The Beauty of Gifts From God

Written By: Deanna Marie Battista

Welcome blue ribbons! You've got mail. I wanted to share something with you that God placed on my heart. It’s interesting in many ways. One could quite literally draw a line from my life before and after I welcomed my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into my heart. From that point before I knew him, I felt I had been preserved within this sphere of a never ending suffering vocation. After I knew him, I could easily pinpoint the multitude of ways that I had been being led towards my Father all along. It’s a wonder indeed. Even today as I stop to write and hold my hands within my lap from stiffness, or get up to walk just a few feet near my desk to grab a pen, or the current manuscript I am editing; the hurt that I can face, yet with a purpose. It’s become a joyous remembrance of the pain that comes with anchoring my soul towards holiness. I don’t think suffering is something that is done in vain. I think there is a greater purpose for it. I don’t think it’s an argument that, for the sake of being holy you have to suffer. However I look at what our Father went through. I also look at the girl I was prior to being led within a few short and yet long years before writing Ice Cream Sunday. I’ve felt held by the light that engulfs heaven in ways that the potency of being led around by the darkness couldn’t and would never compare. The worst suffering in this world is to not know Jesus Christ. I have overcome the worst that can happen. Yet still, here I am just two months shy, from my one year anniversary to becoming an Author; because of God himself and what he implored me to do in this life. Just two months away from releasing my fourth book, another testimony. I have been awakened by God himself. I have experienced many pricks of the conscience that I welcome. I have followed the many breadcrumbs that led me here. I, in the metaphors of all metaphors, was resurrected by God within this life to go and walk this ignited path of light blue and bring others with me towards his face. I limp even today, yet I strongly feel there are layers to suffering. Not just medical or scientific explanations that can explain, treat, and aid within what we are going through, or what hardship is heavy to carry. Sometimes I like to think that the suffering I experience here is purging through the ways my soul can be cleansed and restored back to a mustard seed of holiness- the less suffering I’ll have to do within penance in purgatory. I pray I will not go there one day, and go straight to heaven. That is the goal and should be for everyone. I am profoundly heeding the ways of this world, and the way that God uses this beautiful and brokenness to bring more children back into the fold of receiving gifts. I have both suffered and been completely healed. I have even experienced what it was like to go through the cycle of ailment and illness once more without fear or grief for “the girl that doesn’t suffer enough", because she doesn’t have too. I was held by God’s hand to be shown what his peace can truly cover. I am so moved by the way our Father works and weaves within the grains of details that correlate and make up the gear systems of our lives. The most potent gift, the grace he will pour into you. Some may even feel the weight of it like a curse, but it isn’t. It’s a way to become a vessel for the holy spirit, and a format where your heart can become a throne for Jesus himself. What a gift the love our Father has for us, indeed. Every ounce of pain is a love letter sent by a dove. I can attest, and I can also implore others to see him to see yourself. Know him to know your own spirit; but mostly hold onto the ribbon of divinity and allow God to wrap it like a crown around you both. 

  Yours Truly, 

                   Deanna Marie 

           Always Writing with Light