Michelle Gardner
About The Author
.jpg)
Michelle Gardner is an educator, author and speaker committed to using her challenging life to offer encouragement and hope. She has a B.A. in Bible and Theology and a minor in New Testament Greek from Multnomah University, Portland, Oregon. She has completed training in Domestic Violence Advocacy through Abuse Recovery Ministry Services and through Focus Ministries’ Partners in the Journey. Michelle received a Congressional Angels in Adoption award.
For several years Michelle organized adoption-oriented conferences around the country, bringing together adoption and foster parenting organizations for each event. She wrote about adoption for Focus on the Family’s magazine and published two books through a hybrid publisher, with her second book becoming their bestseller for nearly a year. Together, those books sold almost 4,000 copies.
Michelle says - I’d like to share with you a bit about my life. I have 12 young adult children and 20 grandchildren. I can’t begin to tell you what life was like raising all the kids– loud, chaotic, expensive, sometimes heartbreaking, but mostly crazy fun. I wouldn’t change any of it. I am so glad I get to be mom to these incredible young people.
Most of my kids are adopted, and I worked with adoptions for several years. Eventually I was accused of child trafficking, which was shocking and untrue. I was officially cleared of any wrongdoing, but the damage done to my reputation and ministry caused the work I was doing - helping women start small businesses so they could keep their kids - to end.
More than a decade later I still can’t see even one positive thing about that situation. So many children and women were being helped and it all ended so abruptly. But I realize God doesn’t owe me an explanation. When Job cried to God for answers God’s answer was “I am God.” And I have learned that trusting God is enough. Whether I can see any good in this situation or not I believe God will use it for his glory, because I have seen his faithfulness thousands of other times.
Most of my kids have married and have their own busy households of children. To our surprise, in the middle of the busyness and fun, more than half of the children have two very serious genetic diseases or other serious health challenges, including leukemia, severe autism and a heart condition requiring two open-heart surgeries before age one. Having two life threatening genetic diseases in our family is obviously rather frightening. We are learning to trust our Creator to care for his creations, and we cherish the time we have together. No one knows how long their life will be, and maybe my family has the advantage of being reminded not to take each other for granted.
Several years ago something happened and my husband had a nervous breakdown. We weren’t in full-time ministry anymore, but he was an elder at the church we attended. He fell into a pit of alcohol and madness and escalated his abuse of our children and me. My two oldest sons and I asked our pastor to do an intervention with us, but even though Steve was an elder the pastor said he didn’t know our family well enough to get involved.
Over the next few years, I tried everything I could think of to get help for our situation, but church leaders in three different churches didn’t take me seriously. Finally, before I could figure out how to get Steve the help he needed, he took his life, leaving me with a dozen grieving and traumatized young adult children.
When the unthinkable happens, what do you do? I read Isaiah 43 over and over.
It says:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you,
I have called you by name. You are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.
When you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
And the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your Saviour.
Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.”
This passage doesn’t say IF we go through difficult times, but WHEN. We live in a fallen world, and the expectation is that we will experience very difficult situations. But the promise is that we won’t face these situations alone. The Lord of heaven and earth was with my children and me, passing through the waters and walking through the fire. He considers us precious, and he loves us. And out of the nearly eight billion people on the planet, he calls me by name.
Knowing this about God didn’t change the outcome of the situation, but it changed my mindset so I could face this tragedy with hope and peace rather than despair. And that changed everything.
So this is my life. It’s been hard in many ways, but it’s also been wonderful, living the adventures the Lord’s given me every day. Some people wonder why I continue to trust God when there have been so many hard things. But the point of the Christian life isn’t to avoid as much suffering as possible. Suffering is inevitable. The point is to allow God to use suffering to change us to become more like Christ.
When life is calm it’s easy to forget this world isn’t our home. Suffering reminds us life is over in a fraction of a second and then our real life will begin. My biggest reason for trusting the Lord is the knowledge that I will spend eternity in a new heaven and new earth prepared by the Lord for those who love him. And he will wipe every tear from my eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. And that promise is bigger than any suffering I might experience now.
Hope, delivered to your inbox.
Get bi-monthly hope and encouragement when you subscribe. You'll receive lovely artwork, quotes, Scripture and stories to give you hope for your challenging situation.