Growing up in a fatherless home, unprotected by her mother and sexually abused by a stepfather, Amy felt unworthy of love. Then one day a love letter arrived, one she had been waiting for all her life.
On the day Amy was born, her dad wasn’t around. So as the labor pains began, Amy’s mother fit her pregnant belly behind the steering wheel of her car and found the father of her child at his girlfriend’s house. Amy’s parents were divorced when she was two, and her father completely abandoned her. Her mother was absent in other ways. She constantly told Amy that they had really wanted a boy, so Amy grew up thinking she had done something wrong.
From the age of 6 to 11, Amy was sexually abused by her stepfather. At one point, she gathered the courage to tell her mother about the abuse. “I remember seeing the look on her face,” Amy says. It wasn’t a good one. Her mother failed to protect her, and that made Amy feel even more unloved.
Now 36, Amy gave her heart to Jesus Christ when she was 14, and after a time of wandering, she rededicated her life to Jesus when she was 30. “It’s so easy to look at Jesus and be in love. Jesus died for me!” Amy says. “I have never felt so much love as the day I accepted Him.” Yet she still felt some pain from her past and wasn’t sure how to view God the Father, not until the love letter arrived.
It happened in the summer of 2011. Amy and her husband had returned one evening from a church meeting about a mission trip to a Honduras orphanage. As someone who has always loved children, Amy was excited about the possibilities of traveling to the children’s home to “love on” the kids. She was so stirred up she couldn’t sleep. After tossing and turning forever, she finally told the Lord, “You need to let me know what is going on so I can get to sleep.”
That’s when the love letter arrived. In a vision, Amy’s bedroom disappeared. Suddenly, she was sitting in the green grass of a field with mountains in the background. She knew she was at the orphanage in Honduras.
Across from her was Jesus. He came toward Amy and lifted her up into his arms. As he held her, he whispered in her ear. “My dear precious child, you’ve always felt like an orphan, but I wanted you to know that I’ve always been here, and I am really your Dad.”
In that moment, God poured out his love into Amy’s soul. “I had never felt wanted, I had never felt loved, but God made me feel wanted, and loved, and beautiful,” Amy says. “If you’ve been abandoned, ignored or abused, God will do whatever it takes to show you his love. Let him in. He wants to share his love letter.”
“If your mother and father have forsaken you, the LORD will take you up and adopt you as His own dear child.” Psalm 27:10
