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| Jeanette Windle |
Jeanette Windle is the
author of Congo
Dawn along with ECPA Christian Book Award finalists Veiled Freedom and Freedom's
Stand and a dozen other international intrigue
releases for both adults and children. I was fortunate to meet with her in Philadelphia last summer. She is a woman who is passionate about her writing and about the issues she addresses.
Jeanette, welcome to Overcoming With God. We appreciate your willingness to share your
testimony of overcoming with our readers.
Would you tell us about the most difficult thing in your life you have
had to overcome, with God’s help?
I
can say honestly there are simply too many to narrow down the most difficult,
some that remain too painful to share in public forum (if readers really want
to glimpse the most private and profound of God's mercies and overcoming in my
life, read my fiction, because my protagonists invariably walk through storms
and struggles that God has walked me through). However I would like to share
one of the more difficult chapters in my life because it is also one of my
greatest stories of God's grace and love.
My
husband and I had been serving as missionaries for many years in the Andean
highlands of Bolivia, South America, when we began praying for a daughter. We had three sons, our oldest Mike, our adopted son Josh who
had come into our lives after many years of not being able to conceive, then
our miracle son
born just ten months after Josh, Stephen. With all three
sons now school age, we began praying for open doors to adopt a baby girl. In
the fall of 1990, God gave us a beautiful two-month-old daughter we named Tanya
Elizabeth. My sons were ecstatic with their baby sister. We had a wonderful
first Christmas with her. But that very Christmas night we woke up about 3AM
wondering why Tanya had never cried for her feeding. That
was when we discovered that somewhere in the night Tanya had died of SIDS
(Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
I had always considered myself a strong
person. There had been hardships before in my life. Growing up as a daughter of American missionaries in the guerrilla zones of Colombia/Venezuela, I'd encountered bandits, riots, political and physical threat. As an adult, I'd endured a knife at my oldest son's throat, muggings, robberies, personal assault, more riots and unrest.
Though
I'd known fear, I'd always come through, put the past behind me. I had
always known God was there, recognized God's
control in every situation. I was a survivor.
Then came Tanya's loss. I had no idea bottom
could be so far down. It wasn't just the loss of our daughter, but of the hope
of ever having another child ever. We could not have any more children. When our hearts
healed enough some months later to submit our names again
for adoption, a corrupt local welfare
administration informed us bluntly our last attempt had made clear our
missionary salary could not compete with what had become a booming black-market
for international adoptions.
As the months went by, I could not push the
memory and loss of my
beautiful baby girl from my
mind as I'd managed with every other bad happening in my life. I couldn't bear to look at little girl's dresses and dolls and hair ribbons in
the open
air market. I remember breaking down in tears
after delivering a gift to a dear friend who after two boys had just delivered a baby
girl.
What I never asked
was why.' After
all, why not? In
the Bolivian highlands, I lived
surrounded by misery. Children
starved in the streets. I knew women who'd lost their entire family to disease and malnutrition. National ministry leaders who'd lost loved
ones because they had no access to the medical
care available to my
family.
Logically I knew
millions were far worse off than I. I still had a husband,
three adorable
sons, a roof over my head and food to eat. Like
Job, I never questioned that this was God's doing, not Satan or man or just the
way the world was. God was in total control, and He alone had chosen to allow
this in my life. So I bowed my head and submitted, but the pain was still there
and deep.
I still remember vividly the night before
American Thanksgiving, 1991, when our middle adopted son Josh, who was five at
the time, called me into his bedroom after lights out. The next day I'd be
hosting the entire expatriate missionary community for Thanksgiving. But the
day had another significance. Because of odd Bolivian laws as to age of
adoptive parents, the time needed for processing adoptions, our own upcoming
furlough back to the US, the next day was the absolute final deadline for our
adoption of a child in Bolivia--ever! With no such possibility in sight, I had
just that day laid aside my last hope that we might have a daughter .
Leaning out of his
upper bunk, Josh demanded anxiously, "Mom, does God really answer
prayer?"
"Why do you ask that?" I asked him.
"Because we have been praying so long for
another baby sister, and we still don't have one."
What could I say? I knew the Biblical answers,
and I'm sure I gave some correct parental theological response. But I wasn't so
sure I believed it myself. All I knew
was that God knew exactly what He was doing with my world. And that I was still
hurting.
One passage to
which I was drawn repeatedly at the time was Lamentations 3:19-26). "I remember my affliction and my
wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is
downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because
of the LORD's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." (NIV)
In those words was the hope I could cling to in life's storms. Not
looking back to the affliction and wandering, bitterness and gall, but forward
to the love, compassion, faithfulness of our Lord, new every morning.
Is God's compassion and love for real? You bet they are! I remember vividly
as I woke up the next moment thinking, "Okay, this is the day. Don't think
about it. Focus on getting ready for company."
I'd taken my
three sons to a neighbor for a birthday party and was stuffing chickens (no
turkey!) when the phone rang. On the phone was the social worker who'd
processed our first adoption.
"Do you
still want a daughter?" she asked. "Because I have a baby girl here
abandoned on the farm where my brother works. If you want her, you can take her
directly home, and I will personally do your family court paperwork so she
doesn't go into the system to be sold to the highest bidder."
When the
neighbor brought my sons back from that party, their baby sister was sitting in
a stroller in the front room. To this day our daughter Ellie reminds her big
brothers that she is God's answer to their prayers (and sometimes they kid that
they wish they hadn't prayed so hard!)
Did God have to
answer my prayer? (though, in fact, I had already given up on
praying) No, He didn't. There have been times before and since then when His
answer has just been 'No'. That I've simply had to endure, grieve, come through
loss. But that moment when the phone rang was like God reaching down from
heaven to say: "Jeanette, here's just a little something to say I love
you. I have always loved you, I will always love you."
Trouble has come into my life often enough
since then. It will in the future too, I know. The son who asked that question
about prayer has taught me that a child wandering from God can be a worse grief
than a child's death. And has taught me as well how much God loves us even when
we fail because I know how deeply I love my son and how much greater God's love
is than mine.
As for me, in everything that has ever come
into my life since that day, one thing I have never doubted for a moment is
God's all-encompassing love and compassion for me. I have always been able to
look back, point at that moment, and say, "He did that just because He
loved me;. If I've let Him down often enough, He has never let me down. And He
won't let me down now."
Our heavenly Father's compassions never fail.
They are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness.
What is your favorite bible verse and
why?
While
again I have too many favorite verses (including the passage above) to choose
just one, I do have what I call my "life verse", which God laid on my
heart during my teen years. "Being confident of this, that He who began a
good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ
Jesus."--Philippians 1:6 (NIV)
This
verse continues to mean much to me because I am so deeply conscious of how far
I fall short of being like my Savior. In the midst of struggle when at times it
seems that the good work God began of transforming me into the image of His Son
is going backwards instead of forwards, the promise that one day God--and not I!--will
bring that task to completion when I am at last in the presence of Jesus Christ
is an anchor I can hold onto amidst any storm.
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| Congo Dawn |
Disability friendliness: Is this latest
release available in audio format or do you have any other works available on
audio? Do your e-books have audio
capability? Do you have any in large print?
Both
Congo Dawn and my last title, Freedom's Stand, are available in
audio-book. All of my titles are available in e-book and can be listened to
through the audio function of the e-book, at least for the Kindle downloads.
What has been the most important thing
you hope your readers will get from your books and why?
My ultimate goal in every book I write,
however much a "thriller," is to share with the reader my own
heartfelt conviction that, for all the turmoil and conflict and pain in our
world, this universe does make sense and has both a purpose and a loving
Creator. The scenarios in my books are only too real. But if a life spent in
some of the planet’s more difficult corners has taught me more than I wish I
knew about the depravity of which a godless mankind is capable, it has taught
me far more of God’s overriding sovereignty and love. If I did not have the
absolute assurance that the course of human history and current events as well
as my own life lie in the hands of a loving heavenly Father, I would not have
the nerve to research, much less write, the stories that I do.
As you researched your books, did you
learn anything that particularly touched your heart?
One impact of writing each new book
set in a different corner of the planet has been impelling me to more prayer
for that part of the world and especially my brothers and sisters in Christ
there. While writing my two Afghanistan titles, Veiled Freedom and Freedom's
Stand, for instance, I will never forget sitting in a women's prayer time
in Kabul (behind closed doors as is necessary under the current regime as much as
under the Taliban). One woman prayed that God raise His hedge of protection around
us against the power of the Prince of Persia. The hair stood up on my arms as
it suddenly sank home that I was sitting literally in ancient Persia, territory
of the same demonic prince (see Daniel 10) who was powerful enough to hold off
for twenty-one days the angel sent to answer Daniel's prayer. Only when Michael
the Archangel entered the fight was that angelic messenger able to break through.
That experience above all motivated me to pray deeply and constantly for those
serving the living God in the midst of such spiritual war zones in Afghanistan
and elsewhere.
In this latest work, do you have any
topics useful for bibliotherapy, or therapeutic influence through reading about
a disorder or situation?
The
seeming paradox of an all-loving, all-powerful heavenly Father intersecting
with ultimate human suffering is a strong theme in Congo Dawn, especially related to violence against women, children
at risk, human trafficking. My last two Afghanistan titles, Veiled Freedom and Freedom's Stand, deal strongly with freedom of faith issues.
Thank
you, Jeanette, for agreeing to answer these questions. Your testimony is one of
the most powerful I have seen here on OWG!
Jeanette's books are available for purchase online and in bookstores. (Click here.)
____________________________________________________
GIVEAWAY: Jeanette has generously
offered an autographed copy of Congo Dawn to one of our readers (within
North America.)
Share the following TO ENTER: What is one of the prayers God answered for you? Leave your email address if we don't already know you well.
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