The Kindness of the Lord

By Kathleen Angell

Author's note: My friend, Justus, lives in Kenya, which is in a time of great turmoil and suffering and trial right now.

Please stop and lift him and Kenya, and all there, in your prayers right now, please.

Thank you so much. I thank the Lord.
-Kathy Angell )

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I see in my mind's eye, sometimes, flashes of things in the past where the Lord has shown great kindness. I thank Him.

It reminds me of the Scriptures in James 5:11, about patience in the face of suffering.

Knowing that the outcome of what the Lord finally brings about is so full of compassion and mercy.

It speaks of Job's perseverance and that of the prophets, and what the Lord finally brought about, and how the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.

My example was not one of a righteous man but of a young woman who was just not capable, who was foolish and immature.

Lost. Without. A needy young woman who did not walk with our Lord nor know Him.

Though now, I can easily look back and see the Lord showing Himself throughout my life.

That pull to Him that was always there. I knew it once, but not well, and had strayed from the thought of it.

Yet I can see Him during this long, long trial, and in the end of it, so clearly.

I know it was His mercy and compassion and kindness that changed my life, even then, even before I knew Him.

The world is not kind, but the Lord is kind.

The end of the matter with the Lord was rich in kindness that was not due me. I was so not worthy of such care. He gave me so much kindness, so full of compassion, so full of mercy. Praise the Lord!

His rain and care and love truly cover over the righteous and the unrighteous.

His love was a banner even in my lost condition.

To start my story, I was married many years ago when very young. I had been engaged to a young man since I was probably 15 years old.

Seemingly devoted to me and I to him, for what seemed like years. I looked forward at 17 to be able to be near 18 to go ahead and marry him. We seemed inseparable.

How deceptive the world is and life in the world without the Lord's guidance. How much like oil as it flitters here and there.

It was such a weird thing to go through. And really weird if you were a very dysfunctional young woman. I think I quit playing dolls about the time I married. Well, it certainly seemed that way. My mental maturity.

Sometimes I look at teens today and have pain for them in my heart. The need for their Heavenly Father's guidance is so clear in their lives they are projecting.

My marriage wasn't really a marriage at all. My eyes were blind, as I was blind, but it was not existent at all.

Even before separation happened, it didn't exist, but all this time spent looking for it to work, the lack of it existing just evaded me.

After the fact, I could not get it annulled.

It lasted such a short time and there was an immediate rejection of me as a young wife, even really, I can see, at the very altar.

It made no sense.

A wife of youth rejected before it began.

It was warped and unreasonable. And left me for years with pain that I couldn't get over, but the Lord could heal.

And much later, when I knew Him and cried out to Him, He did heal me. He delivered me from the pain of it and healed me completely of the bondage to it.

Immature, and in a lunacy depth of pain, without salvation, I ran to look for whatever would fill the pain of that rejection and void.

Ignorant of anything constructive to do with my life, as that never did cross my mind, I ran into another relationship.

And now, expecting a baby, and getting a divorce from the first marriage and into another weird relationship, all before twenty.

I had decided not to fail in this relationship.

I would not so easily give up on it. I would hold on, stick it out.

It lasted in an unwed situation for several years. Never marrying because of realizing that I was frightened of the person I had so without knowing jumped into a relationship with.

I finally made my way out with my son, when my mother urged me to do so, worrying about my son's safety.

That had never crossed my mind. But it had crossed my parents mind and it was the motivation to get out quickly.

It didn't take much to urge me out, I wanted out very badly.

Only fear had kept me in it. Fear of losing my son. Fear of this, fear of that. Dependent.

Finally separating from that, now with a little son, and all the same trappings of weird that I had all along, I went from one person to another hoping somebody would want me. Not living with anyone, but looking for someone.

How sad. But the Lord said that the poor and needy had cried for water and there was none. I think in my heart that fit me to a T.

I was poor and needy to know the Love that was the Lord's.

But was looking for love, earthy love, thinking it was love.

Looking everywhere for that drink that doesn't satisfy.

Ignorant fairy tales, a person with no discipline, no concept of the ticking of a clock called living in a society, where you work and function.

Only a desire so deep to be loved, to not be rejected, to find someone to care about me.

That drive caused me to put myself in situations that caused blow after blow of rejection.

Kind of like a tumble weed.

I'm so thankful for the Lord Who looked on me in my despair, and stupidity, ignorance and foolishness and gave His own life to save me.

I am so thankful for the Lord God Who loved me, and loves us before we even have any way to love Him.

I am so thankful for the Lord.

I remember sitting down one day and thinking at the end of that relationship, feeling absolute pain. I have died.

Pain.

I can look back and see clearly that was a wonderful starting place where the Lord looked on me in mercy.

A place where the Lord looked on me in mercy and gave me a new place to start.

I didn't know Him yet, but His imprint in this situation is as clear as day, as clear as can be on this place in my life.

And not long after that a person came into my life. I met him at a bookstore I worked at.

I know the Lord sent him to me. I knew it then.

We married. We also moved to another state and started a home and had a family.

People didn't think it would work, but it did.

I know the Lord sent him to me. He was a gift from the Lord to me. Though I didn't know the Lord, I knew He had sent this man to me.

This happened before I knew the Lord in my life, yet the Lord in it is so clear to me. He is so kind and He cares about us.

I can see easily God's kindness and mercy and love, compassion, in bringing me my husband.

He not only gave me another chance, but gave me a husband that has shown me God's own attributes in caring for me, and our lives, our marriage, and the Lord has allowed me to love him in His own precious love.

Though we went through so much in our lives, yet the Lord held us together. He still does.

We came to know the Lord together over time,as the Lord drew us.

I cried in my ignorance for a water of love that I never found, but the Lord came, and gave me a wonderful marriage that is still wonderful, and even more so today than yesterday, though the yesterdays have been wonderful.

Not in the way man would think perhaps, but in the Presence of the Lord in our lives and marriage, and His keeping and giving us His life.

The Lord came into our lives and became the Center of our lives.

The marriage is held together by Him. It has suffered the blows of the wind and rain, but the Rock was what held it together.

It is a wonderful thing to know the Lord. To have Him in our lives. There is nothing like it.

He loves everyone very much. He gave Himself on the cross that we might be able to come to Him.

His kindness shines on us even when we don't know it. He is there behind the dark clouds, and it is not ever so dark that He is not there, He is always there to hear the cry of our heart.

He hears our cries. Even those things that I put myself into through ignorance and foolishness, yet He came in love and saved me.

I want to encourage whoever the Lord is drawing close to Him.

Whoever is going through depths of pain and in need so badly. That the Lord will never leave you or forsake you, or us, and as the Bible says, the end of the matter shows His great mercy and compassion.

He can bring a change. And He never took me aside and told me how I didn't deserve Him, though it was true. He just brought healing to my life.

Once it came to me to realize how foolish and immature I had been, it was because He was giving me enough light and healing to see my error and repent of it.

It is His kindness that led me to repentance.

I could ask forgiveness for my sins and see how I had lived, and see how wonderful the Lord is and had been to me, even more now as I look at it and He shows me how He was with me, and how I now want to live for Him because of Him.

He didn't upbraid me in my depth of pain for my foolishness.

He just came and pulled me out of the briar bush, the miry clay, and saved me.

And will do the same for anyone. He loves us all. He is truly the Good Shepherd.

He came for all. He has no partiality. He does not love one because they look good and not love another because they look bad. We are all needy before Him.

His hand is extended out in love to all. He would that we all would come to Him to know Him and His love for us, and be healed.

To know Him, and to know His love for us. The reason Jesus Christ came to us and died and rose again. That we might know Him, know His Father, and know His love for us.

It is the very reason He came. To save us. To care for us. To nurture us. To show us His own love for us. To have a relationship with Him.

For us to know His love for us, that we too, might know that love for Him.

How kind. How wonderful.

I remember the kindness and compassion and mercy and goodness of the Lord concerning Job. And though I was no Job, yet the Lord came to me in my pain and despair and a life that would seem not redeemable really. He came and gave to me a new life even before I knew Him, and continued to give me a whole new life and being in Him.

He gave me a wonderful husband, and a wonderful family and salvation through Him.

Newness I never could have had without Him.

Love to all.

My name is Kathleen Angell.

My life was dramatically changed when the Lord made Himself real to me.

My website is
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