Portrait of a Servant Girl – Donna Part 1

January 19, 2018April 18, 2018 / hhooks / 1 Comment

Author’s Note: All my sisters in Christ are Servant Girls, and we’ve all been given God’s stories to tell. I’m grateful to be able to write to you about Donna and her story this week and next week on my blog. We met over dinner and talked nearly 3 hours about who she was before she allowed God to be Lord of her life, how He changed her when she gave Him her heart, and how He is working in her family right now. It is my pleasure to introduce you to the always smiling, always joyful, Donna Lawing…

“I knew when I was in high school that I wanted to be a secretary,” Donna told me. “I took a typing class in 10th grade, and that was it!” she said, with a huge grin on her face. (If you know her, you know that whole-face, contagious, brighten-your-day grin I’m talking about.)

So, after high school, she completed a 10-month program in Secretarial Science at King’s College and stepped into the working world at a company called SunHealth. That was 1987, and 31 years later, Donna is in her 21st year as the Executive Assistant for both Speedway Motorsports, Inc. and Sonic Automotive, Inc., working closely for Bruton Smith, Scott Smith and David Smith, as well as Bill Brooks, the Vice Chairman & CFO for Speedway Motorsports. (And sorry — no comment on whether or not Bruton is going to buy the Carolina Panthers. I asked.)

Donna (left) with Bruton (right) at Charlotte Motor Speedway (image used courtesy of Donna Lawing)

“When I get to heaven, if God needs a secretary, I’m the girl for the job,” she laughed.

Obviously, this is the career she was made to do. It has been a constant in her life since she was 18. But, while her career path hasn’t changed, other aspects of her life certainly have.

Thirteen-year-old Donna asked Jesus into her heart one night at a church camp called Camp Lurecrest. As she sat around the fire with the other campers, the counselor began talking about God – explaining how much He loves us, so much so that He sent His one and only son, Jesus, to earth. The counselor went on to describe how Jesus lived a sinless life but chose to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to.

As the counselor talked about Jesus being raised from the dead three days later, Donna became overwhelmed with this feeling of being ‘drawn’.

“There was this incredible love and this desire to really know Jesus,” she told me. “So, I asked Him into my heart that night, telling Him that I believed He died for me and took my sin on Himself, to make a way for me to be with Him forever.”

Unfortunately, as time went on, she went her own way and chose her own will over God’s. “I really wasn’t… discipled,” she admitted. The next 20 or so years were marked with many bad choices. While her career path was stable, her personal life was anything but. After two failed marriages, she found herself a single mom, raising her two daughters, Courtney and Jess, and working full-time to support them. She was very angry with her second husband and harbored a good bit of bitterness and resentment toward him and their failed marriage.

To make matters worse, Donna admitted she was always a bit vengeful, but life had sharpened this. Typically, she would only apologize if she “knew” she was wrong – but you had to prove it to her first. If you hurt her, she would definitely hurt you back; she would get revenge. She wasn’t humble. She was always right. Her way was the right way – the only way.

However, the Lord was about to change all that. He was orchestrating things for her path to converge with that of a high school crush who would be instrumental in leading her to a true relationship with her Savior.

Donna and Kevin knew each other in high school and lived in the same neighborhood. She was interested in him, but he was older. “Seniors did not date sophomores back then,” she said. So nothing came of it.

Evidently, it wasn’t God’s timing for them back in high school, but it was in 2003. They’d seen each other around Charlotte over the years, but Kevin happened to show up at Donna’s work one day; he was there for his job and saw her outside on her break. He stopped to say hi and ended up inviting her to dinner so they could catch up. After a few more dinner dates, they became a couple.

Kevin and Donna Lawing (Image used courtesy of Donna Lawing)

As they dated, they began attending church together, alternating Sundays between First Baptist Church Indian Trail (Kevin’s brother and his wife were attending FBCIT and invited them along) and the church where Kevin’s dad was pastoring in Charlotte. Donna began learning more about the Lord, studying the Bible more, asking questions, and soaking it all in. Kevin became involved with her daughters as well, coming to their home once a week to have a family style meal together.

It was at one of those meals, in January 2004, that Donna realized that she needed to surrender her life to the Lord. The conversation that night was about life – how people say one thing and then do another. Donna began to see that she had been doing just that – claiming to be a Christian, but being no different from anyone else. She didn’t want to be that person anymore. She wanted Jesus to know that she was sorry for being a hypocrite; she wanted to “walk what she talked.”

That’s when Kevin told her, “we can make it right, right now.” And that’s what they did. Kevin and Donna went into Donna’s bedroom, knelt by her bed, and talked to the Lord. She told Jesus that she was sorry for how she had been acting and living. She told Him that she didn’t want to live that way anymore; She wanted Jesus to be Lord of her life. She surrendered all to Him right then and there and has never been the same since. She truly made Jesus the Lord of her life. She couldn’t blame who she was on her circumstances any longer. Her encounter with the Lord brought her face-to-face with herself, her sin nature, and she had to own up to the consequences. For so many years, she had tried to make her own way, but now she wanted Jesus’ way. She asked Him for forgiveness, and He took her back.

What’s more, all vengefulness was gone. “The Lord taught me how to be humble, and He taught me to submit – both to my soon-to-be husband and to Him.” Donna also shared that the Lord immediately took away her nasty mouth — her excessive and unnecessary use of profanity. It was literally, in that very moment, gone!

The couple got engaged and became involved in premarital counseling with Rick Jordan at FBCIT. This led them eventually to join FBCIT and Rick’s life group. (Incidentally, this is where I met them and where Kevin said those fateful words in class one Sunday when he was subbing for Rick: “The most miserable person in the world is a Christian who isn’t living for the Lord”.)

Donna is confident that their church and church family have been very influential in her development as a Christian. She told me, “A lot of where I am with the Lord and who I am in the Lord is due to our church and life group.”

FBCIT Life Group that Kevin currently teaches. (Image used courtesy of Donna Lawing)

“Of course, we are all still a work in progress and always will be,” Donna was quick to remind me. “I do still struggle with patience,” she confessed. “I tell everybody, jokingly (sorta), that I’m pretty sure God put me with my husband to help me learn and exercise patience! God is teaching me to be still. Sometimes you just gotta wait.”

The waiting, surrendering, and trusting part has really come into perspective lately as Donna has walked through one of the toughest situations she’s ever faced…her oldest daughter, Courtney’s, substance abuse and addiction.

Donna (seated, front center) with her daughters, Courtney (top), Jess (right), and granddaughters, Madison (center) and Mackenzie (left)

“Considering all I have been through — and some of those things being what I thought were just the worst things ever — my life is really good. I have peace; I have joy; I have hope. Even in a moment of fear and despair, I am not broken by it.”

Donna knows now that life isn’t about her, it is about God and what He can do in and through her.

Next week, in part 2 of this Portrait of a Servant-Girl, I will share how God used Courtney’s struggle with addiction to restore their family.

What was your life like before you met Jesus? What did He change about you and your life when He saved you?

Fixing Me Was God’s Job

December 8, 2017September 7, 2018 / hhooks / 5 Comments

God can use any time, place, or circumstance He wants to use to get through to you. He can speak to you in the most unlikely of places and in the craziest of ways. When I was 31, after spending more than 10 years ignoring God’s voice (and at times even denying that Jesus existed), I actually obeyed God’s calling and left my full-time job to be a work-from-home-mom and be with my then-16-month-old son.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

To date, it it probably the craziest thing I have ever done. Most of the things God asks us to do seem crazy at the time; that’s why those things are known as a “leap of faith.” They aren’t things we could accomplish in our own power or with our own knowledge, skills, or money.

And that’s where I was in May 2010: being obedient to Jesus when I still wasn’t even sure I believed in Him! I didn’t have trouble believing in a Creator God overall, but I had lost Jesus – the man who walked and talked and healed and taught and died and lived again.

So, what God did was to remove me from the busyness of the life I had created with a job and a mortgage and a husband and a child and a pet, and He sat me down at the family-heirloom dining table in our house and confronted me with myself.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

Now, I’m not trying to say that staying home with your baby isn’t busy, but it was a lot less so for me than when I worked full-time outside the home. I still worked part-time from home and cared for our home and our son, but God had cleared my schedule quite a bit.

Life was quieter now. Life was slower now. I had time to think. (Funny, “thinking” was what got me into the mess I was in in the first place, but thinking was also what God used to get me out). I finally acknowledged that I needed help with my mind and my thoughts about God and Jesus.

At first, I tried to fix myself.

I remember reading a book or two I thought would help me believe in Jesus again. At this point, I really wanted to believe in Him but couldn’t fathom ever being able to again. I did pray sometimes and ask God to help me.

I was so used to scholarly-type study from 6 years of higher education that I thought maybe I could study my way back to believing in Jesus.

I got a Bible commentary to read what scholars said about the Bible hoping that some smart person’s “proof” would sway me. I read the book of James because I heard someone say it was a good idea for new Christians to start with that book when reading the Bible.

God led me to meet some Christian moms from our church and our area, and I started going to MOPS – Mothers of PreSchoolers – at our church with them in the fall of 2011.

I began to feel God more. It was slow, but it was there. I knew my worldview was made-up, but I still didn’t want to submit it to God.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

I was working hard to fix myself before I went back to the Lord. I thought He wanted me fixed before He would take me back. {Spoiler alert} That’s where I was wrong. Fixing me was God’s job. Fixing YOU is God’s job. He doesn’t require us to come to Him already perfect. {Hint} If you wait until you’re perfect before you go to God, you’ll never go to Him. If God waited to save us until we were perfect, He’d never have anyone to save!

Photo Credit: Pinterest

What is the craziest thing God has ever asked you to do? How did He achieve this thing through your obedience?

The Time God Told Me to Leave My Full-time Job (Yes, I thought it was crazy, too)!

December 1, 2017February 18, 2021 / hhooks / 20 Comments

“The most miserable person in the world is a Christian who isn’t living for God.”

Those words, spoken by the teacher subbing for our regular life group teacher, were the words God used to start an awakening in my soul. They moved me. They disturbed me. They were FOR me!

Photo Credit: Pinterest

Bill and I had been attending First Baptist Church of Indian Trail for a year or two at this point. I had started singing in the choir. I was still going to life group, and I had started going to Bible studies led by our life group teacher’s wife. I had even gone to my life group teacher and his wife a time or two to talk about this worldview I had created. I only remember going once or twice, and I don’t know how forthcoming I was with what was really going on inside my head.

I was still actively fighting against God’s convictions though. Four years passed, and I put up a valiant fight against His whispers and tugs. He’s persistent though, so He kept chiseling.

Photo Credits: Pinterest

Then, in early 2009, our son, Ethan, was born. I went back to work after 8 weeks because that’s what you’re “supposed to do,” but by the fall of 2009, I started having the strangest notion: I wanted to be at home with my baby.

That was TOTALLY foreign to me. It had never occurred to me to stay home with my child. Honestly, I always thought people who did that were…well, crazy, quite frankly. Why in the world would anyone want to be at home all day with a whiny, screaming, snotty-nosed kid?!

Even so, God had been placing me into different situations and was using various things to soften my heart and convict me in that direction since our son was born.

I was scared! This was crazy! What would my poor parents think after paying for me to earn a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree? What would my poor husband think? We’d bought a house two years prior to our son’s birth and just bought a new car since Ethan was born. I was crazy confused.

Then, I started to realize that this must be something God was calling me to do. I had no idea if that was true or not though because I had no idea what it was like to have God tell me to do something.

I had to figure it out, so I started asking people – trusted women I had met at church. One of the women I talked to was the wife of our current Sunday school teacher (we’d gotten a new teacher in the past 4 years). I explained what I was feeling and that I was starting to think this was something God was telling me to do.

“How do I know the difference between something God is directing me to do and something that’s just my own idea?” I asked her.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

She explained that, first and most importantly, God would never tell anyone to do something that wasn’t biblical. If what you think God is telling you to do goes against something written in His Word, then it isn’t God telling you to do it.

This trusted lady also told me that, if this thing is actually a conviction from God, it won’t go away. God will gently but consistently keep convicting you of what He wants you to do. Sometimes, when we think up things on our own, they come and go easily, especially if it takes a while to achieve it or we meet lots of opposition while trying to do it. However, a conviction from God doesn’t just shrink away at the first sign of difficulty. He won’t let it. I’ve heard it said that God is a gentleman. He won’t ever force Himself on us, but He will continue to woo us and encourage us in the direction He wants us to go until we choose to go that way on our own.

Finally, my confidante asked me if I felt peace about this – leaving my job and staying at home with my child. I remember a smile quickly spreading across my face as I confidently told her that I did feel peace!

Photo Credit: Pinterest

It was insane! I had been afraid of it at first, but the more I thought about it and all the details that led me to believe it was God prodding me in that direction, I had indeed experienced a peace and calmness. Our life group teacher’s wife told me that peace was one of the best ways to judge whether God is telling you to do something or not. If you feel conflicted, it probably isn’t from God. If you feel peace, it is most likely from God.

I felt TOTAL peace about this. I was confident that this was a “God-thing,” as people say. It just wasn’t anything I would have cooked up on my own! But, as I was learning how to hear God’s voice, I began to trust that this was in fact what He had in mind for me.

Bill, on the other hand, was definitely NOT at peace with this crazy idea. (That is a blog post all its own that I’ll share another time). So, we prayed about it a great deal over weeks and months it seemed. Finally, he just shook his head. “The numbers don’t add up,” he said, referring to the many times he’d calculated our bills versus his salary to find out that his salary alone wouldn’t cover what we’d need to pay out each month.

“But,” he went on, “if you’re saying God is telling you to do this, I can’t go against it. We have to do it. We’ll just have to trust that He’ll take care of us.”

In May 2010, I worked my last full-time semester at the community college where I was teaching, and I haven’t regretted it for a moment.

I couldn’t have known, but this was another crucial turning point in my journey back to God. It was the first time in my life since I accepted Christ as a 12-year-old, that I stepped out in faith and completely submitted to His will. (I was 31 when I left my full-time job.)

I experienced God’s provision during this time in my life, and that was a big deal for me. Obviously, there were plenty of other times in my life that He provided, but I never acknowledged that it was Him until He told me to leave my job and go home…and I did it…and He provided for us.

Do you remember the first time you knew it was God directing you to do something or not to do something? What was it like? How did you know?

Do you remember a time when you experienced His provision after you stepped out in faith and did what He wanted?

Would you share these experiences with us?

The Most Miserable Person in the World

November 24, 2017November 23, 2017 / hhooks / 6 Comments

What’s the worst mistake you’ve ever made? No, I don’t mean that time in middle school when you tried to cut your own bangs and ended up with about an inch and a half of hair in the front that stuck out from your forehead when you tried to curl it and spray it into submission.

Looks kinda cute on her but was horrific on me, and I did it more than once! Photo Credit: Pinterest

Yeah – you remember that time (or four – depending on how many times it took you to learn not to do it on your own). It was the time you tried to trim them when they were wet, and you pulled them down tight and cut them at the length you wanted them to be…when they were dry! Yeah – that time 🙂 Takes a while to get over that mistake, don’t it!?

But that isn’t the mistake I mean. I mean that big, life changing (or at least life diverting) mistake that took years, maybe even decades to recover from. I have a few like that, but one of the most costly mistakes for me was the time I spent trying to act like Jesus wasn’t real and wasn’t sovereign over my life.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

That all started back in 1997 when I was a freshman at UNCW. Fast forward to 2004, and I’m married and looking for a new church in a new town with my new husband.

Yes. You read that right. I was still ignoring Jesus but looking for a place to go to church. I was newly married and knew that, like my parents, my husband expected a girl that was going to church. And, I wanted couple friends to hang out with, so we visited churches in our area. I was raised in the Methodist church and Bill was raised in the Baptist church, so we went to both. Sometimes friends invited us to their churches and sometimes we went to churches we’d seen in the area around our apartment.

We finally visited First Baptist Church of Indian Trail (FBCIT) around 2005 because Bill’s mema had seen a service from this church on TV and suggest that we try it out.

Mema had mentioned this church to us several times after we moved to the area. I was against it though. It was a Baptist church for one thing, and it was huge! It took 3 services to accommodate people on Sunday morning, for crying out loud! But, it was around 5 minutes from our apartment, so we finally went.

The Wednesday after our visit, as was the church’s practice, they sent people to visit us and invite us to come back. We went back the second Sunday and asked to be placed into a Life Group (that’s a Sunday school class for those of you old-schoolers like me). That day, we were taken to a class that hadn’t been together very long but was for newly married couples like us. We met the teacher and his wife and 3 or 4 other couples. After service, they were all going to lunch and invited us. We went, and that was it. FBCIT became our church.

I don’t remember a ton from those early years except the life group. It was growing fairly quickly as other couples were added and some started having children. A few of the ladies in the class who sang in the choir invited me to join, and I did.

I know now that God meant for us to be at FBCIT. It was the church and those were the people God was going to use to woo me back to Himself. I sang in the choir. I went on the choir retreats. I listened to the sermons. I participated in the life group lessons. (Sounds a lot like the first 18 years of my life, doesn’t it)?

Photo Credit: Pinterest

God began convicting me during this time. I can’t tell you much of what He said or did though. For one thing, I don’t think I’d ever been convicted before – or maybe I just didn’t recognize God’s voice. For another, I’d gotten very good at ignoring anything that might be from God: ignoring it, rationalizing it, getting angry at it, whatever I needed to do, I did to avoid whatever He was doing or saying to reach me.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

Then, one morning during life group, we had a substitute teacher. I have no idea what the lesson was about, but I will never forget this one thing he said: the most miserable person in the world is a Christian who isn’t living for God.

I almost burst into tears right there in the middle of that class with all those new friends we’d made.

That was me!

He was talking to me!

I WAS miserable!

I hadn’t known exactly what was going on, but I knew something was wrong. I hadn’t realized it until that very moment; I had become an expert at pushing is back for after all those years. I had gotten good at doing church things and living like a Christian, but I wasn’t living for God at all.

Whoa! Talk about a turning point! I still had a very cold, hard heart of stone, and it would take a few more years to soften it completely, but this moment definitely got my attention.

Look back and take note of the life-diverting moments and turning points you’ve experienced? Would you share them here?

He’s a ‘Hold On To You’ Kind of God

November 17, 2017November 15, 2017 / hhooks / 2 Comments

Once you belong to God, He keeps you, even if you don’t want to be kept. I’m thankful He doesn’t let His children go. (I know somebody just said ‘amen’ to that)!

Photo Credit: Pinterest

I’m sure there were many ways God held on to me when I decided to walk out on my own, but one way was by keeping me in church. The whole time this mess was going on, I never stopped going to church. Weird, right? I really don’t even believe in Jesus at this point, but I am sitting in church!? I know. I know.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

On the surface, the thing that kept me in church was my parents. I knew they expected me to go, so I went. From the time I was 18 and moved out of my parents’ house, I found a church to attend in the difference places I lived. That was God keeping me. That wasn’t me. Now, I’m not saying that I went every Sunday, and I certainly wasn’t involved in the activities at the church like I was when I was young, but I still went. That’s one of the major things that kept me from totally going into oblivion. That, and God had a Christian husband in store for me, but I didn’t know that yet.

I’d known who Bill was since high school although we’d never spoken to each other that we can remember. But, we were in a group of friends who were hanging out while some of us were home on break over the Christmas holiday in 2000. Over those weeks of break, he and I met and started dating. That was 17 years ago, but God had Bill planned for me when He separated the dry land from the water and said it was good.

Bill grew up in a close-knit, Southern family just like I did. He was raised in church (the same church where his mom went as a girl with her family). He spent summer days running through the woods with his cousins, and he spent many a meal with his feet under the table at his grandmother’s house. It’s a little eerie how many similarities there are between his childhood and mine.

Memmie’s house (Bill’s grandmother)

But all those similarities don’t negate the most important reason: Bill believes in Jesus. God knew that I would need a Christian husband to hold my hand and help lead me back to Him, so He sent me Bill.

Bill and me – 2014

Bill and I met in December 2000. We got engaged in July 2003 and were married in June 2004. During the 3 years of our courtship, I don’t recall telling him a lot about my worldview although we did talk about it a few times before and after we got married. More recently, he told me those conversations scared him and that he prayed that I’d go back to my faith for the sake of our family.

Thankfully, God was working in my life to reconcile me to Himself.

It took a while.

He let me walk out on my own for a long time.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

In Psalms 81:11-12, God says, “But My people did not listen to My voice: and Israel did not obey Me. So, I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart, to walk in their own devices.”

This verse makes me shiver; it is as if God were speaking specifically about me here because this is exactly what He let me do. He gave me over because that was what I wanted. He knew His child well enough to know that I had to learn the hard way, so to speak.

I was going to have to walk away to get back to Him.

In a recent Bible study, I heard Elizabeth Poplin explain why God gives His children over to their own devices. She said, “That’s what God does. We think we’ll get freedom out there, so we leave and taste it, but it doesn’t free us. He does. So we go back. We have some of the world in us when we come back. He will clean us up”.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

And He’s kept us the whole time. He’s just waiting for us to get our fill of whatever it was we thought we wanted more than Him. He’s been watching. He’s been working. He’s been waiting – like the father in the famous parable of the prodigal son. God waited for me to look His way, and as soon as I did, He came running!

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Hallelujah!

Please share your stories of how God held you!

June Cleaver? Who me?

October 6, 2017April 18, 2018 / hhooks / 14 Comments

Leave it to Beaver
Beaver Cleaver and his mom, June (photo credit: Pinterest)

I am not June Cleaver. I’m just not. My mom was pretty darn close, so before I became a mom, I assumed I would be great at it, too. I was wrong! I’m not June Cleaver nor Carolyn Murdock (my mom). I’m just Heather Hooks; that’s all I can be.

I have a relationship with Jesus. I am a wife and a work-from-home mom of two children. I am a daughter, a sister, and an aunt. I have only ever lived in North Carolina. I am a teacher and a photographer. I discovered, once I had kids, that I was a selfish control-freak with a short fuse on a bad temper that my children see far too often.

At our house, dirty dishes sometimes stay in the sink overnight and bathrooms aren’t cleaned as often as they should be. The floors usually need to be vacuumed or swept, and I am pretty sure I have become nose-blind to the trash can in the kitchen.

I am learning to be a wife who respects her husband. This hasn’t always been the case in my marriage. Learning to trust God and accept His sovereignty over my life has shown me pieces of my own self that could be more God-centered: my marriage, my parenting, my relationships with others, how I spend my free time…

God hasn’t always been the focus of my life though. I was raised in a Christian home and was saved when I was 12 years old, but when I got older, I chose to turn my back and walk away from God and do my own thing for a while.

How’d that work for me, you ask? You’ll have to keep reading to find out ;-)…that’s what this blog is all about.

This blog will be an honest and open look at my life and my faith journey. I will be as transparent as possible. You’ll read my testimony, how God has worked in my life, my struggles and triumphs, what I am learning about marriage and parenting…who knows what else…maybe even a recipe or cleaning tip here and there. I am letting God take the lead and direct me on this; I’ll just do the typing.

The main goal here is to write to you so you’ll know who God is based on what He has done in my life. These aren’t just my stories. These are God’s stories, and I write to share them with you.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

Feel free to introduce yourself. I’d love to know who is here with me.

Servant Girl Stories

Writing the stories God gave me so others will know His love

marriage

Portrait of a Servant Girl – Donna Part 1

Fixing Me Was God’s Job

The Time God Told Me to Leave My Full-time Job (Yes, I thought it was crazy, too)!

The Most Miserable Person in the World

He’s a ‘Hold On To You’ Kind of God

June Cleaver? Who me?