand the intense emotions that ricochet from happiness to fear, sometimes within the space of an hour. Intuitively, I understood that I would begin to find inner peace if I again wrote down my conversations with God. So I took my old notebook and went to Glory Ridge, just outside Asheville, North Carolina, two months after a mastectomy.

God provided that place of retreata log cabin on sixty-two acres of forest where I could hike, sit in the sun, pick succulent blackberries, and listen to the sounds of nature. Each night as I lay on my bed, I listened to cicadas thunder like phalanxes of advancing soldiers. Only as the sun rose over the mountains did they lapse into silence. One night coon dogs chased nocturnal raccoons on the ridge, barking all night while Heidi, the huge St. Bernard that guarded the place, ranged over the property, protecting her own but also jarring me from sleep hour by hour. The next morning I felt as if my head had been hit by a hammerso much for this suburban womans erroneous belief in the tranquillity of nature! I went alone to pour out my pain and to begin listening to God, as I had done seventeen years before.

I needed to hear his voice, to speak from my heart to him and know that he heard me. Each morning I sat at a tiny, weathered table on a small, screened-in porch just off the kitchen, surrounded by deep woods and noisy birds and insects. I am not a sensing person, but I found it a healing experience to be so tuned in to nature. As I spoke to God and listened intently for his answers, I discovered anew that he is never far from our sidethat he hears our desperate daytime prayers and our middle-of-the-night whispers. So it is from this place of personal suffering that I have put pen to paper and come before the Lord. It has been my hope that as I have asked him questions from my own human heart, as well as questions I have heard my clients ask him, I would speak for you.

Each life has its own particular crises and struggles, and some are more severe than others. But we all struggle with our intimate relationships, our disappointments, our self-images, and our longing to be known and loved just as we are. All of us, whether married or single, have those moments when we are afraid. Thats when we need to know that God cares deeply for us in an intimate and personal way. So whether youre a young woman or a grandmother like I am, I believe this little book has something to say to you about your uniqueness to God. Within these pages, I have tried to capture the intimacy of a womans honest relationship with her God.

When she speaks about whats in her heartjealousy, anxiety, fear, joyhe always answers. The scriptural selections are sometimes paraphrased but most often cited directly. Direct quotations (drawn from the New International Version of the Bible) are always italicized. Long ago when I published my first book,