I would like to share a story that I read a few years ago from Dr. Dobson’s book Bringing Up Girls.  It is a fictional story that is powerful and moving.  Whether we are teenagers or grown women, we often don’t realize how valuable and priceless we are.  All our lives we desire to be loved, protected, cherished and appreciated.

I didn’t grow up with a father and I assume that many of you did not have a father like the one portrayed in this story. If a fictional character can show his daughter how important she is, how much greater does our Heavenly Father love and value us?

The Charm Bracelet by Sarah Kistler

Sweet 16 had finally come! I never thought I‘d make it. But I did. And it was amazing. My parents threw the birthday party of the century, and I had more people than I could count. The whole day had been awesome. But as I watched the sun begin to set, I knew the best part was soon to come.

It was late in the evening. Confetti had been swept up, helium balloons had started to sag and gift wrap had been folded neatly and tucked away for my mom’s later use. As I sat at my window studying the dusky sky, Dad peeked into my room with a smile.

“Ready to go, Sweetie?” he asked.

Was that a trick question? I wondered as I scrambled to my feet. I’d been waiting for this night for five long years, and it was finally here! I was now officially allowed to date!

The plan was for my parents and me to go to my favorite restaurant on the night of my 16th birthday and officiate the agreement, go over standards and discuss rules and such. And now we were finally on our way.

I sat across from my parents in a quiet corner booth. Having just placed our orders, I figured it was time to get on with it. “So. I can go out with any guy I want to, right?” I squealed, hardly able to contain my excitement.

Mom and Dad chuckled. Dad answered, “Well, we agreed to that, didn’t we?”

“Sweet!” I exclaimed, doing a little victory dance in my seat. My parents had held me off for years, but now that the time had come, they would let me date any guy I wanted! Of course they knew I had a good relationship with God and wasn’t too short on common sense, either.

“Now wait just a second,” Mom interrupted with a smile. “You have to agree to a little something yourself.”

I was expecting a lecture of some sort, so I was already prepared. “So what do I have to do now?” I asked, leaning forward on my elbows.

“Just open this,” Dad answered, producing a small white box. He gave a mysterious smile.

One Little Rule I hesitated a moment before untying the curly pink ribbon. I slowly opened the lid and saw a beautiful silver bracelet. But not just any bracelet. It was a charm bracelet. And they weren’t just any charms. They were gemstones, small but gorgeous. A dozen dainty charms dangled gently.

“Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say. I wasn’t expecting this at all.

“Now you have to understand this isn’t just any bracelet,” Mom informed me.

“I know,” I said. “It’s so beautiful!” I studied it closer. There were six small charms alternating with six tinier ones. The smaller ones were a deep blue. Sapphires, I guessed. And the other six were each different. One appeared to be just a rock, one was pink, a white one, a red one, green . . . and was that a diamond?

“This charm bracelet is symbolic,” Dad explained, leaning in closer to study it with me. “It represents you and your purity. This is what will guide you through your dating relationships. Your mother and I can only tell you what’s right. We can’t make you believe it yourself. Hopefully, this will.”

I looked up solemnly. “I’m listening.”

“This represents the first time you hold a guy’s hand,” Mom said, pointing to the gray one. “It’s just a piece of polished granite. Seemingly cheap, yes, but it’s still a part of your bracelet. This is pink quartz.” She gently rubbed the next one between her fingers. “It represents your first kiss.”

“This green one is an emerald,” Dad continued. “This is your first boyfriend. The pearl is the first time you say ‘I love you’ to a man other than me.”

I giggled. This was so amazing.

“The ruby stands for your first engagement. And the diamond represents the first time you say ‘I do,’ ” Mom finished.

After letting it all sink in, I cleared my emotion-clogged throat. “What do the six tiny sapphires stand for?” I asked.

“Those are to remind you how beautiful and valuable you are to us and to God,” Dad replied. “Now here’s the hitch in all this, the one and only rule you’ll ever have to follow when it comes to dating.”

Only one rule. Sounded good. But little did I know . . .

“Whenever you give one these actions of love-a kiss, an ‘I love you,’ a hand to hold-you also have to give the recipient the gem to match.”

I must’ve misunderstood. “I have to give him the gem?”

“You have to give it to him,” Mom restated.

I was silent for a moment. I thought they must be joking. But they weren’t even thinking of cracking a smile.

“But Daddy!” I suddenly shrieked. “These are insanely expensive! I can’t just give them away!”

He gave a soft, loving chuckle. “Did you hear what you just said?”

I thought about it.

“Baby, your purity, your heart, they’re far more valuable than a few little rocks. If you can’t find it in your heart to give away your little charms, I don’t think you should be giving away the things they represent.”

I could feel my insides melting, ready to gush out my tear ducts. On the one hand, it made me feel valuable and precious. But on the other, it made me furious. It made no sense. But it would.

Priceless Gems A few weeks after that night, I was hanging out with my friends at the beach. Chad wouldn’t swim because I wouldn’t swim. I was more interested in reading than getting caked with sand, and he was more interested in sitting with me than swimming with his buddies. He was sweet. He was cute. And he tried to hold my hand.

I was thrilled for a nanosecond when a certain piece of ugly granite flashed through my mind and made me move out of his reach. I was severely annoyed-annoyed at my parents, annoyed at my bracelet-turned-handcuffs, but most of all, annoyed at myself. I was letting a little rock dominate my romantic life.

I furiously glared at it during the whole embarrassing walk to the bathhouse. But then God hit me upside the head with a shocking epiphany. I couldn’t give up my little chunk of granite. It was a part of my bracelet, which in a sense made it a part of me. I wouldn’t be whole without it. It wasn’t a priceless gem, yet it was still valuable. It made sense after that.

Kevin came along eventually. We had fun. We hung out a lot. I thought I might love him. I thought I might tell him so. I thought of my pearl. It turned out that I didn’t love him as much as I thought I did.

So my parents had been right. They couldn’t make me believe the things they wanted me to believe. So they let God and my bracelet do the work instead. Among the four of them, I figured out how valuable I was. How valuable my purity was. How not valuable guys were who just wasted my time and emotions. If they weren’t in it for the whole bracelet, why should they get one part of it?

Nate. He thought my bracelet was awesome. So he never tried to hold my hand. He never tried to kiss me. But he asked me to marry him.

I never knew that so many years of torture could amount to so much happiness. I’d thought it was silly. I’d thought it was overrated. But now, I‘ve never been more glad of anything in my life. As I gave my husband the charm bracelet in its entirety, I wondered why I had found it so hard to hang on to those little rocks when it was so amazing to give them all to the man I truly loved.

But it didn’t end there. Now our daughter wears it.

When I think about the last year of my life, I can say without hesitation that it was a great year. I had an increase in finances, accomplished some life goals, traveled to Haiti to help orphans and widows, mentored and pastored people through their life-struggles and enjoyed an amazing Caribbean family vacation.

Although I had a great year, I can’t help but think of the people, who I know personally, that faced a year of tragedy – The parents who lost one of their twin babies to SID’s; the woman who suddenly died, leaving behind her husband and seven young children; my friend’s sister who lost her husband to cancer eight years after losing her son; the friend who underwent a double mastectomy due to advanced breast cancer; the mom who watched her little girl battle cancer; the several friends whose husbands left them and many more.

For so many people, this past year wasn’t just a bad year, it was horrific. Many people have gone through things that have changed their lives forever. Many have laid in bed at night, not knowing if they could face another day, wishing the nightmare would end. Some have questioned over and over; “Why me? Do I deserve this? Is this some kind of punishment?”

Maybe you are one of these people.

No matter what last year looked like, a new year gives us the opportunity to move on to the next chapter of our lives. No matter what has happened or how miserable life is, there is a loving God who doesn’t want any of us to live with hurt and pain. 1 Peter 5:7 says “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” Psalm 30:5 also says, “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Your weeping may have endured last year, but this year can be your year of joy.

All the Lord asks is that you put your hope in Him. When we let go of our pain and put our trust in Him, He is faithful to change our time of mourning into a time of joy.

Isaiah 55:12 says, “So you’ll go out in joy, you’ll be led into a whole and complete life.”

This is my prayer for you this year!

What if you had the privilege of living in a place like this?

What if this was your home and not Atlantis, the luxury hotel in the Bahamas with the Michael Jackson suite that rents for $25,000 a night?  Would everyday feel like a dream, living in paradise without a care in the world?  What if you didn’t just live in Atlantis, but your life was always filled with comfort, peace and a strong presence of God.

What if one day God asked you to give up this perfect, luxurious life to live in a place like this? 

You no longer have everything you need and want, but now you live in a place like Haiti. In fact, you didn’t even have a home until you were lucky to find some worn out fabric that you pieced together with sticks to protect yourself from the scorching sun and torrential downpours.  You’re also surrounded by hundreds of thousands of other people with needs as great as yours. Your floor is made of mud, you bathe and drink from the same parasite-filled water supply and to add to your heartache, you have to give your children away as servants because you can’t provide for their needs.

Why am I asking you to imagine so much?

Over 2,000 years ago God asked Jesus to leave Heaven, to be “Immanuel – God with us.” (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23) It didn’t look exactly like the picture I’ve created, but Jesus did give up His perfect life with the Father to be with us.  He didn’t come as a wealthy king, born into a royal family, but he came as a humble servant, born in a stable surrounded by animals and the stench of manure. He came because He loves us. He came to meet our crisis!

Most of us don’t have an extreme physical need like Haitians living in a tent city, but we still have a crisis. The crisis we face is spiritual one and without Immanuel, we are ALL destined for pain and suffering for eternity. Each of us are born physically alive, but spiritually dead and separated from God.

Christ came to live with us, to die in our place, to rise from the dead and to reconnect us to God. Why would God sacrifice His own son, to suffer so much for us? BECAUSE HE LOVES EACH ONE OF US!

“For God so loved the World that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

I’m not sure that I would have had the courage to do what Jesus did and to leave what he had, but I’m sure glad He did. It’s amazing that God loves us that much!

“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son,
and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”
Matthew 1:23

Around this time last year we received a diagnosis from my mother’s doctor that was heart-breaking.  We were told that she had ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) and that her life would be cut short.  This disease causes the motor nerves to die which send signals to the muscles.  Because the nerves stop working, the muscles atrophy, rendering the person paralyzed and not able to eat or breathe on their own.  The progression of this disease is very rapid and affects everyone differently, so it is uncertain to know how much longer she has on this earth.

For someone like my mother, this is hard to imagine.  She grew up in a home with three sisters and ten brothers.  Ten brothers!  Now picture a girl growing up in a home surrounded by all these boys.  She would have to be one tough cookie, and that is exactly what my mother is.  She is a woman who has played on adult softball leagues, coached her kids and grandkids sports teams, replaced a radiator in her car all by herself and has always had some major project going on at home (like building a fence or fixing her lawn mower).

When someone who has always been so active and full of life can no longer do simple things like feed or dress themselves, it really makes you look at life differently.  It’s hard to watch someone who has always been so independent, now need help with the simplest tasks.  Many of us don’t usually take the time to think about life until we are faced with the reality of death.

Psalm 39:5 says, “You have made my days a mere handbreath; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath.”

Our life here on earth is just a breath compared to eternity.  One day each of us will leave this earth, but it will not be the end of us.  The problems, sickness and discouragement we face now are momentary compared to the life we have beyond this one.  Our minds are bound by time, and eternity is so vast that it’s hard for any of us to comprehend.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 says, “Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Those who put their hope in Jesus Christ will live forever without pain, trouble or worries.  Whatever you are facing today is only for a moment.  So let’s focus on what’s ahead because life is just a breath.

Have you ever felt like you weren’t liked just because you are a Christian? I can remember feeling this way a lot in high school. There was one particular time I remember being with a group of friends who mocked me by playing music they thought I would be uncomfortable listening to. It didn’t end in high school either. Many times I have been around people that treat me normal until they find out I am a Christian. Once they find out what I do for a living, they usually become paranoid and uncomfortable until they pull themselves away from the conversation.

2 Timothy 3:12 says, “…everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” If we are truly living a lifestyle pleasing to Christ we will be persecuted. It may not be as severe as what the disciples faced, but sometimes you just can’t avoid it when you are living a lifestyle pleasing to Christ.

Over the years I have gotten in the habit of keeping my faith from people because I want them to see that I am a normal person just like them. My hope is that I can build a relationship with them without the awkwardness and persecution that goes along with the label of being a Christian.

If you’re like me, sometimes you just don’t want to be seen as one of those crazy, fanatic Christians that get themselves in the tabloids for the wrong reasons – like the guy who sold everything he had, strapped a sign to his car and drove across the country to tell everyone that the world was going to end. Most of us don’t want to be associated with that kind of lunatic. We want people to feel comfortable, loved and accepted by us.

As much as we try to love people and be liked in return, 2 Corinthians 2:15-16 tells us something otherwise;
“For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those
who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.”

For some people we are a breath of fresh air, a source of encouragement and a people they can depend on. But to others, we are the putrid stench of death. The truth is – we have the Holy Spirit living in us which brings conviction to those who are not living for Christ. The light that shines from within us exposes the sin in their lives. It’s something we can’t help. For some people it helps them understand that there is a void in their life and causes them to seek the truth, but for others, it makes them so frustrated with themselves that they hate what they see in us.

Regardless of how we are treated we must remember what 2 Corinthians 5:20 says; “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” The Lord has called each of us to represent him to the world. We can’t allow fear and rejection from the past to hinder us from being an example of Him today. We have the most precious gift anyone could receive – the promise of living for eternity with a loving God, free from pain and sorrow. Let’s not forget who we represent.